TL:DR; Garden of Seif: Chronicles of an Assassin is the kickstarter-backed, debut title of Foxdrift Studios and it was released on October 4th, 2023; and like any good garden, I dig it! The art is gorgeous, the character models are unique over the generic styles I’m used to seeing, the character writing shines, the music is pleasing on the ears, and the plot is filled with twists and turns. What more could you want from the chronicles of an assassin?

I’ve been suffering withdrawal from not reading any VNs in the last month, and most of the ones I’ve read recently were on the older side, so I thought I’d look into a fresh release, and well, Chronicles of an Assassin is just that; fresh! I couldn’t find anything rotten about it at all~

The gameplay is straightforward. You have a couple of routes to choose from and if you play your cards right, you just might survive and maybe even get a little something more. There are lots of choices you get to choose from; over 30 - some are flavor and some are impactful.

Most dialogue choices lead to you building trust or betrayal with the character whose route you are on which will determine what ending you get. I really appreciate that the game tells you whenever you are gaining trust or betrayal. It also helps that the game has a fully completed walkthrough that will guide you to all the endings, super handy if you don’t feel like searching all the different combinations to see all the endings.

One thing that I partially wish was done a bit differently is the exploration of the bad endings. I think it would have been incredibly interesting to see how some of the characters react to the things that happen in a few of the bad endings, but instead it abruptly cuts off, shows a cool looking card that tells you where you went wrong, and takes you back to the main menu. I get it though. The game is from the point of view of the protagonist, Iris, and then the two people whose routes you can follow, so further exploration of some of the bad endings would require adding more character perspective changes and that might not flow as well. I guess this is sort of a compliment to the writing because it means that I was wanting more!


You are also able to enter a custom assassin name for Iris to be referred to. I thought that was a really neat touch and gave me an even deeper connection to a protagonist that I already liked a lot!

The UI is really pretty and does something that I’ve never noticed before with its buttons. Instead of having the buttons tab up off the dialogue/text box it has the buttons go up from the lower right side. I like this! It doesn’t block anything important from the scene and it is undistracting off to the side like that while I am reading, plus it looks really good. I want to see more VNs do that in the future!

A minor but another appreciated thing is that the game is entirely playable with just a keyboard and even lists the keybindings. It’s not super important, but it’s something I noticed and thought worth pointing out.

There is also a journal function that not only gives quick access to the credits and music tracks, but also has a tab for viewing unlocked in-game letters and a lore tab. When I first saw the lore tab, I was pretty nervous. I was worried that it would be required reading for understanding the world of the game. It’s not. It’s a very expansive and enjoyable read that goes in-depth about the various factions, locations, and languages but thankfully it isn’t there to act as a lore dump/do the legwork for the story; it’s an enhancement.

Speaking of enhancements, the lore page comes with a viewable map of the continent where the game takes place. It’s a highly detailed, yet clean and gorgeous to look at map that gives you a better idea of the overall game world!

The characters do a fantastic job filling each other in on the details of the world and factions as necessary, to a point that it feels very natural. It’s something that the reader is eased into over a period of time as well, instead of just being repeatedly bombarded with information.

The writer knew what she was doing when she did her world building. The story repeatedly gives off a sense of wonder by mentioning something about the world; whether it be the name of a faction, an item, or an animal - to get you wondering what it is and then introducing you to it later on! It all feels organic/natural (which is what a lot of fantasy themed stories fail to do properly, in my experience).

The story itself is pretty light-hearted, often romantic and comedic, but sprinkled with flakes of melancholy here and there. I don’t want to get too deep into it because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that there are more twists and turns than your typical racetrack! It was hard to put down, and even prevented me from getting some work of my own done because I kept wanting to read more. Garden of Seif: Chronicles of an Assassin clocks in at a satisfying 100,000 words! It took me around a total of 9 hours to read both routes.

The character artist, Cutecumber, did an amazing job. Her artstyle gave the characters very vibrant and unique designs. Furthermore, the character faces in the dialogue box have a wide variety of expressions. I thought I was done seeing all of Iris’s expressions by the end of the first chapter, but nope.

I’m not sure if it was who worked on the UI, the character art, or the CG Backgrounds, but there are these cool chapter title cards and a batch of them for one of the routes is that of a scorpion. I don’t know if it was intended or if I’m just seeing things, but I always see a heart-shape while staring at the top down view of the scorpion’s head on the title card, and I just think that is so cute and clever! That is good design!

The CG Backgrounds were well done, always matched the current scene, and perhaps most shockingly of all, I never noticed them repeating (as in to represent separate locations, they repeated, but only for the singular location it represented) - especially to the borderline off putting degree that it sometimes happens in a lot of VNs.

I’ve briefly mentioned characters a few times but haven’t given them a deep dive yet, so let’s get to that, shall we? The characters are so well written that if I was just staring at the script and the names next to the dialogue were covered I’d be able to tell who was saying what the vast majority of the time. The characters always feel genuine, especially the characters who are anything but. I loved it and had a fun time with all of them; from the supporting cast to the whole ensemble!

Garden of Seif: Chronicles of an Assassin gets a resounding, “Yes, you should buy it if you like visual novels. Especially if you are starving for a fantastic Otome!” from me. The $20 price tag is very fair, but if you are still unconvinced after reading this review, then consider getting it during a sale! Personally, I normally wait for sales to buy my games, but I bought this full price and am very satisfied with it!

I was hoping for a fun horde game in the same vein of Left 4 Dead, but instead I got "Escort Quest - The Game".

Being able to level up to unlock perks, more damage for weapons, character skins, and the large cast of playable characters is cool.

Unfortunately, the allied AI in this game is downright terrible, so I'd argue that playing solo with bots is pretty unviable even on the easiest difficulty.

The final straw for me was at Story 2 Part 3 when I experienced a bug that then lead into another bug which pulled my into an inescapable area (there is a bug where your character will sometimes get knocked down by nothing. The second part of this bug dragged my character through a gated area that had no way out).

When I thought about how I didn't want to go through the area defense objective and escort quest at the start, I realized that has been the whole game; defending areas and escorting NPCs until the hordes stop coming.

If it had just been get from one end of the map to the other and survive with 3 other players (bots) then this would have been something. Alas, in my opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 remains the undisputed king.

It's an inferior Left 4 Dead clone. It does some things right like having unlockable weapon and character skins, but it's bogged down by a needlessly convoluted card system and is plagued with bugs even after two years of release.

I gave up on Act 4 (of 6) of the campaign - played nothing else - and so far I've: Fallen through the map, had my character "die" hanging on a ledge that didn't exist, and got insta-killed in the final phase of a really annoying and unfun boss fight at Act 4.

Speaking of said boss fight, it's needlessly hard to do with the bots on the easiest difficulty and quite frankly, I can't be bothered to try to go through it again or to finish the slog that is this solo campaign.

I don't know about other platforms, but it's pretty telling to the quality of the game when only 9% of the Xbox playerbase has finished Act II of the game (yes, I'm aware it being on Gamepass has a bit to do with it, but still).

It's a shame that Turtle Rock couldn't nail down the formula and make a good Left 4 Dead successor with this (or presumably Evolve). Maybe they'll get it right the next time, but I wouldn't count on it.