I do occasionally stream my mental breakdowns, so this seemed like a quick, silly grab off of the Steam sale. The humor is very obviously engrained in Twitch/Youtube references so sure, it got a chuckle or two out of me, but if you're not even partially inside that universe, either as a creator or watcher, I'm not particularly sure if this game would offer too much to you honestly. Maybe I'm just not a fan of deck-builders, but I didn't really get much out of this other than the surface level concept. It's funny in it's introduction to see that mental health is effected by mean comments, but it never really discusses it in anyway deeper than poking fun at an internet culture you may or may not actively be apart of.
It's a rouge-like deck building visual novel where you combat chat toxicity by providing content "points" at the cost of your health. That's probably the simplest way to describe the main battle mechanics. Basically, in order to make money, you want to keep the card games going as long as possible but at the cost of taking more and more damage as each round passes. If you run out of health, you lose a heart and after losing three hearts, the game just ends. I think this is a pretty clever concept, but it's never really explained properly and this is just what I gathered after playing it for a short time. The difficulty ramps up almost immediately because of this and as your character springs to outrageous levels of popularity in such an unrealistically short time, the cards you randomly get seem to do almost nothing. In turn, this makes you have to spend money to recover more health, constantly keeping you with extremely little resources. I get that's the point, but your character has other responsibilities and a life of his own going on in the plot that actively throws a wrench in the card mechanics as well. You get to choose what kind of categories to stream in, in hopes of attracting a larger audience, but there never really was a difference shown for what each category did. No matter what you chose, there were a crap ton of viewers and what audience you were streaming to just seemed to be completely random.
Since it is a visual novel, there is a plot and recurring characters. There may even be multiple endings, I don't know, I got destroyed by Gen Z commenters and died during my short bout with the game. While you make choices in regards to keeping yourself healthy and when to stream, you have almost zero control over what your character does in the plot. He operates on his own path that makes me roll my eyes, because he's a toddler in an adult's body and just chooses to fall down a path of his destruction on his own accord, which also makes the game artificially harder because he has to work harder to make more money. I kind of wish there was more you could do to change that. While the world of content creation has it's caveats of naysayers and pissheads, it's kind of important to recognize that it's a hobby way before it's a job and that not making money or fame from it isn't the literal end all, be all. It can be extremely rewarding in different ways. If that weren't the case, then no one would be doing it at all. But, the main character is very money driven without an inner monologue of his thoughts and he never comes across as if he's even having fun in the first place. He barely speaks and there's never a real self-reflection of his thoughts that take place, unless it's at the very end. They had an opportunity to delve into something a little deeper here and I think they just didn't take it in favor of keeping in this card mechanic.
I also think this may hurt the replayability as well too. I didn't beat it so maybe one day I'll come back to it. Even with the short time I had with it, the combat kind of grew stale. The "enemies" don't really do anything other than call you a poophead in several different variations. Your cards remain relatively the same for a long time. Different audiences you stream to seem to enjoy certain cards over others, but you don't really have a choice in that. I didn't get nearly enough cards to combat some of the audiences that I was randomly put up against. There's also a money making mini-game that requires you to mash the mouse button as fast as possible during what feels like an eternity, which hurts my wrist so I hate it.
I did have fun with it for a few hours, but that's really it. I already saw most of the zingers so I'm not sure if it would offer up anymore fun for me. It seems when you get a game over, you permanently obtain a new card to your deck but that's about the only leeway you get. I'd probably beat it one day and then never again, which is unfortunate because it seems like they want you to replay it a lot. Unfortunately, it's just a half-baked narrative with half-baked gameplay.
Oh well! On to the next content to consume, my little poggers. Be sure to like and- gunshots
It's a rouge-like deck building visual novel where you combat chat toxicity by providing content "points" at the cost of your health. That's probably the simplest way to describe the main battle mechanics. Basically, in order to make money, you want to keep the card games going as long as possible but at the cost of taking more and more damage as each round passes. If you run out of health, you lose a heart and after losing three hearts, the game just ends. I think this is a pretty clever concept, but it's never really explained properly and this is just what I gathered after playing it for a short time. The difficulty ramps up almost immediately because of this and as your character springs to outrageous levels of popularity in such an unrealistically short time, the cards you randomly get seem to do almost nothing. In turn, this makes you have to spend money to recover more health, constantly keeping you with extremely little resources. I get that's the point, but your character has other responsibilities and a life of his own going on in the plot that actively throws a wrench in the card mechanics as well. You get to choose what kind of categories to stream in, in hopes of attracting a larger audience, but there never really was a difference shown for what each category did. No matter what you chose, there were a crap ton of viewers and what audience you were streaming to just seemed to be completely random.
Since it is a visual novel, there is a plot and recurring characters. There may even be multiple endings, I don't know, I got destroyed by Gen Z commenters and died during my short bout with the game. While you make choices in regards to keeping yourself healthy and when to stream, you have almost zero control over what your character does in the plot. He operates on his own path that makes me roll my eyes, because he's a toddler in an adult's body and just chooses to fall down a path of his destruction on his own accord, which also makes the game artificially harder because he has to work harder to make more money. I kind of wish there was more you could do to change that. While the world of content creation has it's caveats of naysayers and pissheads, it's kind of important to recognize that it's a hobby way before it's a job and that not making money or fame from it isn't the literal end all, be all. It can be extremely rewarding in different ways. If that weren't the case, then no one would be doing it at all. But, the main character is very money driven without an inner monologue of his thoughts and he never comes across as if he's even having fun in the first place. He barely speaks and there's never a real self-reflection of his thoughts that take place, unless it's at the very end. They had an opportunity to delve into something a little deeper here and I think they just didn't take it in favor of keeping in this card mechanic.
I also think this may hurt the replayability as well too. I didn't beat it so maybe one day I'll come back to it. Even with the short time I had with it, the combat kind of grew stale. The "enemies" don't really do anything other than call you a poophead in several different variations. Your cards remain relatively the same for a long time. Different audiences you stream to seem to enjoy certain cards over others, but you don't really have a choice in that. I didn't get nearly enough cards to combat some of the audiences that I was randomly put up against. There's also a money making mini-game that requires you to mash the mouse button as fast as possible during what feels like an eternity, which hurts my wrist so I hate it.
I did have fun with it for a few hours, but that's really it. I already saw most of the zingers so I'm not sure if it would offer up anymore fun for me. It seems when you get a game over, you permanently obtain a new card to your deck but that's about the only leeway you get. I'd probably beat it one day and then never again, which is unfortunate because it seems like they want you to replay it a lot. Unfortunately, it's just a half-baked narrative with half-baked gameplay.
Oh well! On to the next content to consume, my little poggers. Be sure to like and- gunshots