Reviews by Naarel

Listen, I appeared in the interactive fiction community a year or so ago, straight out of visual novel community, therefore, I’m used to creating and playing choice-based games. I’m still getting used to parsers and trying to destigmatize them in my head, where they’re still clinging to the association of hours-long, puzzle-filled ordeals (don’t come after me, I’m trying to make a parser myself!). That’s why I was actually kind of happy to see return to home, which advertises itself as a “little IF romp”. Also, today I learned what “romp” means.

I have Lectrote installed but it wouldn’t run the game so I installed Gargoyle as instructed and everything worked as it should. I’ve never heard of GAGS or even Gargoyle for that matter so I’m glad I got to learn. I’m aware that it’s customary to attach transcripts of your parser playthroughs alongside your reviews (on IntFiction forum, where this review was first published) but truth be told, not only I don’t know how to do transcripts with Gargoyle, I also absolutely forgor that I should probably record the playthrough. I’m sorry, it will most likely happen again.

The premise is pretty simple: you’re on your way home but your usual route is blocked. You decide to leave your car by the blockade and just walk to your house instead. Along the way, you can decide to take random detours, take in the views, and encounter a variety of objects you can take with you. Short, neat, very slice of life.

I visited 13/14 locations and gathered 3/4 objects you can find, which translates to 13/14 points. The greatest difficulty I had with this game was trying to enter the house because I simply don’t know how directions work. There’s not a lot I can say because it very much has a vibe of a test project – something you make just to test out a way to make a game, and if I understand correctly, that was essentially what it was meant to be. I’m kind of sad that I couldn’t, for example, examine the house or the car, but that’s understandable within a “test game” scope, I suppose. I won’t comment on the language because the author requested so (European English-As-Foreign-Language solidarity?) but I didn’t have trouble understanding what’s going on, which is great.

Overall, the game has a very calm atmosphere. There’s just something nice about “walking simulators” where your only task is to walk and maybe go on little detours. You know, you need to switch up things from time to time, break the routine, go on a different path. Variety is the spice of life. Did I enjoy playing through it? I actually did. Might even go on a walk today.

Just for the sake of transparency: I only played the demo version of the game, so I’m voicing my opinions about the demo version of the game and not the full one. Keep that in mind while you read. The review may contain untagged spoilers.

Good gods, I miss my TTRPG sessions. That’s why I was kind of intrigued when it comes to The Sword of Voldiir, which is based on a homebrew DnD campaign. It’s got all that you need: character creation, stat rolling, turn-based combat. I love turn-based combat.

Character creation is rather simple: your race (out of three options, which are human, half-elf, and siren; each with their own strengths and stat bonuses), your gender and pronouns, your weapons, your stats (which can be either rolled or chosen manually; I opted for rolling and managed to get really decent numbers), and your sexuality (one of the companions will shift their gender according to your preference). “Visual” customization comes later in the story, which I’m completely fine with.

The game focuses on the band of four mercenaries: Lorelei of Running Waters (a siren woman), Aenwyn Rolen (who in my playthrough happened to be a half-elf man, as I exercised my bisexual right to not choose a preference), Cassian Winterluff (a human man), and of course, the main character (in this case, half-elf nonbinary disaster, Aaran Alvierni). You are all tasked with retrieving the titular Sword of Voldiir, which has great magical capabilities… or maybe anti-magical capabilities, as it seems it’s most prominent feature is magic immunity. The sword rests in a cave, you go to the cave, retrieve the sword, and… get robbed immediately the moment you leave. Absolutely classic hook: your MacGuffin gets stolen, you have to get it back or else bad things will happen.

Along the way you pass various checks and talk to your companions to raise your relationship (and flirtation, if you want to) points. The demo also contains two combat encounters: one with the bandit who stole the sword, one with a chimera which guards the sword at a rich nobleman’s house. During combat encounters you can choose between using magic and using your weapon that you’ve chosen earlier – unfortunately, you can’t switch back and forth between weapons and magic during one combat and you get locked into using one or the other but you can choose between three spells if you’re stuck with magic, so I guess at least that. Don’t be scared of failing a combat encounter, you can reset the encounter if you end up being unlucky… like me. Oops. There’s not a lot of strategy in those encounters, unless you end up using spells which sometimes deal AOE damage instead of single target damage. I don’t mind it at all because my strategy is usually “the enemy can’t kill you if you kill them first” anyway.

Before I go into the “general enjoyment” section, I need to mention some unfortunate technical things. There was a section in which the <<if>> statement broke. In another, Aenwyn’s pronouns weren’t rendered as they should be (showing only $ahimself). I’m willing to look the other way when that happens, especially if I can just continue playing regardless. The game clearly didn’t break in those passages so I simply continued and it didn’t impact a lot to me. What did impact my gameplay were the color schemes used for the game. I played it entirely in dark mode (as I tend to do) and contrast between certain colors, especially the dark background and red links, makes them hard to read. The red works great for light mode but I don’t use light mode, so, yeah.

To come back to the story: I will be honest with you, it’s not the type of story I enjoy… and that’s completely okay. If the game’s goal was to emulate a feeling of sitting by the DnD table as the Dungeon Master gives you short and quick descriptions of things, it definitely succeeded. It’s not what I want to read in my IF but if all you’re searching for is good old “You’re in a cave. There are three paths ahead of you. What do you do?”, it might just be for you. So, important question: did I have fun? Not really. But you might and I think that’s awesome.

(I'm sorry, I had to make a Persona reference in the title. I will do it again.)

First of all, thank you to Ave Q Production for being generous enough to leave some community copies for people like me to grab. There is a demo available but I'd rather experience things in their fullest version.

I won't tag spoilers for a variety of reasons but I am warning that there are spoilers in this review, so read further at your own risk.

We’ve seen this premise many times before: a new, ultraimmersive game is made, you plug your brain into it, things start to happen – not necessarily good things at that. I’m usually not that eager to check those out because in the end, they tend to be a very similar flavor of “Escapism is bad and should be punishable with death” or “Did you know that giving your whole body and mind to a corporation is bad?”. You have masses that yearn to feel good for once in a terrible world and, y’know, end up being guinea pigs that get mercilessly slaughtered for that.

The Butterfly Dreams gives us a slightly different approach: it’s all just a test session where experts of various fields are told to just go wild with their imagination and do whatever they want. The chosen ones include Renata (older lady who’s a beloved children’s author), Juan (a neurosurgeon who’s kinda anxious about the technology), Helena (a world-class chef), Aaron (an economy-changing banker with what’s clearly untreated anxiety and impostor syndrome), Layna (a child programming prodigy), Sean (a professional, gods forgive me for saying this, gamer), and of course, the main character, Thomas (or Tom), who’s not really specified to be anything at the beginning of the game. Our task is to make up new worlds and let everyone else test them out.

Before I get into the story and plot themselves, I need to talk about the visuals – it is a visual novel, after all. I think there was definitely a lot of care put into how the game is presented. There’s a lot of sprite and camera movement that I find, honestly, quite damn cool. The sprites themselves give a pretty good idea of who the characters might be before you even get to know them, which is obviously good, and while the backgrounds are sometimes more symbolic (for example, just two cups of coffee on the table instead of the cottage you’re in), they’re still pretty fitting. There are some really interesting details that you might miss (text and textbox slightly glitching in certain situations, butterfly “click-to-continue” and butterfly appearing when you click), and I really respect everyone who comes up with stuff like this, it’s small but it adds a lot. I also appreciate the accessibility options, especially the one where you can enable descriptions of sound, as I always take this one since my audio processing can sometimes go out of the window whenever I’m focusing on the text. I do have an issue with the fact that sometimes, the descriptions aren’t exactly informative but rather seem like an extension of the text itself (like “SFX: Music to my ears” when a scream plays. Great for me, someone who can hear that scream, terrible for someone who can’t).

Alrighty, into the game itself. We’re all in the “humble abode” (literal mansion) of Brian Singh, who’s the CEO of Asynthesis, the company behind Fantasia – the machine we’ve been chosen to test. Everyone has their own reasons to be here, from creating perfect adaptations of their works (Renata), through wanting to check how far technology progressed (Juan), to simply not willing to pay the fee that needs to be paid when you’re leaving the testing early (Aaron). Every now and then, we’re shoved into the testing chambers to check out whatever world the creator made up, with the creator’s identity usually kept secret until the transfer’s complete. It is quite an interesting concept – you have all those people who come from different backgrounds, have different kind of expertise, want different things out of the experience. Some dynamics start to form: Layna naturally clings to grandmotherly Renata, anxious Aaron nods along to anything Juan might say.

I can’t deny, I got a little attached to the characters in a way. They have their distinct ways of speaking and their personalities are definitely showing. This is why it pains me to say that I don’t think we’ve spent enough time with them. I’m not saying it because I’d love to see more of them (though I would) but rather because some things remain somewhat undercooked for my taste. We get brief descriptions of how we’re all spending time together but I’d rather see it play out on the screen. I loved the one-on-one talks we had at the very beginning of the game and I’d definitely love to see more of that, even if just to cement some bonds and explore some dynamics.

And this, honestly, is my biggest problem with this game: not enough time. The description says that it’s a psychological mystery novel but the most difficult thing about both psychological and mystery works is that they both require a build up which can take a lot of time. I feel like we didn’t get enough of it. We didn’t spend enough time with the characters and we didn’t spend enough time in the worlds created by them, we didn’t spend enough time on feelings and the state of everyone’s psyche, even after Juan seemingly triggered a Torment Nexus scenario. I didn’t feel the “mystery” part – it probably refers to the twist, in which it turns out that Tom, the MC, is a vile criminal mastermind, but… it didn’t feel earned to me, and neither did the revelation that it’s all been an Nth layer of simulation all along. Comments on Itch point out that there are hints that might be lost if you “fail perception checks” and maybe this is why I didn’t feel like it makes any sense, maybe I just failed the perception checks. I tend to write my reviews after just one playthrough, unless it’s clear that the game is meant to be replayed, so perhaps other choices show some more hints as to that and it’s all on me. I’m not infallible.

To summarize: I think the concept is pretty great, I liked the characters, the visuals are definitely a BIG highlight of it all. I just wish we could’ve spent more time getting into everyone’s heads and building everything up.

In the end, there’s only one question that matters: did I have fun reading through it? Yes. Yes, I actually did. So, you know. Maybe give it a try yourself if you feel like it.