Reviews by manonamora

A powerful storm is coming, and you might not have forgotten to fully prepare for it. You expect some damage, but can you avoid it?

You know there is a storm coming, and, while your abode has withstood harsher weather, you hope to find little damage the day after. Unfortunately for you, the preparation you made were not enough, as disturbing sounds alert you of broken things around the house. Saddened by the realisation of how much must be replaced when surveying the day after and the little care you put in preparing for the storm, you think hard about what you could have done instead and...

(Spoiler - click to show)...you are sent right back to the beginning of the game. Thanks to some sort of time-travelling powers, you are able to correct your mistakes, and securing better your property. The storm comes and goes, before you will have to inspect the potential damages again.

(Spoiler - click to show)This looping gameplay will repeat, introducing different element around the house that the storm will target, forcing you to check its condition and prepare for the oncoming storm in the following loop. A few screens will have a timer, choosing the first listed option if the timer runs out. As far as I could tell, there was no failure ending, as the game will continue to restart until all elements are taken care of. It is very merciful game on the player, allowing them ample space for mistake and correcting them.

The UI is made of three different screens: before, during and after the storm, each with its respective colour palettes to align with the background. The background looked strangely pixelated or had a low resolution. The nicest to the eye was the after the storm screens.

Following a mundane incident, revolts have spurred around the land. Previous action on your part having failed, they are now marching towards the castle to demand retribution. As Lord of the land, you must ensure the safety of your subjects as well as bringing peace back. Seeking council from your advisors, the Intendant and the Chef des Guardes, you may find things aren't quite as they seem...

Behind the literary prose, the game is more layered than it lets on at first. It is not just the safety of your subject that should matter to you, but your standing with them, and how far they could go to regain some sort of peace. You will need to play through the story a few times to get the whole picture - two playthroughs at least.
If not just to find all endings, the intrigue itself left me wanting to know what was going on. After all, time is pressing, and you have little to interrogates those around you for information (assuming you don't already know).

Though the game is fairly linear, with certain events being unavoidable, the game offers enough choices to avoid feeling being dragged along by the story. One of the major choice branches the story in two separate, yet fairly similar paths. There is some interesting investigative interactivity in each path, uncovering quite the secrets, albeit short depending on the sequence of action.

The game has a simple UI, with a single colour background, a few lines of descriptions or dialogue, and a list of choice or arrow to continue. To differentiate between orators and internal thoughts, the game will change the colour of the background, adding sometimes inconsistently a portrait of the relevant orator above their title.

While the main story was quite rounded, I found the final section confusing. Doubling down in the fantastical, the game introduced a new character to set the ending. I thought this was a detriment to the rest of the game, as few to no hints were included ahead. It is still unclear whether the end could be a cliffhanger to a future project or if I just missed something crucial in previous passages. I think the game could have worked just fine without.
Still, Ending A felt more thematically on point than Ending B, the latter being the more confusing out of the two.