Reviews by ChanceOfFire

As with other titles from the author, Life of a Mercenary comes with plenty of gameplay and management elements, but with a good dose of story as well.

You play as the leader of a mercenary company, and are tasked with finding contracts and making money while keeping your forces and stronghold in shape by buying various upgrades. When it comes to making management games in the choicescript engine, it is easy to wind up with a clunky or overcomplicated interface. Still, the management system feels easy to manage here, with different decisions laid out for you without the feeling of navigating through a dozen menu pages.

You start out with smaller missions like providing security or beating up thugs, before moving up the ladder and gaining access to bigger and better contracts and missions. In addition to earning money for upgrades, you can also gain experience to improve your character's stats. The first part of the game appears to be timed, which is annoying if you want to clear all the content there before moving on. Still, there are plenty of adventures within to keep you entertained, along with a sense of progression.

Stock images appear to have been used in the game for illustrations. They aren't too consistent in terms of style, but I didn't mind it too much. Also note that some pictures might be slightly nsfw, but there's nothing explicit within.

Also, there is also a fairly interesting cast of characters who serve as fellow mercenaries, along with romances. I preferred the romances in the Great Tournament, but what is here works for me as well.

It's a strong title, and a good example of an open-ended choicescript game with management elements done right.

The Great Tournament 2 continues from where the first game left off. You had the choice of four ROs in the first game, and the sequel offers a unique starting chapter for each RO (along with ending the first game single.) It also partially takes into account the final decision you made in the first game, although it has much less of an impact of the game, and the game also appears to disregard some combinations of choices.

The overall story is largely linear as you take charge of your small fief, before eventually being pulled into a larger plot which brings you into working with another major kingdom, solving their problems by diplomacy, force or some combination of each. Like other games by the writer, there are plenty of gameplay elements here, including city management, troop organization, battles and so on. Most of these gameplay systems feel engaging, and while it's a bit more complex than Swamp Castle or the first Great Tournament, it doesn't feel overly clunky or complicated.

Still, the battles here are a huge pain in the ass, and I was strongly considering giving three stars because of this alone. There are plenty of battles where you have to fight massive enemy armies which large numbers of troops. Sounds fun? Well, you'll be tapping the next button zillions of times just to get through the mountain of meat. Recruitment is another pain as well, as you will have to train some units one at a time, rather than being able to specify a bulk amount to purchase.

The Great Tournament 2 has an engaging story, strong gameplay elements (minus the awful tedium mentioned before) and plenty of content and branching. I do think it's a really good game and a worthy sequel to the first title. Still, be prepared to slog through some of the battles.

You work for a luxury brothel. No, not as a courtesan, but a swordswoman, providing combat services for the Belle-de-Nuit. That said, you do get to work as a courtesan for the brothel at some points, but this is entirely optional and consensual, and the game is upfront about it when it happens.

Belle-de-Nuit is female-locked, although both male and female ROs are available in this HC title. I actually liked all the romanceable characters, and there are also some really sweet scenes of love and intimacy in the game. Interestingly, the game hands most of these scenes to you at the earlier chapters, while turning down the faucet for the middle and later portions. (Most romance games I've played usually do it the other way round, unless they're handing the heavy stuff to you every step of the way.)

Still, I think the plotting and writing are some of the negatives I see here. Your task is to secure a very wealthy patron for the Belle-de-Nuit. (Spoiler - click to show) I romanced the guy working for said patron, and enjoyed it. However, the game does not appear to have much of a plot even with this overarching goal. Most of the time, I felt like I was going through scenes which were interesting individually but didn't have much coherence as a larger whole. It was hard to get the sense that I was progressing well towards bringing this wealthy patron in. The writer also tended to ramble a bit in Never Date Werewolves, and I'm seeing the same problem in this title as well.

If you're just here for romances, I can recommend this game, quite strongly in fact. However, I feel the story just isn't as good.

Full Disclosure: I am a credited beta tester for this game.

Compared to Zoo-pocalypse, Message in a Melody is more like your traditional Hosted Games title, with a fairly substantial word count (150k), character creation, stats and romances. Still, the Sci-fi genre isn't exactly popular with the Hosted Games crowd, and Message in a Melody is more the 'academic' type of Sci-fi game rather than the 'adventure' type. I'm guessing this is one of the reasons it hasn't done well with that crowd. Still, if this type of sci-fi is the one for you, I do think Message in a Melody could be a pretty strong title.

First, let's talk about this game's signature feature - the ability to unlock music. Well, how this works is that at different points in the game, you can unlock songs, which are essentially links to MVs on external sites like youtube. Unfortunately, I feel that this idea was much better on paper than in the actual game. Due to issues with clicking hyperlinks in game, these links are provided as full URLs which you can copy/paste on the mobile version. Also, even if you're playing on wifi or with unlimited cellular data, moving to another website from the omnibus to hear the music just feels really clunky on mobile platforms. Even on desktop platforms, it also feels immersion breaking to jump to a youtube page just to hear the music. I appreciate the attempt at innovation, but this felt like a huge miss.

The setting and story is pretty well written, and while some writers tend to ramble, I felt that the amount of prose used here was just right. There are also optional modes for full stat transparency, which is a big plus in my book. You play as a member of a race of aliens, out to destroy the human race, until something musical just seems to change your mind. You also have the option to romance some other alien characters in the game, but none of the ROs really stood out, and this didn't feel like a big part of the game anyway.

Given the choice of genre and style, this game was never likely to be a hit with the HG crowd. The external music link system also felt a lot like an experiment which went very wrong. Still, if the more academic type of Sci-fi is your thing, there can be a lot to like here.

I've played quite a number of VNs for the dialogue jam. A good number of them had pretty high production values for the event, and Lady Anneliese Dies could be another of them. There is plenty of delightfully fitting music and art here (most of it appears to be free assets, such as pixabay), but the overall product feels pretty high quality, with the mysterious and otherworldy vibes.

A powerful heiress (whom you play as) dies under mysterious circumstances. Using some mystical powers, she travels back in time to figure out who or what killed her.

There are three main suspects, along with a few other possible options like a stranger or a self-inflicted death. The game puts you through a couple of scenes as you move back in time to see what happened and figure out who the murderer is. Still, I was unable to solve this one, and it seems (I might be wrong) that the developers wanted this to be somewhat ambigious so that people could discuss possible theories. Anyway, I'm pretty bad at solving mysteries, so there's probably little I can bring to the table. Still, it was an enjoyable read, even though I'm scratching my head now.

Having to download this game versus just playing it in my browser felt like a lot of work at first. (I'm lazy.) Still, I think it was worth it at the end.

Pretending to be the bear lover of a yandere type character, you discover his curse and decide to go on a romantic outing. There is plenty of funny banter here, partly of the scathing variety, and reading this was entertaining. There is also plenty of great art and sound to accompany this, as well as to convey the cute vibe. It's really good romantic comedy to start out with.

Still, the game has multiple endings, depending on the choices you made. You might get a short and easy ending, or you may find yourself plunging into a darker place. All in all, I felt this was a pretty entertaining and good game as a whole.

Perhaps I'll also check out the main story this game is based on...

Waiting for the Death Wind is the second game I've played in the Dialogue Jam which features very high production values for the event. With excellent art and sound, which fits the theme of the game, you will really feel immersed in the story. There is also voice acting, which is another huge addition, although I have much more mixed feelings about it.

The story is strong, the final words of a dying warrior with his Goddess. You get a few choices too. Nevertheless, this game is also on the very short side, and ends before you know it. Still, the content you do get is excellent in terms of the writing and the atmosphere produced all around by the visuals and sound.

Gentle and charming. You step into a teahouse, make your order and sit with one of four folks for a conversation. I only played three times, and only managed to unlock two of the folks you can talk to. It seems that the game makes this choice for you, and I'm not sure if it's random or based on some choices made before.

One interesting touch is that you can order certain dishes, and the subsequent scene will show the dishes you had ordered. Still, there was one occasion where I tried to order everything (and had to pay by credit since I lacked the cash on hand), but only some dishes appeared to show up.

You get to have an interesting conversation, talking about different topics depending on who you get. You get a few choices, and the game ends when the convo does.

It's short, with nice writing and art, good for an easy playthrough to pass the time.

As AI is a very controversial topic, I will decline to leave a star rating for AI dungeon. Much has been said about how AI could destroy jobs and undermine human labor. I agree that these are legitimate issues which need discussion. I don't have the solutions. In any case, starting here, I will stick to approaching this as a reviewer evaluating a product.

AI dungeon has been revised with different models over the years. When I first tried it, Dragon and Griffin were pretty crappy, while GPT-3 was at least somewhat competent. With the release of later models like Mythomax, Mistral, and so on, I will admit that it has gotten better, although it's still not good for creating a lengthy story.

AI dungeon does require a bit of 'effort' to use, in the sense that you will have to type out the starting paragraphs if you do not want to use a preset beginning, and if you want to guide the story or modify existing outputs, you'll need to type out the sentences in full. For folks who are just used to tapping on choices, some effort is needed here to make the story work for you.

AI Dungeon is better at writing scenes than coming up with long plots, as it merely examines the chunk of text before it, depending on context lengths, and comes up with what it thinks is a statistically appropriate follow up passage. If you want to play around with scenes, AI Dungeon will work for that, and can be quite good at that. However, it's pretty useless for telling long stories, unless you don't mind a long story which goes in some random direction without a care. Due to the nature of AI, plotting is still something it can't do, although anything is possible in future with this rapidly changing technology.

Personally, I prefer it to Novel AI.

It's good for a bit of free entertainment, and the free models can be used to trial the software before deciding if paying for a premium subscription is your thing. Personally, I got bored with it in a month or so, but I might come back if something new comes up.

We've seen IF games in Google Forms, and now we have something in Google Slides. Looks like I'll need to get to that excel-macro IF I've always been daydreaming about.

At it's core, this is largely a VN with a small amount of choice and branching. Some of the choice links didn't seem to work, as one booted me back to the first slide, but it could be an issue with my browser and not the game itself. You play as a someone stepping into a Japanese convenience store and running into all manner of eccentric encounters. There is also a stat bar, introduced partway through your misadventures inside, but it's largely a storytelling mechanic and not a gameplay one.

It's good for a short read, and the art is nice, but I really enjoyed the creativity of seeing someone using yet another unusual platform to create an IF game.