Recent reviews by Polly

This sequel to Lily's Day Off is absolutely worth your time if you're up for some insane over the top comedy in your visual novel experience.

The premise is simple: You wake up on the side of the road and meet Lily, a world-famous idol taking a stroll on her night off. What the story becomes from there is up to you, and plays out over the course of 16 bite-sized versions of the story depending on which options you choose. There's nothing to worry about with weird visual novel structure or endings shenanigans, it's all straightforward so all that's left for you to do is enjoy the insanity, of which there is no shortage of.

Lily's Night Off's writing and presentation of its story is miles beyond the original game. It's so unbelievably well put together, legitimately funny, and polished to a mirror sheen. The story and endings are absolutely unhinged in the best possible ways, and there's just so much more character to the protagonist, Lily, and our new additions to the cast Vicky and Nym. There's so much to love about all of them, and the writing's ability to get these characters across and make them so lovable in such small amounts of time is really to be commended.

I had a fantastic time with Lily's Night off and if you're in the mood for some absurd over the top comedy cut with a little bit of edge, the this is absolutely a fine way to spend a few hours.

1000xRESIST is one of the best "walking simulator" narrative type games I've played. It wears its NieR:Automata, Signalis, 13 Sentinels, and Satoshi Kon inspirations on it sleeve, but rather than outright copying those works, paints the canvas with its own unique colors. It's a stylish, deeply rich, and textured sci-fi story that serves as the framing for a story deeply tied to transgenerational diaspora trauma with splashes of PTSD, identity, and surviving/living through global catastrophes rounding things out. It's a story that has a lot on its plate and it does a fantastic job of pulling all of its themes together and marrying them to a narrative that also remembers to be entertaining as well.

As a player, you're given an endlessly fascinating world to explore. Whether it's the fragmented communion segments (which feel inspired by AI: The Somnium Files at times) or exploring the Orchard, there's always something interesting to see and many engaging conversations to be had. This is a game where it's absolutely worth exploring the world to talk to not only the main characters who are milling about, but also nameless NPCs that you'll find scattered around. There's a lot of personalty and smaller personal stories you can dig up if you take the time and it only makes the game's world richer.

The gameplay portions, featuring some light puzzle solving with time manipulation and Gravity Rush-inspired platforming segments are a good way to break up the walk and talk, though I do wish the former was used maybe just a little more for puzzle solving and that the latter felt a little more guided at times. During the zip sequences it can sometimes be hard to really know where you're going and interactables don't always stand out easily. Navigating the Orchard can also be a little tedious at times with the waypoint system not being as useful as it could be, but none of this is ever gamebreaking and is mildly irritating at worst.

1000xRESIST is a heavy and heady narrative that's brutally honest and real. It doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable, but it doesn't wallow or revel in it either. Even if the dialogue can be a bit self-indulgent at times and maybe the layers of metaphor run a layer or two too deep, there's still an immense amount of heart at the center of the story that keeps the game from ever jumping the track, and it's a narrative experience I'll be thinking about for a good while to come.

Fun premise, but many of the weapons are just plain bad, and some weapons just don't feel like they were tuned for any of the bosses at all. It almost feels like the appropriate way to play this game is to just reset progress so that the garbage weapons aren't in the item pool. Unlocking stuff in games like this should feel fun, but since most of the weapons just feel undercooked, it ultimately just doesn't pan out.

A cute little 3D light puzzler that won't make you break your brain or anything for the solutions, but what's important is that controlling and interacting with everything feels very good. The puzzles, while simple, are fun to engage with and it's easy to see how you could make an even bigger game with more types of enemies to hack and obstacles.

Even if it's just an hour or so taste of an idea, it's a really neat one worth giving a look. There's a good amount of exploration to be done to find all the items and the ending is worth it and very cute.

This is a very cool idea, and even though there's only two stages there's still a decent little chunk of game to explore if you got an hour or so to burn.

Throwing and riding the boomerang rails feels incredibly fun, and I'd love to see the idea stretched even a bit further in a more full and complete game.

As it is, this is a really cool thing worth checking out if you got 30-60 minutes to spare. And it's free so what've you got to lose?

Go ahead! Make a mess! It's fun AND there are no consequences because you're a cute puppo and cute puppos can get away with anything!

This is just a solid little one hour title that's a lot of fun and has a few clever tricks to it if you want to complete it and get all the badges.

It's messy, and we prefer it that way!

Anamnesia wears its inspirations from Zero Escape on its sleeve, with the first part of this planned trilogy focusing on nine people who have been kidnapped and asked with finding the "truth" about a girl named Emilia. But what even is that truth and why are these people in particular being tasked with figuring it out? Part 1 sets up the beginning pieces of this mystery, only tugging a bit at the many dangling strands, so even if the entirety of this world's machinations and secrets haven't come into view by the end, it still makes for a meaty and interesting series of questions to mull over.

Part 1 centers on Answer Team A's perspective in figuring out this mess, focusing on Adrian who...REALLY needs a hug, Valerie who...really needs to chill, and Evelynn who...well she's just perfect really. Kindly older gentleman Oliver also joins the three in putting their heads together to figure all this out, and a good deal of time will be spent in conversations with these characters discussing trust, truth, memory, and the bigger picture of what all this means.

The game's main feature is its spin on the log system found in most visual novels. Rather than acting as a history to re-read text boxes you may have missed, the log tracks ONLY bits of conversation Adrian himself hears, meaning if characters were conversing elsewhere and he didn't hear it, then it's not there and he can't reference it. This isn't a system that's REQUIRED to be engaged with, but you'll definitely get more out of the story if you check the log from time to time, ESPECIALLY in moments where Adrian goes into his own little Brain Zone for a bit. It'll definitely enrich the experience.

Part 1 delivers on a solid introduction to this story's premise and I'm incredibly eager to see what Part 2 has to throw at me.

Kubinashi Recollection is a great little 2D puzzle platformer starring Sekibanki the rokurokubi. Her main character gimmick is the ability to create extra copies of her own head and use them however she sees fit.

In this game, you'll be using Banki's head(s) to solve puzzles in many unique and interesting ways. She can pick them up, carry them around, throw them away, launch them at blinding speed, leave them laying wherever, whatever it takes to get the job done. Her heads can also interact with switches and, regardless of Banki's body's distance from them, can pick up items for you! You'll need to get creative in how her heads are used, especially if you plan on taking on the speedrun/puzzle piece challenges.

But it's not just Sekibanki's heads that take center stage here. There are also gimmicks. Good lord, are there gimmicks. New and fun puzzle gimmicks are constantly being introduced to you and iterated upon all the way up through the final stages, so even once you've mastered certain gimmicks and how heads interact with them, the game's always keeping things fresh with something new to jam up the works.

The level and puzzle design is mostly solid all the way through. Stages that can appear super intimidating at first, end up not feeling so intimidating when you realize they're all generally fairly small and once you've tugged at the right corner a couple times, the puzzles flow in a really natural way.

The only real sticking points are that sometimes stages rely on "gotcha" moments near the end that can force you to have to do an entire stage again, and sometimes the game wants a little *too* much precision for something to be accomplished. That said, there's no challenge in this game that's insurmountable. If you stick with it and puzzle it out enough, you'll get to the end.

All of this and I haven't even talked about the incredibly cute storyline and character art and the amazing soundtrack that stayed stuck in my head the entire time.

Kubinashi Recollection is a super satisfying little puzzle platformer that'll please any Touhou fan or puzzle game fan looking to play something fun and unique.

Fantastic visual and audio presentation and even an interesting concept and light world building, but the story somehow spends an hour or so going absolutely nowhere and not saying or doing much of anything.

2236 A.D. Secretary Stories works well as a supplement to 2236 A.D.'s story if you've already experienced that, but it won't offer much beyond what you've already come to understand and know. It also won't entirely prepare you for how deep and complicated a lot of 2236 A.D.'s themes can be, nor how dense and dark its narrative can get.

If you don't plan on reading or haven't already read 2236 A.D. there's not gonna be much here, and beyond that it's not entirely needed before jumping into the main game proper. But if you're like me and wanted more time with cute Personal AI Secretary System, Masuko, then this'll definitely treat you well over its 2 hour runtime.