Arcade Spirits

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Name: Arcade Spirits
Status: Complete
Site: https://fictionfactorygames.itch.io/arcade-spirits
Rating: PG-13, light romance, light violence, some mental health talk
Pairing: options for gen and any pairing configuration
Description: Someone who loves arcades made a game about loving arcades and finding love at arcades




Arcade Spirits is a professional and polished game, which is a rarity in these reviews. Tl;dr it's a great little VN, with good writing and very nice art, a personable cast of characters, great mood-setting music, and a decent system that both helps you control the plot but also lets you make choices without feeling that you are obligated to say one thing or another to get the ending you are seeking. The length of the game is also decent. I thought it was going to be the end twice before it actually was. Retail cost of Arcade Spirits is $20. That is always going to feel a little steep for me when it comes to VNs, but this is because I am cheap, not because the game doesn't deserve it, and I think in this case the game is definitely worth that if you are a VN fan.

 

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So all in all I'd say this is a successful VN. It's nice to play something that does have some straight forward romance elements but also has an interesting Gen story, something where the characters are easy on the eyes and emotionally engaging, and all of the bells and whistles are operating as intended. The renpy engine is taken full advantage of, with some new game plus elements thrown in too, and it's clear the game was made with love.

Can Androids Pray

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Name: Can Androids Play
Status: Complete
Site: https://scarletcatalie.itch.io/can-androids-pray-red
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen
Description: Doomed soldiers chat about death and then die



This is a ten to fifteen minute game with a single basic concept. It's reminiscent of a chapter in a sci-fi compilation. I've always liked conceptional short stories so I enjoyed this game, even though it was so brief. But because it's short it's hard to review without just straight up describing the whole plot, so I'm basically going to do that.

The game is built in unity, which allows the devs to create a nice 3d, atmospheric scene of a desolate landscape in which you and another mech pilot have crash landed. Both of your mechs are disabled and when the sun comes up your mechs are going to explode. So you're fucked. The whole game is these two mechs chatting together, rather abrasively, about their situation. At some point this conversation turns to the concept of God, whether he exists, what he's like, and after a certain revelation in the game, what his feeling may be on a particular subject. At the end you're given an option of basically two ways to die. You can sit in your mech and explode or you can open the cabin and die to the atmosphere. The choices are given meaning in the prior dialog.

Like all good spec fic there's a lot of what ifs that come up in the course of this short conversation, though since the speculation is theological in nature it's kind of easy to take a relatively simple approach to one of the problems if you're an atheist. The second question expands from that to the concept of personhood, which is a question you can ask whether you believe in God or not.

I can't say that the ideas in this game are particularly groundbreaking, and the idea is really all it has, though the writing is fine and the music sets the mood well. But I don't know if I would spend money on something like this. The dialog elements are pretty meaningless except for maybe the last, and the story would do just as well as a short two page chapter in a larger book. So if you're really into conceptual sci-fi maybe go for it but otherwise probably skip it.