Black Galax: Blood Legacy is an entry for the IGMC 2014 and a prequel to Black Galax: Revert which is still in the making. It is a visual novel with a few battles and escape-games starring lovely Alison Richard aka Alice.
The game includes witches, witches being hunted, characters being rescued from witches, clairvoyance, marriage, maids and voyeurism among other things. The main focus, however, is Alice's relation to the Blood lineage which is vital to the creation of the artifact known as "Black Galax" (thus the connection of the games).
The game is, as most entries, an hour long. A quite packed hour.

The game has a doubled narrative structure .. the focus lies on the interactions of our main character, as you walk around talk to people and search for your objectives. Thoughts included, of course.

Then we have Ravier (my, who that might be), our narrator who gives additional information, a background, fourth-wall breaking commentary and more or less effective jokes.
He also chimes in whenever you may save inbetween. Which is often. Ridiculously often. It is a nice feature to be able to save immediately before a fight or similiar, but we needn't be able to save every 2 minutes. Not when you've got save points in the areas, anyways.

The mapping is quite nice, so is the music and the characters by themselves. We've got a strongwilled, impulsive Alice. And many more characters .. more or less flawed, but likeable. The more important ones being the two Blood siblings and their maids. And who doesn't like maids?

Unfortunately, the major gripe is the storytelling. There is simply too much being told. And it's not told in the best fashion, either. Not the best thing if you are shooting for a visual novel.
The battle-parts have been really fun, though - I'd be looking forward to that in the sequel.

The main flaws that persists throughout the game are two things:
Our plot progressing by shoves and a lack in consistency.

We have practically the entire life of Alice's broken down to 3 chapters. We start with her living in a quiet village, going to school. Chronologically, everything is fine.
We do get that she has an .. aggressive .. trait about her early on.


Good to know..

As there are so many events put one after another, the focus does not become very clear. The relevant parts remain in the background as a result.
Personally, I would leave out the first chapter almost entirely and start from the second one. It gives merely background information explaining why she ends up there, with a liittle bit of foreshadowing, but it would better be included in the later parts. (yes, characters may talk about past events)



Character development is a wonderful thing, but it is incredibly forced when you have a complete turnaround from one minute to the other. That is not only unrealistic, it is also a complete rip in the perception of a character.
There was no indication, no hint, and to make matters worse, we have the same kind of turnaround later on again. Not to mention that both the starting point and the result were unrealistic beyond belief.
Yes, it was a nice attempt to explain the origin of the character and their issues with their upringing, but it doesn't work that suddenly. He was bringing up issues out of nowhere. Habits alone are a very hard thing to change. If we'd mend our ways because of a single slap, we'd live in a happy world. They also lose their impact in the presence of his brother who had lived through the same treatment.
The connection that followed was skipped almost entirely as well.

The artifact giving the games their names was not the focus it should've been. In fact, you just barely note the existance of the idea of such a thing. If it is such a crucial invention, it must be brought to our attention earlier, and in more detail. That would also be a chance to hint towards possible motives of our characters. The children that should carry on the legacy, take revenge and whatnot have not even been seen once. They should be brought up earlier and in more detail, as they, too, are a crucial part to the story that is about to enfold afterwards.

It was also dubious for what the game was going for .. humour inbetween is a nice idea, but if you use too much you end up losing all impact the story-relevant details could have. The fact that an important character-introduction came right inbetween mere doodling dimishied its impact significantly. We are sluggish, we need a little bit of time to change directions.

The way the humour was implemented was too straightforward as well, there are plenty of ways to use voyeurism as a joke, but saying "he has seen me naked" is not one of those, unfortunately. I didn't laugh at any point, nor was I amused. But others will certainly like this crude approach to humour.




That is embarrassing, not funny ..

The commentary interrupted the game too often for it to create a consistent atmosphere. Most explanations of magic, astrology and so forth were neither new nor important, either. You could have included these notices in form of books to allow more connection to the actual game-world.
Also, in terms of style .. you do not use *Alice says shyly* or similiar after their speech. You do that in chatrooms, not in games and literature.
You properly used italics most of the time, and "shyly" was expressed already in the way she talked (adding "..."), so that needn't be. Typos and formulations were pretty much consistent, but not too distracting. I assume the time limitation played a huge part.
It was a nice touch that Alice's immediate reactions to dialogue were expressed at the top as thoughts, though.

So, all in all, the story itself isn't too bad. The time jumps are a little bit distracting, so is the commentary, but it's okay overall.
The battles and minigame variations were quite fun and the game frame is quite nice (musics, aesthetics..)
There has been put a lot of effort into the game and it shows.
It was a bold move to shoot for a visual novel, and it may not have been the smartest decision.
But it was enjoyable nevertheless.