The Indigo Illusion

NOTE: There might be spoilers, but I'll try to avoid them.
NOTE2: English is not my first (nor my second) language, so sorry for any mistakes I've probably made.
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Chivi-chivik played: The Indigo Illusion

There are games that are more focused on storyline than others. They might have no amazing or unique gameplay, but the story is enough to keep playing.
This game is one with a huge focus on storyline but... is it worth it?

Gameplay
The game takes "being like life" seriously: often you just can do one time-consuming thing (two as you advance in the game) and then move on to the next part of the story. Sometimes this drop of realism is cool, sometimes isn't, specially when you want to talk with everybody you can.
Aside from that, the rest of the gameplay is nothing special: you can inspect and interact with things, talk to people (specially talk to people), and you do some little puzzles.
To be honest, I disliked the black balls puzzles: if I made a wrong move, I had to close the game and reopen the file. I don't know if there's a way to reset the puzzle that doesn't involve closing games.
I also disliked the awfully slow walking speed of the characters in some rooms. It was also slow even when pressing shift!

All in all, the gameplay's generally normal: you're in a room, you talk with/interact with what you need to, and then you proceed.

Graphics
Map graphics are RTP, so they're nothing special. The mughshots, however, are really good and well drawn. The person who did them has got the skills!

Music
Music isn't special (nor original), but does create an ambience... sometimes.

Technical stuff and the like
I like that there's an autosave function, and since it saves everytime you go to a new room, it's perfect!
I haven't found any bugs, so that's good as well!
In the game there are many dialog choices, but like, TONS of them. That's great (to make the story and your character live), even if most of them are just for flavour text (In the end, everybody loves flavour text). Anyway, they're pretty well placed.

Story
The BIG point of the game.
This is a character driven story, so how the characters are, behave or act is important.
We start the game choosing a name and our appearance for our character.

I don't care, I'm not a man.

I chose to be a black guy (I'm black and I kinda look like a guy anyway) named John Hoe (hehehHEHEHEHE). Now ready, I started this story.

The game starts with you having a werid dream and waking up the first day of college. You meet your roommates (which are important as hell to the plot) and you then set off to college for a refreshing new freshman life. But things start getting bad when you have a dream that night with one of your roommates there.

I won't explain anything else because that would be SPOILERY, but here are my comments:

• There's just too much telling. Games are great ways to make 'Show, don't tell' stories, and telling pretty much ruins the experience. Sometimes it is needed (specially when uneventful moments happen), but many telling could've been replaced with more dialog or cutscenes.
  
• The characters are proactive. Proactiveness is what you want in a character, so it's great that all of them are. (it doesn't mean reactive characters are bad per se, but proactive ones tend to be way more engaging. Reactie characters are hard to develop, so if you need one, you better effort to make them good!)
  
• The story moves fast. Since this is a game with no great gameplay, this pace is more than perfect.
  
• This game promises human exploration, and it delivers. In a short time the story exposes you to tons of social/personal problems (one per character) and it does it really well. It's not like those RPG Maker games in which they do put those in very intrincate ways (so they can surprise you later with a reveal/plot twist), this one goes straight to the point. Sometimes this is needed.
  
• I missed POC characters (I was the only one, and choosen by me).
  
• Even if the game is direct with everyone's issue, the symbolism in every character's dream is cool, and easy to understand.
  
• The story itself starts slow, but then it becomes more interesting. The ending is... okay. There was no plot twist or shocking reveal, but at least it didn't disappoint me.
  

Overall
This game's good, it has a good story despite the amount of telling and good characters. You might like this game if you don't really mind normal gameplay and a slow walking speed.
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Chivi's out, and gives this game a rating of...