Nine Mile Ride

Nine Mile Ride (NMR) is a short visual novel with no gameplay. I’ll confess that I am not a big fan of this game genre, but perhaps NMR could change my mind about it …




Minimalistic Title Screen: You can actually control that line that you see to the right of the road to select the options, which I’m guessing are “Start/New Game”, “Continue/Load Save” (Can you even save?) and “End/Exit/Quit”. I get the feeling I was missing the font to see the text.


Story/Plot:

Paul, the protagonist, spends his time with his best friend, Harry, at Crowthorne Woods and a nearby cemetery in what I assume is the English countryside. His friend dies suddenly and Paul decides to make good on a promise made earlier.




Harry and Paul hanging out at Crowthorne Woods




This is how those same Woods ended looking. No, this scene doesn’t appear at the end of the game …


Characters/Dialogue:

Paul, an eighteen year old, is the protagonist of the story. The scenes cab be visual or verbal, involve him either talking to another character or what I would call inner dialogue. Not much is revealed about him, except that he shares interest in mundane topics and smoking with his best friend Harry. Both of them make witty remarks and have an deceptively carefree outlook on things.






Paul’s recollection of Henry's death coinciding with “rubbish” collection day

The other two other characters that Paul talks to are his mom and dad. I would describe them as the loving enforcer and distant, respectively.

The writing is very well done with only one glaring typo. There were some words I didn’t know and had to look up, which, in no way, I found distracted. The way Paul’s inner dialogue was written I found quite enjoyable, with a bit of a lyrical quality to it. The technique of showing some of it in a black background to emphasize what and how things are being expressed is very effective.





Gameplay:

There is no gameplay involved.


Graphics/Sound:

In terms of graphics, as far as I could tell, NMR has a mix of RTP and custom graphics. In spite of the limitations of RPG Maker XP I have heard about, I found animations to be fluid. In particular, I liked the one for fire burning.

Regarding sounds I have mixed feelings. The only music I heard was during the credits at the end of the game. The other two non-RTP other tracks which I found in the Background Music folder of NMR I never heard during the game. Could it be that these were supposed to have been playing during some parts of the game that were silent?
There was a mix of sound effects, mostly custom, that were masterfully used to create ambience during certain scenes. My favorite was the one involving fire burning, which combined with the animation gave a very realistic sensation of being in the presence of one, feeling of warmth and smell of smoke notwithstanding.


Conclusion:

I found NMR enjoyable thanks to its good writing, nice graphics and use of sound effects in spite of the issues mentioned. A Let’s Review video could do more justice to NMR than this review. Finally, while I’m still not a fan of visual novels yet, I think I am more willing to give games of this genre a chance in the future.