Dear Mariko

Prelude

Before I start reviewing, I would just like to say that this is my first review. I apologize in advance if there are any mistakes, and I will correct them if any are present. My goal in this review is to give constructive criticism to the developer of the game, and to give some insight to any players who find an interest in it. If there are any major spoilers revealed in this review, they’ll be hidden with the hide feature. Without further ado...


Introduction



Dear Mariko is a very short and quite simple RPG Maker horror game that has three very contrasting and almost contradictory endings. Each ending takes about five or so minutes to get, and depending how sharp you are, the whole game can be completed in ~15-30 minutes. For myself, it took me about 15 minutes to get all three endings. I even replayed it a few times to see the endings again, which took about 30 minutes altogether. I wanted to try to soak up all of the information I could, especially so I could try comprehending what the initial developer wanted to achieve or give as a message in this game. However, what I got though was me trying to pick up the bits and pieces of the information. I must say that this game had some really good ideas, however, a good chunk of them were executed poorly with confusing dialogue and an obscure main character.


Story
Score: 2.0

In this story you follow the main character, who is unnamed, and is presumably Mariko herself. It is revealed she returns to a particular home where she comes home to see her boyfriend Darien. She unexpectedly finds a letter on the ground in which it is revealed that her boyfriend is leaving her due to a stalker that he claims is “crazy” and a “monster”. Depending on what decision you make here, you either get the basic ending, or two different endings that’ll either go over your head or just make you glare at you computer in confusion.


If I was Darien I’d take Shinku over Mariko any day. Gotta get my yandere fix! Dear God, Help Me XD;

Endings

While the story itself had some great ideas, there were a lot of plot holes and issues with the endings. There are definitely are some high points in the game as well, with the peak in the game being extremely intense.


Gameplay
Score: 3.5



This section will be fairly short, as the game was very short and it’s obvious that the gameplay wasn’t the focus in this game. The game was more of a visual novel--but that’s not bad as the majority of horror games don’t have a lot of gameplay elements besides puzzles. Yet here wasn’t really any puzzles in this game--it was mostly just the game handed at you and you, the player, going through the initial events in the story.

Is this bad though? No. For ~15-30 minutes of the game that is there, it is not necessary to have an extreme amount of gameplay. I did, however, like the little foreshadowing touches to the game. They were very faint, but when you added all of the pieces together it made sense. I can very much appreciate little things like that and I think a lot of other players can relate with me on this as well.


Graphics
Score: 4.0

The graphics were actually quite nice in this game. I really like that you had original art and cutscene graphics. However, I was sort of turned off when I saw a link on the bottom right corner of the snowflake image. Besides that, I think the sprites, cutscene graphics, and portraits are all very well done and put together.

One of the things I would have changed though would be the map area. I’d pretty it up a bit more, maybe even use some parallax mapping. Especially since the whole game is only in two rooms.


Sound
Score: 3.0

The sound was actually pretty good for the amount of game time it had. It did a good job of making it sound more intense, especially when you see “her” in the game. The voice acting for “her” was also quite nice, however sort of misplaced in my opinion.

Most of the time in the game there wasn’t any music from what I can remember. Just ambience, I believe.


Conclusion
Final Score: 3



This game wasn’t a bad a game, however it did have a lot issues with the story which is a big turn off for me personally. While there was nice things added like foreshadowing, (Which is rare in RPG Maker games from what’ve seen.) custom portraits, and a plot twist, there just needs to be some polishing up a bit and then it’d be a very, very good game.

Photo Credits: Kylaila and Kirroha