Death Girl Mows the Lawn

Foreword

I'll admit upfront that I'm probably not qualified to rate this game about a girl processing her grief over the passing of her sister. This isn't because I haven't lost relatives over the years, but I'm so distant from my relatives that losing them barely affected me. In fact, the last time I saw most of my relatives was two or three years ago at my Grandma's funeral. So in short I just can't relate to the main character of "Death Girl Mows the Lawn". This also means I don't feel qualified to judge if this story is a good betrayal of a teenage girl losing someone close to her and trying to deal with it.

Intro

"Death Girl Mows the Lawn" is a short visual novel developed by dinky-dau using RPG Maker XP that takes around 10 minutes to complete. A visual novel as previously mentioned that centers around a girl trying to cope with the sudden death of her sister and is still grieving over a month later in her own way. A topic that makes it too hard for me to score this visual novel in my opinion. The visuals on the other hand are a major letdown in my opinion since the developer really missed out on the importance of the three tile rule. As a result the world inhabited by Death Girl and her friends and family is pretty painful to look at but I guess someone else needs to review this project.

Story
Summary

You play as F.G a girl whose sister passed away a month ago due to a seizure who decides to dress up as Death Girl. Death Girl is a magical girl from an anime that both sisters enjoyed. Though I'll admit F.G's transformation is rather underwhelming since we all know real magical girls getting a spiny light show while their apparently naked.



Though I suppose that is a bit much to ask for. At any rate after transforming F.G proceeds to deal with mowing the lawn before going to the local diner with her pops where she questions why he wasn't at the funeral. This can either lead to F.G running away or her causing her pop to break down into tears and flee the diner himself.

Afterwards F.G cuts down even more grass until she's basically spent before returning to the shed in order to scream at death about just how unfair it was for him to take her sister so suddenly. And at the end of it she appears to accept her loss, but demands death gives her a chance to say goodbye next time he comes around. Though I seriously doubt Death will agree to those terms. He is a busy man after all.

Gameplay

There really isn't that much gameplay to be had here. This is a visual novel with a heavy emphasis on cut scenes. The few times you do get to control the character all you can do is wander around or wander around a field while cutting grass as you run into it. Albeit cutting down certain pieces of grass will cause the character to perform a quick cut scene where she rapidly charges and cuts through a bunch of grass in a hurry, but that's all this game has going for it.

Graphics

While the developer has made some updates to the graphics like replacing stumps with fences. The game still contains a lot of noticeable beginner mistakes when it comes to mapping like large fields of the same tile next to each other.



On the plus side the game does contain a few custom assets. So at least the game has a visual identity to a certain extent. Even if that identity isn't as strong as I'd like since it seems like it would have been appropriate to try and make the game look even more like an anime until F.G accepts that her sister is gone.

Sound

The game feels a bit uneven in this department. This is because the game sometimes lacks background music at certain points of the story that would have really benefitted from a good background track. After all, there's a good reason people remember the Jaws theme. Though the selections used when the developer included music were alright in my opinion.

Conclusion

"Death Girl Mows the Lawn" is a visual novel that presents the player with vary few paths to explore. And those paths don't really influence the overall ending of the story that much. As a result the choices presented to the player almost feel as meaningless as the options presented to the player in "Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories". To make matters worse the visual part of this visual novel could use some more work in my opinion, but to end on a brighter or maybe that's a more depressing note. The game definitely manages to set a very somber mood through it's dialogue and the actions of F.G.