Hakuda's wife visiting

The mountain god disguises as a human and knock on the door. It is said that the true form is somewhat strange-looking. Once you provoke the mountain god, the river will be swallowed, the mountain will be destroyed, the sky will be concealed, by the act of the mountain god. Never, ever make the mountain god angry.

….Then there was a sound of knocking on the door.

Hakuda's Wife Visiting is an extremely short and melancholic adventure game made in Wolf RPG Editor by Mitake/Goddiga and translated by Nolfwin. The game setting is old japan: we play as Kinu (the name can be changed in the beginning), a young woman that received a mysterious visitor in the middle of the night.
The game has three endings but it is quite short and simple and I am sure every player will figure out hot to obtain each ending (took me about 12-15 minutes to get all three of them, I'd call them Bad Ending, Standard Ending and Perfect Ending), that will determine the final slide, and that's all.
Learning how to obtain the perfect, "golden" ending is also pretty easy if you just read the three letters you will find during the course of the game.

The game is a rather minimalistic and simple adventure (the wooden stool is the most useful item of the game, and it will be used just a couple of times!) with really few dialogues (I also noticed that the english translation isn't flawless, but the "broken english" in this case has really some charm) and interactions. What it stand out are the custom made graphics that are extremely pretty and cute. Even if the atmosphere is creepy this is no horror game, but it's more a sort of mythic japanese tale.




Final Verdict
Another really short but complete game I decided to try due to the availability of numerous numerous translations (spanish, deutsch, italian, etc).
Emotional music and the gorgeous graphics are what make this game stand out (and I assume a lot of work went into these two aspects of the game), pity that it is really short, anyway it tells a complete story, and it's ok even if the whole game is set in just two rooms of and ancient traditional japanese house (aside for the ending sequences, of course!).

All you can do is interact, pick items and use them on the correct places, it's easy and simple, you decide the fate of Kinu (or how you will name the protagonist of the game). Despite the shortness I agree that there isn't anything else to explore, the actors of the setting do their part and the actions have consequences (I can agree that there isn't much freedom in this game, but this is the situation that was forced onto the protagonist, so the player can clearly identify with her).

My rating? 4/5, this is short and good as a Haiku.