June Bride Nightmare is a game by IVORY DICE, a developer whose games I came across a couple times before when browsing freem. I was happy to see it being translated, just like, well, I'm happy to see pretty much any game being translated.

Playing the game, I was satisfied. It was a good game, not without its flaws, but it still felt very professionally made in a lot of aspects.

For one, things are very nice on the visual side of things. There's a CG at the end where the anatomies of the characters feels a bit off to me, and one near the start that feautured what looked like a coffin with a photoshop distort effect applied to it to make it look better, as well as yet another that featured a door near the start that was somewhat blurry, but other than that, the art was actually really nice.

The tiles used were pretty nice too, alongside the mapping. I did have some issues with the game being too dark at times, which was especially annoying near the start when you did not have a candle and were trying to dodge the butterflies. I ended up running into them because the tables in the room were near invisible in the darkness and I kept trying to walk through them because. Even with the candle, the game was just a little too dark at times.



The soundtrack was pretty decent. The wedding bells at the start immediately caught my attention, and two other songs late into the game were also very nice. The rest of it was mostly decent, not bad, not good. Just your classic subtle horror game music.

Then there was the gameplay. Interestingly enough, there was an effort here to make it more than just your classic rpg maker ''item there, go get'' style gameplay, and it was pretty nice. There's stealth sections thrown in (granted, I did fail most of these because you can't exactly always tell what the killer will do, and it was very easy for him to corner you at times), and you also have to choose which items to use where, which could often provide some extra challenge too. The puzzles themselves weren't particularly hard. I managed to beat the game mostly on my own, though I did get stuck sometime later into the game because I didn't know I was supposed to wash off dye from some flowers (I feel that could have been hinted towards a bit better).

The story is the only place where I had some problems. I was very hooked by it, and there were several moments in the game that made me think ''oooooh, this looks like it's going to lead to some interesting revelations''. Sadly, the game decided to take the cliche route with its story, and I personally wasn't too fond of that. I was more fond of the theory I came up with halfway into the game. Here it is in case you're curious.



I do wish the story was taken in a more interesting direction, because it did have a lot of potential.

That being said, I absolutely loved the setting. I don't think I've ever played an rpg horror game that took place in a chapel before. Another cool thing is playing as a soon to be wed bride. I loved how she mentioned things like how she couldn't hide in her poofy dress from the killer. It was also handled very well. The game did not take your classic rpg horror route of making it so that you travel through the place and then suddenly you end up in some impossible location like an ultra space (hey that rhymes!) but rather chose to stick to just a realistic chapel. Granted, the garden was a bit strange to find, but I guess it wasn't too farfetched.

Speaking of things being handled well, the game was also very well polished. It played out very smoothly, despite being a little slow sometimes, and was completely bug free as far as I could tell. I give the game three and a half blue butterflies out of five.