Dwoemer of the Drill Faced Goddess

Dwoemer of the Drill Faced Goddess is a visual novel made by Hexatona for the Retromania event in 10 days. Made in RPGMaker VX Ace. Oh yeah.

This game is basically a choose-your-own-adventure book (well, game in this case!) with no combat, some riddles and/or puzzles and lots to read!
There is music, that is rather creepy and fits very well the mysterious setting, and there are pictures (no animations) that are rather dark (sometimes even too dark) both in the sense of sinister and brown/black coloured. These two colours are dominant together with acid green and white (more rarely) and this gives a distinct look to this game.

The premise of the story is simple: we are a man or woman looking for a particular artifact in a mysterious cave that leads to the depth of the earth. There are few characters and we witness the events of the story as the protagonist, so it's nothing complex and pretty easy to follow. It's a creepy descent masterfully told through few lines, dark pictures and sinister music. But pay attention, because dying is easy, luckily there is even a save location after the first half of the game. Nice! Well no, very nice since I could not figure out one of the puzzles and I survived just by chance on the second try (I am rather bad with enigmas sometimes).


Hey... this does not sound nice. Well this is a horror story, so it's ok!

What's bad? Well, for example, while I like a lot the art style, some pictures are quite confused and too dark (but maybe this is done on purpouse!), and sometimes the use of the green font over the green backgrounds makes difficult/annoying reading these lines.
Then there is the linearity: while there are multiple endings and paths, in the end there is just one true ending, and the game will tell you that. So besides experiencing the different encounters, there is not much to do, but as I wrote in the title this is like a book to me: you read it once, then maybe you pick it up later to read something. That's it. Oh and if you like action and do not like reading a lot (especially horror novels) this clearly is not the game for you.

Verdict
This game has several edges that I considered before choosing the score: a great atmosphere and setting, an original story, and a solid concept. I also took in account the fact that this was made in a short period of time, anyway despite being short this is as good as the short horror stories I used to read. And well written too, in my opinion.

Hexatona made a game like no other, I am aware that there are other visual novel made in Rmk, but no one has such a great horror atmosphere and distinct style. This would have been even better with more time available to make the gmae, anyway this is still a solid experience. Oh and I forgot: the ending is awesome. I won't spoil but I absolutely love what happens in the end when you reach the true ending, both visually, mechanically and concerning the plot.

Are you curious now?

3.5 - little great game. Sometimes a small one time experience is still good, better than long repetitive games. And this was a good read to me. Not perfect but original and classy.