Flowers for Kasumi

Game Title: Flowers For Kasumi
Engine: RPG Maker VX Ace
Status at review: In progress

While I generally stay away from horror games, I've had a half-eye on this game, thanks to one of the game authors submitting to the Heartache custom content page. Even if said content was cancelled, or otherwise never came to pass. Life happens.

Regardless of background coming in to the game, my experience with this game was short. To be fair, the game is incomplete at this juncture, but, I may not have entirely been aware of what content was available. I'll speak of that more in a bit.

The introduction of this game has some thoughts by the protagonist (Okina Isa) of what she thinks of the titular character before going to the funeral of said character. There seems to be something of an urban legend surrounding the lake she was supposed to have drowned in (Lake Kumashina), but, of course, the details of such are sketchy at best. At the moment, all I can recall is a spate of missing people that were eventually found drowned at the lake.

Be that as it may, Isa cannot believe that Kasumi committed suicide, and decides to explore her house for clues. Naturally, the house is haunted, and locks her, and six others, inside.

The main gameplay loop starts at this point, with players in control of Isa (with Akamine Omoka in tow), exploring the house, and inspecting objects. You can pretty much inspect any object, and there is a bit of humorous banter between Isa and Omoka in some places.

I noticed two puzzles in this game. One involved finding an axe, and using it to cut bones in the storage closet (literal skeletons in the closet, here?) an attempt to search for... I'm not sure what. I made multiple attempts at each pile, and I never found anything. This puzzle might be linked to the locked cabinet in the kitchen, but, it might also be possible that whatever was supposed to be found here could be used upstairs. However, that area (those areas?) were not available in this demo.

The other puzzle was in the dining room. There was an empty cup that I was supposed to use to offer a toast to the dead. Or some-such. I never found anything in the space I could explore in regards to this. So, again, maybe this is linked to the locked cabinet in the kitchen, or whatever I need is upstairs.

While I'm not exactly sure what triggered the scene, at some point, I re-visited the dining room, and saw the ghost of Kasumi there. The way she was talking sounds like it could be a set-up for a flashback sequence. Or, perhaps, another puzzle. However, I was somewhat surprised when I was tossed back to the title screen. I must have done a double-take when that happened. It was just so sudden, and unexpected! My latest save-file recorded only 15-ish minutes of play, and it wasn't all that long ago from when I got that scene. It wasn't until I re-explored where I could one more time on a new game, and to figure out what causes Kasumi to appear in the dining room...



...that it clicked together that what I saw on first play might have been what was available to play.


Summary:
I think this game sets up a good mystery. I found the puzzles somewhat reminiscent of Resident Evil, which I don't think is a bad thing. However, I kinda think it suffers from the abrupt end of the currently playable game. Then again, maybe that was done on purpose to garner interest for the game. If so, I tip my hat to the developers. It's not typically my policy to rate unfinished games, but, if I did, I would probably rate this somewhere 3, maybe 3.5 stars.


BOTTOM LINE: N/A