So there’s this game Umineko, right? Or “When The Seagulls Cry”, but no one calls it that. It is… probably my new favorite work of fiction, full stop.
It’s an episodic murder mystery visual novel in eight parts, each of which takes the same initial setup in a different direction. The incidents that play out in each episode are confusing, obfuscated, and not entirely solvable on their own- it’s as you play through more of them that you notice suspicious commonalities and pick up on key facts that put previous episodes into context. It’s all masterfully arranged and clever as hell, with twists that turn things upside down over and over again. All that plus killer music+sound design and some really fun meta stuff makes it an incredibly fun challenge to tackle, despite not technically being at all interactive.
Now- if that’s enough of a recommendation for you, here’s the Steam page, here’s an LP if you don’t want to spend money, go nuts. But… I want to go into a little more detail on why it’s so unique and worth playing, and that requires going a little bit into spoiler territory. Not major stuff, but… the main hook gets established halfway through episode 2, and it’s hard to talk about Umineko without talking about that hook. So, a readmore, if you’d rather go in blind, which I reccommend:
This is the first time I’ve seen a coherent explanation of what Umineko actually IS, and I’m kind of into it. It sounds a bit Phoenix-Wright-esque.
Brb putting it on my Steam wishlist.
The Ace Attorney influence is very explicit- one of Battler’s sprite poses is the Phoenix Wright Finger Point. It’s a bit cw: everything, though, especially gore and detailed and intense depictions of child abuse, so fair warning.
this looks really neat, but i’m very confused because there seem to be at least three games, one base and then “question arcs” and “answer arcs” and i have no idea which are which or which you’re talking about or whether they’re related or ???.
Neko Atsume, but with fish/reptiles/dinosaurs/pigeons/chickens instead? Where are these games? Am I going to have to learn to make games now?
(&:) Tiny Bird Garden is like Neko Atsume but with assorted birds, and Gecko Garden is basically the same but with leopard geckos.
(I would love things like dinosaurs, more reptile varieties, chickens, and especially small friendly cryptids. 😀 But I’m too lasy to make them myself. :/)
I’m going to check those two out ASAP. Thank you a million times for helping to feed my unending hunger to collect small good digital animals.
I’ve heard good things about Tap Tap Fish!
Tap Tap Fish is indeed pretty dang awesome. They came out with a little freshwater section too, so you can tap for guppies and goldfish and bettas and turtles and stuff now as well as various saltwater critters.
wassup gaymers, i have decided to make this list of gay visual novels/dating sims bc i love playing them and i want more people to know of their existence. if there are any that i haven’t added to the list just tell me and i’ll check it out!
please note: i haven’t played all of these. i have tried to link to the creator’s social media/shops/patreon, but if i couldn’t find them then i didn’t add them. please support these creators if you can!
butterfly soup – “a visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love” (itchio – windows + mac + linux | creator’s tumblr + shop)
can you say my name again – “This game is about anxiety. This game is about getting intimate and having sex. And above all, this game is about being a trans lesbian“ (itchio – web browser | contact/social media + patreon)
emperor’s lesbian new groove –
“
Enrolled in a super-exclusive school full of beauties, take advantage of your luck ♥
first kiss at a spooky soirée – “you play as marzipan, a light witch who’s gone her whole life without kissing anyone–UNTIL TONIGHT!” (itchio – windows + mac + linux | tumblr + patreon)
last night in tokyo – “Tindra has spent a week in Tokyo with her friend, Emil. But she’s not been able to enjoy her time there as much as she had hoped.On the last day, she attends a monthly night club party for queer women and meet the dashing “Midnight Prince” of the club, Yozora.And she’s ready to do whatever it takes to make Tindra’s last night in Tokyo memorable…” (itchio – windows + mac + linux | website + patreon)
liar liar – “a middle schooler named Yukari, whom you must aid to kill her boyfriend for reasons she doesn’t specify“ (itchio – windows + mac + linux | tumblr + shop)
lone wolf – “Laika, an overworked werewolf slaving away at a tech-support desk, is having a hard time navigating her budding relationships between full moons. Between her long-suffering nymph best friend and a new succubus co-worker, Laika finds life turning a whole new level of complicated.“ (itchio – windows + mac + linux | team)
love on the peacock express – “As a private investigator you’ve always been interested in two things: solving mysteries, and kissing hot older women“ (itchio – windows + mac + linux | team)
magic warrior diamond heart – valerie amanrath is a 17 girl who suddenly gets magical girl powers and has to fight along with her friends the nightmares that have started terrorizing her world. (itchio – windows + mac + linux | creator’s tumblr + patreon)
//TODO: today – “
College dropout and aspiring artist Teal only wanted to live life without major complications.” (itchio – mac + linux + windows | website + website + team)
war of the lilies: an eons lost story – “
Live tonight! Come witness firsthand the story of how our Nation of Odessa came to be. Rife with romance! Inundated with intrigue! This is the tale about how the Lord of Odessa fought for both love and country.“ (itchio – windows + mac + linux | website)
Cursor*10 – little game where you have several “lives”. you use your cursor to navigate the floors, and when the time runs out, you go back to the beginning. however, the previous cursors will go through the same path they made before, thus allowing you to get further each time.
Daymare Town – creepy point and click game. very inky, interesting drawings. you have to find your way through (or perhaps out of) Daymare Town, which is inhabited by obscure prickly people.
Grid Game – there are a bunch of little circles. click one, and watch it rotate and set off a chain reaction. mindless distraction game.
Samsara Room – a strange escape game where you’re stuck in one room but pass through different dimensions to get out
Feed the Head – more like interactive art than anything. there are several different things to do in this game.
Factory Balls – a bit of a puzzle game. you have to paint a bunch of balls to match the model shown, using various options and paints.
Grow Nano Vol. 3 – one of my favorites of the Grow series. you have to click the options in the right order in order to make the sick person feel better. this one just warms my heart.
make sure to click the tags to find more games by the creators and companies and the rest of the games in the series!!!
I find Tonypa’s games to be simple, unique, and enjoyable. A lot of them involve patterns, colors, and matching, so they’re very calming as well.
some from me!!
deep thinking games with exploration themes…
6 differences – a pretty cool find the difference game that’s very atmospheric and somewhat soothing in the first levels, mostly takes place at night around a city, features sound effects and music and even moving cars down the highways. content warning for some surrealism and acid-trippy effects in the later levels (a person with a deer head, some kind of alarming music, the level’s walls moving as you look for the differences, etc – sometimes the level changes after you find all but one clue, and in one instance a train goes by rather suddenly and loudly, but it didn’t make me jump and i am sensitive to jump scares)
i can hold my breath forever – a game about exploring underwater caves in search of a friend. some references to drowning!
i wish i were the moon – short and sweet game about two people and a moon! clone things and move them around to get different endings :3
small words – a soothing platformed-style exploration game that lets you uncover different maps/pictures as you walk around
don’t look back – a creepy game based on the myth of orpheus and eurydice, this is a platformer-style game that has you going to the underworld to get your lover back. very atmospheric, but a slightly creepy atmosphere that (of course) references death, so take care
alight in dreams – during a dream you get wings, and explore the dream to find out about the history of a person who has never dreamed before. mentions death and suicide.
a house in california – explore an old house and learn its history, very atmospheric. can be a bit confusing for some, you may need a walkthrough.
silent conversation – a soothing game that makes levels out of passages of classic books; you win by toughing every word. not my preferred reading material, but the way the levels are built kind of force you to drink it all in stead of speeding through it.
games that are a bit creepy…
prior – you, a little box creature, wake without your memories in an unknown place. you must explore to find your family and figure out what happened before you woke. a dark game with multiple possibilities – can be a little creepy.
immorTall – an alien makes friends with a human family after crashlanding to earth. defend them as long as possible!
loved – a dark sort of game where you go through the levels deciding if you will choose to obey the voice giving you orders or defy it. in some casing obeying makes things easier, but in other cases the voice asks you to make things hard on yourself – throwing yourself onto spikes so you have to start over, etc. sometimes it is almost impossible to do what the voice asks. (serious warning for emotional manipulation, just to be safe – the question at the start will purposefully misgender you depending on your answer, and continue to do so throughout the game, but, depending on your actions, will then correct the mistake at the end.)
one chance – a kind of dark game; in the impending apocalypse you have one chance to decide what to do with the rest of your life. there are many endings, but you really do only have one chance…refreshing the page will not let you play again! content warning for death,suicide, impending doom, hopelessness, etc
every day the same dream – another fatalistic game with multiple endings, but this one allows you to find them all. same warnings as the one above.
elude – a metaphorical representation of depression. dark melancholy levels, nice atmosphere, but can be a little moody.
symon – you play as an elderly man stuck in a hospital bed. you sleep to dream and relive your past. this game is pretty much endless and features endless combinations of the same tasks, to reflect what that sort of life might be like. cw for death and end-life blues.
now for some lighter ones…
pizza king 2 – i found this sim where you run your own pizza shop weirdly addictive. food cw, of course, and it’s the only sim on here because they usually aren’t my thing, but, well.
boomshine & obechi – two colorful games where a well-placed click will start a chain reaction and see how many points you can collect!
music bounce – release bouncing balls to hit platforms to get the perfect rhythm!
dropsum & dropsum colors – math games where you combine numbers to eliminate them. you can choose where to drop the numbers, turn the board, and use powerups! (dropsum colors isn’tloading for me rn, but it might for you)
first person tetris – you spin with the tetris blocks! fun for pros, but it can make you dizzy.
flash tron – a recreation of the original tron game as seen in the movies. here you can play with others online!
dolphin olympics – super fun game where you swim and do tricks as a dolphin to score as many points as you can in two minutes. there’s also a freeplay mode. if you jump high enough, you may even see the moon ouo
mirror’s edge 2d – i adore the 3d version of this game for ps3, but if you don’t have access, you can play the mini/2d version. no real story, but it’s a very challenging game with rad animation!
bloons – i started playing the tower defense game, but they’re all pretty fun and complex. scroll down a bit and click any of the ones under “bloons games”
elephant games – a sort-of series with gems like “achievement unlocked” & sequels (where there is no objective except to complete all the achievements) and “this is the only level” (where you go through the same level many different ways). you grow to be quite fond of the little guy. :’D
some of these i haven’t played in awhile! i pulled from my bookmarks, because i used to spend all day curating links to these things. if i’ve missed a content warning PLEASE feel free to contact me about it or add it yourself!
one thing me n my art loving gf would do is visit galleries and play a game called “root, loot or boot”
the gist is that you would look at a group of paintings in a room and decide which figure in the painting you’d root (fuck, in Australian slang), which painting you’d loot (steal and put on your wall at home) and which painting you’d boot (punt into the garbage because it’s shit and Not Art)
a couple of things about my experiences:
1. this game is a lot more fun if you’re attracted to women because there’s so many Hot Gals to choose from
2. if you are attracted to men, you will spend a lot of time going “well, looks like I’ll have to pick jesus again” as my bi gf did
3. it gets more complicated in modern art museums and you find yourself having saying, “I’d fuck the rhombus” “you CAN’T fuck the rhombus” “then I’ll fuck that blue squiggle thing. what’s it called?” “creeping existential dread in blue” “then does that mean I’m fucking the squiggle or am I getting fucked by the existential dread it represents?” “aren’t we all already getting fucked by existential dread?”
4. if you play this with an art history nerd, they may decide to kill you over one of your “boot” choices
5. you will get Disapproving Looks from other patrons who overhear your heated debates
6. it’s also the best fun you’ll ever have in an art gallery
Dreaming Sarah – A puzzle platformer about a young woman who’s in a coma following an accident of unknown nature. Your task throughout the game is to expore Sarah’s mind and piece together exactly what happened. Fair warning: it gets kind of graphic in a couple of spots.
Metrico+ – Do you like bar graphs? Because this game has bar graphs. It’s an abstract puzzler where you navigate terrain consisting of animated infographics; imagine living in an especially dry PowerPoint presentation and you’ll have the right idea. Despite appearances to the contrary, there actually is a story here, though a lot of players don’t get far enough to realise it, and that story is basically weird as hell.
OneShot – This one’s recent enough and popular enough you’ve likely heard of it, but on the off chance that you haven’t, I’ve got to give it a plug. It’s about a young cat-person of indeterminate gender named Niko who’s been chosen as the Messiah, charged with restoring the Sun to a dying world. Note that I didn’t say “you play as”; it quickly transpires that the god Niko serves is you, the player, and as the Messiah they’re able to communicate with you.
Ossuary – A puzzle game set in Purgatory. Your inventory consists of various mortal sins. I’d suggest giving it a go without assistance at first just for the atmosphere, but don’t hesitate to look up a guide if you’re well and truly stuck; some of the puzzles descend into some pretty severe moon-logic for their solutions.
Rusty Lake: Roots – Less a unified game and more an anthology of variably challenging hidden object puzzles tied together by a nonlinear framing narrative. I think it’s about alchemy. Lots of gratuitous dismemberment; in particular, keep your distance if you have a thing about eye trauma.
concept: an austen-inspired tabletop rpg where there are five classes
single man in possession of a large fortune who is in want of a wife
young woman with low connections who must marry so that she can secure her future
cad whose main goal is to convince someone to elope with him
wealthy, scheming woman whose goal is to ruin the happiness of the aforementioned young woman
tiresome & vulgar elderly busybody (can be either a man or a woman)
I’m gonna split this out a little farther, because I feel like we’re blurring the lines between classes and stats. First you should pick your Austen class:
Bachelor/Bachelorette
Cad / Floozy
Husband/Wife
Matriarch/Patriarch
Busybody
Then you roll for your stats across the 6 basic Abilities:
Don’t know Polite Society(so maybe it IS this), but just jumping in to suggest this would ALSO make a really good “Werewolf” style hidden-role card game.
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but – it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration – why do assholes always come out on top? – and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
just moving along like everyone else 