A fun, horrific "Choose Your Own Adventure" style story for the NES.
(An honest review for anybody else wondering if this is for them)
I had my eye on this game for a while, but was always kinda on the fence. While it's usually pretty easy to judge a game based on its screenshots and demo video, something like this is maybe a bit trickier, and the lack of reviews on it only made it more difficult for me to decide.
I have always been a die-hard fan of adventure games of all types. Games like Shadogate (NES), Uninvited (NES), the Hugo (MSDOS) Games, etc. I never got big into pure text adventures like Zork, but I grew up with a love for Choose Your Own Adventure books and the Fighting Fantasy books that added RPG elements to the Choose Your Own Adventure style.
I think the most tl;dr point I can make is: If you consider this a story rather than a game, you will enjoy it more. If you don't like stories, you probably won't like this one.
I hope my review helps whoever reads it in making a decision.
The Good:
This story is a wild ride from start to whatever end you get. There are some campy predictable outcomes, but there are also a lot of unexpected twists and turns. It honestly kept me guessing and wondering through a lot of the game. So much happens in such a short period of time that it will throw your expectations on what could happen next out the window and give you no choice but to submit to giving up and going for the ride, wherever it takes you.
The music does a great job setting the mood and atmosphere, and various small sounds along the way act as nice little embellishments to further set the mood. The graphic elements do a good enough job at giving you something to visualize as you read through the text. There are some areas where updated graphics may have been nice, but what was provided is sufficient enough.
The game also provides you with one checkpoint that you can set and overwrite at any time by pressing [start] on your controller. Sometimes it would be nice to set more than one, but I think if you did that, you'd get so confused by all the branching out that revisiting more than two or three points back would leave you confused. Note: Savestates on the Everdrive seem to work, but you'll find your game will lock up for a few seconds - same as when you load into a saved state. Give it a bit, and it will free itself back up and start working again. Unless you really chart out what steps you took along the way, I don't necessarily recommend them.
In honesty, I tend to not be a huge fan of reading, but this story is really fun and I've already put quite some time into going down various branching paths to see where it goes. Often times trying to pick the wrong choice expecting an instant game over, only to find out that the game twists to keep me alive and rolling.
The Bad:
This game is, overall, well done. My "bad" points are maybe minor nitpicks at best:
The font - it would be great if it was only used to set mood, things like onomatopoeia, and quotes/things you hear. But as the only font you'll see, I found it got difficult to read in bulk. The unevenness of the lettering made it difficult to follow the lines of text after a while. I strongly suggest checking out this ROM Hack provided by the dev if you feel the stock text is difficult, as it greatly improves readability.
The Inventory System is a bit confusing at first, as it may appear that you have items that you don't. As explained to me by the dev, "Sometimes it represents actually possessing an item, while other times it's simply having knowledge of something that will enable additional choices later." Keeping that in mind will help it make a bit more sense to you.
The Conclusion:
Recommend if you're looking for a fun story more than a game.
This game is great, and while the $10 may seem a bit steep, if you consider that a Choose Your Own Adventure paperback is around $9, I think it's reasonably priced. There are a lot of forking paths that you can take, and every path I've taken so far has been a real trip. Times you think you've won, you haven't. Times you think you're surely gonna die, you find a way out.
I think the important thing is to consider this more of a story than a game. While there are lots of forking paths and decisions, there isn't really "free will" per se. It's not a true adventure game like, say, Shadowgate or Deja Vu where you can make inconsequential decisions and have things you never needed. It's far more in line with a traditional "Choose Your Own Adventue" book or Interactive Fiction experience where your fate is already decided and your outcome is just a branching path away. This doesn't at all diminish its value, it's just an important frame of mind you need to have going in.
Being able to play this emulated on a handheld device (your phone, a DS, etc) before bed or where you normally do your reading will improve your experience with it.