"Down the River's Edge" is full on western gay romance in one of the most complete delivery packages of a full experience. Every aspect of this presentation had been thought through, from the audio and music choices, all the custom artwork, the sprites, the UI, and even all the mixed media from the looped animations to a straight up cinematic ending, with classic western duel shoot out and everything. There were a lot of artists on this team, so I also give props for being able manage such a large team and handling all the coordination between them.
This is an amazing presentation, but the art, sprite, animations, and music are doing a lot of heavy lifting for this story. In fact, with the way that it was presented, the story had a mystery and intrigue to it (spoilers coming up). I really dug the format of doing the present day with flashbacks to get the bigger picture. It was really great to keep uncovering more facets of the characters and their relationships. Finding out just how passionate the two men were, followed by discovering why Javi pulled the gun, and learning why he'd be justified in pulling the trigger. I could feel the emotion coming through the story, from love and lust to betrayal and revenge. Unfortunately you lost me at the end. I'm all for happy endings, but it feels like there's a scene missing somewhere to help the reader understand why Javi would choose the forgiveness over vengeance (the dick was just that good). It's a western, so none of the characters are particularly saintly, but Nate gets little to no comeuppance for any of his actions while Javi has literally done all the suffering, so it doesn't feel like this happy ending is earned for the two of em together.
It feels like the story was headed in one direction, but the author knew what he wanted the ending to be, so there's a disconnect with the plot and the ending. Like for example, it's like you wanted a shootout duel at the end, even though there's no reason for the marshal to even humor the idea of doing a duel, or that Javi would even just not jump and run away. Also, in a western, the duel is supposed to be the ultimate clashing of values and ideology, where the winner is the one with the stronger/right values. I'm guessing the clash of values is love vs justice? Yet Javi loses the duel, but it's a fake out and still gets the happy ending? It just feels like the ending was for a different story with a different set of characters. It's quite unfortunate, because for how well the story laid out it's plot, I don't think it stuck the landing and that's going to affect how folks remember it.