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LongStory

LongStory: A bit weird, fairly charming and very LGBTQ+ friendly dating sim. · By Bloom Digital Media

[Palestinian Aid Bundle] Review -- Two Stars

A topic by moorflower created Jun 14, 2021 Views: 1,259 Replies: 1
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I got this game through the mega-bundle, as specified above. Thank you for including this in the bundle; it's a really good cause and I'm glad there was some support for it. This is an old game and I'm sure it's not reflective of the programmers' and writers' current skill. i'm leaving this review for LongStory as a game and not as a fundraising tool and this review is directed at people who would be purchasing the game for full price.

That being said, I gave LongStory two stars in my rating for three reasons:

1) the plot

The conflict feels to me like a manufactured nonissue, and you're railroaded into making stupid, drama-fueling decisions with such unyielding constancy that even the other characters get pissed about it occasionally. The game as a whole gives off a vibe of trying to be welcoming and kind, but the main character has, in practice, so little respect for the boundaries of others that the attempts at inclusivity and creating a friendly environment fall flat. In short, it radiates a feeling of moral self-importance while not meaningfully substantiating those professed values. Like, sure, you have demographically-diverse characters, but they all...suck, to put it harshly. They're all obnoxious people, most of whom treat each other poorly to varying degrees. Of course, they're children, but children can be sympathetic protagonists too, and I didn't feel compelled by any of the characters or motivations here. The sort of...cheeky rose-tinted vibe just feels wholly unearned to me.

2) the app itself

I don't know what the backend of this app looks like, but while playing, it feels like it's holding on by a thread. I could only interact with  the game at all by going into the game files and manually launching it through the terminal. It loaded as a tiny ~200x400px rectangle I couldn't interact with. Forcing it with menu commands to fit to full-screen made it function, but I use that term loosely. The UI only seemed to work intermittently and the skip function in particular functioned seemingly by the grace of God. The texting segments of the game were full of what I assume are corrupted images of emojis or something -- lots of random symbols and gibberish.

3) the price

This is really expensive for a game that a) barely functions on a platform it is sold for and b) certainly can't make up for technical issues with its plot. I would have been a hell of a lot more forgiving if it were cheaper -- fifteen dollars is a perfectly reasonable price for a game, but not for a game that often feels like it was written and programmed on a graphing calculator hooked up to 2015 tumblr. I'm especially bugged by this since I remember when this was a mobile game still coming out episodically and each episode was an additional chunk of cash. By all means, get that bread, but I feel the need to be transparent about the issues and frustrations I experienced given the lack of a comments page and pretty much any community discussion.

(+2)

I do agree with you on most of the review, but in regards to the corrupted text, I did not have it occur in my game. I definitely do feel like sometimes I was a bit railroaded in the game though. For example, in my gameplay with Colin as my love interest, I was forced into two dialogue choices that would cause us to break up, when I didnt want to do so at all. I understand that there is an overarching plot to the story, but having the ability to have more meaningful choices would be nice. I feel like I was forced to break up with Colin for something that wasn't entirely his fault.