COATS

tl;dr - If you like playing in a richly built world full of fleshed-out characters where your decisions mean more than getting the "good" or "bad" ending, this is a must play!

Plot-wise, most games have a really small (or non-existent) decision tree.

You play for hours, and it may be really fun, but in the end it all adds up to two things: were there "missables" that you didn't find, and which of the 2-8 endings did you get... Most of the time, these games have an optimal solution - you get all of the content possible, and you save at one or more appropriate points (usually in the last 10 minutes of the game) that let you see all the endings in one run, with just slight changes in behavior. Also, the endings are usually in a hierarchy - the best one usually encompasses the events in all the others, or is the "happiest" one.

Now, there isn't anything wrong with this, especially in indie games. Making a big decision tree is *hard*, both in terms of programming and writing. For each decision that changes the story, a lot of content has to be written and coded. As these decisions stack up, so does the workload and buglist, so it is understandable how linear most games are.

This is not one of those games. First of all, there is a lot of content. The game plays out of multiple large "stages", with very different play mechanics. When I reached the end of the first stage, I thought the credits would roll, and I'd have been pretty happy with the result. That happened to me two more times!! In the end I was amazed at the skill and audacity of the project, and really applaud its creators.

The decisions (story-wise) that you make are really great, too. Finding a secret potion so someone doesn't die down the road isn't a real decision - if you can do it, there's no reason not to. Choosing which of your two friends survives, now that is a decision. When someone wrongs you, do they deserve forgiveness? What if they had attempted to murder someone you love? What if that person was watching when you had to decide whether or not to gun them down in cold blood? That's what I am talking about!

The game is also full of characters. Almost each one has tons of written dialogue, a coherent backstory and motives, and is fallible. They pay attention to what you do, and you really can't please (or save, or marry) everyone. And then there are all the consequences...

So, instead of a game where you try to "maximize" or get the "best" ending, you get a game where you feel really empowered to play a character as you see them, and enjoy the result. This game has a delightful "what if" factor.

I am especially impressed that with so much content, the graphics, sound, and UI stayed pleasant. I would have forgiven a bad UI, ascii graphics, and no sound for this level of writing and non-linearity, but I got it all. Thank you!

If I was forced to name one criticism, it would be that the mechanics of play were a bit repetitive overall. Each phase has a set of "mini-games" that further research or survival. These tasks are not too onerous or difficult, but they are fairly heuristic in nature - they are well-solved by a rote formula that you can learn with a little practice. After cracking the formula for any individual "task" (which was the fun part for me), I still had to repeat each one many times to advance the plot.

Thankfully, as the story progressed the core set of mechanics and mini-games kept changing, so it wasn't a large detraction. In one place I even had to decide between a morally dubious shortcut, or grinding out a task for a much longer time.

There is a core constraint here that I respect - I want a lot of content, and there is gameplay to go with the content. If the developer spends most of their time generating content, there is going to be some repetition with mechanics to allow me to see that content, and to allow a wide range of players to enjoy the story.

I do wonder how the experience would have worked without the mini-games (as a visual novel), or if I only had to display a certain mastery, and then they became automated.

I hope the developers continue, and I'm excited to see where they go next. You've got my attention, that's for sure!