A Midsummer Day's Resonance

A very short visual novel, again available in English for free. This one I didn't really like.

The set-up of the story was a little contrived, it forced the reader along (for example, the POV character becomes completely enamoured with a girl for no other reason than that she is incredibly beautiful) and seemed to merely exist as a 'HAHA PLOT TWIST ARE YOU SATISFIED?' sort of story.

Of course, most of us were expecting that 'twist'. Honestly. As if all the 'hints' being dropped weren't enough.

Anyway, premise of this story is that the main character happens to have a guy run over her schoolbag with his bicycle. In that bag is her school things, as well as her mobile phone and a bottle of soft drink. Soft drink - which she buys every morning and puts in her bag to drink at school later - explodes all over her stuff, and soaks into the cracks of her crushed mobile phone. For some odd reason, she carries the completely broken phone around, when suddenly, it projects a screen in front of her and on that screen is another girl...

Main character chats with this Girl A, who also brings her neighbour Girl B to chat. Main character 'falls in love' with Girl B, everyone chats, various blatant plot points are thrown around, the three girls decide to meet up after exams.

Anyway. For reasons which are complete spoilers, they can't actually meet up. Main character is depressed at losing these two dear friends of hers (cue eye-roll), and the magic phone connection never works again.

...and she asks out the guy who broke her phone.

I don't know. A very short story (although in this case, it was probably a good thing), a rather stupid storyline, some 'home truths' stuffed in at the end... The SFX were annoying (with that bzzzt of the holographic screen turning on/shorting out), the music wasn't anything particularly spectacular, nor was the artwork.

Not one I would recommend to others.

True Remembrance

True Remembrance is a free visual novel by Shiba Satomi (available for download in English from the first link), and is a relatively long story (for a non-commercial game) about, well, life. It's not exactly a 'slice-of-life' game, but I suppose the major themes I got out of it would include things like 'the things sacrificed to achieve a goal' and 'overcoming loss'.

The world of True Remembrance is one where 'The Dolor' has infected humans - a state of severe depression that can only be remedied by having the offending memories suppressed by a Mnemonicide. The main male character, Blackiris, is an alpha class Mnemonicide (the highest class bar the omega class), and the story begins with his meeting his next assigned patient, La.

This may seem like a rather slow story, but in a world where action packed movies abound and we are fed with endless dramatic stories, one must remember that the old classics like Lord of the Rings began with a lot of background building. Even with that said, the seemingly pointless introduction contains little bits of information that become more significant as more is revealed.

Unlike Narcissu, this has a happy ending. Sort of. It's a bit of a sad story at times, but it doesn't over do it to the point of being overly emotional. The background music of this game is also lovely, something which most of us take for granted in the visual novel scene.