visualnovels

I've been working on the patch list and remembered a photosensitivity mod for VA-11 HALL-A I've seen a few years back. While looking for it I stumbled upon the original VA-11 HALL-A prototype from 2014 and decided to check it out.

It's pretty neat. While art style and gameplay differ slightly from the final game, writing itself is pretty close to what we got there. I was actually surprised some of the off-hand mentions in the release version were about this story.
The three characters we get to meet are also pretty close to their final designs - both in looks and in dialogues.

It's a short but fun look into one of my favourites, I love stuff like this.

Edit: I also started playing Invidia, an upcoming indie VN about a criminal psychologist. There's only a demo (I'm still in the middle of reading) but it seems interesting enough so far - story is about a juvenile psycho with various violent crimes to his name (check out the warning about themes on the game page if you're worried about triggers) and MC is not a stereotypical warrior of justice but has her own less than stellar aspects. I'll write a follow up after I'm done with the demo and try all the choices - it feels like they might be important in the future.

One small issue that's apparent pretty much right away is localisation - game was not written in English and there are some small errors with wording in few places. Nothing game breaking but it's definitely noticeable.

Edit 2: I was actually way closer to the end than expected so I didn't get much more out of it. I'll keep an eye on this title, it might end up pretty interesting after all.