Reviewed for Secret Santa 2018
The game follows three young girls, Angela, Devon and Lia, as they track Lia's lost sister in the Cypress Hills. As expected from the team that brought us Dear Edwin last year, the audiovisual aspect is really great.
However, the game is quite railroaded. You aren't given much of a freedom to explore as your companions constantly remind you if you're about to enter places you're not supposed to. I can understand that somehow because each map is hand-drawn, but it derails from the experience somewhat.
As mentioned, the graphics are beautiful. There are a few exceptions, though, that I hope you will consider paying more attention to when the contest is over. The pipes you find in the city look plain and dull, perhaps because of the lack of any shading on the sprites. The storagehouse in the Cypress station looks dull with grey colours, and I quite honestly disliked the puzzle minigame there.
Speaking of puzzles, the Moonshine puzzle had a bug in my playthrough: I did not notice the buttons (I think there were buttons) for changing the pipes, it was by pure coincidence that I noticed that pressing Esc (cancel) allowed me to try another pipe. And the "turn pipe around" gimmick would work better with curved arrow pictures, in my opinion. Anyhow, after spending about five to ten minutes on that puzzle, I managed to get the thing working and could progress. I'm not sure if I could have gotten the moonshine right away, but the backtracking from Gerdy to that machine and back was unnecessary.
I can see the potential for a full game in this entry, but it still requires some extra polish before it would sell, if you're going that route. I can understand developing the story, hopefully you will consider the other points of this review as well.