A flawed, but still very good game.

When it comes to gameplay, the game doesn't quite reach the whole way anywhere. Everything feels like it's kind of ALMOST there, but not quite. But it works -- it isn't terrible or anything.

Where the game does excel in spades is in characters and atmosphere. Entertaining and well-realized characters are brought to life by fantastic art and very talented voice actors. The writing succeeds both when handling individual characters and when handling the overarching mystery, which I quite enjoyed untangling.

But its greatest strength truly is Kaso-Machi itself, a masterful loveletter to a bygone era in Japan that is dripping with nostalgia. Perfectly executed, no notes, and wonderously accompanied by a lovely and evocative soundtrack.

You won't regret your visit to Kaso-Machi, so pick it up!

I was already planning on buying this, but decided to play the demo to help with metrics or whatever.

As somebody who have played a great deal of Vampire Survivors-style games, this one certainly has the sauce. I like that it requires a little more from the player, since it allows the player to aim and dash to avoid enemies. Generally, I dislike deck-builders, but it worked quite well on this one. Building your hand during runs is a bit more interesting than just picking perks and it adds a greater sense of strategizing when creating your build during a run. It's also a good excuse to showcase some art, which made it sad when I got a bug in the demo that just removed the art on all weapon cards.

Because can we talk about the art? It is IMMACULATE the whole way through. The cards, the environments, the character sprites both during gameplay and cutscenes, THE SPELL ANIMATIONS. I guess it's nice that there's an option to turn off the spell animations, but who the hell would ever want to? They look amazing. The game commits entirely to the classic shoujo aesthetic in both its visuals and its music and it is beautiful.

The writing and story is intriguing, but there isn't too much of it to go off of in this demo. Considering this devs past works, however, the full thing is gonna have some stellar writing. Trust.

There are still some kinks to iron out for sure, though. The menus are a little wonky the way it interacts with both the mouse and keyboard control options at once. The game can also get very, very visually cluttery. Part of that just sorta comes with the genre, but since this game requires a bit more active participation from the player, I feel like this area can and should be improved. The cursor is the biggest issue, as it is INCREDIBLY easy to just sorta lose in the visual din. I wish it stuck out more. Same for the enemy attack indicators. Many melee enemies actually having attacks instead of just a persistent hitbox is nice on paper and the attack area indicators work well when it isn't too crowded. But when all the enemies bunch up, you cannot see the indicators and the only safe thing to do is to just stay away. This ends up invalidating the melee weapons.

All in all, my expectations were high, but this demo cleared them nonetheless. I'm only more determine to purchase the full game now.

Performance literally gets worse every time I come back to it.

What's there isn't bad but there isn't a lot there. If they hadn't been forced to abandon development, I do think it could've been something special. But as it is now, it doesn't take long until you just sorta feel like you've played it. Still, it's worth messing around in for a bit with a friend or two.

Almost enough to single-handedly restore faith in the AAA video game industry.

This game is an actual masterclass in game design from start to finish and is one of the most creative games I have played in my 26 years as a gamer. This is a game that suffers absolute no identity crisis and knows exactly what it wants to be -- a video game that is fun to play.

Split Fiction is the kind of experience that could never work as anything other than a video game and shows exactly what the medium has to offer as an artform that other mediums cannot do.

If you have somebody to play this with, you owe it to yourself to play it.

This was great. I don't even really play survival horror games because I have little ♥♥♥♥♥ syndrome and can't handle horror, but Crow Country was just at the point where it's spooky but not to the point where I get paralyzed and don't want to keep playing.

I really enjoyed the puzzles, I really enjoy the environments and I really enjoyed the storytelling and especially how the story twist was foreshadowed.

Okay so, I played this game as part of an "indie game club" that I have with friends. Think of it as a book club, but for indie games.

I did not finish it and I did not enjoy it, BUT that's just because it isn't my cup of tea. Talking to the other members of the club made it very apparent that this is a great game if you like Mega Man games and/or games similar to it. It's got fun levels, cool bosses and an interesting progression system even if some upgrades are definitely better than others. Also a banger soundtrack and a great visual style and on that point we all agreed.

So I'm still going to recommend it. Because it's great at what it does and built with a lot of love and respect to its inspirations, even if it ain't for me.

While technically very limited, the game manages to handle its limitations with exceptional grace and is a textbook example of doing more with less. As a result, the dated and low budget visuals succeed quite well in setting the atmosphere for any scene, clearly resting on a foundation of a very strong art direction.

Audiowise, the soundtrack is quite lovely and unusually varied and well-utilized for an indie game of this size. That said, it's not half as impressive as the voice acting. The cast list may not contain any particularly heavy hitting names, but this large and authentic cast easily shows that you don't need to have a famous name to bring out an incredible performance full of pathos and impact.

But the main attraction here is without a doubt the writing. However, this is one of those games where you really should go in blind, so I'm not going to talk much about the content of the writing. Instead, I will simply say that it is a masterpiece in storytelling that manages to use its many inspirations to tell a story that is extraordinarily unique. In an industry full of tired takes on tried and true concepts, safe and palateable storylines and the occasional clumsy social commentary, 1000xRESIST takes a risky stab at something unique and through damn near flawless execution scores an exceptionally deep cut.

My personal GOTY and I recommend it to anybody who appreciates good writing and sci-fi.

Short, but not bad at all. Sometimes what you crave from a VN is a short and sweet experience and this did the job just fine. Writing was nice, art was good, the voice acting kinda stunned me with just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fire it was -- did not expect that for a free game.

And yeah, it is free so there's literally no reason not to pick this up. And if you feel like it, buy the lil' DLC to give the devs some money. I'd say the VN is deserving of that, to be honest.

I thought it was kind of silly to give a bad review for difficult in a FromSoft game, but after some 20 hours with this, I have to say that I agree. It is just too hard and yes, I've been finding fragments. It's not JUST that things take and deal a lot of damage, they're just frustrating to fight.

At this point I'm straight up just not having fun anymore ,even if the explorations is amazing, so negative review it is.

Dial it back, FromSoft.