Tyrion Cuthbert is an interesting take on Ace Attorney, one definitely more on the Visual Novel side of things with less focus on the puzzle elements. Taking the mantle of a defense lawyer in a world full of magic and mysteries, you investigate crimes, find evidence, then tackle witnesses in court trying to find contradictions by pressing statements, thinking through events, and using some mystical powers of yours as well. I had a really good time with it!
Boyfriend Dungeon, the latest game from Kitfox Games, is a combination of dungeon crawler and dating sim where you play someone going on vacation in a small sunny town with the underlying goal to meet new people and potentially date them. The twist here is that these people can also turn into weapons that you use to fight monsters representing your own fears inside “dunjs” scattered across town, so you use them to fight as well. A neat twist on both genres, I had a good time with Boyfriend Dungeon! The pacing was a bit weird, but there was a lot to smooch here!
Disco Elysium is an incredible story and world crammed into a very interesting RPG held back by some frustrating and obscure mechanics. Taking the role of an amnesiac detective with a lot of internal thoughts on everything, you try to solve a murder case over a period of multiple days in a small fictional village in a fictional universe with enough parallels to our own world to make it truly fascinating. I managed to get to the end of the game almost by forcing myself to play through it because at some point I just felt I was stuck on everything and spent so much time wandering around aimlessly that my fun with the game was sucked away. It is nonetheless an incredible thing.
Glittermitten Grove is a fairy forest management game where you accumulate food and other resources in other to maintain a thriving fairy population. You use these fairies to build more buildings and help you collect mana in order to cast spells to grow trees and do other things. It's a neat little game and I find that the act of managing how trees grow (if you stack too many buildings on one side, the tree will collapse) and the need for trees to get a lot of sun to be real interesting. It is not, however, the reason why I got Glittermitten Grove. I'm talking about Frog Fractions 2; Hidden inside this other game is a product following a classic misdirection entertainment product about a frog eating flies to teach kids about maths. It's pretty tough to do misdirection when people are expecting it, but Frog Fraction 2 manages it admirably.
Ladykiller In A Bind is a visual novel about lesbian sex taking place on a cruise ship. It's also a visual novel about consent and a various cast of characters living in an alternate universe where everyone can just be themselves without getting destroyed by the mockery of their peers. The concept of the game is interesting and you really want to see the story play out and the relationships are interesting. You also need to balance votes and suspicion and this allows for various objectives and multiple playthroughs. I really enjoyed it!
The Silver Case is one of Suda51's old games - a visual novel - that was remastered and brought back on Steam this year. Being a big Suda fan, I decided to check it out. The end result is a bit too weird for me - probably due to its ancient roots in the PS1 era - and I really couldn't get into it. Is The Silver Case interesting? Sure! It's also pretty stylish and you can see blobs of 'typical' Suda51 themes and touches here and there, but at the same time, I found it very confusing, both in the story and gameplay sense and ultimately it felt more like a chore than a fun game to spend time playing.
I'm not too sure why I played Hatoful Boyfriend, I'm not a big fan of visual novels and dating-themed ones aren't my cup of tea either. It must have been something about the pigeons, I thought. There was something weird about this game - dating sim where your peers are all birds - and it lead me to think that there would be more than meets the eye. Sadly for me, I couldn't dig deep enough within the game to ever find out if there was more than that.