Misthold Welcomes You

Purple Noise Echo (2018) is an early access game still in development, but it has a really great look and will probably end up being a fun game. It's an "ambient tactical" game in which you play a "silicon entity" (sort of a robot?) who has to wander around and gather resources. You can only see a few spaces around your robot body at a time, and it's very dark and semi-spooky (in a scifi kinda way, rather than a gothic horror way). Great background sounds/robot noises, and the robot design itself is awesome.

However, the gameplay still needs work. There's not a lot of instructions and it's not super obvious what you're supposed to do, or why. Maybe rescue somebody? Apparently that's the point, as the description says: "The game is about discovering the hard way: the mechanics, the place, the story and more."


That might work better in a fully-finished game, but in an early access game it just means you're clicking around trying stuff and then the game crashes. And I think even in an exploration game, it's a good idea to have a story element or a specific goal, to make it worth the effort of finding out that stuff in the first place.

Purple Noise Echo made my Mac slow down to the point that I thought it might crash the COMPUTER, so I had to shut it down after 7 minutes. Despite that, I thought it was a good beginning to what seems like a neat game.

Price: $7.00

Available for Windows and macOS. I played the Mac version.

The Whisperer in Darkness (2014) is a visual novel game based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. It's basically just a retelling of the story, set in modern times.

Since you literally don't have ANY input except for slowly moving a pixel person across the screen, which honestly could've been left out with no loss to the story, I don't think this is actually a "game." There are no dialogue options, no plot choices, no actual interaction except for moving the pixel person.

As an art form this is an interesting concept; as something I spent almost an hour reading I can't say I was that excited about it. (I don't like Lovecraft.) I liked the art and the old school style font, and I appreciate the unique delivery of a short story, but it was VERY boring.

Not really recommended unless you want to try out reading a short story via video game. I vaguely remember these sorts of things from my 1990s childhood, and I don't think I liked them then, either...

Price: $2.99

Available for Windows, Linux and macOS. I played the Mac version.

Content notes: Screamer-style art panel at the end, though there isn't actual screaming.

Jam and the Mystery of the Mysteriously Spooky Mansion (2019) is a point & click reverse whodunnit set in a haunted house. You play as Jam, a tween detective with ambitions higher than her mystery-solving capabilities. At the start of the game, you've already captured the villain and now you need evidence to prove what villainy he was doing.

Explore through different rooms clicking on things to find "clues," solve easy puzzles and put together "solutions" to solve the "crime." These involve picking up both clues and interactive elements, and figuring out which element interacts where (it's not always obvious). It's a short game and not hard to play-- the fun comes through the dialogue, the spooky atmosphere, and Jam and Alexandre (the villain) interacting.

There are 16 different endings, 15 through presenting evidence and 1 secret ending that I stumbled on accidentally. Once you present one solution, you can go back to that exact moment and present the other 14 combinations, no need to backtrack. All the endings lead to very funny dialogue, usually with a wham shot because of the demon.

Cool things: the default font is in the style of a 1980s computer game, but you can adjust it to something easier on the eyes (like I did). Also comes with a spoiler-free walkthrough/hints, including an endings checklist to make sure you get all the clue pairings.

Took me almost an hour to go through everything, and I really enjoyed it. I'd love to play a sequel game!

Price: $2.00

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

Serre (2017) is a romantic visual novel between a lonely gardener (serre means greenhouse!) and a space alien who looks like a huge bee! Harold, they're lesbians. I played the Mac OS version.

Nice colors, nice hand drawn art, adorable background music. Funny and sweet dialogue/characters, with some hurt/comfort thrown in. It's a very basic story; the dialogue choices all lead to the same plot points, so it doesn't matter what you pick. A bit of a bummer, since part of the fun of visual novels is seeing where your choices take you.

Some dialogue choices lead to cuter scenes than others. You can go back and replay the other dialogue choices, skipping past scenes you've already seen. Super quick to play, maybe 10-20 minutes if you're a fast reader. (For THAT short of a game, wait until it goes on sale or buy it in a bundle.)

Price: $5 CAD

Available for Windows, Mac, Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

If you pay extra (or got the Bundle) it comes with a cute artbook with behind-the-scenes sketches and bonus post-game comics, all of which are adorable and funny.

Content notes: Hints of past bullying, one character says a mean thing which is tonally very different from the rest of the game.

A Normal Lost Phone (2017) is a puzzle game. I played the Mac OS version.

The story about a trans girl figuring herself out, told through phone apps, emails, and text messages. Some puzzles (mostly finding the right codes), but more just reading a lot of text. Feels a little bit like creeping on a stranger to dig so deeply into their personal stuff, but it's an interesting plot device. Good music! Good art! Really nice design for the phone. I'd call it a visual novel except there are no plot choices or options, and you can't change the outcome of anything. Does that still count? Not sure.

About an hour's worth of play, longer if you read EVERYTHING (I skipped some of the forum posts, but they had good "what does it mean to be trans" info for newbies).

Price: $2.99

Content notes: Homophobia/transphobia, suicide/self-harm, bullying.