I don’t believe that one has to really understand art to appreciate it. Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is definitely more art than game. Despite being interactive and having a few true gameplay elements, for the most part, it seems to be designed as a pretty backdrop for a rather epic soundtrack.

Completing the game is simple. There seems to be no true fail state, although there are at least a few spots where interaction is required to advance. In fact, if there’s a point where you’re unsure what the game requires of you, hints come early and often. Which makes sense, the game has an agenda, a certain amount of story it wants to tell accompanying each track.

Players that come into this looking just to experience it will probably have a fine time. The art and the music are pure joy, and despite the lack of text, there is a clear story happening. However, if you really hate bugs, or have severe arachnophobia, you probably won’t have the best time. Yes, there’s an antagonist, and it’s a big ol’ spider with a boombox.

The entire game took less than an hour from start to finish. I didn’t struggle with any of the adventure game / puzzley segments, and the game didn’t seem to penalize me for being downright awful at the rhythm parts. I was, however, surprised that after the credits, I had only unlocked one solitary achievement. Achievement chasers should be aware that the only other non-hidden achievement requires perfection in all 7 of the rhythm game sections.

There is definitely more game here if you want to look for it, but for me, I was satisfied just to have played through to the end. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of a music video or a laser light show, but I didn’t find any of the game play elements compelling enough to play through it multiple times. For the scant asking price of $3, I didn’t even mind the short play time.

For me, Changeling was a bit of an off-brand pick for #DatingSiMonth. I have very limited experience with visual novels, and I’ve found them to be very hit or miss. However, the few I have really enjoyed have not been romanced-focused; it’s just not my genre. However, when looking through some of the games I’ve picked up in Itch.io bundles, Changeling caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First, being about high schoolers was a fairly good indicator that it would be light on graphic sexual content. Secondly, while romance is part of the story, and the final choice you make in the common route locks you into a single romantic interest, each route you play through gives you more and more information about the overarching mystery surrounding the protagonist.

Still, I wasn’t too sure that I’d get invested, but I figured I’d dedicate an evening or two and see at least one story arc before I decided whether or not to continue. I went in completely blind, so the path I ended up taking was not the one I would have chosen if I had realized the decision was one about which boy I’d be spending time with, but I just went with it.

Despite coming to a very dismal end with Corvin’s Route, I was undeterred. I figured I’d try one more route, and see how much the story changed. Now understanding which decision determined the storyline, and having gotten to know the characters better during my first playthrough, I was better prepared to choose a love interest with whom I might actually be inclined to make “best ending” sort of choices.

I did not – in fact – make best ending choices, but I got a better ending with Elliot than I did with Corvin. More importantly, I learned so much more about my character and about what was going on around her. I wanted to see the rest of the stories. I was hooked.

Normally, however, I don’t have the patience to get through all the repetitive clicking to get back to a choice point, and when I started out, I hadn’t yet mastered the visual novel pro-tip of saving often. Very often. On the upside, Changeling‘s skip feature is phenomenal – it takes you to each decision point quickly, and without a whole lot of manual clicking.

I really didn’t have strong feelings about the art style, which may be a make it or break it for some visual novel fans. The writing was solid throughout, which is perfect for me as a plot-first reader because the world building and story is really interesting. The romantic scenes – at least the ones I’ve encountered – are sweet rather than sexy, which I very much appreciated. If I had any complaint, it’s very minor – the side characters (non-love interests) seem to fall neatly into the boxes of either being sympathetic and likeable, or are kind of broadly painted with the antagonist brush. That wasn’t really an issue for me, though, it might read a little dramatic but who among us wasn’t dramatic in high school?

Probably the strongest praise I can give to Changeling is this: after losing access to my original save file, I went back, and manually clicked my way through to be able to start all six possible love interest routes. I’ve found the Steam guides to all the best endings, but I don’t know that I’ll necessarily use them. I kind of want to find out just how bad I am at dating sims, and admittedly, I’m in for the story more than I am for the boys.

I don’t know yet if I will play them all, but I also pretty sure I want to know what happens on the other four routes. I’ve played for about six hours now, reached two of the god only knows how many endings, and I’m still eager to read more. I expect future progress will be somewhat slower since I’ll no longer be able to play on my Steam Deck in bed, but I don’t doubt there will be future progress.

(Bear in mind, I do read rather quickly – the developers estimate most people will need about 4-6 hours per route to reach an ending!)

I don’t know how this stands up againt games loved by visual novel enthusiasts, but if you’re curious about visual novels, and you are interested in a YA supernatural drama with a side of cute boys, this might be a good one to try out. Changeling was part of the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality back in June of 2020 as well as the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine from March of 2022. It is also available on Itch.io and Steam for $19.99.

I picked up Strange Horticulture almost a year ago, on the strength of the demo I played back in October of 2021 during one of many Steam NextFests. Originally, I had planned for it to be one of the last games I covered for the #JustOnePercent project, before I decided to stick to only games that actually released in 2021. So, in reality, I could have played this anytime over the last year! Thankfully, I decided to get back onto the Community Game Along train, and January is #PuzzleGameMonth, so it was a good excuse to stop putting it off and actually play the damn game.

You have inherited a botanist’s shop from your uncle, and the game dumps you right in the middle of a story in progress. Your customers will come to you asking for plants, sure, but they will also be dropping tons of news and gossip over you counter as well. However, none of the specimens in the shop are labeled, so you’ll need to closely examine the plants and compare them to the notations in your herbalism book to figure out how to fill customer requests. You’ll also have ample opportunities to explore the wider world to acquire even more plants for your shop. Some hints will come directly from your clients, but you’ll also get your share of instructions by mail to help you find every strange plant that can be found.

Although the plant-identifying puzzle makes up the meat of the gameplay, it’s not the only kind of puzzle Strange Horticulture has to offer. Make too many mistakes, and you’ll be tasked with a reassembly puzzle or a key matching puzzle. Sometimes, your directions for exploration are straightforward, but many of them require figuring out what that scrap of paper someone pressed into your hand could possibly mean.

In the early days, your book is fairly small. Completing orders or talking to people out in the world will often reward you with new pages. It is possible to – sort of – soft lock your progress if you get stuck on one of the map puzzles; more than once I had a customer come in and ask for a plant I didn’t yet have. Since there’s no way to refuse a customer order that I could find, you may need to either break your mind (which seems to restart the day, and open up the possibility of a different customer order) or water the plants you do have until you get enough Will to Explore to go out and try again. The hint button can be useful if you’re not sure if you already have a plant in your possession, but it certainly isn’t going to figure it out for you.

It took me just over four hours to play through and reach one of the possible endings. A not insignificant portion of that time was spent rearranging my plants in hopes of having a more logical order to things, which would quickly be undone by the discovery of new plants. When you pick up new plants, they’re tossed somewhere on your shelf, and with 77 plants to find, it doesn’t take long for any organizational system to fail. Thankfully, you are given the tools to label each plant as you figure out what it is, or if you prefer, there’s a setting to auto-label any plants you successfully identify. It’s an opt-in system though, which I am happy to report I discovered before I’d manually labeled more than half a dozen plants.

Once you reach an ending and get credits, the game isn’t quite over, however. No, one of your regulars comes in for a post-game opportunity to obtain any remaining plants and identify them all. It gives a nice bit of completion to the game, and I appreciated the opportunity to “officially” identify everything.

The only part of the game that – at least to me – felt a little half baked was the making of elixirs. The ability doesn’t unlock until about halfway through the game, and even once it does, you only have occasion (and the recipes) to do so a few times. It wasn’t that it felt out of place, so much, as sort of unfinished. However, it also really took nothing away from the game play experience to only have it matter a few times, so it’s a small gripe in an otherwise really solid game.

I’ve focused mostly on the game play, because it’s nearly impossible to talk about the story without spoilers. It’s dark, it’s gritty, and at times, it’s delightfully cryptic. Even the dialogue with the less important customers is interesting, and also? You can pet the cat pretty much whenever you like. There are a handful of times where you’re given a choice to make, and those choices do affect the endings you’re eligible to receive on that playthrough. Although there are several different ways for the game to end, I don’t see myself replaying this one anytime soon, but there’s definitely lots more to do if you’re a completionist.

Overall, I enjoyed Strange Horticulture a lot, and played the entire game over a single sitting. This was partially because I was so captivated, but also in part because I was worried that if I didn’t get back to it right away, I would be completely lost. Your mileage may vary on that one, but it was definitely a concern for me. Still, a four hour playtime isn’t unreasonable for a single sitting game, and what a fascinating sitting it turned out to be.

For someone who has literally thousands of unplayed games in her library, I find I still am concerned about the longevity and/or the replay value of games when I’m shopping. So although I enjoy escape-room style puzzle games, I rarely buy them outside of bundles because I feel like more than most genres, these are one-and-done kind of games, and they’re usually fairly short as well. When a triple pack of escape room games from mc2games showed up in Fantatical’s Holiday Diamond pick-your-own bundle alongside a couple of other titles I’d been meaning to pick up, I figured getting three of these games for roughly $5 seemed like a good deal.

I’ve now played one of the three – Palindrome Syndrome – to completion, and although I enjoyed the game for what it was, I would have felt 100% ripped off if I’d bought it at its retail price of $10. I played on the Steam Deck over two sessions, and it took me just under two hours to complete the game. Calling the story of the game mediocre is probably a bit generous, but if you’re playing an escape room style puzzle game, you’re probably not in it for the story.

Full disclosure: I needed to look up hints twice during the game. Once to figure out what the puzzle was asking me to do, and the other because I was totally flummoxed. Both of these were in the last of the six game areas. Up until that point, I made steady, non-frustrating progress through the variety of puzzle types (although most are recycled a time or two throughout the game). The game does give you all the information you need to solve every puzzle it puts in front of you, however, sometimes, doing things out of order will leave you feeling like something was left out – just keep looking. It’s all there.

Instead, any frustration the game might have earned comes from design and user interface decisions. This was maybe made a little worse by playing on the Steam Deck, but it felt like the interactable areas were very small, and oddly placed. More than once, I only discovered something was interactable on my third or fourth lap around the room. I wouldn’t quite call it pixel-hunting, but the experience definitely could have been improved by increasing the size of the interactable areas. There are also a couple places where color is integral to solving a puzzle, and the color choices definitely could have been handled better – in one memorable place, there’s a purple and blue that look very similar, and in another, the clue is yellow, but the choice in the solution is much nearer to a green.

The other gripe I had was with the way notes were handled. Several times, you’ll pick up bits of written information that go into a notebook you can open to refer to them. However, you cannot open the notebook while actively attempting to solve a puzzle, so if you need to refer back to the information that the game has given you, you have to close out of the puzzle, open the notebook, find the correct document, and hope you remember everything when you get back to the solving part.

While I wouldn’t call Palindrome Syndrome a good adventure game, as a pure puzzler with some set decoration, it’s worth a playthrough, but certainly not at full price.