Source: Review Copy
Price: £7.19 (£9.58 w/soundtrack, soundtrack £2.89, assorted goodies £4.79)
Where To Get It: Steam

Content Warning: This game features a mention of nonconsensual sex, and murder.

Visual Novels come in many forms. That’s part of their charm. And seeing different approaches to visual novels, from different places, is, itself, quite a charm too. Which is, of course, a good segue into Sanator: Scarlet Scarf, the first translated work by Ignis Sanat, and winner of the Anivisual 2019, a yearly Russian Visual Novel contest.

It is, let’s get this out of the way, short. But, as we’ve often seen on TMW, short doesn’t mean bad. It simply means short. The prose in Sanator is good stuff, solemn and heavy, as befits its setting, a town beleaguered by a plague that, as it quickly turns out, is of supernatural origin. The art is solid, anime styled, but with its own texture and flair that I quite enjoy. And, while its choices are relatively few, its characters are interesting, and its setting works without needing to look up too many of the Special Fantasy Words.

It should be noted, before I continue, that the demo is, itself, a prequel to the events of the game, a more linear experience, but still with its own charm, and adding nuance to some of the characters through short vignettes. A little extra to the world is always nice, and it does well not to give away key facts.

Anyway, both the demo and the game have some pretty good music. Heavy, portentous, a fair few chiming bells and choral parts… I enjoy this. And I enjoy the fact that it all works together in this short, tight narrative about a Sanator (Plague Doctors whose shadows can hurt, who fight both normal disease and spirits of plague), faced with the Scarlet Scarf, a malady that causes a deep, bleeding lesion from the neck to the waist, not unlike… A scarlet scarf. And, of course, it’s supernatural in origin.

If I had regrets about Sanator, it is, honestly, that it is tight. It shows the horror of the plague briefly, resolves quickly, and that horror doesn’t really get a chance to linger unless you’re deliberately savouring it. It doesn’t give the indirect antagonists a lot of room to breathe. I also think that the supernatural being’s origin is… A little squicky (Okay, imprisoned and sacrificed by a cult, fine, but, as writers have noted, rape is a very lazy way of establishing someone else as evil. Suggest “Couldn’t unsee the other, failed sacrifices wot were super horrific and stuff.”)

Still, overall, Sanator is a tight narrative, and I’ve enjoyed my time with it.

I do love me some good art. And my cup hath overflown this month.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Ah, the 16^th Century. Such a wondrous age, full of poets, of doctors finally starting to learn what the heck they’re on about, and, of course, the Plague. It is a wondrous age to which our dear leaders wish us to return, in the hope that perhaps the Empire might also coincidentally rise again.

Speaking of quacks… Astrologaster is a comedic tragedy, in the form of speechcraft and song (Often Madrigals) about a “Doctor” who used Astrology as his form of diagnosis, one Simon Forman. And, to be fair, he is a fitting subject, for he was tangenitally involved with… Well, a lot of London life of the period. The game takes liberties, but it does so to introduce quite a few other major players of the period, such as Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle, the Dean of Rochester, Thomas Blague (and his wife Alice), and Emilia Lanier, a poet, and suspected to have been the Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets 127-154.

Yes, knowing this period of history helps with some of the jokes. But by no means all, for nearly everyone is mercilessly riffed on, excepting some folks whose lives… Really didn’t deserve that much mockery. In any case, a fair warning, the game does end rather suddenly, and the reason for this is that the good “Doctor” ended… Rather suddenly. But the aim is, through astrology (Or, more accurately, through a cunning combination of actually divining what’s wrong, and telling people what they want to hear), to diagnose folks’ complaints.

It’s very clear, in the sense that you know what’s what, even if the diagnoses are sometimes… Difficult, and the picturebook aesthetic works well. Where it really shines, though, is the aforementioned voice acting and singing. Jo Ashe does an excellent job of playing concerned wife Emma Sharpe (how do her older husbands keep dying on her?), for example, and the songs about Thomas Blague are wonderful examples of a new musical art form I would like to call “Getting owned by the Church Chorus.”

It’s… Honestly kind of hard to write about the charm of Astrologaster without either going on a history lecture, spoiling the results of some choices, or both, but… History buffs will get several laughs (and knowing nods), most folks will have a charming experience and quite a few laughs, and, overall… Yup, I like Astrologaster.

I cannot really Madrigal, but Iamb good with that Pentameter. Honest.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: Minimum $1, but if you drop less than $5 on it I’ll be disappointed in you.
Where to get it: Itch.IO

Content Warning: This game has themes of self harm and suicide, and a depiction of suicide. As such, the review has been age gated

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £49.99
Where To Get It: Steam

CONTENT WARNING: It should be mentioned that Zanki Zero deals with adult themes like abuse (sexual or otherwise), gaslighting, and murder, so… Yeah, be warned, this game deals with squicky subjects.

It’s an interesting exercise, to tot up the thematic elements of a developer. And for Spike Chunsoft, there’s a fair amount to pick from. Sins of the past. Just about believable pseudoscience made believable. Big twists. And attacking the heartstrings with comically large pliers.

And Zanki Zero definitely goes in for all of these, along with a bit of cringe early on. If I had a nickel for every time a “wacky” cartoon character was just groan inducingly gross, I’d have enough to whack said cartoon characters with a small sack of nickels. Thanks, Zanki Zero, for the unnecessary addition that one of your MCs is proud of pissing themselves on camera. I’m only grateful that’s told, not shown.

Iiin any case, once the game gets going, the cringe seems to die down (somewhat, although content warnings for abuse, sexism, violence and murder definitely apply throughout), and the game gets interesting. A survival RPG/Visual Novel hybrid, Zanki Zero follows eight protagonists, and… Seven sins? Ah, one of them is secretly an architect of this whole mess where humanity is extinct, and eight (?) clones of people are asked to rebuild a cloning machine to resurrect humanity, despite the fact that they, as clones, cannot breed. I’m sure this’ll at least try to make more sense down the line, but at the beginning, mysteries, gribbleys, failed human clones, and ruins abound, with various systems unlocking as you go. Building elements of your base. Cooking, crafting, upgrading. And, through it all, the clone mechanics.

At first, as described, it’s stressful, and the game makes sure to kill off a character to get the point across, but, while death isn’t the end, and can be beneficial in certain aspects (Dying in Adult life, for example, extends Adult life by 1 day), it costs to resurrect someone, so care must still be taken, as there’s a lot that can screw you up. Traps, monsters, the threat that some of the gifts you get from the EXTEND Machine have strings attached. You know, losing what’s left of your humanity, that sort of thing. I’ve been playing it on the second difficulty setting, and this honestly seems reasonable for me, since my only party wipe was through overconfidence. It’s only later, with the introduction of various traps, that it starts to get properly mean. God-damn bird…

The game’s pace is, honestly, pretty good, and, some odd keybinds aside, it tutorialises pretty well. This, plus the interesting way combat and “survival” plays out (The bars, equally, decrease and increase at sensible rates, so I rarely felt I was nannying) means that, overall, I quite like Zanki Zero. Sho, the cringier of the two Extend TV hosts, is a different story, but thankfully, his segments are quite brief. If you want to explore a VN/RPG hybrid which adds depth as it goes on, Zanki Zero is definitely an interesting one to check out.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t have anything clever to say here. How can he, when Humankind is long gone?

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £29.99 (£38.25 game+soundtrack, £12.99 soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Ohhh, we’ve been waiting a long time for this, but finally, the first trilogy of Phoenix Wright has hit the shores of the PC, and it’s quite the pleasing turnabout. After all, Phoenix Wright is, overall, an interesting and cool series, and the PC port is pretty good.

Okay, let’s get the niggle out of the way before we sum up the trilogy: It only remembers what window size it’s meant to be on loading. That’s pretty minor, so… Phoenix Wright. It’s a series of police procedural visual novels, in which you play the titular character, a novice lawyer, in the deadly justice system of what has been dubbed by fans “Japanifornia” (For being both Japanese and American), where simply defending your client isn’t enough… If you can’t find the real murderer in 3 days, your client is guilty by default. Game over, man… Game over.

It comes in two segments, investigation and the trial, but, thankfully, I can’t think of an instance where the investigation can end without you having collected the necessary evidence. The trials, however… Ah, they get tricksy at times, because not only do you have to choose between pressing for further details and presenting evidence, sometimes, what seems like the obvious path is… Well, the wrong one for the time. So, yes, occasionally there’s a bit of “Read the developer’s mind.”

Thankfully, you can save at any time, so if you’re unsure, remember the old adventure gamer’s adage: Save Early, Save Often!

Now, of course, is it good? Well, the original games and their HD ports come highly recommended for charming writing, good visuals, fairly accessible play (They were originally developed for the DS), and good tunes (Especially “Cornered”, which really gets the blood pumping), and, I’m happy to say, this particular port is… No different. The pacing and tone shifts are well handled, it breaks up the tension well with its comedic moments, and there are characters to love (Edgeworth, who definitely isn’t a secret Steel Samurai fan, nope), characters to love hating (Redd White and April May definitely come to mind for this), and I’m having a whale of a time playing through the first three games (Although I am informed that whales don’t get involved until Dual Destinies, which is outside the scope of this review.) As mentioned, there’s one correct path, and sometimes it involves reading the developer’s mind, but these are relatively few and far between.

As such, Phoenix Wright Trilogy definitely comes recommended. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and hot damn, you do feel clever getting a case done without, say, looking at a walkthrough. For fans of mysteries and visual novels, Phoenix Wright is a no brainer.

The Defence Rests, Yeronner.

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