What Comes After Review (MissBehavin)
Read before you buy the game!!!
I know in the description of this game it's mentioned this is a 'side-scrolling adventure'. But I have to say, it's very much less adventure based than I would have liked. This is less game and more visual novel. You play as a young girl who falls asleep on a subway train and wakes up strangely in the afterlife with no real explanation as to why. Which sounds great as a jumping off point, but they never really go further from there. It's never explained why you are on the train, it's more just a "gee I wonder" kind of thing. But the main 'game play' part of this 'game' is to move left or right, walking or holding shift to slightly scuffle your feet faster along the train. You hit space to talk to people and go through some long winded non-voice acted conversations, so basically a lot of reading. When you talk to everyone on the subway train which is about 6-7 cart fulls of conversations with people, animals, plants, etc. you go sit in your seat and the game ends.
It's hard for me to give this slightly animated visual novel a negative review, because on one hand, the art is cute and pretty and the one song that plays at the end is a nice song to listen to. But on the other hand this is not a game and it should be described as accurately as possible on the steam page to be just that. There's very little game play here and mostly reading, which I am not against. One of my favorite games of this style is called "The thief, the witch, the toad, and the mushroom". At least, it's called that at the beginning, because in that visual story you read through the fable, only for it to change as you go through a 'choose your own adventure' style story. And the book itself messes with you on so many levels it's amazing (absolutely give that game a try if you enjoy visual novels/books of this style!). What's even more surprising is that game is free, compared to this game that asks you for $5 to walk around and read.
And that's my real issue here with this 'game', it needs something. If you're going to make a visual style novel like this it doesn't need much, but it needs something creative to add in order for it to make sense being on a platform like this. I'm not saying it needs WASD, or mini games, puzzles or ringing bells. But this is a story of a young girl that is on a train for the afterlife, and in the beginning the conductor lady explains that you 'might be able to help some of the deceased with issues they have leftover from their lives' and wouldn't it have been nice to be able to have multiple choices on what to respond to the dead on the train to help them through their unresolved issues. Or to have the ability to find objects for them that carried memories? Maybe you find an item for one of the deceased and it unlocks a art scene for them of a memory or their story. If they did want to lean more into the game play category they could have given you the ability to phase in and out of life and death to help the ghosts resolve their issues before passing on, which would have made the $5 price tag more viable. Something. Anything.
This game definitely tries to send clear messages about living a better life before your death. On this train of death you are greeted by people who took their own life, animals that were abused, plants feeling pain when people harvest/eat them, even a baby that got sick and died. The creators of this story wanted you to feel...something clearly. And be able to take away messages of hope and betterment from their 'game'. But like I said, it's not enough to just stand on a soapbox and preach these things when people are expecting some kind of interaction on a platform like this, even at the minimum level, you need some kind of game play or you need to just be very direct about this being a $5 visual story.
If you do really want to experience this book and have ghosts preach at you for 0.8 hours (I am a fast reader but that is the time it took me to get through it in it's entirety), wait for it to go on sale like I did and pick it up for $1 or less.
I am going to leave a negative review here, but it's more just for warnings sake. Because what I thought I was going to get was a chill game that had a lot of visuals but had SOME small form of actual chill interaction, what I got was just a quick read that albeit was a little cute and fun to look at, but didn't really have much else to offer me. And I don't want anyone else to feel buyer's remorse, so the negative review is to save people some money if they would be disappointed with what this title truly offers. If you still think you'd like to try this title, go for it, it's not bad per say, it was just not accurately described well enough for my liking.