CAFE 0 ~The Drowned Mermaid~

A short shoujo visual novel that you'll need to play through multiple times (at least 5) to get the "true" ending. Each playthrough plays quite differently, though, depending on the choices you make. Some feel like a romance/dating sim; others more like a murder mystery. This makes the repeated plays feel more like a continuation of the game, than particularly repetitive. HowLongToBeatSteam reckons this is a 2 hour game to 100%, which I can believe; I apparently took 7 hours, but that's with real life interruptions. The UX is comfortable on PC, with good mouse support. Some perhaps less-obvious controls: rightclick brings up the ingame menu, and scroll-up brings up the text log of the game, VERY useful if you miss any text. The developer, roseVeRte, seems very active and responsive to help requests and reports, even 11 years after release! The achievements all work and are easy enough to get for the hunters; there are guides for this in Steam's Community section. I don't believe it's possible to miss any if you play through to the "true" ending. Shoujo VNs aren't really my thing, but I was trying to 100% some of the shorter games in my collection, and I have to say the time spent on this did not feel wasted. The Japanese voice acting seems good (though I'm no Japanese speaker!), and adds emotion that I think would have been missing just with the text. I was surprised how much I understood of it; the translation isn't always literal, but the differences are small and mean the same thing, just in more natural Japanese phrasing. Note that while the game lets you name your character when you create a new game, this is obviously not represented in the voice acting, where the character gets the game's canonical name for her, "Umino Marin".

Okay. A short vn but wow, this was kinda fun. Not entirely trashy but I liked the drama and story well enough. It's certainly something to try explain to your friends what happens haha! The true end that happens in this game, is always something I look forward to and wished I saw more like it... nice.

Just couldn't get into the story at all. And I tried.

1/10

Nice game, i was surprised gladly.

Tremenda telenovela.

Meh.... I'm not sure about it. Liked the idea where u must know all the good/bad endings to know the truth but did not like at all the story.