Camp Palut

[h1]LETDOWN[/h1] Camp Palut is a short yuri Visual Novel that you can fully complete in less than 3 hours. I had a really hard time deciding if I should actually recommend this title. On the one hand, it's not an awful game - it was just fine. On the other hand, ~10 euros for something so short is definitely too much. In the end, I decided to follow my brain and not my heart. I love yuri, but [b]Camp Palut is simply not good enough to recommend it. You may give it a chance, but only after some serious sale[/b] (at least -60% if not more). [b]Story and Characters[/b] I really liked the main idea of the story - summer camp, a small mystery, girls, yuri all around. Sadly, the execution wasn't great. Mystery part was super obvious from the start, buildup to that mystery was too short, and characters were too shallow (but that's because they had no time to do anything). At least flirting with Amy was fun (if you did her route). There's actually some chemistry between her and the main character and you can feel it through the dialogues. I didn't feel the same bond with other love interests. [b]Gameplay[/b] Classic visual novel, with some choices (mainly about who we want to date). Everything worked as it should, and all important pieces were included (like the gallery). [b]Visuals and Audio[/b] The art quality was rather uneven. Great character designs, but forgettable backgrounds. CGs were just average and there were only a few of them (4 for each love interest). Audio... there was barely any audio. Mediocre soundtrack, some background noises from time to time, and no voice acting. [i]Check my Curator's page for more reviews: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41437353-mnik%2527s-Experience/[/i]

Lovely little thing. Everyone is very lovely :)

They are so precious. Kind of cookie cutter VN material, but they did it well. Also lesbians. Can't go wrong with lesbians. (Or enbies.)

I backed this on Kickstarter and I would say that it was worth it! Its short, but the story is tight and all the characters are cute and likable (even the villain haha). The shorter story also allows you to replay the game to try to get the different endings without feeling like you're wasting your time without a walkthrough. Definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of romance visual novels!

Camp Palut is another example of a game I really [i]wanted[/i] to like but just couldn't. The main problem is the writing. There is just not enough here to justify the $15 price tag. Now I want to make it clear that I absolutely do not believe there should be an exact linear correlation between a game's length and its price; that kind of stuff is what leads [i]certain[/i] devs to add dozens of hours of pointless unfun junk mechanics just to pad out the playtime. But here, the short length of the game isn't an attempt to tell a compact movie-length story in visual novel format, it's a symptom of a much bigger problem: the empty writing. The best description of the writing style of Camp Palut is "Things happen." That sounds trite (things happen in all but the most esoteric of stories), and it kind of is, but roughly 90% of the game reads like an outline that was never fleshed out. It's just [i]bland[/i]. By the midpoint of the story, the MC and her love interest and the rest of the campers are all in actual life-threatening danger--yet the game completely fails to instill any sense of tension or suspense. Not because suspenseful things aren't happening in the story, but because they're being narrated so boringly that it might as well be a government report. Bianca's route, unlocked by getting the good ending for one of the other three routes, is by far the best of them, primarily because it's the only route that bothers to do anything interesting; it at least [i]sometimes[/i] has situation-appropriate tension in it. That said, [spoiler]it ends with Bianca dying. Yes, in her good ending. No, she's not resurrected. Her last CG is of the other main characters standing at her grave.[/spoiler] I actually didn't mind this even though I liked her (relatively), just because I was that desperate for [i]something[/i] interesting to happen, and that was in fact an interesting choice for the devs to make, but a lot of people would probably be angry at it. Or not, considering how little the game does to endear you to its characters. The plus sides: - Every character has their own unique sprite, even nameless camp counselors - I thought it was cute how the camp logo has lesbian flag and bi flag variants - Actually kind of a lot of CGs for a game this short? - The art is mostly nice, especially the backgrounds [i]For recommendations of romance games, check out my curator, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32080131/]Games for Hopeless Romantics[/url].[/i]