Lilith Was Dead

Lilith Was Dead is a visual novel with an interesting but very predictable story, fairly vapid writing, decent voice acting (for amateur levels), and many fake choices. It's not too bad considering that it's the developers' first game, and I'd be interested in their future games, but I can't really recommend this one. The story focuses on a murder that takes place during a movie screening. The cinema's few visitors interrogate each other while waiting for the police, trying to find out who's the murderer and whether they are still in danger. The plot is interesting, fairly complex, and well thought-out. There are a few twists that _could_ have come across as far-fetched, but the writer took great care to explain them and make them plausible. However, they did not spend half as much time on alternative explanations or red herrings. The story is therefore very predictable and didn't manage to surprise me even once, which is not great for a murder mystery. It would have helped if the other suspects had had a motive, or if (for example) they knew something about each other which could have made them suspicious to the other party (and the player). But neither is the case here. The writing is mostly just matter-of-factly and functional. The goal of most lines is to deliver information and perhaps provide a clue, not to entertain via witty dialogue or thoughtful insights. It felt a bit like the author didn't have much to say apart from presenting the plot (which would be understandable considering that the developers seem to be very young). Regarding gameplay, every single choice I explored was fake. Either there were 2-3 choices that all had to be picked one after another (so why give the player the illusion of choice if we have to take all options anyway?), or there was one "right" choice which progressed the story, and one "wrong" choice that led to immediate death. At no point did the story branch into different paths or explore the situation from a different angle. There was one choice that looked like it could lead to different branches (where you have to say who your main suspect is), but at this point it was already clear who the killer was, and I saw no point in accusing anyone else. Given that the product description promises "many choices" and "alternative paths", I find this type of marketing deceptive and disappointing. In terms of presentation, the graphics are okay for a low-cost visual novel. There is some background music, which I found so annoyingly attention-grabbing and repetitive that I had to mute it after a few minutes. One thing that surprised me, is that all characters (except the protagonist and the narrator) are fully voice-acted. While this was clearly done by untrained amateurs and the technical quality of the recording isn't great either, I've heard much worse in other indie games. The voice-acting definitely gave the characters a bit more of a personality and raised the overall quality of the product. I was positively surprised by the game's quality-of-life features. It lets you save at any time, you have more save slots than you'll ever need, you have various options for text speed and auto-skipping, and you have separate volume sliders for music and voices. The game can be played exclusively with the mouse, exclusively with the keyboard, or with a mix of both. On top of all that, the game has an internal screenshot function, and lets you revisit previous dialogue and all screenshots in the scene where you have to pick and accuse your main suspect. This is an amazing feature that I would love to see in more games, but there was simply no reason to use it in this game. Given that it's fairly short and doesn't provide a lot of information that you'd need to remember, working from memory was more than sufficient. The game is cheap, and if you want to experience an interesting short (around 80 minutes) linear story without caring much about gameplay, then it may still be worth a shot. In general, though, neither the writing nor the gameplay reached the level that I would want from a visual novel, so I can't recommend it. I think the developers did show some potential, but I can't recommend a game for potential alone. I'd generally be interested in future projects from the team, but am not sure if I would trust future product descriptions.

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Lilith Was Dead feels like something that would have been a sleeper hit on Newgrounds a decade ago. Everything from the art style to some of the more seemingly unintentional funny story elements feels like something from a late 2000's flash game. The first half of the game is very linear and doesn't lead to much in the way of actual investigation. However, once a major reveal is made the game really picks up the pace. The end result is a lot of fun. Check this out if you liked older flash mysteries like the original Detective Grimoire flash game.

I really enjoyed the visuals and the voice acting. It all comes together very nicely - the music, the dialogues and the twist at the end. Short but thrilling VN for little money, I would recommened.

Üniversiteden uzaktayken iki arkadaşınızla yerel bir sinemada buluşursunuz. Basit bir buluşma olarak başlayan şey, kısa sürede çözülerek arkadaşınızın kurban olduğu korkunç bir cinayet gizemine dönüşür. Bu görsel roman tarzı oyunda bunu kimin ve nasıl yaptığını bulmak artık sizin göreviniz.

What a fun playthrough. Yes, it was a bit ridiculous at times, but truly was just some good, plain ol' fun. I obviously made some bad choices along the way, as I ended up in a "dead end", but I'm grinning and feeling a hundred times better than I did when I first got up this morning. Thanks for a great time and keep up the good work!

So this was a fun game short but fun i was really surpised there was voice acting in this game i diddnt expect that sure it wassnt the greatest voice acting but it was still there and i enjoyed it. Now for the game itself it was pretty good for someone who never made a game before so nice job heat wave games for a good first game i hope we hear more from you. About the story and the characters the characters were interesting and likeble at least most of them Jax was a bit MEH not the greatest character in the game. In the middle of the game is a plottwist that will shock you however by revealing that plottwist it also made it VERY clear who the killer really was now for me it was obvious from the beginning who the killer was it almost looked like the killer was screaming HEY LOOK OVER HERE GUYS ITS ME AM THE KILLER YOOOOOHOOOO during the entire story. When i choose my main suspect i was right i also managed to avoid bad endings i solved the case,got the killer and finished with a good ending on my first try later on i decided to look for alternate endings and they were all bad ones. I love playing detective and try to solve a murder mystery so i was a little dissapointed that i was right about everything and that it was all that simple i want to think when am playing a detective to solve a case its not really fun to know everything and be right on everything without having to think i really wanted to think during this game and i diddnt had to but still i really enjoyed the game i also like that little joke at the end HERE WE GO AGAINXD I was actually hoping for one little surpise at the end but there wassnt really but still i enjoyed playing it its not really a game with replay values but am still happy i bought this game at least to support the developers and i hope they will make more games in the future. I give it as a rate a 7.5/10