Give it up for day three! I know a three day streak is hardly anything to brag about, but considering I have a full time job and have to move soon, I'm pretty stoked about it. Today's thirty minutes were given to Code Romantic (or Code Rom@ntic, if you're looking at the banner) by prettysmart. Minor spoilers for the first two chapters of the game.
This is a visual novel with an adventure and romance plot that punishes you for playing by making you learn to code. I am absolutely kidding about the punishment part, I've been picking up pieces and bits of coding from my dad my whole life so this was actually a really nice refresher course before I go hunting for some college level classes in the upcoming year. Thank you game dev prettysmart for making me realize I was using some basic coding syntax wrong, it'd been bothering me. This is another one of my bundle gifts, but it's usually $9.99 on Itch.io.
When I saw the banner and title screen, I immediately thought "this looks like it was either drawn by hand or the artist was incredibly dedicated to a pen-and-paper style and succeeded in tricking me. Turns out, all the art for this game is in fact hand-drawn! It's very cool, with distinct shapes for everything and the artists style really shines. I'm not good at complimenting art, aside from knowing what I like and prefer, but this is art I would definitely stare at a while if I encountered it in the wild. Thumbs up.
This game not only has good writing- I didn't feel overly patronized by the introduction even though it was a scene between mother and child, with you taking the place of the child because I was immediately dedicated to being... a child. If that makes sense. Sometimes it works (like in this game) and sometimes it makes you want to tear out your hair (looking at you, Fallout 3). The sticking point is that it doesn't overstay its welcome! It establishes the apocalyptic premise and some need to know information about our protagonist, such as her relationship with her mother and her dead-to-robot-uprising father, and then moves on to where she's a bit more grown up.
This doesn't mean you get out of learning to code, though, if you were getting your hopes up. If you're more interested in losing yourself to a story than picking up some coding groundwork, you might want to give this a pass. The coding lingo is well explained, though, and you are given a dictionary feature that sits alongside the programming window. Very neat and helpful for any scatterbrain moments.
I'll be honest, the only reason I stopped playing was because I am very tired and have a long day of work tomorrow and I knew if I didn't quit I'd be up all night, or longer if I was dissatisfied with the ending I got.
All in all, I was compelled by the characters, by the hint of plot I received, and I will never say no to being taught a new skill (especially not one I am hoping to learn soon anyways). A great experience! Thirty minutes well spent!
