Journal

This isn't a game for masses, not a first person shooter with high quality graphics. It isn't a whole world of role-playing with monsters, weapons and magic. This isn't a strategy game with huge armies to control. If you only play games because of these, then back away slowly from this game. This is just a simple story about a young girl, and how she struggles with some events in her life.

With all the Telltale Games (Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us) interactive stories are becoming more and more and more popular. This game is not that great neither with story, neither with gameplay, neither with graphics, but it crawls into your heart. In it's 1-2 hour gameplay, you control a girl and have to rebuild her somehow-erased journal, walking through the sketchy, but beautiful hand-drawn pages of the journal. I have to admit the surroundings and 3D elements could have been made better, but the journal parts were weird in a lovely way and the narrating circus parts were just magnificent.

I think indie game maker, Richard Perrin, did a great job with this game's story. You are in a fog the whole game, you don't know the most important thing, and it is seldomly mentioned. The game focuses on speaking to other character, and deciding how the girl should behave. There are a couple of bigger decisions, but you can't change the major storyline. Because you are a little girl nobody wants to tell you anything, your parents don't want to tell you why they separated, plus you have troubles at school, struggling with anxiety, and depending on how you behave with your friends will decide how they treat you in the end. Just like in real life. The story deals with these things, which might seem difficult even for an adult, but how these things are even more difficult for a child. Meanwhile there is another storyline with shadow figurines, which at first might seem like it has nothing to do with our young girl, but in the end integrates slowly into her life.

I highly recommend this game, although as I mentioned it before, not for anyone who can't appreciate a simple but makes-you-think story.