#evertides

The amount of options you have to customise your character is stunning, and makes the reading experience feel incredibly personalised. You normally have about six different options for how you react to, or interact with, the characters and events in the games, giving you a huge amount of freedom to develop your Hunter's personality down whatever path you want. You can also choose the genders of the romance options, or have them randomly selected (I chose this for my first playthrough).

The story starts woven between the main missing-person case and a murder mystery, and quickly spirals into a network of potential conspiracies tangled with interpersonal disagreements, shadowy organisations, and competing viewpoints. The world grows around you as you read, answering some questions and hitting you with new ones as the story develops, always keeping the most important information tantalisingly out of your reach. There are action scenes, and you can choose from one of 6 main combat focuses, which each give you unique scenes and combat options—and a few non-combat options related to your choice as well.

I went for A as the romance option I focused on most, because I'm a sucker for friends-to-lovers, but all the options seem equally fleshed-out and I enjoyed seeing the cast of conflicting personalities forced to work together. I'm already planning a replay, focusing on N and checking out some of the branching paths I didn't go down the first time, because I just enjoy spending time with these characters and watching them bounce off each other. Plus, I'm hoping to get more clues regarding the central mystery to see if my current theories hold water.

The game keeps track of your character decisions in a profile you can access at any time, which is especially useful to monitor your relationships with your romance options. There's also a codex, which occasionally updates with extra details to help flesh out the setting (I really enjoyed the implication that garlic is MSG for vampires).

In terms of accessibility, there are options to choose light or dark mode, three different fonts (including one designed for dyslexic readers) and you can alter the font size to make it easier to read. It also provides content warnings for each chapter.

ok so we got there and some crappy hip hop rapper or whatever was playing so we weent to the silver snail across the street and omg they had so much doctor who shit it was cool

then we went back outside and the hip hop performer was finishing up and hollerado started setting up and idk why i didn't listen to them befer their performance was perfect omg they were jumping and they were just so cool i loved it they were shooting confetti and everything it was the best and i actually got a place pretty close and i could still sort of see them even though im short

and then omg tokyo police club started setting up and i saw graham and greg and i was crying omg then they were announcing them and then the lead singer of hollerado came out to specially announce them and oh my god he said he knew them because when they moved in in the same neighborhood they were trying to do a seance and omg apparently they lit a fire in their living room and everything i was screaming ok so then they had to stay in his house and he liked their music and yeah omg im screaming and then they came on and started playing cheer it on i was legit crying ok i was pretty close too and then ok wow it was perfect im crying and oh my god when they played all directions i was legit so happy omg i even already knew half the lyrics and omg i wish i could see them live again also during favourite colour tHE LEAD SINGER OF HOLLERADO CAME OUT AND SHOT A THING OF CONFETTI IT WAS PERFECT OMG

and then after i went to the side to see if i could meet them and after a bit i saw dave and he was going around and i was shaking so much and tHEN I SAW GRAHAM AND HE STARTED SIGNING THINGS TOO but omg dave got to me and i asked him to sign my elephant shell deluxe edition thing and he wrote "REBECCA" on it too im crying and i also mentioned steph because i didn't know what to say omg and then i got a picture with him omg then i went to meet graham and we actually talked a bit it was the best and i got a picture with him but i couldn't get him to sign elephant shell because omg dave took up the whole thing im crying and yeah it was the best night of my life

and omg dave was going around again asking people for high fives and i stuck my hand out and high fived me ok it was the best high five of my life