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1136 Narrative games reviewed and scored, best first.
1136 reviews
Ryo Kobuchi's arcade window-cleaning life-sim follows a young man juggling rope-swinging skyscraper work with the daily grind of rent, sleep, and relationships, earning a small but unanimously "Positive" reception for its addictive cleaning loop and surprisingly earnest life-sim storytelling.
7 / 10
A free, deliberately dithered, Mac-System-7-styled DIY publishing sim about running a zine-and-chapbook press through hype cycles, controversial exposés and literary fads — small, thinly reviewed, and still quietly receiving new content five years after launch.
7 / 10
A sci-fi skating-platformer from Heart Machine, the studio behind Hyper Light Drifter -- Very Positive on Steam and genuinely loved for its movement and art, but shadowed across years of reviews by a consistent verdict that it never quite lives up to the pedigree that sold it.
7 / 10
Sonic's first open-world entry, warmly received for boss fights and writing that reviewers say the series hasn't matched in years -- while a growing, high-vote complaint about Denuvo's always-online requirement has nothing to do with hedgehogs at all.
7 / 10
A Clone Wars-era turn-based tactics game from Bit Reactor (XCOM veterans) that delivers exceptionally strong, near-universally praised original characters and storytelling, undercut by severe but hardware-dependent performance problems, a deeply contested tactical-depth design compared unfavourably to XCOM by many genre veterans, and a serious, journalistically-reported mass staff furlough at the studio shortly after launch that a meaningful share of reviewers factor directly into their recommendation.
7 / 10
Shift Up's PS5-exclusive-turned-PC-port lands with genuinely praised combat, striking visuals and one of the strongest PC ports of its console-exclusive generation, undercut by a real, widely repeated "style over substance" complaint about shallow side content and a thin story — one this review can confirm the game's own director has publicly, directly admitted was underdeveloped.
7 / 10
A surreal, queer-themed psychological visual novel that markets itself as a crime thriller and delivers something far stranger and more personal, whose ambitious, deliberately unresolved writing earns near-unanimous praise even as one detailed later review calls its structure a mess.
7 / 10
Mi Lirong is fresh out of college, newly employed, and just been told by her doctor that she is at risk of diabetes. While night-jogging to try to fix that, she runs into He Siqiu,
7 / 10
A fully-voiced musical visual novel set among Greek gods hiding in the modern world, built by veteran narrative designers and carried by a genuinely strong voice cast — praised for its concept and performances, but hit at launch by real save-corruption and audio-mixing bugs the developer fixed in public, dated patches, and criticized by some for a "roleplaying" billing that oversells how much its choices actually change.
7 / 10
A Prohibition-era mafia idle/incremental with 5,000-plus words of dialogue, ten narrative ascensions and multiple endings — well liked by most of its early players, with a save-wiping bug at the finish line that the developer appears to have patched days after two reviewers independently reported it.
7 / 10
A NZ$10.29 fusion of time-loop adventure and idle incremental that has held a Very Positive Steam rating across four and a half years — not by avoiding friction, but by turning the loop's reset into the exact mechanism that makes idle progression permanent, while never fixing the one interface complaint players have repeated since launch week.
7 / 10
A standalone follow-up to Subnautica set in an arctic alien ocean, Very Positive across more than 55,000 reviews for genuinely strong underwater exploration and crafting — dominated by an extraordinarily consistent complaint from fans of the original that a smaller world, more land-based sections, and a talkative protagonist undermine the sense of isolation and vertical discovery that made its predecessor a landmark.
7 / 10
A Zombie Apocalypse Told Like a Movie, Not a Game Survivor's Notes doesn't play like most things wearing the "zombie survival" tag on Steam. There's no crafti
7 / 10
A NZ$28.99 sci-fi narrative adventure from Gone Home developer Fullbright that holds Very Positive across roughly 3,500 Steam reviews since August 2017 -- a genuinely inventive simultaneous-viewpoint storytelling mechanic wrapped around a two-to-five-hour experience that a large share of its own reviewers, positive and negative alike, argue doesn't give its oversized cast of characters enough room to actually land.
7 / 10
A genre-blending 2D action-platformer starring a bratty, homework-hating princess, praised for beautiful pixel art, satisfying combat, and a surprising amount of content for a solo-developed indie, with a few noticeably longer, more tedious stages and localization rough edges keeping it from full polish.
7 / 10
An outstanding fighting game that added a cash shop and premium battle pass two months after launch, then spent a year buffing offence until its own 300-hour veterans stopped recognising it — and is only now climbing back.
7 / 10
A cheap, fully-voiced otome death-game puzzle RPG whose writing and cast earned it an outsized, devoted following, held back by a rough English localization — including one reviewer-flagged slur that shouldn't have made it to release — and an unresolved bug that blocks progress specifically on the Mac version the store page advertises.
7 / 10
A Papers, Please-inspired resume-screening simulation about becoming the interviewer instead of the interviewee, praised for its sharp, emotionally grounded writing about modern work but criticized by reviewers for shallow document-checking gameplay, a short runtime, and a store menu that sells convenience features for real money.
7 / 10
A first-person psychological adventure that reimagines the Divine Comedy as a family curse, praised unanimously by an early review sample for its visuals, sound design and atmosphere, though even its admirers are candid about a short runtime, a story that loses focus late, and interface choices that undercut the ambience.
7 / 10
A genuinely inventive sci-fi survival game about a stranded scientist cloning alternate versions of himself from different life choices, whose acclaimed writing and design were overshadowed at launch by a confirmed, publisher-acknowledged failure to disclose generative-AI content — including leftover AI prompt text found in shipped translations — that this review independently verified through press coverage rather than relying on review-corpus allegations alone.
7 / 10
The trilogy's middle chapter, widely framed by reviewers as a "sophomore slump" that carries over the same combat-design critique this outlet found in the original game — plus a new complaint that its own attempt at a new mechanic (barricades) adds tedium rather than depth, and an ending several reviewers call less satisfying than the first game's.
7 / 10
A genuinely ambitious open-world vampire action RPG from Rebel Wolves, a new studio founded by Witcher 3 veterans, that fills a real gap for vampire-themed RPGs and draws strong, consistent praise for its story and atmosphere, undercut by widespread but hardware-inconsistent performance problems, real controller bugs, and a deeply divisive time-pressure mechanic that a large share of reviewers say was misrepresented before launch.
7 / 10
A narrative WWI adventure from Unreliable Narrators and Manavoid Entertainment following Newfoundland soldiers through the Gallipoli campaign, Very Positive across a large English review sample for its sincere, unglamorised portrait of trench life, with a fair, repeated complaint that its story and pacing don't fully earn its short runtime.
7 / 10
An Early Access pixel-art survival RPG about waking into a world ruled by endless labour and debt, exploring an underground lab alongside a rebellion of strange creatures called KB-Cats, praised for creative, thought-provoking writing about work and survival and a surprisingly deep career-and-economy system, held back by thin early guidance that leaves some players genuinely lost.
7 / 10
