Lilith Was Dead Reviews

A short about one hourish visual novel murder mystery. It was simple but I liked it. It entertained me while I played.

An amateurish game, though one made with enthusiasm. The plot is simple, the mystery is obvious, but there's something charming about it, probably the old Newgrounds feel. Good luck to the developer and hope they improve.

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.

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.

I really enjoyed this game. It had my attention the whole way through and I enjoyed it more and more when I started to recognize clues as to who the perpetrator might be. When I got the choice of who I thought the perpetrator was, I got it right the first time! Really cool investigation. What I didn't expect was 'what' the perpetrator was, that was a nice surprise. All in all, fun little game and absolutely worth one or two bucks. I didn't play this game in 0.1 hrs btw, I played it in the train offline and apparently Steam doesn't register hours then.

It's a very nice game, only taking about 1 hour to beat. The art style is simplistic and charming, and the characters are unique and interesting. I think Jax's voice actor plays the part really well. I would recommend it if your bored or just want a quick story, even if you aren't interested in graphic novels. I am looking forward to the next heatwave games game.

First off. I would like to share my experiences with prior visual novels. Such as Doki-Doki Literature club, Hoonie Pop, and the fate series which while I have not played, I am a huge fan of the story line and overall game play format. Regardless, you do not need experience with visual novels to enjoy this game. Very quick and enjoyable game and the music fits extremely well with the overall atmosphere increasing the impact of moments in the story. The story itself has a very...exciting twist and for the first project Heat Waves Games has developed I am excited to see what the next and the route they take and hopefully add some black people in their next game. I really enjoyed the voice acting as well and cant wait for what comes next.