Dyscourse Reviews

Dyscourse is a bit unusual as a "decisions matter" style of adventure game because the unofficial tagline should be "MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS!!!". You awake from a plane wreck on a remote island and quickly come across a group of survivors. You need to choose "wisely" to help the group survive, but once you complete the game you gain access to a day rewind option which will allow you to attempt pushing the story down different branches [spoiler]until you are literally pushing other survivors down branches just to see if they will fall and die[/spoiler] because why not? This really is the main point of the game, and it's fun for a while but I got to a point where I was satisfied that I'd seen everything I wanted to see. According to the achievements list I've only seen 41% of all possible story events, but it just seems like it would be punishing to attempt to unlock every minor event. I'd rather put Dyscourse down while I still feel like it was a refreshingly unique game rather than grind my way through every possible arc just so that I can say I saw it all. 6 out of 10, it wasn't a total plane wreck ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

You'll definitely like this game if you like choose your own adventure games, or just adventure games in general. Going through the story once hasn't taken me more than 2 hours, but don't let that make you think this game is small-- it's packed with tons of different paths to take in the storyline, with each path revealing a different part of the story. I found myself replaying to piece together the whole picture, favoring some characters over others to get new information out of them. If you find yourself having trouble committing to a long video game, or forgetting where you are in the game, Dyscourse might be a good match for you, as it was for me. Additionally, the style of the game is beautiful and very quirky, and the colors are a nice balance of saturated and subdued. Very easy to look at for long periods of time if you find yourself playing for hours on end. Music adds a lot to the mood of each scene, and the writing is smart and charming. Pay close attention to what you read! And choose wisely. ;) Overall: Buy this game. Throw your money at it. Play it forever. ALSO: There's a cute cat with fluffy ears in the game. Do it for the cat.

This is one of those games that needs a 'maybe' rating for the review. It's a good idea. Plane crashes on desert island, you, the sensible person, have to lead a group of idiots to survival over the course of a few days, while waiting for rescue. Simple as that. Works rather well too, in the sense that choices certainly do affect the outcome of the story somewhat. But it is rather simple, and figuring out all the different 'pathways' and variations of those pathways can be a fun thing to do. However, it isn't as in-depth as people make it out to be, you can have a husband and wife be rather blase about one or the other committing murder for example, even when their relationship is absolutely rock bottom, where the expectation is for some actual 'reaction' to happen, to push them over the edge. Where Dyscourse fails is in its characters and the direction the game takes with them. As I mentioned, the idea of the desert island survival story is a sensible one. But the characters are something out of a poor hack's comedy show. There's the husband and wife, who seem relatively normal. The absolute bat-snot insane conspiracy theorist, tin-foil-hat, rage inducing idiot "Teddy" who will spout off all sorts of ridiculous rubbish about THE NANOMACHINES! and the ALIENS!!!!!! And omg the sand has ears... Oh shut up, you delusional nutter. There's the 'gamer', and I use that term ever so mockingly because apparently gamers IRL would go out in a thunderstorm and suggest a lightning strike means a Black Mage is nearby. Wut? Dude, get a grip. And then the office jocky, who seems to have an unlimited amount of cigarettes, who mopes like that one friend who tries to find a negative in absolutely everything? "Good morning!" "Nothing good about it, oh woe is me, I wish some rock would casually stone my brains out." "Jesus Christ mate, all I said was good morning!" "And wooooooooe I am still alive, to listen to your mundane voice, please kill me now!" If you find that sort of thing absolutely, knee slappingly, hilarious, then Dyscourse is right up your alley, a survival game with absolutely "hilarious" characters. If, like me, you find that sort of thing absolutely moronic, then Dyscourse is probably not quite the game for you, and it is a shame because the idea is a relatively simple, safe one that really should work no matter what, and yet the developers somehow managed to actually make it almost unbearable to get through. (Additionally, turn the 'voice effects' sounds off, it will save your sanity.) So yeah, get it on sale if you absolutely must. Don't bother if you feel those characters I summed up above are unlikable people, unless you want to buy it just to kill them, which some of you will, so go for it. (Game rating: Mixed.)

A short choose-your-own-adventure type game with a interesting art style. Pros: Art direction and graphics are good for what they are Story is decent - new aspects found after more playthroughs Cons: Very short No strong desire to complete multiple playthroughs to see different outcomes Some story arcs don't make the most sense and seem contrived. Possible spoiler: Poisonous gas magically formed in a cave with previous life in it and killed part of my party? WTF? Overall: The game is too short and simple to be worth the $14.99 asking price. The price for the deluxe edition would be crazy. Pick it up if it's half price or less. Otherwise, watch a let's play on youtube and you'll quickly see more money would be a waste. Grade: C-

Dyscourse is my newest favorite choose-your-own adventure game. I thoroughly enjoyed combing through each path to unlock the variations of each possible ending. I found myself often looking back in time at least 2 or 3 times per playthrough to find out what went wrong. With that said, a lot can go wrong (and that's a good thing). Small details matter in this game especially if you want to aim for 100% of the achievements. I also want to note that the art style is very easy on the eyes. The characters dialogue is also well-written. Personally, Steve was my favorite out of the group with his bleak outlook on life and his trusty stapler. If you want something to compare it to, I'd say it is like a slightly longer and more evolved 'Monster Loves You'. I definitely recommend this game for those who enjoy adventure games. Even if you don't normally play adventure games, this is actually a good starting point for the genre.

Dyscourse is a really different any intresting game, overall its a solid game but has some flaws. The pros: Its like if 'Lost' had choices that YOU choose (Similar to Life is Strange or The Walking Dead), the artwork and atomsphere is really well done. Every moment in the game I feel nervous and eerie and the amount of outcomes and choices are so hearttearing. The characters a realistic and have their pros and cons, there is no one character that is perfect or evil.. which I love because they're not cliche. For instance one guy is super nice but is always paranoid and it gets annoying, one lady is kind but doesnt make the right choice and it a bit of a critic. The timer when you make choices also adds to the tension and is great, after every choice you instantly feel like you made the wrong one which was perfectly done. The varity of deaths are also really cool and it has an amazing amount of reply value, I want to reply it to get every single outcome. The middle: There is some stuff to say in the middle, the beginning is pretty aburpt and i'm not sure how I feel about it.. it doesnt pull you in the first five minutes of playing and takes awhile. The puzzles are generally simple which is a con and a pro, there was only one puzzle I struggled with and it was unique which was good, so the puzzles are unique but simple. I'm also mixed on the soundtrack, it was good but I feel like if the devs went a little further on the soundtrack it could have improved the game. The cons: I actually dont have a lot of cons, I wish they did voice acting instead of mumbling and exploring your area can be fustrating sometimes because the controls can make it awkward to move around. Sometimes the choices confuse me though, for instance I gave food to one lady one day and didnt give her food another day and then she died from starving. Overall: Overall this game is solid, if you enjoy games about choices and point & clicks this is for you. I'd give it a solid 8/10.

Overall rating: 9/10 Description: a game that rely's heavily on story and player decision making where no two playthroughs are alike Expected completion time: to finish takes about 1 hour, but you will play through again and again For those who like: life is strange, the gods will be whatching, always sometimes monsters, the telltale series Replayability?: absolutly, you will play through this over and over, and that's what this game thrives uppon Value for money?: could be a little cheaper, but doesn't feel like you're getting ripped off Collectables?: no, but you will find something new every time you play this Things of note: the art style is beautiful, and things can get pretty crazy pretty quickly

[b] Target Audience: [/b] [I] Those who love choose your own adventure books[/i] [b] Summary: [/b] For CYOA lovers who loved reading every possibility. The games graphical style and aesthic is its strongest asset, and there's some good elements of story telling here. But some of the CYOA elements don't work well with the main story, and character shifts will be off putting. Not a lot of gameplay, but that's not the game you would be buying if you picked it up. [b]Gameplay Footage and Video Review: http://youtu.be/clBv5I_e_kE[/b] [u] Lists: [/u] [b]Positives:[/b] [list] [*] Art style and different locations play off fabulously. [*] Branching paths, a lot of different story elements [*] The ability to rewind a day to try something new [*] Some likeable characters, and good dialgoue between the two. [/list] [b]Negatives:[/b] [list] [*] Inconsistencies with story telling, in particular, with character trials and reacting reasonably to a situation given what they've gone through [*] Rapid character changes at times don't make any sense. [*] A lot of guesswork, think Maniac Mansion/Sam and Max type of logic at time. [*] sLack of interaction, even for a CYOA there's little stuff you're actually doing. [/list] [b] If you want more reviews/information regarding games I've reviewed, visit my curator. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6861768/]Dragnix Curator [/url][/b]

This game is absolutely dreadful, and I really wanted to like it. I tried my hardest. I guess the best way to break down my distaste for it would be to list the Pros and Cons. Pro: Interesting art style: The game looks fairly nice. It won't blow you away with graphics, animations, or character designs... but the art style itself is a change of pace from what one would typically see. Soundtrack: Whatever else I may say about this game won't detract from the fact that it has a pretty stellar soundtrack. I always enjoyed what I was hearing in regards to that. Disky: There is one twist ending that made me kind of chuckle. I'll give that due props. Cons: Terrible Characters: I disliked every single character in this game, passionately. For a strictly story driven game like this, that is a cardinal sin. All of the characters were hyperbolic annoying familiars of one character stereotype or another. And since they all spend the entire campaign b--ching, whining, complaining, fighting with each other, and generally failing at whatever task you delegate to them (though there were some successes in that regard), I found it very hard to find any character that I could truly align myself with. Absence of Gameplay: Its pretty tough to call this game a game, there isn't really anything game-like involved with it. Most of the time you are crawling through dialog, and in those rare moments when you can control a character, you have an extremely limited range of movement within a restricted area, and your actions are only ever temporarily extended beyond doing nothing into picking up a couple of objects. Once you pick up those objects though, you're done "playing" anything game-like here. Its back to the story. Which would be fine and all, were it not for the above grievance combined with the below... Absence of Choices: The game bills itself as a Choose Your Own Adventure style game, and I dig that. But for a game whose focus is on story and choices, you don't seem to have a whole lot of decision points. You make a choice here and there and then spend the rest of the time watching everybody react to those choices. Sometimes, the distance between making a decision on something is so large that I forgot what kind of game I was playing for a bit. Its really like an elongated cutscene. When you get to the moments where you make decisions, most of the time they are pretty milquetoast (choose who finds the water, choose who gets to eat, etc). For a game with interest points far and few between, you'd think they would make all the decisions you would have to make be a bit more.... exciting. I went to look at other story driven mobile games just to compare, because I felt I wasn't being fair to Dyscourse with my expectations. I played a story driven game on iOS where every other sentence my character said was a decision point; I had the ability within the game to completely drive the conversation, and as such, the direction of the story. More to the point, even the minor choices I made felt like they carried more weight; they informed my character and allowed me to respond to situations the way I would respond. It may be unfair to compare to Dyscourse, but for a game devoid of any real gameplay and focusing on story and choices, I could have certainly used more. A lot more. Petty Storytelling: There were a number of times in the game where the storytelling just felt.... petty. For instance (Spoiler Alert, I guess...), there was a moment I encountered on a mountain where I had found 3 eggs in a nest off of the cliff. I was able to get two of them, but couldn't get the 3rd. With 3 of us in the party, I had to make a decision: who gets to eat these two eggs? Well, one of the dialog choices presented to you is "All 3 of us will share the eggs", which is an easy thing to do with eggs. But then you are told "No we can't do that, you must choose between 2 of the 3" for no real reason whatsoever. Its obviously a Sofie's Choice moment, choosing who will live and who will die. The petty part is, I had made great strides getting to this point in the game without any characters dying, and I was literally on the last night before rescue. There was NO reason for anyone to die other than the game just said "Nope someone's dying lol". What am I playing this for? This was only 1 of several examples within this game. Dull: All in all, the game is just dull. The story is horrendously generic (plane crash, desert island, etc), and none of the characters to a lick to improve on that. As stated earlier, they are all annoying characters. Add to that, they all speak Simlish. Not normally something I would say is a bad thing, but when you have annoying characters in a dull game talking about dull things (do I really care about George and Jolene's marriage?), the Charlie-Brown-teacher-wompwomp effect only helps to underscore the appropriate level of attention I end up paying to the whole thing. Wompwompwompwompwhatever lets move this along so I can get to the next decision point. Short: Maybe this should be a positive considering my feelings on this game, but for a 15 dollar "game" of nothing, being able to complete it in less than an hour seems... borderline criminal. That iOS game I mentioned earlier provided me a much more robust storytelling and decision making experience at the same length, for free (for the first episode, the 2nd costing about 2 bucks, which is still substantially cheaper than this). Why is this game so short? Its not at all worth 15 bucks for the litany of reasons listed above, but even ignoring all that, 15 bucks for less than an hour of playtime is a steep, steep price to pay. Is this an early access game? No no, that's not a good excuse. I've poured countless hours into Darkest Dungeon and other early access titles. I just don't get it. Maybe the lame, rote, predictable, cliched, boring story just doesn't lend itself to a long lifespan of playability. Whatever the case may be, its a quick burn, so be prepared for that. Ending: I don't really want to spoil the ending.... suffice to say that if you like looking at corkboards, you're in for a grand treat. OVERALL: I cannot NOT recommend this "game" enough. I am honestly completely baffled and dumbfounded by the positive reviews its been getting. I don't get it at all, not even a little bit. I can usually understand one way or another how popular games I don't like are at least popular with others. For Dyscourse? Its as much a mystery to me as the island itself.

It's cliche, but if you know Choose Your Own Adventure, you know this style of game. Done well, it can be really engaging, and provide a lot of replay value in going back and finding different outcomes. Unfortunately, this one didn't really resonate with me. On a mechanical level, the game is fine, with frequent decisions (some timed) that appear to have a substantial impact on the narrative. It's the narrative itself I take issue with -- the characterization is very one-dimensional, with each character serving as a simple stereotype. A bit of personality shorthand is fine for a short game, but these characters are mere caricatures, where every single line is a repeat of their one overriding personality trait. It makes the game farcical, which removes a lot of (well, all of) the weight from the decisions; when someone gets hurt or killed, it's difficult to sympathize when everything they've said to that point has been the same exaggerated characteristic over and over again. Couple this with humor that borders on slapstick and emotional responses that seem sociopathic and it's hard to take seriously. To me, for a game like this to work, the decisions have to be something I care about -- the tension comes from wanting to make the correct decision. Unfortunately, the relative silliness on display here in combination with the flat characters means that ten minutes in the decisions start feeling fairly arbitrary as I click through for my ending.