the head well lost Reviews

Finally finished the VN, and I could tell the storywriter did A LOT of researching. I enjoyed the story, art, and how the background music changed at appropriate times to appropriate musics. Hopefully I can get the other endings soon as well.

This is a VERY VERY GOOD VISUAL NOVEL. The love interest is amazing, the story is beautiful, it was funny and sweet and moving and just so many good things. 10/10, will play with Rai again.

This was a very nice, cosy VN, and I enjoyed reading it a lot! The head well lost is, as the short summary so succinctly describes, a romance story between a librarian and a pop star (who just so happens to be headless). The story opens when our protagonist, Francis (whose name can be changed in-game), pairs with the mysterious Rai on a dating app, and the two hit it off. They begin to learn more about one another, and they gradually open up through series of text messages which are fun to read (the phone UI is really cute, and I love how the characters use emojis and have distinctly different ways of typing too). Then, after talking to one another a little, the two end up meeting in person, where it's revealed that Rai is actually a pop star from the band DRYDEN... and he's also a dullahan without a head. Francis is pretty thrown by this, as one might expect, but she resolves to make the relationship work. Whether it actually works, however, is up to the player, as there's quite a lot of choices scattered throughout. You can choose how Francis interacts with Rai to a degree, though her personality is set. Francis is her own distinct character (she has self-esteem issues owing to some familial strife and a past failed relationship) and she's rather cautious about jumping into a new relationship. You can decide whether she decides to voice her concerns to Rai, however, or if she keeps them bottled up for fear of bothering him (though doing this too much will typically result in a bad end). There's several different endings to this VN which branch off at different points, and while I haven't read all of them, they show various ways Francis's relationship with Rai can go. It's clear these endings are short 'bad endings', however, and there's one clear 'main route' where Francis and Rai end up happily together. I'm not sure if all of these endings were strictly necessary, as they feel like very short 'what if' scenarios which aren't fleshed out too much, but the large amount of choices the player has throughout keeps the story engaging. I personally enjoyed the first 50% of the story the most, when Francis and Rai are getting to know one another and they're just starting their relationship. I thought this part of the story was the most engaging, and it was nice getting to know more about Rai alongside Francis (and seeing all the cute nicknames for Rai Francis has as she routinely changes his name on her phone lol). The last 50% of the story deals with Francis trying to maintain her relationship with Rai while also digging a bit more into Dullahan lore, which was also interesting, but the story felt a little aimless at this point. The good ending was still very cute and heartwarming though, so it all felt worthwhile overall! It's worth noting that I liked the presentation of this VN a lot. It's minimal, with only three character sprites, and the backgrounds are all filtered photos. I also believe all the music is stock music, though I might be wrong. The character sprites, though limited, are very expressive, however. I especially love Rai's sprite, and how many poses he has. He doesn't have a head, so he can't emote like characters in typical VNs do, so the devs made up for this by giving him several different poses and occasionally making the animated smoke which drifts out of his head turn into a question mark or a heart. It's a really cute little detail which gives him a lot of character! The backgrounds, though filtered photos, work really well with the sprites: they feel cohesive. I'm also a fan of filtered photo bgs in VNs, since they can make stories feel more grounded in the real world (which The head well lost definitely is; there's a lot of pop culture references in here, and the characters even go to Waffle House and IKEA). The music, meanwhile, was perfectly fitting. I also liked the UI a lot. It's simple, but it's very stylish. All in all, I'd recommend this VN if you want a nice, chill romance story to unwind to. It's quite lowkey for the most part, but the characters are charming (especially Rai) and I enjoyed my time with it overall!

A lot of work, thought and research went into this and it shows. Simply put this is a more mature (not just because it has sex, mind you, it's optional) otome about maintaining a relationship. And in this case dating a celebrity and a creature of legend is not as much of a fancy gimmick but more of an actual obstacle. [quote]Relationship is not a one-way street.[/quote] There's lots of text, good\true ending will take about 10+ hours to complete and there's a lot to unpack there for both of our characters. I'll leave some minor nitpicking for later and for now go with what I liked. The plot is rather well thought of and most character interactions, bad ends excluded, are a delight to read, that includes problems and miscommunication as well as friendly banter and heartfelt support. Characters talk about stuff, they work on it, they kinda do counseling for each other, that's one of the things I don't see in otome much and it's a shame. So overall without spoiling anything this is a very immersive story about a year in a life of a couple, the options are there but mostly it reads like a kinetic novel would, the stage is set and there's not much you can do about it. [quote]- I realized life is just a bunch of stuff you can't control. - But is that a bad thing? Let it Snow (2019)[/quote] Nitpicking things. The kinetic novel or a VN with less options would work better imo. A lot of options are not changing anything, just adding minimum variety to the text and with the 'read every single text variation in the game' achievement just makes it frustrating since getting every ending, even with minimum saves, doesn't give you all this stuff. Moreover most of the endings give you very little extra info and while I liked how they were tied together plot-wise it would just be more fluid a story. There's also the last bad end which is a trope I strongly resent but aside from it it denies most of the things our characters agreed upon and generally just makes it look out of place. Again, this has lots to do with my personal preference so take it with a grain of salt, it's a really popular plot, apparently, so... yeah. Just to be funny another unrealistic thing is that MC has like 95 phone change all the time and now that's a superpower I want! Aside from this I really enjoyed this journey, it's well-written and has it's moments of all kinds of emotions, can't wait to see what your next character will loose or find (yes, I played and loved Without a Voice too, I'm convinced there's a pattern now).