Title: Ever 17
Creator: KID
Publisher: Hirameki International
System: PC
Names for the genre this game falls under in English are varied, but think of it as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book with voices, pictures, and much longer.
I was surprised at the length of this game; to me it was like one of those books that you can't put down, but it still took me more than four days to finish it. There are two perspectives (think player characters) and five "good endings" to this story; the last one is unlocked when you reach the other 4. The point to this game is to uncover the mystery; on your first run through, things will probably seem fairly simple and believable. When you run though the story from the second perspective, you will find things that shatter your understanding of what's going on; the only way to find out is pursue all 4 good endings to unlock the final ending where you will discover the shocking truth.
The characters are all developed in depth during the story and the art is beautiful. I wish that there were more character poses, however, and some of the voices when they are saying things softly has noticable static. The story is excellent and I still can't get it out of my head days after finishing. I almost think that the $40 price tag was too little. That said, this game was originally developed in Japanese, then translated by Hirameki for release in the states. There are many typos, and at the beginning of the second perspective paths, there are strange replacements. There are about 5 times where the voice was missing from a line. Fortunately, these problems seemed to grow milder as I progressed down a given path and did not greatly disrupt my enjoyment of the game.
There is a demo available which will demonstrate the art and the game system, though it uses a much earlier translation and doesn't really get much into the mystery. The demo skips arround in the timeline of the game seemingly to prevent spoilers, though I still felt a bit spoiled when I started playing.
If you enjoy reading a good book and have a lot of available time on a computer in your future ('cause you're not going to want to stop playing), I suggest you buy this game.
http://www.hirameki-int.com/appc/pro...e17/index.html
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