LongStory

I dunno.. It was okay, but that's about it.
I'll still give it a positive review, though. I think I would've liked it more if I was actually the target demographic, 14 yo me probably would've liked it.
I think younger teens might enjoy this game but not really anyone who's 16+...

I like how inclusive the game is. POC characters, LGBT+ characters, a nonverbal character, and there's even non-monogamy.

I'm gonna leave a positive review since I think that the target demographic might enjoy it, even if older teens/adults like me may not.

While it was fun and chill to play, the story really railroads the main character into certain perceptions and actions no matter what you choose. I felt like there was little player agency and that i was reading a fancy book. More often than not you're presented with only two choices to pick from.

Great game, tho it crashes on episode 8, the epilogue of the game. Engaging characters, a very simple whodunnit, and good art. It would be nice to customize your character a little, you're pretty much given boy or girl version of the same look. skirt or jeans, but no way to mix it up. Em also looks like they are 40. Still, had lots of fun and binged 7 episodes in one run. Wholesome.

I really, really wanted to like this game. I played the app a few years back but as a teenager I didn't have enough money to buy the rest of the episodes. So I finally got to play it and it's.....okay? I mean the art design is nice and I do like how inclusive it is that's where the compliments end. The game was originally a mobile game, ported to the PC and while I don't mind that you can definitely tell by how clunky it plays and how blurry the screen is (not to mention the lack of graphics settings).

On top of that the choices don't really matter. Sometimes they lead to a dialogue path that was obviously meant for the other choice. Pair that with the clunky dialogue and you're in for a rough ride.

I think the worst part of this game is the fact that the mystery surrounding Em is poorly executed. You find out what happened to them before the game ends (which is fine) but it's not all that it was hyped up to be. Just melodramatic middle school drama.

Speaking of middle school--this game is about middle schoolers. Which isn't inherently bad but it seems to advertise itself as a game that takes place in high school. It doesn't make much sense for the game to be about a bunch of 13 year olds but I digress. It's whatever, but takes away the replay value because I definitely don't want to try to romance a bunch of middle schoolers to see what would happen. It makes me uncomfortable. The game is also chalk full with queer Tumblr era humor. And I understand that's the demographic of the game but it ages the game horribly.

Plus episode 8 just gave me a blank screen so that's cool. I guess. I feel like this is more like a visual novel than an actual game. I don't think it was worth 15 dollars, maybe 5-10 dollars but 15 is way too much for this game that has little to no replay value. I got RDR2 for on sale for 30 dollars. Is this game really worth half the price of RDR2 on Black Friday? It's a cute visual novel but I'd definitely wait for this game to go on sale or something and not buy it at full price. And go into this understanding that it's more or less an interactive visual novel and NOT an rpg where your choices matter.

Meh. It had potential. I remember playing episode 1 for free on the app store when I was 15. Idk, something changed but I can't put my finger on it. I had a deja vu that Colin said something about cliques but that wasn't in this game. Cliques are an interesting concept, but whatever. I will say though, it is shorter than I expected. Also the ending was a bit lackluster for me. Everyone's happy now, sure, everyone made up, laughing & kumbayah. But yeah... I wondered if my choices made a difference at all. Maybe I just expected some more DYNAMIC results with the relationships I've made so far in the story but that's just me. Its like the ending is almost pretty much set the same for everyone. The thing about Me and Abby being in an open relationship? Not surprised. I foresaw that would be her endgame, but show what happens to us after that, you know? It'd be cool to see what happens IF another person hops in that circle. What would be her reaction? Who knows, maybe we'd all be cool with each other for example (or not).

Eh, I mean its okay. The choices definitely matter. However the game has a very unsatisfying and unfinished ending. I was surprised when it ended. I was like... that's it? It seemed like there was so much more to explore and more things to happened when it ended but then it just... ended. Very LGBTQ+ friendly choices matter game though.

It seemed like kind of a chore to get through the game. Rather than it being fun. Not worth 15$. Maybe 5$.

The game was nice??? but a lot of the plot devices felt half done and not really thought through? It felt like a lot of unnecessary drama for no reason? Like I said it was a fine/okay game but I wouldn't recommend it

Loved the game but the ending was abrupt and left you with no resolution to anything. Fun game, but just not worth in the end

Let me start by giving a shout-out to the devs. I posted a negative review here on Steam due to a bug/clunky interface that stopped me from progressing, and they found it and worked with me to solve the bug. Big kudos to them!

However, I can't say that I was very pleased with what happened once I was able to progress. Almost immediately from the start of chapter 2 I stopped feeling like my choices mattered. Sometimes it was small, like response dialogues that suspiciously seemed like they would've applied to both options. Other times it was more egregious, like no matter how many times I had my character agree to stop pursuing the mystery about Em I wasn't given options otherwise. The game also springs scenarios on you where you're expected to make a choice about who among the possible partners you are going on a date with without so much as a scene where plans are actually made. As time goes on, it seems less like I'm playing a character with agency shaped by the choices I make and more like I'm playing a paranoid, over-excited, temperamental character in a harem anime.

If this game had presented itself more as a visual novel with a set plot and characters but branching paths, I would've been fine with avoiding it; I like more freedom and choice to be who I want to be in a dating sim. It's especially startling, given one of the major selling points is that I can pick my appearance and pronouns, but despite the literal first line of this game's description being "In LongStory you can be [...] who you choose." my character is pigeon-holed into a specific role rather quickly. I'm willing to forgive spelling/formatting errors and a clunky and often unresponsive interface for the sake of interesting characters and a compelling plot, but when I select the option to "stop doing The Thing" and the immediate next thing the game does is have me do The Thing anyway, I can't in good conscience give it a positive review. Especially not for $14.99.

Unfortunately I can't recommend this game due to issues with usability, this game lacks a lot of features that are standard for visual novels. There's no audio or video options, so you can't adjust music volume or the screen resolution or whether or not the game is windowed or full screen, there's no way to scroll back and reread what just happened if you need to, and there's no way to adjust the speed at which the text appears. However the last straw for me was when I went to save at the end of the first episode/chapter/whatever and the save didn't work and I lost all my progress and would have had to start at the beginning again. It's a shame because the first episode was pretty good story-wise and I would have been interested in continuing, but frankly if you can't even have a reliable save system and are lacking all these usability features, you have no business trying to sell your game at $15 regular price, $6 sale price, regardless of how good the story is.

The game is decent and i enjoyed it but i feel like the story just ends.. maybe instead of making that political nonsense you could have just spent the time making an actual conclusion to the game. I would've liked to have seen the Hanna route take place..

It's nice that there's an LGBTQ-friendly high school-based dating sim but the story isn't too engaging. It gets boring after a while and though it tries to bring in "drama," it just falters. The animation's pretty limited, too. The characters always have the same facial expression so it often doesn't match the story. The game pushes hard for romantic interaction but you don't get to see them kiss or anything.

Yes, BUT !!!

The game is nice but I have some problems with it... sometimes the dialogues are strange we have informations in our choices that we're not supposed to know because we did not made the right choices at this or that level to unlock the information, so we should not be able to tell them.
Plus, I was expecting a world a little more cruel, on the complexe and complicated topics like genres and orientations, having no character really obtuse who could be refractory or truly intolerant is strange... This world is a little too much Care Bears for me!
The March speaks of intrasque problems in America that can lose us a little, I'm French and I don't really know what's going on overseas. All the informations given to the readers in this chapter are nice, but, for Europeans knowing internet website about american goups loose it purpose. I'm ok with the message but not in a game. It's be like a French game saying if you are a beaten wife call : 39.19. It's not world-wide. I hope you understand what i'm trying to say. Good thing yeah, but maybe put this chapter in an extra. I really don't care about american website about thing I should NOT don't care, but I'm here to play a game... The entire chapter was just boring for me...

I did not go though all the game, I just focus on Em, Nora and Marcel, so I'm not done, not even sure i'll try to finish it. The music and some dialogues have made me shed a small tear, but I don't feel to be the person targeted by the game, call it an adult disenchantment, but for me it lacks a little depth especially with the topics covered, I did not expect that story at all, and especially not with heroes that young... they are 14!!!

I would have liked a more mature game, maybe even more adult, a game where we could understand the difficulty of the daily routine of Em (good to speak about changing room but that's not the only problem of transgenre people am I wrong? Well there is another problem with Em, how our personnage know Em wants to be refered by they? No real conversation between our personnage and Em enlight this fact, this is a point that would have been good to put in the conversation!)
A game where we could understand Marcel's problems with his culture! (Plus if seeing two girls kissing is so... strange for him, how can you date him with a guy without him being wary of that fact? He really seems like he doesn't mind... I'm pretty sure his country is NOT in a "I don't mind" mood with LGBT... Really !!)

So yes, I'm not the target of the game, but I cannot manage to put a bad review either. I'm just not the good target for this game and It's clearly difficult to understand what the game wanted to be. A dating game? An helping game to understand difficult topic? A cute game to make us think about difficult topics? I really think the game loose in all of that. Heroes too young for a dating game, and nothing enough depth to teach us some lessons... Too bad!

I applaud LongStory for its inclusiveness, but removing that aspect from it and looking at it simply as a game, I cannot recommend it compared to others of its genre.

While LongStory does have a rather interesting storyline that resonates well with the nostalgia of school days past, it plays much more like a kinetic novel rather than an RPG, and the choices that are presented don't really feel like they have a lasting impact. They also don't seem to do much to change the resolution or ending to the game. Not only that, but at times the choices aren't really markedly different from one another when they're presented which, combined with the fact that there's very little customization available for the protagonist nor much of any skills listed that gives him/her/they a defining feature, breaks the immersion considerably. This ends up with the reader feeling more like they are watching the story unfold as a visitor instead of being directly involved.

Considering that LongStory is lacking in a great deal of features that are considered standard for a game of this genre, the considerbly short play time, and with these issues presented, I find it very difficult to justify the price of the game as listed. Perhaps pick it up if there's a sale on it as the story itself does inspire some emotional nostalgia and is quite inclusive, but as much as it pains me I cannot recommend it when examining it strictly as a game.

The story is excellent, the art is good, but sometimes it glitches out (if you switch from one window after making a choice and then back to the game, you have to send your choice again before making a new choice, disrupting dialogue). Although the game allows you to hint at not wanting crushes or anything to do with romance, it will still pair you with a character (in my case, Nora- guess how shocked I was when the MC started referring to her as a girlfriend! Unless MC and Nora were already dating?) Not bad for a game originally for phones, but it could do with some work.

EDIT: After further playing, it is revealed that the characters are FOURTEEN. This would be fine if I was in their age range, but seeing as I'm an adult... Yikes. I thought this was the MC's last year of high school, not in grade 9 or grade 10.

I originally wanted to play this on my smartphone, but couldn't get the app to work right. Thus, I was glad to see the game appear on Steam. There is so much to say about it, but I'll do my best to keep my thoughts organized.

Despite the title of the game, my first playthrough was only 6 hours or so. However, the story has many paths to take, so there's plenty motivation to replay it several times. There are six romance options to aim for, each with special CGs to unlock. There is technically a seventh character to romance, but this comes up at the end of the game, perhaps for someone who didn't romance anyone throughout the game.

While this story takes place in the United States, it's obvious that it wasn't written by an American. Definitely not a complaint, just an observation. I suspect it was written by Canadians, due to Canadian websites being listed at the end of the bonus chapter. There are also subtle writing differences. The British U, such as "Favourite" versus "Favorite." Common phrasing of school grades, such as "Grade 8" versus "8th grade." Also, some of the story involves the jr. high schoolers having to choose which high school to go to. That's definitely not a common American practice in the educational system. In most places, students have to go to whichever public high school is in their district or pay tuition to a private school. However, I'm not an expert on the entirety of the United States, so perhaps some states do things differently.

The best aspect of this visual novel is the representation of marginalized groups of people. The beginning of the game allows the choice of pronoun and whether to look more feminine or masculine. I admit that an androgynous option would've been nice too. Among the characters, there is plenty of queer representation. That was to be expected. Luckily, there is also a lot of racial diversity as well. I believe the protagonist is racially ambiguous on purpose, so most people can insert themselves in his/her/their place. There are actually more people of color to romance than white people. That's probably a first among all the otome VNs I've played. I was really pleased to see an Arab character! He was even developed enough so that the player can learn a bit more about his culture, including when he takes a trip to Dubai.

The bonus chapter is political. I refer to it as the Anti-Trump chapter. The chapter touches on many topics that many Americans are concerned about. Women's Rights. LGBTQ+ rights. Immigration policies. The Muslim registry. The increase in hate crimes. Knowing that many Americans feel helpless during Trump's presidency, the chapter was added to help marginalized groups of people feel less alone. It also gives American and Canadian resources for ways to resist oppression and become more active in grassroot social movements.

Admittedly, the game can use some work. As stated earlier, this game was first on smartphones, and didn't port well for PCs. There is no skip option for already read text, which means lots of rapid clicking after the first playthrough. There's no way to scroll back to change choices. Sometimes a glitch occurs when saving, in which it resets the chapter. While not necessary, a gallery to view CGs later would be appreciated too. There are also a few typos throughout the game.

Regardless of its flaws, I highly recommend the game. The story is slice-of-life, but still very interesting, with decently developed characters and a variety of romance options.

LongStory has some decent ideas when it comes to, well, story. The bullying aspect of high school definitely rang true, and the online relationship with Nora was very similar to the internet relationship I'm actually having. Unfortunately everything built around the story is lacking in a way that means I can't recommend a purchase in its current state.

LongStory was initially designed for a mobile platform, and it definitely shows. No sound effects, no text skip, and an extremely clunky 'episode' system that means one wrong choice can force you to give up half an hour of progress. Some of the decisions I had to make were two options I never wanted to select (blabbing about the secrets of someone who's sworn you to privacy, where there's no third option to keep quiet). A lack of transitions and repetitive music make the pacing very uncomfortable at times, and a complete lack of internal dialogue/narration causes the text to feel clunky (especially whenever it's describing what the TurkeyHawk does).

If it was a more competent port better designed for PC, I might've been willing to stick with this game for longer. As it is though, I don't think I have the patience for it.

I have played many visual novels at this price point, and can easily say that for your money, LongStory is the best bet.

The art is super high quality, the writing is incredible, and the overall experience perfectly weaves the nostalgia of high school with plenty of humor and sadness.

You can tell, from the jump, that the queer experience is important to the developers. But I think the thing that makes this game stand out over most others in that particular sphere is that it tells a story that anyone can relate to, and it puts you in charge of exactly how to tell that story.

It has some of the most genuinely engaging choices in a game like this. In TellTale games, most choices are a binary between two routes, but in LongStory, choices genuinely feel organically linked to the kinds of slice-of-life high school drama that don't shake out easily. Sure, you can tell this girl you like her, but what if she says no? You can ask for a guy's phone number, but what if he gets freaked out? These things sound mundane on paper in comparison to Zombie Attacks or Intergalactic Space Conflicts, but the game's writing is so immersive that I found myself caring much more about whether to hit on one of my friends than I ever would about shooting an army of space aliens.

I've played enough visual novels at this point to be able to easily recognize flags that will dramatically shift the story in one direction or another, but in LongStory, no single choice feels like it is going to set you down an A or B path. Instead, the game feels like it is genuinely evolving in step with your choices as you make them, telling you a story that is actually tailored to each one of those choices, rather than throwing five or six smaller choices at you until you reach a larger, more divergent decision.

There are a few very minor technical hiccups here or there, but considering we're in a time when every Triple A game has them, I can confidently say that the few quirks I've run into so far don't really detract from my overall enjoyment of this stellar narrative at all.

It probably comes off like I'm writing a love letter to this game because it speaks to my experience, so for those of you who get annoyed by "issue games," I want to make it perfectly clear that half of me expected to be bored stiff by this game. I don't particularly identify as queer or trans, and it's only through the writing and storytelling of this game that I found myself relating to its subject matter. Every conversation plays out like a hilarious and awkward back and forth between the main character and a cast of colorfully defined romance options and side characters, and it feels like a genuine picture of High School romance and intrigue.

I can see where that might not be for everyone, but I think this game has a much wider audience than people on the fence might think after a first glance. The themes are universal, and the game gives you true ownership over your identity as the player, giving you boys, girls, and even a giant, gesticulating Turkey to fall in love with.

If you're a fan of the genre, Life Is Strange, or are just looking for a totally different kind of video game narrative, you won't go wrong with LongStory. I'm going to be thinking about it all year. It's the kind of game that reminds me just how powerful a medium games are for telling stories.

I chose to be male at the beginning, but the story of the game isn't adapted to a male main character, so everything seems off. The pronouns are correct, but the story and reactions aren't believable.

The game is probably a lot better and believable if you play as female, so I'm still giving it a thumbs up for cuteness and a price that's not too steep for a game like this.

I picked up this game for its LGBTQ content and was not disappointed. I felt the story was well written and it has engaging characters. Unfortunately, it does miss some notable aspects of other VNs. The save system is a bit wonky. Somehow my game got deleted hours in with no option to skip text quickly. So I'm back at the beginning. I will of course play it further but it's really disappointing to lose all that time.

In summary, excellent story with LGBTQ content, but flawed mechanically as a VN.

I guess I can't really do a full review yet for now, since I've only played through the game once and romanced one of the characters (Colin), but I'll write my thoughts based on my experience and update this review in the future when I've explored more options.

So I was really excited about this game because I was always really itching to play more LGBT+ romance games, and I'd say that I enjoyed this one despite its flaws. I liked the characters and the charming art style, and it was overall a pretty immersive game. Well, for the most part. I liked that there was so much drama, although if teen drama isn't really your thing then that might be a drawback for you. Personally, I'm a messy b*tch who lives for drama, so I was totally eating it up.

There are a few things I disliked about this game though that I hope the developer could fix. My biggest issue was that a lot of the time I felt like choice was taken away from me, and my character acted in ways that I NEVER would've acted and I couldn't help that. They can be extremely nosy and intrusive, and a particular spoiler-y instance was when they decided they wanted to break up with Colin, even though I didn't want to at all. It practically forced me to and took away the decision. I suppose it didn't really matter in the end cause I was able to get back together with him, and that the developer wanted to progress the story and add conflict, however I still wish that that could've been done without taking away player choice.

Also I just wasn't really satisfied with the final two chapters. Chapter 8, the second to last one, I think should have been the last one and also should've been optional, because it's a standalone chapter that has no relevance to the story or decisions you made in the previous ones, so I felt like the game shouldn't have made that chapter mandatory, or at least saved it for the end. And also with the last chapter, I thought it focused WAY too much on one single character, and said character wasn't even the one I romanced, so I wasn't really quite satisfied with how everything ended. I'm planning on doing another playthrough romancing that character I mentioned, since the last chapter is so focused on him and it would probably more meaningful if he had been a love interest.

A few small smaller gripes I have is that there's not really an options menu to speak of, just an option to mute or unmute, and also there's no "skip" feature that's really handy in VNs if you wanna breeze through dialogue you've already seen. I'm really hoping the developer adds this because as it stands, starting another playthrough is very time consuming.

With all the criticisms aside, I do think this game is worth a try, especially with this current sale. I just hope that the developer will tend to some of the fixable technical issues with the game. I will update this review once I've played through more scenarios.