Mise en abyme: placed into the abyss. Four stories, seemingly unrelated, joined together by fate. An isolated island tribe. A growing desert kingdom. A developed galactic republic. A species nearly exhausted. You, player, forced to see things through their eyes. What will you gain? What will you lose? | Created for NaNoRenO 2013
This is what I get for not reading the creator's summary. Even he was warning me this would be a "meh" experience. The character design ranges from passable to laughably bad (the latter, unfortunately, applying to a major character I'm pretty sure we're supposed to take seriously). The four stories (which mostly barely qualify as such, with the ratio of exposition-to-stuff-actually-happening about 4:1) don't have enough in common for the creator's invocation of "mise en abyme" to make sense. The denouement is disappointing, as well, serving only to tell (yes, outright TELL) the player how profound the experience was supposed to be.
All told, this plays like a first draft, which makes sense given that it was written and programmed in one month. It's way too ambitious for a project of that constrained of a schedule.
I still give it a 3 because the music, sounds and backgrounds make for effective presentation, and a few of the characters were interesting enough for me to want to see them in a better game.
In summation, spend your two hours doing something else, please.