Generally I don't buy games that are big on death, necromancy, and gothy crap, because the bad ones are dull and the good ones make it hard to sleep.

That said, I played a bit of Necrobarista, and it's definitely worth a look.

The most notable element of it to me is the presentation. It's basically a VN, but it uses flying cameras, slow movements, and freefloating text. Screenshots don't really do it any favors, because the subtle movement and flow is a big part of it.

It's sort of like... Return of the Obra Dinn.

Not in terms of feel or play, but in terms of how it is cast. Screenshots aren't really kind to that game, either.

The thing about this immersive-camera VN mode is that it's not too much more expensive than the typical canned-shot VN. The only reason the canned-shot VN is so common is because most people have a separate renderer and game engine.

IE, Ren'py and shots from Daz.

But if you're using assets in your game engine, there's no reason not to use fun camera angles.

The flying text is a bit of a puzzle, though. I bet it took a lot more work than you expect, because it has to be clear of things like people's heads.

It does seem like 90% of their shots are either "text right" or "text left", so maybe they compose their camera angles specifically to let them anchor text in the same two places 90% of the time.

The flying text has a few small issues with readability due to the lack of, you know, a text box. It's not usually a big deal since the screen moves when you move your mouse, so you can easily pull it free of things like bright lights directly behind white text.

Yeah, all their text specs must include position data. THIS part might be significantly more expensive than an ordinary VN. Having to manually choose where your words go every time sounds like a challenge.

But at the end of the day, it's worth noting that they take these fairly primitive assets with virtually no animations and make it work.

Most previous attempts to do that I've seen turn out... pretty... uh... stilted.

Maybe this one works because it's about confused dead people

My guess is that this kind of game will become more common. But the flying text is going to be a serious problem for anyone not sticking exclusively to black backgrounds.

Probably gonna see a lot more comic-book-style word bubbles, instead. Combined with the gentle camera motion

But one of the features of the approach Necrobarista uses is that they can hop between prose, direct dialog, quotes, offscreen noises and conversations and leave it all to sort of blur together.

Which is a good feel for a game about confused dead people.

I'm still early in the game, so I can't say much about the content. The writing seems stable. There's some forced elements, and some very natural elements. The tone is very good.

Anyway, if you have a soft spot for VNs, I would recommend Necrobarista. It is at least above average, it might be even better.

Oh! You progress the story by choosing words, which bake down into fungible 'fragments', which you use to unlock story beats.

This is a spectacular idea.

I don't know how well they use it, but I do know I'm going to spend some time thinking about how I can use it.

If we imagine how this kind of "idea map" works in comparison to how ideas were used in Disco Elysium... and maybe even how personalities are represented in Persona... I think there's some space to explore.

Gonna stop playing, go to bed, and think about it.