Once Upon a Hallow's Eve

Most visual novels can be pretty impersonal and straightforward when it comes to the story and the characters that are part of it, mainly because the plot is rather thin most of the time. However, that’s not a limitation of the genre itself, it’s just that the games are usually designed to appeal to a more casual audience, one that lacks the patience to get familiar with intricate plotlines.

Once Upon a Hallow's Eve is a colorful visual novel that revolves around romance, mystery and a bit of dialog, although you shouldn’t expect too much interaction with the characters. However, you are allowed to make decisions every now and again, and depending on your choices, the story ends one way or another, with both good and bad endings to witness.

The story puts you in the role of a girl by the name of Cara Lee, although you have the liberty to change her first name to whatever you wish. Hence, she is on her last vacation before graduation, which makes her feel a bit disoriented. One night, she is caught off-guard by a landslide in the woods and she wakes up unconscious after a few minutes. Naturally, her wandering steps lead her to a mysterious mansion in the middle of the forest.

Your task is to have conversations with the inhabitants of the mansion and extract information about them. As it turns out, they are not exactly normal, if the house in the middle of nowhere didn’t already make that clear enough. Obviously, you might even get more than a conversation from some of the boys, depending on how involved you are in the story.

Lastly, the artwork matters a lot in a visual novel, and it’s not that bad in this one, fortunately. The background artwork can be a tad devoid of depth sometimes, mostly because of the interesting shading techniques, but the characters are quite expressive and unique. Moreover, a great part of the backgrounds is actually very moody and well-chosen for this type of game.

All things considered, Once Upon a Hallow's Eve may not have the most amazing story out there, but it’s relaxing enough to keep you busy for an hour or so. Moreover, you can re-play the adventure and see how things change when you make different decisions.