What gives a visual novel a personal feel to it is, in part, the amount of choices you get to make. Leviathan definitely delivers in this department! You decide what to say to the people you interact with, including Edna, and you can move around freely. Since this is also an adventure game, you aren’t stuck on this one-way path where you have to go somewhere specific at all times. If you want to explore, then go explore! If you do make a mistake that gets you killed (or some other terrible thing happens), you will start back at the point where you had to make your choice or choices that led to your untimely demise. You might have to redo a small section of the game, but you don’t have to replay a bunch of stuff you have already seen or heard. There is no skip feature that allows you to skip previously read text, but I’ll forgive them for this since the game is set-up decently enough so you only have to re-read anything that was involved in your decision.
The look of Leviathan is really unique. The graphics are nice to look at, but some of the people are drawn just a bit oddly. Mainly Ruth Lautner. It feels like they used a real face on a not-real body, or something. It almost reminded me of a caricature that had been done in reverse. The rest of the game looks great. In the first episode you see the path leading to your house and a few rooms in your house, like Oliver’s room, your mom’s room and the kitchen. The house looks really quaint, and not in a sarcastic way! The kitchen looks like it is just waiting for someone to step into it and start making a meal for the family.
The music and background noise in Leviathan is stellar. From the first few steps where you hear the rock and grass crunching beneath your feet to the sudden crack as lightning streaks across the sky, every bit of it was enjoyable. The music ranges depending on what is going on and is always very fitting. There are lots of bumps and pings to hear as you play. The text makes a noise almost like typing when it comes onscreen and there are usually an array of background noises to be heard as well. Everything sounds great in this game, and it all combines to truly give you a feeling like anything can happen!
I played this game on Windows 7 and Windows 8, and I did experience one rather annoying bug while playing the game. I had around an hour of playtime logged, including time spent taking screenshots for the review. I saved the game and exited it. When I started it up the next day the rest of the chapters were not unlocked, nor was my save file anywhere to be found. I had to start the game over. You can choose to begin at chapter 2 but I am unsure if not playing the first chapter before starting the second will affect anything that happens in the game. The game asked me what Edna called me and I told it something different than what I had actually told her to call me. It said OK, but then when Edna appeared she called me what I had told her to call me in my original save. So, it’s like my save game was there somewhere lurking in the abyss. Weird.
The first episode is a bit short, but totally worth the time you spend with it. You can get through it in an hour or two, depending on how fast you read and whether you take the time to examine everything around your house. The first episode is free, and each additional episode is $2.99 USD. Right now, there is a 20% discount being offered on the official website, and you can get the entire game for $9.57. A lot happens in this episode that sets everything up for the remaining parts of the game, and considering you can get this part of it free, I didn’t feel cheated in any way! Short or not, it did a great job of intriguing me! I wanted to see where life would take this young boy, who already knew right from wrong, at least enough to defend his friend! A boy who had enough curiosity and courage to start to investigate what his mother was up to, no matter what events happened along the way.
Episode 2 takes us ten years into the future. Where will Oliver be at this point? What other intriguing things have happened to him? Find out soon, in my review of Episode 2 where I dive into some interesting aspects of the game and give a bit of insight as to how I was affected by it!
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Overall |   |
Review copy supplied by publisher.
