owlmoose | Game Recommendation: "Cinders"

I was home sick from work today, so I took the opportunity to download the demo for a game that's been getting some buzz on my Tumblr dashboard: "Cinders".

This game is totally charming, a fun reworking of the Cinderella story where the main character has much more spirit and agency than the traditional heroine. The stepmother and stepsisters also get meatier roles (and, depending on how you play it, more sympathetic). It’s described as a “visual novel”, and that’s very apt — the game is really an interactive story, where various key decisions shape the direction of the plot, and small choices can drastically alter the outcome. The lead character is great, there are lots of interesting women characters with varied personalities and motivations, and the artwork is simply beautiful:

If any of the above is appealing to you at all, I definitely recommend you check it out — the aforementioned free demo totally sucked me in, and I played the game twice today, plus going back to check out a couple of branch points. If you do give it a shot, let me know what you think!