De Novo

We're a judge whose promotion means we now have to review death row cases and choose one out of every three appeals to be accepted.

This is one of those games that thinks it's somehow a good idea to feed you its text one or two lines at a time, asking that you keep clicking to continue. Why anyone thinks this is a good idea is beyond me. It makes me feel like I'm trying to navigate the world by peering through a letterbox. Maybe if the text were really succinct -- perhaps three panels at most before asking for a choice -- but that is not the case here. The prose, in fact, is pretty awful. The dialogue feels stilted, and the grammar is tortured. Some of the story developments feel a bit immature, as though they were dropped into the plot with no regard to how people think or how systems work.

The presentation is attractive, though. I'm very fond of sepia. And, as immature as I think the story developments might be, I have to give it credit for wanting to tackle such a subject at all.

It's a game with ambition and heart. It's a breakfast of attractively braided challah bread and Orange Pekoe tea. But I don't think it's been fully baked yet.