The sequel to another demo played at Steam Next Fest.

The Wreck is a game that struck me immediately, not only for the management screen, organized like the desk of a person who - precisely - writes for work, but also for how the whole story is introduced and how it is possible to immediately intuit that the themes will be neither serene nor light.

This is one of the main reasons why when I choose a demo to play during Steam Next Fest, I try to know as little as possible about it and approach everything with as clear a mind as I can.

Attorno a gennaio 2023, The Pixel Hunt ha offerto chiavi per poterlo giocare in anticipo, in cambio di beta-testing e feedback. Ovviamente non ci ho pensato due volte e mi sono offerto.
Gentilissimi me l'hanno concessa e devo dire che è stata un'esperienza bellissima da un lato e divertente dall'altra, per tutte le maniere in cui ho provato a "rompere il gioco" in cerca di glitch e bugs.
Anche compilare un report personale esteso (non richiesto ma ho voluto farlo di mio) è stato interessante, anche se non mi è più ricapitato di farlo per altri videogiochi (per ora!).

I thank you infinitely The Pixel Hunt for the possibility!

Junon è una sceneggiatrice fallita, la sua vita è completamente allo sbaraglio dopo una tragica perdita avvenuta 5 anni prima degli eventi narrati, che ha portato lei e suo marito al divorzio e le ha lasciato una terribile amnesia.
She and her sister grew up in the shadow of their toxic and narcissistic mother, a famous artist, who offered her a job as her assistant and PR to help her during her difficult moment.

But after a night spent together with her mother, the ER calls Junon because that she has been hospitalized in critical conditions after a sudden illness.
However, a woman so indomitable and strong could have nothing more than a big, unexpected surprise for her “too sensitive” daughter…

The Wreck is a 3D low-poly visual novel and as a visual novel you don’t get to do anything outside the intended gameplay, made of dialogues, cutscenes and choice-selection.
Although the visual novel style can be considered as an interactive (short) story, something nearer to a book than a game, one of the most peculiar characteristics of The Wreck is having a movie-like photography/direction.

Junon is both a passionate cinephile and an aspiring screenwriter (currently a failure), so we watch her narrate her story as if she were the protagonist of a feature film and narrate some of the scenes herself. An approach that honestly amused me and that I found not only original but well-fitted into the general setting, sometimes touching the fourth wall.

There are a lot of interesting shots both in the cutscenes and during the dialogues, which project us to a deeper level and help us understand the state of Junon's mind and how she protects herself from the chaos that her life has turned into, reduced almost completely to crumbs. We see her efforts to keep the pieces together with the little energy she has left.

(ITA. "Diane: ...ma se proferisci quello stupido nomignolo un'altra volta, ti strangolo.")

The character models are fantastic, they really reflect their personalities well and The Pixel Hunt has managed to give them a really wide variety of ethnicities, styles and body types, reflecting their "stories from everyday life". None of the characters are hidden behind a veneer of glamour but are strong people trying to carry on with their existence.

And they did it very naturally and even though the characters we see in the whole game are just a handful. We can count them on the fingers of one and a half hands or so.

The colors are vibrant, well chosen and placed, highlighting every scene, every frame and every situation we find ourselves in.

Considering the game as a whole, the style is bright, exciting, able to be intense and fun at the same time and to perfectly convey the main themes and messages of the story.

Disclaimer: I am not a visual novel expert, nor am I a specific fan of the genre in general. Although I have known what a visual novel is for years, I have only recently become interested in it and my experience is therefore rather limited. For these reasons, the review is purely my personal experience and opinion with this game in particular.

At first glance, The Wreck appears to be a visual novel like many others, the incipit seems like a clue that leads to a slice-of-life plot, where a young woman struggles with past and present worries involving her troubled mother, suddenly hospitalized due to an illness.

Ci si aspetta di vedere un sacco di dialoghi, dove ci verrà chiesto di scegliere tra due o tre differenti risposte, guardare i progressi della storia e, se il gioco è abbastanza complesso ed avanzato, decidere così l'atmosfera che vogliamo per correre verso uno dei diversi finali.

However, you will quickly discover that the heart of the gameplay is not exactly this: yes we have cutscenes, dialogues and response options, yes we have a story to discover and get passionate about, BUT the most important thing is instead to immerse ourselves in Junon's mind, explore her past one recovered memory at a time and discover what her life and her relationship with her mother was like.

~°~

During cutscenes and dialogues, where Junon is talking to someone else, we can see two of the main dynamics:

Red words: in the subtitles of Junon's inner considerations and thoughts, red words will occasionally appear within the sentences. You can find one or more. When they appear, you must click on them (if there are several, you must choose one).
By clicking, more lines will appear, which, especially if you have chosen a word among several others, will be consistent with the word itself (e.g. if you choose between "Marie" and "myself", a consideration about Marie OR Junon will appear, depending).

Large white words: Unlike the previous ones, these float and are translucent until you hover over them. They are a kind of keywords and you will see them when the main dialogue stops. Once you interact with the word, you will see the dialogue restart with that specific word as the main theme.

(ITA. "Nessuno potrà MAI capire cosa provo." - "SOLA")

~Minor spoilers to follow~
(Gameplay/Meccaniche)

When they appear during a main scene, they often add more response options for Junon to choose from. You can ignore them if you want and just choose the response that was already there from the beginning.

When they appear during a memory, they help you move on, so to complete the vision you have to find and click on all of them.

At the end of the scene, Junon will escape from the situation she is in, get to her car and drive away. This scene is always the same: what Junon is saying changes but the cutscene does not change and she will crash the car to avoid a deer in the middle of the road. When this happens, many objects will fly around and three of them will become clickable (they will be shiny).

Each object is a memory to explore and for each major section of the game there will be three different ones at a time.

At the end of each memory, Junon will return to the present, to the moment she was leaving. The dialogue will change, she will not run away and you will have saved her from the accident with the deer once again.

Note: When exploring Junon's memories, there is nothing to do beyond searching for words. No puzzles or point-and-click gameplay. There are dialogues to listen to and big white words to click on.

You can't go wrong.

Your task is to understand, to be sensitive and empathetic, to experience the story as Junon, to get to know the people close to her and those most important to her as you prepare for the final choice you will be called to make.

The game doesn't have a huge soundtrack, there are 5 main tracks, that I know of. The music is mostly pretty decent, except for the opening song, "La Vérité" by Vive La Fête and written by Danny Mommins and Els Pynoo (I fell in love with it! I think it's beautiful, especially when played at full volume!).

Note: You can listen to "La Vérité" ONLY if you have not activated Streaming mode, otherwise it will be one of the copyrighted songs that will be replaced with streaming-safe ones.

Even though we only get to hear this song a couple of times in the entire game (at the beginning and at the end), it's perfectly in line with the use of soundtracks in movies, where one or more famous songs are placed at strategic moments, perfect for nailing them to our minds and forcing us to hum them for the next six months.

In the links section you will find links to Bandcamp and Spotify (for the soundtrack).

The Wreck was truly a surprise.

I was expecting a cute visual novel with an interesting narrative, centered around a light comedy about small family tragedies with a sprinkle of dark humor.

Instead I found a wonderful game that starts out as a brilliant comedy but quickly spirals into a downward spiral into Junon's not-so-happy life, where we are silent witnesses to her past - past life, past tragedies, past (failed) dreams - and what it means to grow up in the cumbersome, immense shadow of her narcissistic mother.

A story that highlights how a parent is not automatically a good parent just because they brought a child into the world, how we have the right to call our parents what they are even when we continue to love them and care for them despite everything, and that a "bad parent" is not always a "bad person" but someone who may have suffered traumas themselves without having had the means to deal with them or a victim of their own inabilities. In addition to legitimizing pointing to them as the reason for our problems and the messed up emotions we feel.

It also teaches that we often need to have other people around us, especially those who are important to us, but that at the same time it is also right to want to be alone, to heal in our own time, to discover ourselves through our solitude and ultimately find something positive in life and feel good again.

A harsh and raw modern fable, which touches on delicate themes and issues, such as mental health, loss and mourning, toxic relationships, suicidal thoughts, feeling desperate, narcissistic parents. Themes that unfortunately unite many more people than we can imagine, but addressed with great delicacy and tempered by a truly brilliant humor.