Enigmarella

Overview
Enigmarella is an English Victorian era/steampunk themed otome visual novel offering typically 12-15 hours entertainment for all 16 possible endings.
Story
Orphaned at a very early age, our heroine Alice Rahner is brought up in an institute for young girls under the very watchful eye of the owner/matron Rose Lantier. Alice, born into nobility, is not subject to the normal freedoms afforded to the other girls due to the laws and customs of the society in which she lives, whereby upon coming of age, she is to be legally obliged to marry a titled gentleman instead of being able to leave the institute and lead whatever life she desires.
The reader enters the story just before Alice's birthday and the shocking discovery that she is about to be married. This is unavoidable, but whether Alice falls for her husband or seeks love elsewhere, is entirely in our hands.
Positives
- Graphics. Backgrounds seem to be a combination of stock photos carefully worked to fit the setting, and original art which gives the impression of being created with watercolour pencils – and if that is the case, then they are really quite impressive.
- CGs are at another level. Character details are wonderful, some of the most pleasing I have ever seen in a visual novel.
- Musical accompaniment. It's very clear that a great deal of thought and talent was applied to the musical score. Each tune fits very well with the scenes it accompanies and overall adds to the ambience.
- Voicing quality. Although I was initially surprised by the Scottish lilt of the MC (it didn't fit my expectations of her when I first started), I quickly adjusted to it. The entire script is voiced, both characters and narration. All diction is crystal clear and offers the option of listening to the story rather than reading it.
- The love interests. Without saying which is which, one is a delight and the other needs a bloody good sorting out. Considering they're brothers, they are poles apart.
- Balance of story to choices. By restricting the number of choices to make to a sensible level, not only does the story get chance to breathe and develop, but each choice has genuine impact.
I've experienced VNs with so many choices packed in that they cannot possibly all have relevance and by sheer numbers, create an almighty grind when replaying for alternative ends. Enigmarella completely steers around this pitfall without leaving the reader feeling absent of control.
- The gallery. This is SO WELL DONE. I've opted not to post a screenshot as I feel this is something you should have as a reward for playing the game yourself. So I'll leave it at noting that you can click on almost everything for a little extra that you won't be expecting.
- Initial load up and exit from the game are both instantaneous.
- Autosave happens on exit, so if you forget to save, you can still continue from where you left off your previous session by simply loading “quick save”.
- No Steam achievements. I know, you're wondering why I would put this as a positive? Actually, it's both. The creator has posted an excellent guide so you can find all endings without the frustration of going round-and-round trying to find that really annoying excessively well hidden achievement which provides no other reward!
Negatives
- Autosave happens on exit from in-story gameplay back to the menu whether you want it or not so if you use quick save to check an option and then want to go back to it, you're going to be disappointed.
- There is no load option from within the story. You have to back out to the menu, which means the game autosaves, overwriting that quick save you did a couple of moments earlier...
- There is no back step or history option available. For a game of this overall quality, that's a bit of a shocker. As I've noted in several of my reviews, I play on a laptop and use the trackpad, which inevitably results in an occasional accidental touch of the pad, causing the text to move on when I don't want it to. As a result of the absence of a back step, I missed some captions during my play through of this game.
- The skip function (toggled by a touch of the right CTRL key) works fine, but it is slow. I wonder if this is a result of the design choice to create this game using Unity instead of Ren'py. From a player perspective, that may not have been the best decision.
- The text box is big enough to hold three lines of narrative only. Unfortunately, many of the captions are between 4 and 6 visible lines in length. Yes, the text speed can be altered, and there is of course the option to just listen to everything and ignore the text altogether until the next choice. However, sometimes one wants to be able to read the entire caption in one, or circumstances (such as an interruption when listening) cause you to miss what was said. In such cases, you will miss out on some narration, and there is no back step to enable you to recover from this.
- There is no Steam overlay. Again, I question the choice of Unity over Ren'py. Would that have made it easier to add? I honestly don't know.
- No Steam achievements. If you like the achievements in a VN to help ensure that you find everything available, this is potentially going to put you off. Which would be a shame.
- No epilogues to each route. Endings arrive very suddenly and are a single screen with an admittedly appealing still, a few words, and a button for the main menu.
Not a negative of the game itself, but this has to be asked. What went wrong with the publicity? How on earth can a novel of this quality be so unknown? At time of writing, there are only 12 reviews and one curator non-review by someone who has clearly not played the game. This deserves to be among the top-selling visual novels on Steam, yet over six months after full release, it looks like almost nobody has ever heard of it. This is a travesty.
Experience and verdict
After my first full play through, I found the slow skip (even with the text speed set to maximum) to be tiresome and a little frustrating. This did become much less trouble after the first couple of endings, as I got a better idea of where to save in order to minimise the amount of skipping to be done. I was also troubled by the “lost” captions that I couldn't recover due to the lack of a back step.
Every other experience within the game, for me, was a positive one. And I do mean everything else. It is a solidly written story with no narrative conflict between the different branches, good-to-beautiful visuals, excellent soundtrack, well rounded characters and very well balanced reader interaction levels. What more do you want?
Price wise, this game does underline just how much it costs to have full voice acting in a visual novel and I feel this is the reason for the store price of the game. The developer, quite reasonably, needs to cover that cost. However, strictly from a buyer viewpoint, the price feels high for the amount of entertainment on offer. Therefore, although I am happy to absolutely recommend experiencing Enigmarella, I do feel that you will be getting much fairer value if you catch it at 25% off full price.
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The good:
Where to start? Though not a game I would normally have played, (I have played few visual novels, although I’ve generally enjoyed the few that I have...) the concept intrigued me, the graphics looked very good, and the steampunk atmosphere convinced me to go ahead and play it.
I was blown away. The art is amazing. The voices are good enough for it to go straight to a feature film. One can tell that they are all professional actors, and that they really got into the story. The music is great, sets the mood perfectly, and stands out on its own. (Suggestion: let us buy (or gift us) the music as a separate download). The story is engaging from the very first moment, well thought out and although a few twists might be foreseeable, (no spoilers) most of them are not and keep adding layers of interest and depth to the game. All the characters have a “realness” about them that I have found missing in many games, (both visual novels and others). You really get a sense of the different personalities and nuances of each character. Sometimes, in a book, a game, or even a movie you get the impression that different characters speak, think or act exactly like others, which immediately makes them non-relatable and “false”. This is not the case here.
Alice is one of the most interesting characters I have ever encountered in a video game. (Elizabeth from the Bioshock series is one of the few that I remember as being even remotely as interesting). She is complex, flawed, impulsive, intelligent, obstinate, resourceful, and as well rounded as any character I have ever encountered in a game. Every single other character makes sense and is consistent, even through the changes that occur during the game. This character “growth” and depth needs really good writing, and they’ve done a wonderful job. It wouldn’t surprise me if the writers have a “backstory” for each one, and if so, it would be great to be able to have access to them somehow.
The choices are real enough to make one pause and think carefully. (Yes, I know you can replay many times and make different ones), but I like to make all my choices as if I was living the story, especially the first time.
The artwork is beautiful, and the “lighting” is perfect, and each scene pulls you deeper into an immersive experience, where you can quickly “suspend disbelief”, which I consider essential when playing a game, or watching a movie, for that matter.
It is perfectly clear that every aspect of the game has been created by professionals and that great attention to detail and work must have been carried out in order to get this result.
The bad.
Very little, frankly. I would like to have an exit button added that does not quicksave, (just because of my style of playing), A continue button (that takes you directly to the last quicksave) on the main menu would save me an extra click. I would like to go back and review conversations I’ve had, without necessarily having to go back to a previous save point...Finally, and this is not really a bad, I would love to have more scenes, just because the artwork is so good, (maybe two or three more in each location like the theater, for example).
The ugly.
Nothing. I can really say that this is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played. Kudos to the studio.
Conclusion:
Well worth buying, and I will try and get all the different endings, although I like to take time between each replay, to get a full experience again. I have looked for other games from this company but haven’t found any. I suppose Steam will let me know if they produce anything else.

I am not a gamer. I’m a reader. However, I was at a friend´s house and she convinced me to try it. I couldn't stop for about three hours. The story is great and what I loved the most are the voices, especially Alice´s accent, the drawings are spectacular, and the music is great.
Until now I had only played solitaire on a computer, but I actually opened a steam account just so I could buy and play this game. I’m sure my friend would not have appreciated me going over to her house every day and using her computer for two or three hours.
Absolutely love it!

I can actually just leave it on auto play and listen to it like an audio book. The story is actually good and when compared to other otome games where the female protagonist just sits around and has no personality. This one actually does have a backbone.
The price is actually reasonable when you consider the amount it must have cost to pay the voice actors. They didn't cheap out them. All the voice actors sound great! I been mostly just listening to this while baking cookies and doing chores around the house. So I can't say much on the art style because I honestly haven't been paying much attention to it.
10/10 overall for a audio novel and voice actors

What a beautiful game and a beautiful story thanks for all the hard work put into this game

I enjoy steampunk, so I was hoping for something fun from this VN and the story delivered that. While not expecting anything like "The Parasol Protectorate" series by Gail Carriger, the MC did deliver some brash and spunk as well as a keener interest in her own desires than most in these games. I could appreciate her as a character and her different-ness from other otome MC's. The artwork, especially some of the CG's, and music was fairly well done and worth paying for. I also enjoyed the accents of the VAs, although I'm not sure that the VA for the MC needed to narrate the non-dialogue text (just struck me as odd but like being read to?). The story was original and laid out well, even if a few spots felt like a bit forced due to limited context. The willingness to be a bit more adventurous and even Victorian steamy worked well for the story and the character.
On the downside, and remember this is still listed an Early Access game on Steam, there are some basic mechanics missing from the UI in this game and a few bugs that affect gameplay and replay. During play the in-game menu does not have a Quick Load or Load button even though there's options to do Quick Save or Save. To Load, you have to exit out of the game entirely. And since there's also no Menu button or even an option for Window vs Full-Screen, it was a pain to close the whole game like that just to get back to the main menu in order to get to the one Load button on the first screen. Second, the Skip does nothing which does not help for replay, and the Text Speed slider also does not actually adjust the speed of the text to display at all. These might be considered bugs and could be fixed. Due to these two bugs/issues, playing the game took me considerably longer than I felt it really should. I could have finished much faster, in a few hours, but taking the speed of the auto-read took me 3-4x longer. Third, there were a few spots, which didn't really affect gameplay, where the VA audio tracks didn't match up with the script texts. Fourth, there's just a few glitches in transitions that need some TLC polish so that the game can shine with all the potential it really has going for it. Lastly, I hope that the endings get expanded a bit more for the release as it's a bit too abrupt as it is now. There needs to be a little more closure.
General expectations for a game of this price would also include a gallery of CGs or music soundbox or some little "extras". None of those are currently in the game, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see there's great assets from the game available for that to be added.
Overall, I would recommend this game as something different for a few hours of time and continue to support developers who can bring a range of games of this caliber to market for players.

interesting plot, enjoyable