izigame.me

Really enjoyable! Even the bits with Jarod!

Summary

Only took me 8-9 hours to get through a full rotation, but I'm already replaying it to go over any of the content I missed on my first run.
However despite it being fairly short, it was a refreshing experience, the game totally flips the typical narrative of being a named main-character, by splitting your experience between a multitude of faceless characters, and instead delivering character development through the various people you'll meet on your way to the border!
It's a funny almost-rogue-like experience, where you're looking to escape the country to flee a tense political climate, but each time you escape (or fail to) you do it all again as a totally different person, until you eventually hit election day and all your interactions throughout depict the ending (and the fate of all those who wanted to/have not escaped yet).

Characters

Some of the characters are quite corny in their delivery, and the dialogue doesn't always flow as well as I'd like, but they were still all charming enough to keep me hooked. I found myself rooting for certain characters at stages and trying to enable the downfall of others to achieve a means to an end. Each have an interesting cross or relevancy to another character and it causes some unexpected turns that make you go "ohhhhhhhh" after making a discovery that was right in front of you the whole time.
The one downside of having your actions split across multiple characters of course is that there's no way to develop your friendship with the main cast, you can only impact how they treat the next character (which usually isn't always that different), and with the fact you're always playing as a teenager, there are several instance where you're being roped into doing something that would be insane to ask of a 14 year old irl..

Story

The world-building is pretty good, there is a clear divide between certain cast members as the result of a totalitarian government attempting to secure permanent rule as long as they can beat a left-leaning moderate in an upcoming election. Throughout the game you're expected to make a multitude of moral and political choices that will impact the course of the story, there often isn't an incredible amount of nuance in your choices (between picking left-wing extremism or apolitical/moderate options, it generally doesn't let you be an outright fascist) but enough that you feel you can at least feel you're making an impact. Your more physical actions do fairly intuitively change the probability of certain events showing up, and thus certain outcomes in the story, but again this is limited by having the lifespan of your characters only contribute to certain segments, which is intentional but can make some runs feel ended prematurely. There is also a degree of show-but-not-tell elements, where every phone number you find can be called in phone boxes, and pictures on dashboards may give hints to relations between cast members, etc.

Gameplay

The game-play is full of fun little quirks, from playing Bella Ciao on a tuba overlooking a motor-home park, to helping two robbers successfully break into a taxi garage. There's always something to keep your attention up when the going gets a little dull. Genuinely thoroughly enjoyed going through the length of searching every corner just to make sure I've covered every action offered to me.
As for the rogue-like aspect, the game is incredibly easy if you try optimise your routes, as you are rarely ever at a lack of resources and most dialogue scenarios can be talked out of if you just don't bother "roleplaying" nullifying the whole gravity of it, so I encourage you instead to actually focus on trying to get the most out of the story instead of going for gold every run. You're only going to get out what you put in, it's less of a true rogue-like survival game and more of a funny twist on life is strange style story delivery.
That all said, well worth the amount I paid for it, especially going into it with very few expectations, oh and, beware of Jarod..