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Ughh, I kept avoiding having to talk about this series, but I am committed to documenting all the games I complete, which means I can't continue this blog until I say at least something about this.
This is a series consisting of three short RPGMaker games and a couple of spin-offs, all of which I have played. I'll cover the individual "episodes" very briefly and will mostly talk about the series as a whole.
TL;DR: The plot is a mess that grows messier over time as it introduces more "meta" elements. It is also a very personal work through which the author expresses some of the struggles of being an artist on the internet, among other issues (the games touch on a lot of topics with varying levels of success). This makes the series very hard to criticize even when it has glaring flaws. The artwork is cool though.
Hey, I am not the only one who struggles to say something coherent here; most reviews of these games that you'll find can be put in three categories:
The first two kinds of reviews don't elaborate much, and the latter goes on and on about the "profound dialogue" even when it's incoherent nonsense. So far I haven't found a single review that describes Hello Charlotte in a satisfying way. I can't promise that I can say too much about the games myself though.
https://etherane.itch.io/hello-charlotte-ep1
...and why is the title so pretentious? Ah, whatever, I'm a sucker for this kind of indie game.
Hello, new Puppeteer! Meet Charlotte — a Puppet you will control. Meet her alien friends, maggot cat and a certain Observer. Dive deep into horrors of junk food, TV world, religion and romance novels for middle-aged women. Keep your puppet safe at all times. Or don't. Have fun dying!
This one's a typical indie RPGMaker title - episode 1 has no combat, only character interactions, puzzles and exploration.
Episode 1 is short but is not very good. Very cheap non-sense game overs from interacting with certain things, but at least you can save at any time and don't have to deal with turn-based combat. The whole "Puppet" thing is a pretty childish attempt at 4th wall breaking ("ooh video game characters have no free will, ooh") and the same can be said about some of the villain's (?) rants about society (though that can be dismissed since the protagonist doesn't really agree with the rant). The art is cute, the world is surreal and mysterious without bogging the player down with too many explanations or monologues (Charlotte EP 1 is not a masterpiece but it's not YIIK either). The only other reason I stuck around was because I was told that the series gets better over the years. *6/10*
It's an RPGMaker title like the previous ones I covered, but this one uses a newer version of the engine which is not supported by EasyRPG. So I played it just the way I do with any other standard Windows .exe file. This game ran mostly fine under Wine.
I noticed a bug where some of the text would overflow from the dialogue UI. I thought it was a bug within the game, but someone else pointed out that it was a bug within Wine's font rendering. Ah well, it was a minor glitch anyway.
but someone else pointed out that it was a bug within Wine's font rendering
The same applies to every other game in the franchise, so I will skip this section in the following posts.
Game finished 2023-04-21
https://etherane.itch.io/hello-charlotte-ep2
Another Charlotte game: Another pretentious subtitle.
Requiem Aeternam Deo is the second installment of Hello Charlotte series, released in 2016.
It's a story lamenting the impossibility of universal happiness, and idolization of those out of our reach. As her mind unravels, ink will flow, and blood-red flowers will bloom in the desolate field.
This game came out one year after the previous one, and the author grew one year older (I think etherane might have been a teenager when she released these?), so there are noticeable improvements. Namely, the setting and the ending are slightly more interesting this time (yay for re-telling the mythical "tragedy of the commons"). Some over-arching elements of the franchise get established here: for example Charlotte's house's layout completely changing since the last game with nobody commenting on it, and the 4th-wall "puppeteer" concept is messed with, though with no significant impact on the story itself. The introduction of turn-based combat (a metaphor for "Socialization" at school) kinda ruins things a bit, as there is zero depth to the gameplay there, but at least it can be skipped with little consequences. The metaphor for social anxiety might be too on-the-nose, but hey, this series is establishing itself as a hotpot of mental illness, despair and descending/escalating weirdness, while not necesasrily taking itself too seriously. *7/10*
Game finished 2023-04-21
https://etherane.itch.io/hcep3
Childhood's End is the third installment of Hello Charlotte series and the final episode in the main story.
The longest and final game in the series, released in 2018. This better be good.
Right off the bat, the game's a lot more enjoyable to play: finally no cheap bad endings and no shoe-horned battle system.
The plot convolutedness goes up to 11, now featuring fanfiction, more meta-narratives, tulpas, a guy who complains about gender and who turns out to be the creator of Hello Charlotte's world, retconning of all previous games, etc etc. The game is short but even then it's hard to keep up with everything, so I ended up replaying it. I was harsh on the last two games, but here it is harder to call "bullshit" on the absurdly complicated plot, because this time it's not trying to philosophize or comment on real-world issues, and instead has a sharper focus inward and towards meta-narrative. I said before that this series must've been deeply personal for the creator and this is the game that shows this.
There are filler segments with puzzle elements where you explore different alien worlds and try to solve their problems, but the worlds are surreal enough to mostly be a fun distraction rather than anything else. After replaying the game and not getting distracted by the filler this time, I got to appreciate the core plot of the game a bit more, but even then it's a mess.
<SPOILER>
We learn that this guy named Charles is the creator of the in-game world and all its in-game characters, and infuses them with parts of their psychology, this creates a finite loop where this finite cast of characters is forced to play out certain roles in video game form over and over. A defective Charlotte learns that she is surrounded by NPCs and starts acting self-destructive and ruining everything, so the player gets put off from playing the game any longer.
</SPOILER>
It's a fun way to comment on pressures of being a storyteller and feeling pressure from followers; but plot-wise too much is left unexplained. Why is Charles' inner world being broadcast as a video game? What was the point of the whole "puppeteer" thing?
The ending was pretty satisfying though, especially after all the convoluted shit that the characters have gone through; Episode 3 properly provides closure rather than moping around about the tragedy of capitalism/living in a society/going to school/what have you in episodes 1 and 2. (I mean, there's value in venting out frustration in art, too, but it's nice to see a person break out of that depressive loop and provide some inspiration. Watching how this series improved over the years, especially with how transparently emotional it is, is like the author having her own character arc as an artist. This kind of indie game experience is always fascinating to me.)
I originally gave it a *7/10* due to feeling bogged down by the plot, after replaying I bumped it up to *8/10*. Apparently HLTB keeps both scores, so the final score is a nice and round *7.5/10*.
Game finished 2023-04-22
Game replayed 2023-06-21
gardenapple - 2023-06-23
