After playing Katawa Shoujo i gained a interest in Visual Novels, while half-heartedly searching for something interesting i came accross Juniper's Knot, a short Visual Novel with a first person perspective which is maybe around 45 minutes to go through it if you are a slow reader but this is a free game made in a month so you can't really complain about what you are getting.
Story
Juniper's Knot is story of two characters, a Demon & a Boy meeting each other in the ruins of a old manor and bonding after explaining what is going on in each others lives, the Boy is lost miles away from his home, the Demon has been trapped in a small area of a few metres for centuries having no contact with anyone as punishment for something she did way back when. Sounds thrilling doesn't it, well i'll tell you what, it is, the story engages you to read on that little further and find out what happens next. The characters themselves do not try and get you to like them, as any sympathy you have for the Demon spending centuries trapped possibly dashed as she says that if she gets out there is a good chance most of the world will probably burn in flames but that doesn't seem to matter when you can see inside her thoughts, the only other character is a child that is the nice one of the two not yet jaded by the world sees the best in her despite the fact she is a Demon famous for tricking and stealing peoples souls, it makes him endearing i suppose but he is not the main focus i would say of the story, the girl is, and for good reason she is the most interesting of the two. Now some of you may be wondering why i call them Demon or Boy, it is because you never find out their names throughout the entire story, this sounds stupid but they have bigger things to worry about than names and they aren'y needed when there are only two of you.
Graphics
Visual novels aren't famous for their graphics but Juniper's Knot uses actual art work for everything, having an extremelly pleasing art style i find that works well in the game, that is graphics done.
Sound
One of my favourite parts of this game is the music, in two parts i find it to be top notch. The first is that it is good and enjoyable music that has some quality and effort put into it and what it is for, while saying i prefer to most of music in gaming today as well as in the charts is not saying much, it is true. The second reason why i love the Sound in this game is that it is used appropriately to convey the emotions of the scene more than it would normally, to me few games get things like this correct and i find it good that some indie developers understand the importance of good music.
