In my younger years, I played a lot of flash games online. Looking back, I'm guessing most of those games were pretty low quality games that I wouldn't be bothered to play through now. As time goes on, I feel that I am slowly learning more and more the value of putting a game down.

One example of a game I put down recently is Secret of Mana. After I got a Super Nintendo Classic, I took it upon myself to try out some of the classic games I had heretofore missed. But Secret of Mana just really didn't stick with me. I had a poor first impression of the menuing, the slow start of the story, and the finnicky action battle mechanics. I really don't doubt that there are things about the game that make it great, but for me I feel it was valuable to put down the game when I didn't have enough interest in playing it.

But this past week, I put down a game for a different reason: conscience.

After a long period of not posting, I've decided to have a change of pace and write about some other games I've played outside of the work we are doing at SoloVid. (Maven hasn't moved much in the last year, but we're still hoping to see it come!)

I'm not much of a gamer, but I do enjoy games. I particularly enjoy the fascinating things I learn about game design from other games. So today I'm going to talk a little bit about Rakuen, a storiented game by Laura Shigihara. The game very much takes queues from Kan Gao's To the Moon, but there are some things Rakuen has to add to the genre.