A few years ago, M.B Saunders was trying to get funding for a 'Dragon Dating Simulator'. For various reasons, that really didn't work. We were already well into the XYZ-Simulator territory and novelty Visual Novels were no longer having the impact they once did.

Eventually it was retooled as "Angels With Scaly Wings" (AWSW) and launched on indiegogo for crowdfunding. This game exists, and I'm partially responsible as I sent them 7 Euros as the demo amused me. At the time I was also picking random crowdfunding projects and chucking 10-20 AUSBUX their way.

As stupid as the concept first appears to be. I'm glad I did help fund it, even to a small token effort. It ended up being something completely unexpected.

AWSW is a mix of a traditional Visual Novel games with various puzzles game wrapped up in a murder mystery. Actually, it is not much of a mystery. You know the culprit early on, because you see the first attack happen right in front of you. Instead AWSW follows your character into the game's world and lives of the inhabitants.

The world is one of Sophont Dragons, living in an eerily human styled world. You are sent there as an ambassador as part of a trade mission. Humanities knowledge packed in a few PDAs in exchange for the the Dragon's green/clean energy generator tech that is superior to what you have back home. Abbott must hate them.

As the story progresses more of your home world is revealed. There's a few things that feel clunky with this though. A large info-dump late in the game lets you know the world you really come from is not exactly what you may of thought (-minor spoiler-), this easily could of been handled better and shorter in the introduction.

This type of thing happens more than once. While your character does have opportunities to interject into conversations, on a few occasions you're going to have to deal with text dumps that can take 5-10 minutes to read at talking speed. Hell, they even feel slow at reading speed.

The overall writing is a bit mixed. Some of it is really in the cringe factor levels. Especially in chapter 1. It does get better, aside from the info dumps or at least I learnt to tolerate it. And when you learn a few little bits of information there's a number of good holy shit moments as it all comes together.

Art is also mixed. Somewhat crude cartoonish designs for on screen characters while in conversations. Decent backgrounds created specifically for the game. Good stock backgrounds. And immediate make it your desktop wallpaper unlockable art. Sandcastle Adine is just gorgeous. I'm Aro/Ace and I platonically l♥ve her design.

Each day in game you get to interact with two of the 5 main characters, or lounge around your apartment. They all fit various archetype tropes and thankfully do so without feeling like a parody of them. There's a noticeable amount of crossover in their life and history that is unlocked by playing through the game. And since it requires several plays to see how they all link up in the world you may want to explore as many conversation paths as you can.

To get it out of the way. Yes, you can clearly romance four of them, the fifth you just go out adventuring with. And it's pretty clear you can have sex with two of them. Possibly one of the minor characters too if you like your imagination to run. Thankfully this is totally optional, and requires work on your part to get to that conclusion. It is also a fade-to-black scene without anything being detailed if you do consent (search the fan-art if you really need R34 of this), and you can calmly and nicely deny their advance or freak out in a hostile way. Bryce is pretty overt in his intentions, but the others will react negatively if you try anything before the relationship is established.

Yes. There is a fair bit of innuendo. It is weird. I know it. You know it. Even the damn scalies know it. But somehow... Ahh, I hate to admit it, but I did get attached to some of the characters.

Adine especially as she comes off as the most normal. Adine is the best. She presents the nicest and less creepy possible character path. Banana Wyvern is the best.

There's also around 5 minor characters you can also spend a day talking to. They are a bit of a mixed bag of individuals. I did rather like how their stories overlap as you unlock more of the world. Some you will spend more time with than others as they show up in the main story path, while two just feel like filler.

Your own character is a bit of an arse. There's reasons for this that are revealed as you play through it, but a few multiple choice areas are variations of 'I see' or 'I don't know' when a little flavour text would of done nicely than the dense slate you come off as. It would not even have to be a big impact on the game, just something other than what is provided. For the most part your gender and ethnicity is left blank and you can only mention it in a couple of areas. The dragons don't appear to care anyway.

And now: spoilers beyond the images below.

This is a game where your actions matter and have flow on effects into the game world. When you start, expect things to not go so well.

And then you can NG+ the game in a slightly different way. A large part of the game deals with time loops and alternate realities. Until you unlock the true ending, you're stuck in the loop as long as you continue the game. Your character loses most of their memory each loop but what actions they took would of influenced the next world reset and any of those beyond. Especially when you take items back with you. As a player your knowledge can also come back to bite you should you try a different action to a known win state.

So, you think you know the story after a single play through? A second? No. There's thirteen main endings to this game. And you're going to want to know all of them to get the full picture of it.

But don't worry, the game provides a 'Scene Skip' feature to jump ahead and will give you control once you reach a point you've not yet seen. By the 6th pass in the game, I was hitting that skip button as I knew a good chuck of what was going on.

Several of the cast will outright die until you take action by spending time influencing their life in prior timelines to the point where their subconscious tells then to do something else next time. And even then you may not win. There's one 'good' ending which is an effective emotional punch to the throat. Having had family & friends go though a similar situation to what they did was rather rough to play through. Yeah, I cried. It's fucking horrible and and pushed me towards aiming for the single true happy ending.

Worst off is that I didn't know about this situation on the second pass through the story. I just wanted a better outcome for one character and didn't know the lives of the others. This one good ending was a good ending. Until I knew what the outcome of the rest were as the timeline was still rather horrible for them.

The internet may joke on ' the feels ', but it really hit hard on some of these people. Games have pulled on the feelings before but few character deaths have really hit me. Alys Brangwin back in the mid 1990s with Phantasy Star IV, and Fatima in Anachronox also had final words to the player really hit the emotional level. Bit of a surprise to have something like this in a friggin dragon-romance game. If Simple Mind's "Don't You" played at this point I would of lost it.

On a lighter note the game is cleverer than I thought it would be. The Ren.py engine allows you to skip back in conversations, so if you get an outcome you did not want you can go back in time and retry. And the game knows this. And will call you out on it. And punish you to work through a timeline with the actions you have taken, especially if it is something where you did the wrong thing and knew it would go wrong. AND it knows if you try it more than once.

To be honest, that's kinda the old school ironman awesome stuff I love.

Angels With Scaly Wings was not at all what I expected. There's a lot of content in the story to unlock. Minigames to play. Alternate paths. And I spent 18 hours on this playing through it to make sure that the best possible outcome was made. And they all lived happily ever after, or at least had a world of actual hope.

And then... Yeah! Post game content! Once you've completed the majority of character paths and the "true ending", you can initiate a timeline with a scene where you are given access to a computer. If has a few entries you can use with the aim of unlocking secrets. But you're going to have to know the characters you met to progress.

It was a rather fun final puzzle. And there's small hints from the dev that there's a little more to be added (edit: not long after these thoughts went up, there was a patch that did add some new things to seek out).

Do you like VN games? Do you like Dragons? Give it a go. There's some serious issues with this one, but I honestly did really enjoy the experience. This game exists. And I'm happy that it does.

Game Acquisition: Crowrdfunding - Indiegogo (€7).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 24 January 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP
Processor: 2 GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX Compatible Card
Storage: 2 GB available space