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Queen Beast Review - RIB21

Queen Beast Review

Disclaimer: I’ve beaten the game and gotten every achievement, it took just over 6 hours. I try to keep all my reviews spoiler free.

TLDR: This is a charming and wonderful experience that I recommend to anyone with time to kill. It is also, however, a VN in the literal sense. There is no gameplay and it is a short story. The art and music are superb. There are very minor errors, nothing jarring. It is FREE on Steam, so at the very least I’d say go add it to your library. I want to see more from this world and creator.

        Queen Beast popped up on my radar when, as the broke college student that I am, I was browsing Steam for free games. I’d always been a fan of the idea of VNs, but have never engaged in any serious attempt to play them before. Call me a poser if you want, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about them. I know all about the famous ones, they’re plots and routes and censorship drama, etc. I also know about stuff like Rance, and no I won’t bash that because I can appreciate why people like it, even if I haven’t seen it for myself.

        My point here is that seeing a short and free VN on Steam with gorgeous artwork and, admittedly, some good looking women, drew me in and I added it to my library. I recently got around to actually playing through it (I know some people take issue with using the words “game” and “playing” for VNs, I obviously don’t care) and the experience has left me wanting so much more from these characters and creator. There’s a lot to praise here, the obvious things to begin with are the soundtrack and visuals.

        The art is gorgeous, if more projects come out of this I would happily get the game poster framed and put on my wall. The characters are all distinctive, and you can tell that a lot of care went into this project because even little UI elements and transitional sequences have details that seem like they took a lot of time and consideration. It’s very obvious that the devs care about this project, and nothing makes an experience better than being able to tell that as a consumer. The soundtrack is splendid too, the use of music doesn’t feel cheap at all. There’s plenty of sound effects and different tracks for all of the various story beats you’ll encounter, it’s very charming.

        The plot was very engaging, I won’t lie I wanted to see what happened next and it’s really not bad. The characters are amazing and each one is very different from one another, but I do have gripes about the plot itself. I think that because this is a short and free project, the ending seemed a tad rushed. Not enough to be jarring, but it left me unsatisfied. Please note that this is not the majority opinion. From what I’ve seen on the Community Hub and itch.io page comments, people love it and are super satisfied. I felt a little stupid because I only got what the ending “meant” after seeing a dev comment on the Community Hub, and so that definitely irked me a bit. However after realizing what had happened, I can say that the story is definitely quite beautiful in its own way.

        There are very minor errors in this VN, only around three typos or mistakes that I noticed in the whole 60k+ words you’ll be reading, so really they’re not a big deal at all. The humor worked very well for me, I found myself laughing quite often, but I’m also pretty easy. It seems obvious to me that the goal of the devs was to recreate the sort of 90s aesthetic and feel of VNs and I’d say they succeeded very well, even though I only feel that I know what I’m talking about, but I do not.

        This game has nudity, but not sexually graphic stuff. You can turn nudity off in the settings (and get an achievement for it). You also get achievements for opening the “Staff Room,” doing that 100 times (sort of), and for opening the game any time in December (I admittedly set my system clock to do this one, but I’d say wait if you can). The rest of the achievements are obtained simply by going through the story. The Staff Room is a pleasant surprise and really gives you some insight into what went into this project. Again, I have no real nostalgia for this stuff but even so, I’m happy that there are people who are doing this sort of thing.

        All I really have left to say is that I really really hope we get a sequel or a short story that wraps up loose ends. I want to see certain characters be happy and others do certain things. I can’t help but feel there’s more to tell and I’m pretty confident that the devs can deliver meaningfully entertaining sequels and stories set in this world. Regardless, it was an experience I enjoyed and I think you will too.

Nikhil Saxena

Founder, Destrier Studios

https://linktr.ee/destrierstudios

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