So I Tried… Punch Line

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Punch Line.

What I thought it was

A visual novel/puzzle game based on an anime where the protagonist will destroy the world if he sees knickers. And then constantly gets into situations where he sees them. Maybe something about a ghost? It’s honestly been a few years since I saw one episode of the anime. It wasn’t bad, I just never got around to continuing it.

What it actually is

22 episodes of trying to not look at panties despite the camera literally being drawn towards them if they’re on the screen. At least, there are 22 chapters to the game and they’re called “episodes” so I have to assume that each one is based on an anime episode.

You’re a spirit, separated from your body by mysterious means, presumably by whoever or whatever is controlling it. To get it back you have to find a book that is, thankfully, in the shared house that you live in. To help facilitate this, you need to build up your spirit level by knocking things over to scare your housemates. Unfortunately, if you see panties for too long an asteroid will wipe out humanity.

Will I keep playing

Yeah, I think I will. I had to play more than half an hour of this because a good chunk of my time was taken up with scenes from the actual anime, but I had just finished a link trick. That’s setting something up so that someone went where I needed them to, since I couldn’t take them an item. The Earth was destroyed only once before I worked out how to do that, and I want to see how the story plays out. I especially want to find out more about the superhero who lives in the house, and how one person being unconscious means an asteroid will hit the Earth. I'm just bummed that the 50 achievements don't work on Steam.