Recent reviews by Shmuppel ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

TL;DR: Since the developer has abandoned the project and the remaining episodes will not be made/released in the foreseeable future I wouldn't spend your money on this. Its story is incomplete and will probably never be completed. In the end by paying $5 for this you'll have 1.5 hours of prologue that is, in itself, not nearly enough to leave you satisfied.

Update: As of July 14th, 2015 Dischan Media has officially shut down. Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos will not be reinvigorated.

Game review:

Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel about, as the title inclines, the managing of chaos. The premise of dysfunctional systems revolves around an organisation in some technological utopia that sends meddlers to other worlds to solve their problems and reclaim order. It's an interesting concept, but it's not too different from what we've seen before. That said, it doesn't mean dysfunctional systems has no potential, in fact it has loads of potential. Too bad none of that really matters.

The story is basically an introduction to the universe and it's characters. We get to see the main characters do their jobs as meddlers in a world that is having diplomatic problems. Things escalate, I won't spoil anything, I'll just say that: it's way too short to develop anything outside of a prologue to the other episodes. Yes, there is a story in it, no you're probably not going to cry over it. It isn't insanely good and it isn't bad. At best this will leave you wanting more, where the problem of an abandoned project reels in again.

Even if an incomplete story wouldn't bother you, this first episode leaves too much to be desired and too many questions to be asked. The game is way too short to accomplish any real world building, something that is so important when your game is literally about travelling and meddling in the affairs of other worlds.

The characters, focusing on the two main ones, consist of your basic grumpy teacher and stubborn student. That's not to say the characters aren't enjoyable or not well written, they share some funny and touching moments. It's just that the game is simply way too short to develop any character properly. Thus we are left with... again, nothing special.

Then there are the choices, which are very important to get right when you make something in this medium. It is unfortunately something dysfunctional functions had a serious lack of. The entire game basically has 1 choice. 1 choice in the entire thing. After this one choice dysfunctional systems might (depending on what you choose) present you 2-or so more rather confusing choices. Too bad none of these matter. At all. The only difference is that you'll be getting a different achievement.

Something I can praise dysfunctional systems about is it's amazing art and music.
The art, although perhaps a bit repetitive at times, looks amazing, there isn't a whole lot of animation but that's alright, in the end I wasn't expecting there to be any. The UI is really good, everything fits together nicely and I actually enjoyed reading the few codex entries there were, as bland as they may be. As for the music, it was very nicely done. You won't have the same track looping every other sequence or anything like that here. Good stuff, Ill probably end up listening to it more in the future.

The real reason you shouldn't buy this:

After all that I do feel the need to honestly say that Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is not a bad visual novel at all, at least, as a prologue. Sure, it doesn't hit all the good spots and the lack of choices is pretty disappointing. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. It does it's job as a prologue - it gets you excited for more whilst giving a basic introduction of the universe.

The real reason you shouldn't buy this is because the developer abandoned the two sequels that were originally planned. Reason? Financial problems and a lack of motivation. The development team did a poor job of financing the funds received from the kickstarter campaign. People have lost a lot of their trust for the developers, and righteously so, it was one big mistake after another for the dev team and the death of Dysfunctional Systems as a result of that. It's a real shame, I would have liked to see more from this.

So, in the end Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos gives us a 1.5 hour prologue of a story that will probably never be made. Whether you are willing to spend $5 on that is your choice, but I personally wouldn't recommend it.