Recent reviews by Kia

Can't recommend this game enough! Lake of Voices takes place mostly across one treacherous location, with the focus being on the characters and the myriad branching narrative paths you'll be forced to choose between. The writing in Lake of Voices really shines -- so, so far beyond what I could have expected for a free game. In addition, it's fully voice acted, which draws you deeper into the immersion and attachment to each of the characters as you make difficult decisions that may lead to their (or your) deaths. You will get some repetitive scenarios here and there, but you can utilize the Skip button to speed ahead to new content when it appears, and since this is a free game, I don't find this too large a price to pay by any means.

I played this game for 3+ hours before discovering a special route of the game that adds a narrative twist I NEVER saw coming, and it absolutely blew me away and changed everything. If nothing else, I highly recommend everyone interested in this game play until you find this route! (If you're struggling to find it, check the achievements guide in the Community tab.)

Truly, among of the best free VN style horror games you'll find on Steam.

I thought I knew what to expect from this story, but it took me completely by surprise in the best ways. I'm so intrigued by this story, I can't wait for the full release to see where it's going!

After playing for about a month, both on Steam as well as mobile, there's a lot I can say about this game. Generally, I recommend it if you're into fashion games and don't mind playing games with gacha mechanics, but I'm going to try to break down the main pros and cons with fairness. I'll note up front that one thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet is that uploading photos to the in-game social media feed hasn't been added to the Steam version yet, which is a big bummer since you get unique rewards for doing so and the game is constantly telling you to "Share" things when you can't.

PROS:
- You can play entirely F2P if you want, you're not required to spend real money despite it being a gacha game. Your biggest enemy when it comes to spending money is FOMO/wanting to collect pretty limited-time fashions (which I admittedly have a few times), or impatience
- Visually very pretty (thanks, Unreal Engine!)
- Very nice and creative fashions
- Many minigames and modes to play with unique rewards, and limited-time events that rotate in and out
- Tons of rewards, most of which are piled on when you first start out, but you still get free stuff for doing all your daily things
- You can design your character's general appearance and skin color
- Fashion design mode where you can unlock patterns and design your own clothes, and input custom art for them on multiple texture layers with customizable materials (perfect for fashion-design fans and artsy folks!)
- Home-design Sims-style mode where you can customize a house and visit other player's houses
- Fairly addictive gameplay loop with a so-dramatic-it's-silly storyline in the main story mode
- Guilds come with their own rewards and are a good way to start adding some friends (the game immediately tossed me into a random guild when I started playing, I assume it does this for all players? But you can also leave and join a new guild)

CONS:
- You can sign up for the game without an email for some unfathomable reason and potentially get locked out of your account. MAKE SURE YOU ADD YOUR EMAIL TO YOUR ACCOUNT
- As opposed to how the game seems to advertise itself, you don't just hop in and automatically have tons of clothes and furniture to customize your avatar/house with -- you have to play a long time and unlock things gradually. Those familiar with similar fashion games probably know this, but for someone new to the genre and taking the ads at face value, said ads are a bit misleading.
- The sheer amount of pages with red diamond alerts and trying to locate where the alert actually IS on any given page is a bit overwhelming at first, but you get used to it over time (especially when you know the diamonds are giving you free stuff LOL)
- Gameplay takes a bit of research to fully understand at times and not waste your time/resources by either using too much or little of them, or by not knowing where to collect certain things and how (I strongly recommend checking out the "Tips for Life Makeover" thread pinned on the LM Reddit!)
- Character customization, while you can stretch it here and there for some fairly unique looks, is still somewhat limited and the character-creator is the most confusing one I've possibly ever seen -- I have never struggled so hard to find a skin color selection in my entire life. Also, the option to select the extremely creepy-looking child avatars that still wear adult clothes, have adult-body-proportion sliders, and participate in an adult storyline is a bit sus in my opinion (and according to other players, I'm definitely not the only one that thinks so), but this is one of those things you might just have to ignore as much as possible.
- Story mode & building fashions scale to take MUCH longer the further in you get, as they require you to collect more and more things that have limited tries to collect per day. This hasn't become super annoying to me yet (at level 39) but I imagine the higher levels start to get a big sloggy
- CUSTOMIZING YOUR HOUSE TAKES SO LONG OMG, the currency for furniture and house-buying is sooo slooowww to collect and it feels like only people that spend real life $$$ on it manage to do anything house-related quickly. I've been saving up to buy a pretty nice house and I'm not even close yet, and I've only spent the currency once on a cheap oven.
- Socializing is a bit limited (can only comment pre-made responses on people's photos, for example) and looking for guilds is a little confusing as you can't see any while you're already in a guild.
- As mentioned before, you can't upload photos to the social feed on Steam, so you have to get the game on your mobile device if you plan to participate in this aspect of gameplay currently (which can be a big ask for some folks, since the game is HUGE). Really hoping they fix this soon.
- Most of the news about upcoming events for the game on social media isn't in English and tends to only apply to the SG (Singapore) server as opposed to the Global servers that most folks play on, which can make keeping up with news a little confusing. The SG server seems to get clothes/events/etc. sooner or exclusively as opposed to the global servers which is unfortunate. I end up relying on folks in the official LM Discord server to keep up with which news actually effects global servers.

Absolutely love this game!! Fans of things like Madoka Magica or Revolutionary Girl Utena will surely appreciate the vibes in this lovely cursed Austrian lesbian simulator. The music and visuals are absolutely top-notch and the 80s/90s anime vibes are so nostalgic to me! The gameplay and puzzles can occasionally be challenging, but not overly so.

My only critique really would be that the content you have to work harder to reveal (optional side quest + collecting "fireflies") felt a bit underwhelming in what you receive for the effort. I still enjoy the vibes and gameplay enough that this hasn't stopped me personally from playing the game three times to see all the romance scenes + endings though!

Very excited to play Pocket Mirror next!

Silly fun with friends, it's a nice game to pick up and play with a nostalgia factor. The power-up traps make the game seriously hilarious, especially when you've got a bunch of people running around in the same place flinging spears like madmen. And, if you get explorative like me, you might even find New and Cool ways to die in lava. Oops.

I can't figure out how to even get into the game at this point because so many of the menu buttons become hidden, broken, or laggy... Trying to customize is a nightmare. I can forgive the graphics and slowness, but not being able to even navigate the menu to even play the game is kind of a deal breaker.