"The Bottom of the Well" Review

Publisher:  Red Nettle Studios

Website:  https://wolfrug.itch.io/the-bottom-of-the-well-dev-version

Genre:  Visual Novel/RPG

Summary:  Alice recounts a strange dream of apocalyptic survival and doom.

Gameplay:  After selecting Alice's traits, which will influence Alice's abilities and options in the game to come, you also make decisions that do likewise. 

Style:  The style of the game is extremely evocative, with all text being back-and-forth conversation between Alice and her friend online.  This works well to convey the action and eerie atmosphere, as do the black-and-white blurry backgrounds.  In fact, the only colors are red, black, white, making the game both stylized and dramatic while allowing the focus to remain on the text.

Story:  Alice's story manages to feel creepy with its vision-dream of nuclear destruction yet utterly realistic in its details (which of course is creepiest of all, with the implication this is all preparation for a true future to come.)  The combination of Alice's variety of traits with choices in the game offers plenty of story opportunities while still making for a difficult game.

Conclusion:  "The Bottom of the Well" is a lovely and dark visual novel with some roleplaying elements that all combine nicely into a fun and fascinating game experience.