LogFAQs > #956880764

One Night Stand (Switch)
Despite the fact that this game has been out for five years on Steam and two years on consoles, I had never heard of it until Nintendo sent me an email the other day with some eShop recommendations and this was one of them. The art style and premise intrigued me enough to cave in at the price point ($5).

This VN has 12 endings and I had a choice as to what I wanted to count as "beating" the game - get one ending, get the best ending, or get all 12 endings. Given the extraordinarily short length of the game (at least one ending can literally be attained in under two minutes), I decided "all 12" was the way to go, and as it turns out, I ended up getting the best ending last anyway (part of that was intentional, but even after getting all the others it took me many more tries to figure out how to trigger it and I'm actually still not 100% sure what I did differently to get it). There's also a small bonus ending for getting all 12 endings, which just confirms that that's the real way to "beat" it.

In this game you play as a young man who wakes up one morning in a stranger's bed with a massive hangover and no memory of the previous night. Given the description of the game, I expected this to play out like the film The Hangover, where you have to use the clues you have to piece together a crazy-ass night and get an answer to a mystery. Instead the focus is actually on the woman - learning who she is, deciding where you want this to go, and figuring out how to achieve that goal. As I said, there are 12 endings here, ranging from being angrily kicked out naked to discovering something potentially beautiful has blossomed, and everything in between. This is the order that I first unlocked each ending in: Walk of shame; Going viral; Heading separate ways; No time to waste; Friend request; True friends; No matter what; That's a wrap!; In a twist; Run of shame; Caught; Her song.

I actually really enjoyed the woman, but to be fair she is definitely of a "type," and if you aren't into that "type" it will probably hinder your enjoyment of the game. I definitely sympathized with her in these endings, especially the really awful ones. The art style and animation are uncannily similar to Hotel Dusk/Last Window, which made me really happy because I love those games and the art and animation is a big part of their charm. The gameplay reminded me a bit of Crimson Room - searching a small room for clues that help you escape one way or another. A couple complaints are that sometimes the text options were a little too sensitive to the button touch, and I'd select one that I didn't mean to while I thought I was still scrolling through text, and each playthrough felt more and more repetitive, especially since some of the endings branch off at the very end and take very minor tweaks to trigger one from the other. I can't really complain about it not being quite what I expected, because for what it was, I actually thought it was kind of cute. Even after playing through it 12+ times, there are still dialogue options I never picked and things I never discovered, so I might play through it again from time to time just to see everything it has to offer. That being said, I definitely think there are some questions that, like in a real one-night stand, simply don't get answered.

At $5 (actually, $3 if you go for it on Steam), if this game seems like it would interest you even the slightest, I say you may as well give it a shot. Like a real one-night stand, you probably aren't going to fall in love, but if it's your thing, you'll probably be satisfied for a night and it may even stay on your mind for a few days.

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darkx
Games beaten in 2021 - 31; Most recent - One Night Stand