One Night Stand (2016)

One Night Stand is almost as short as the real thing, but not as pleasant… or unpleasant. Despite the intriguing concept behind this nice-looking visual novel, which is to find out what the heck happened last night, this plays its cards a bit too safe, and never dares offering something more emotive, or to include interesting plot twists. It is a simple create-your-own-adventure kind of deal that's… well, fun, just not as much as it could be with a little heavier emphasis in character development and/or plot. If a fan of the genre, and don't mind super-short indies, check it out. The rest can safely pass this by.

One Night Stand is a good indication of what the game is about - indeed, this is a visual novel where the protagonist will have to navigate around the follow-up to an alcohol-fueled one night stand. A rather short and simple game but with plenty of different endings to keep the player interested, One Night Stand disappoints when it comes to its audiovisual environment, which is lacklustre to say the least and has almost nothing to listen to and feels like a too short experience.

Overall, this is an incredibly short experience but an interesting one. I’d usually hesitate to recommend a visual novel of this length, but between the cost being next to nothing and the sheer amount of choices you can explore, I feel like it does earn the recommendation.

One Night Stand is proof that Ratalaika can find talented developers and bring them to the masses. While this isn't some Triple-A juggernaut, for what it is, it's a great addition to the genre. If you like these kinds of titles, you owe it to yourself to see everything that One Night Stand has to offer. For such a short runtime, there's a lot to love here.

One Night Stand is a game with a message, that gets it across concisely without compromising on how much you'll enjoy following the story.