5 reviews
The Novelist
The Novelist asks one central question: can you achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love? The game focuses on Dan Kaplan, a novelist struggling to write the most important book of his career while trying to be the best husband and father he can be.
Similar Games
The Novelist Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
It's an interesting short experiment in narrative choices, then, but perhaps I'm just missing the point because I'm single, young, childless, and will never be able to afford that house. In any case, I really hope Mr Ghost gets to flip a table over one day or spew some food just once, because he's really earned it.
As an introspective adventure, The Novelist is truly extraordinary in its setup of roaming through the lives of a digital family of three and getting involved in their minds. Sadly, it can not be allotted top marks for its deplorably restrictive design mechanisms, outside of the evocative realm. Those that are blessed with the right means won’t need to fear any interjection. Those can enjoy this one-of-a-kind simulation thoroughly, but that’s not a privilege everyone shares. It is, still, the cutest, faulty little story about making a house a home.
As a game about family relationships The Novelist is interesting and relatable up to a point, but it doesn’t have a great deal of emotional depth, and the further you get into it the more you notice the flaws in its characterisation. Despite that, though, it’s worth a few hours of your time. I cared enough about these characters to take an interest in their lives, and though the parent-child relationship comes up short, the parent’s struggles both individually and together are better realised.
An intriguing narrative is bogged down by sparse mechanics and repetitive environments.
The Novelist is a narrative-led, sort-of-stealth, sort-of-point'n'click-adventure game by Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief: Deadly Shadows, and BioShock 2 dev Kent Hudson (with playtesting help from a remarkable number of renowned developers, according to the credits) in which you direct and decide the fate of a tormented family who've gone to stay in a remote house for the Summer, in an attempt to resolve their respective career and relationship difficulties. But they are not alone...