Growing up with family a stone’s throw from the West Virginia and Ohio border, the legend of the Mothman has been something that not only sent chills down my spine as a child, but has interested me greatly as an adult. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a C- grade horror flick, or a documentary – I am there for it. Needless to say, getting a review code for Mothmen 1966 had me stoked beyond belief even though it’s a visual novel, which is far from being high on my list of being one of the most thrilling gaming experiences.

Since this is a title that focuses largely on the narrative as its main selling point, I won’t touch on it too much. It was well written, outside of a few obvious typos, and the characters each brought their own unique personalities to the hour-long tale. Without going into spoilers, I was a little let down by the “Choose your own adventure” aspect of this game, as the dialogue or options presented outside of the occasional puzzle rarely drive the story in any meaningful ways. At many junctures, you can pick from one of two options: one is correct, and the other results in one of the main characters biting it. Usually, this is a style of game that if done right, I am eager to jump back in and see how the story could have unfolded differently, and in this case, I was ready to throw in the towel after completing the few achievements I missed in my first attempt. Once all was said and done, including waiting through the credits for the surprise stinger, I was left wanting more – more of the titular Mothman, more dialogue options, and more puzzles.

Outside of the narrative, there are a few mini-games that might fall loosely under the puzzle header as well, and each adds some variety to the gameplay. I didn’t find any of them to be extremely taxing, but if you’re someone who struggles with puzzles, most of them can be skipped or shortened greatly if you fail too many times. Navigating the puzzle segments took some getting used to, as it’s not as simple as just moving in the direction you’d want to move the in-game asset – you pick the movement from a list using the D-pad and then select it using a face button. I would’ve preferred a less clunky method, but it gets the job done, not to mention sticks with the retro theme of the overall package.

By far the game’s greatest strength is the retro-inspired visuals that use bright neon colors, leaning heavily on shades of green that callback to the Sci-Fi comics and movie covers from the 60s. If this had been released during the NES era, it probably would be known as being the best-looking NES game in existence. As far as the audio goes, it’s almost a non-factor outside of some repetitive sound effects as the text rolls across the screen at a snail’s pace. I not only upped the speed but disabled all sounds pretty early which alleviated the issues, but I probably would have enjoyed this a little more with at least a narrator, if not an entire voice cast.

If you’re into The Mothman, retro games, classic Sci-fi or visual novels, you could do a lot worse than this release. While it’s not going to rewrite the story of The Mothman, I enjoyed my hour or so of Mothmen 1966, and am interested in seeing what LCB Game Studio does next; I am just hoping for a little more content in their next venture.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Great Retro-Style Visuals
• An Interesting, Well-Written Narrative Full of Fleshed Out Protagonists
• Unique Puzzles

Cons

• Kind of Lacking in Content
• Could have Used More Choices/Branching Pathways
• Clunky Controls

Mothmen 1966 was developed by LCB Game Studio and published by Chorus Worldwide. It is available on NS, PC, PS4, and Xbox. The game was provided to us for review on X1 and reviewed on an XSX. If you’d like to see more of Mothmen 1966, check out the publisher’s site.

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