Best Month Ever!

Such a cute and fun game!! #bestmonthever! #steam #steamdeckvalve #steamdeckconsole I love choice matter games. You can play an infinite amount of times and always have a different ending. It's about a white woman named Louise, set in the US during 1969, where she must spend as much time as possible with her Black, biracial son Mitch. Louise is dying. Mitch has no idea... her goal is to make her last days, the best month ever and find a care giver for her son.

The game seems ambitious but the script, which is probably the strongest aspect of the game lacks depth. The premise is very interesting but it's quickly going into controversies. It doesn't have to be bad but they seemed superficial and conflicts were far-fetched. Maybe it becomes better, further in the game but the first hour didn't convince me to play more.

The game has a great concept, but it was not executed well. The chapters are short; the dialogue is horrendous, and I in no way felt sympathetic or engaged with these characters. The voice acting was honestly the worst part. The controller mechanics were also slow; it would be better to play with mouse and keyboard. Overall, it's not great, and people should pass up on it.

There's sooo many things wrong with this game. Most of our choices don't affect Mitch's personality the way we want them to and as Louise we really don't know what to do, so we mess up multiple times. Even if we're trying our best not to... But, in really life we also don't know what to sometimes do and our actions affect our life differently than we thought they would. So i felt really connected to the game even though it made mad some of the times. Also the first 11 chapters was fine but last chapter, damn... I cried like a little baby.

A fun & interesting enough game, from what I saw, but there's one pretty glaring issue which means I'm not comfortable recommending it in it's current state.

Without spoiling anything, the start of the game (within the first hour) feature pretty heavy themes of sexual exploitation (in exchange for money) and child sexual abuse. The game does not warn about this in the store page OR in the otherwise distinct pre-game warnings. It was pretty jarring and I'm not going to continue playing it until I'm clear on the content of the game, because I don't want to encounter another similar scene without warning.

Mostly leaving this review as feedback for the devs, and as a warning for anybody else who might be sensitive to those topics.

I like the story but the voice acting and weird controls for certain segments take getting used to. This game could've used some more polish. The art style was nice. Overall, still a good story/choice game experience. It's about the journey.

I guess it's a matter of opinions but, I didn't really care for the story. It seemed like instead of a mother trying to find the best place for her child, it felt like she was trying to do as much things before she died. I feel bad for the kid; he keeps saying it's the best month ever, but I think it's the more traumatizing lol. The only thing I kinda liked story wise was that my choices did matter, not sure by how much but it does.

In terms of actual gameplay it's meh. I didn't realize how sexual and vulgar the game was, which is my fault for not checking but just something to let anybody know if they're interested because I wouldn't have gotten it if I knew. Controls were hard in my opinion; just keep clicking, trying to get them to move. I had it at low graphics at first which sucks, thankfully I could go a little better in quality.

Am I glad I finished the game? Yes, I wanted to see the end of the story. Would I play again? Maybe to see the other possible endings for Mitch but that's it. Would I recommend? Mostly no; it looks kind of cool on Tiktok but when you actually play it, you're just thinking how crazy can this game get, and it gets crazier. And not exactly in a good way.

Best Month Ever is a narrative-driven choice game, set in 1960’s America and created by Polish developers. It is supposed to be a game revolving around a desperate mother’s choices for her young son, where every decision shapes what kind of adult he becomes… but instead it is a ginormous mismatch of tragic events with no real discussion, choices or character development. This ultimately results in an exaggerated story with no emotional connection.

Pros

• Features many “taboo” topics.
• Replayability, with nine different endings.

Cons

• Players do not have any impact over seemingly crucial decisions.
• Decisions reflect extremely poorly on the son’s traits.
• Absurd & exaggerated number of tragic events with no real follow-up, or discussion.

Story

Best Month Ever is a wild ride. When it starts, it does NOT slow down. It is nothing like the store page makes it out to be. This is not a game about a single mother trying to make hard decisions for the betterment of her son. No. This is a game that incorporates every single tragic topic and event it can muster up. Including (light spoilers ahead) paedophilia, extreme racism, KKK & biracial and social inequality, terminal sickness, father abandonment, complete lack of family support, bosses asking sexual favours, lack of rights for women, gun violence seen as acceptable, kidnapped & tortured women and children and the list only goes on. Sounds like A LOT for a four-hour game? Yes, yes, it is. I have nothing against any of these topics being portrayed in games, infact, I think delving into these topics and exploring history is important. However, these topics were simply all just thrown into the game. It felt like each topic was crafted by a different individual. Nothing flowed, nothing really made sense. It came across as far too exaggerated and fake. The opposite of the emotional narrative the store page made it out to be.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2877168164

The mother, Louise, has to make difficult decisions for her son Mitch. The first one involves trying to get her money that her boss owes her. Players can choose how this is done, but regardless of your choice, she sets her bosses car on FIRE and drives away. All whilst her 8-year-old child is present, and watching. I thought, OK that is a bit odd, I would have liked a choice in that, but I will keep going. Yet, it only gets worse. Louise does completely bizarre things that make no sense. She grabs loaded guns and points them at people, with her child present, when this was not a choice that I made. She also fails to ever speak to her son about anything that is going on. She never has any discussions about the racism Mitch receives, nor about any of her wild antics.

The base of the story seems to mainly focus on Mitch’s missing father, and trying to reconnect with Louise’s past. This results in a landslide of difficulties, generally revolving around racial issues. Now, if the game had JUST focused on this, I think it would have been a decent title. But because it throws almost everything else in players’ faces, it is like a thrashing tornado, sending everything into an aimless chaos, and undoing any sort of emotional and impactful message that it was building.

Gameplay

Best Month Ever is a point and click game with quite clunky controls. There are very limited hotspots, and it is always blatantly obvious where you need to go, or what you need to interact with in order to proceed. However, the interactables can be quite awkward. Many times, I was clicking on the little white square, but to no avail. The game just seemed to never register my input. Being a narrative driven game, there are also many dialogue choices, but as discussed in the Story section above… these are not integrated effectively and many core decisions can not be altered by players. There are a few QTE events which are very simple, or driving sections which are doubly awkward and difficult to control, but are only a minor element. If these QTE or driving sections are failed, you simply restart until you get it right. Defeating the purpose of a choice or narrative driven game, at least in my view. This leads me to one of my main gripes with the gameplay element of the game, linearity. It felt like I was simply playing along with a set story, not that I was altering it in any way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2877168136

Every action or decision that Louise makes will impact Mitch’s three attributes. Righteousness, self confidence and relations. After each decision, a symbol will pop up displaying which attribute was increased, or decreased. Most of the time, these made such little sense. For example, the game is very pro-gun, attempting to correctly depict the state of the 60s in the US (in what I assume is a southern state, but I am not sure. I do not recall this being mentioned and although it showed a brief map, my Australian-based geography did not register). I have no issue with these topics, but it seems to go completely overboard with this as well. Every single time the 8-year-old boy would for some reason, pick up a gun and aim it at multiple people, I would scold him (if given the option) and instruct to put the weapon down. This resulted in him losing self-confidence and gain righteousness? I do not understand how trying to get a child to not comfortably pick up weapons and aim them at people will result in a loss of confidence, but OK. Louise’s character is ridiculous, blowing up cars and whatnot, but there are no ramifications for her or the boy’s actions. Even when she murders people. It is not mentioned. This is one of the core reasons why this game has no emotional impact nor credibility, despite attempting to convey such serious topics.

Visuals & Sound

I realise the review is quite abrasive, but there is no redeeming element in the visuals either. The artstyle is rather blocky, but almost similar to TellTale’s comic style. Characters have no details on their faces, and the environments are rather lackluster too. It is not bad, but it is nothing to positively comment on, it is just rather dull.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2877168221

In contrast, the audio was pleasant. The backing soundtrack was soothing along the many car rides and conversations with the characters. The characters are all voiced, and are generally to a high standard.

Technical & Stats

This game was played using a keyboard & mouse, and with the following PC specs.:
Intel i5-9400 2.9 GHz
16GB RAM
GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
2560x1440 resolution
HDD
Windows 10

Playtime: 4 hours.

Controller Recommended? Player choice (untested with a controller, but I imagine the minimal driving sections would be much smoother).

Replayability value: Yes, to achieve all 9 endings.

Conclusion

The most accurate way to describe the story of Best Month Ever is to describe it as a completely disorderly and wild journey. It encompasses far too many topics, more than its short playtime can handle, and as a result, it does not fully delve into any of them. The choices have little consequence, with the more significant choices being preset. Ultimately resulting in the game feeling extremely linear and limiting. Overall, I do not recommend this title, but for those narrative lovers who are still curious, I advise to wait for a hefty sale.

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What a beautiful game this is. It truly has moments that had me gasp, get chills down my spine and goosebumps. The story is so well crafted and really made me stop and think about how I want to live my life. Truly a worthwhile game to play.

not brilliant as the walking dead S1, but not bad either 7/10

UPD: Just found the album of Best Month Ever in my library which comes for free with the game. It's mf gorgeous!
If you have two digit IQ at least and you don't really like to listen to s-it, you must listen to these songs! 11/10

I haven't been as delighted as I am right now. For your understanding, every week I check YouTube Music to find some new sounds. The only thing I found so far was expired sh-t of hippo that ate too much bean soup last night, such as cardi b, lil pump and others.

Don't be a mainstream dork, listen to good music. This album is a diamond! MUST LISTEN.

SPOILER HEAVY. You have been warned. The first paragraph is safe, everything beyond that is enter at your own risk.

So for a long while I wasn't going to review this game, it feels like it's someone's passion project and I hate crapping on people's babies, especially when it's a small team. And a lot of stuff seems pretty innocent - the writing's silted sometimes, certain events are incredibly unrealistic, the pacing is painfully slow (so slow that often I'll leave it running in the background and listen for some kind of indication that I have to come back and do something) and it has all the engagement of a free idle game. But these are all things that I thought, okay, it's got some issues, but that's not worth a bad review. And it has some upsides as well - the music, whilst painfully repetitive, is at least inoffensive, and the art is beautiful.

Here's where the spoiler free warning ends, I'm about to deep dive into the story, though I won't touch on the ending.

My biggest issue for the duration of the game was simply that the story itself is pretty bad. We already know the premise from the promo material, and there's no development of that, no plot twists, etc. It's just a series of events that the MCs experience as they're travelling around looking for a home for the little boy, and that format is fine but there really does need to be some kind of over-arching development of the characters at the very least, especially considering the whole premise of the story is "one character faces their imminent death whilst preparing their child for life alone." The character development should be the crux of the story, and there's just... none. Which is extra frustrating because both characters are so very flat. Louise (mum) contributes nothing but apathy and some vague one-liners with a hint of a fiery personality on occasion, when you allow it, whilst Mitch (the boy) has only a smidge more, showing himself to be a generic good child who loves his mother. There's also a system that develops Mitch's personality throughout the game (even when the "choices" you make are ones he doesn't see or hear, which is interesting), defining his ability to relate to others, his confidence, and his respect for law and order. None of these things will have any kind of impact on any aspect of the game, as far as I can tell, and virtually all choices are simply dialogue options, with the game frequently punishing you for attempts to be honest, diplomatic, or empathetic by lowering your confidence (because I guess being a heartless asshole and being confident are the same thing). There's no nuance to it and very little sense, though at least relationships and law and order are a bit more developed.

And a lot of the lack of development seems to be by choice? Like, there are plenty of times when realistically a mother would sit down with her son and talk about what just happened, but all we get are a couple of bumper stickers and "I'll tell you off-screen" comments. It's like the developers had a cool idea for a game but didn't realize what that game would actually entail, or maybe they were scared that their vision of the game - which would be mostly a mother and son talking about life and racism and such - would be boring. Like, I don't think any of us bought this game for the QTEs and action, but that's what they seem to have put most of the work into.

As for the other characters you come across come in two flavours: completely flat with no personality what-so-ever, or a personality comprised entirely of tropes and stereotypes, and honestly that's what pushed me over from "just leave it alone" to a bad review. I appreciate that not everyone will care about this, but the cast of characters includes:
- Almost all women (except the FMC) is a victim
- Virtually every straight white man is a rapist, pervert, or violent racist
- The queer character is a manipulative pervert
- The black characters are meek and mild mannered victims to the white characters
- There's a couple of cliched Native Americans who only exist to aid and die for the MCs
- I literally don't think there's a single child in the game except the MMC who isn't abused by their parents

What I'm getting at is that it's a game that prides itself on the diverse cast of characters, but it reads like it was written by someone who's never met another person in their lives, and it's handled with all the sensitivity of a tooth extraction with a rock. Honestly in places it feels mean-spirited, it's so bad. Combine that with a character development system that does nothing for characters who don't develop, a game that's so slow it's basically an interactive lullaby, and a story that doesn't exist, and you have a pretty but genuinely crap experience that I honestly have to avoid staying away from.

And in response to the idea that life just sucks for some people - yeah, no shit, I love those stories, give me all the grimdark, that's literally why I bought this game, I wanted to be heartbroken. That's why I'm made - I wasn't heartbroken, I wasn't even moved, I was *bored.* Comparably my dislike of the victims/abusers thing from the rant about the cast of characters - my problem isn't that victims and abusers exist, it's that EVERYONE is a victim or abuser, and their role is defined primarily by their gender and secondarily by their ethnicity and age (with the exception being Kiki the queer pervert exploiting barely legal girls for sex work who's heralded as a saviour). If they'd thrown in a male victim of domestic violence, made Kiki a woman, or shit even just show us someone getting smacked around by someone other than Louise, I'd have been happy, but nope, any badassery is done by the incredibly bland FMC in dialogue that sounds like a 10 year old wrote it after too many Sunday morning specials.

In conclusion the game has very little to offer, including the premise it sells itself on. It's a really long and boring interactive road trip with two character you'll struggle to care about, doing things you'll struggle to care about, until nothing happens or something happens off-screen. Nothing's fleshed out enough to be significant, nothing's developed enough to be impressive (except the art, IDK if I'd call it impressive but it's pretty, at least), and the characters and assets in the game are neutral at best and annoying or offensive at worst, depending on your tolerance for harmful stereotypes and buggy point and click. If it's developed further and gets better I'll come back and update, but I'm not holding out hopes at this stage.

I’m glad I played this game. It’s still kind of sitting with me right now. I think the game quality is very good. I really wish the game was longer. I wish there was more at the end to wrap things up completely and I wish there were longer breaks between each disaster. The subject matter is serious and could be triggering for people. Imagine every kind of bad thing that could happen to a woman and/or a black child in 1960s America, mostly in the South. It all happens (and maybe more) in this game. It was kind of like Life is Strange on steroids, but with only maybe a quarter of the length of LiS. So bad things kept hitting with less time for good things in between.

I also wish that there were some actions in the game that I had a choice on and did not have to do. But those actions were ones the developers wanted you to take to further the journey, so okay. That said, I think the game was beautifully done and I am happy to have experienced it.

What a wholesome adventure. I appreciate the developer taking care of all the details and creating such a great story rich game.
I only played once and super excited to see how the choices you make change the story.

Here's my full playthrough with ending #8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=istsR86zSEA

Took me 4 hours to complete, i'll say the story of this game is really captivating and interesting, you really do wonder where the game is going to go next and how it will end based on your choices

Now as good as the game can be it also lacks in a few other places, mostly textures not appearing or background appearing out of nowhere, characters popping out of nowhere, dialogue repeating itself over and an overall mess to look at. All of those combined together leads to the immersion that this game is trying to achieve being broken as soon as you start to forget you're playing a game

Why do I still recommend it?
The game still has its charm and potential despite those errors, and the game being developed by a film school video game program students makes the bugs more understandable, the story is still compelling and really worth looking into, though if there could be some patches to fix those issues then it would definitively be a way better game than it already is

6/10, still worth playing through

Best Month Ever had all of the ingredients for a great game... but it's not one.

SPOILER HEAVY REVIEW

The premise was interesting and already gut wrenching to think of but I don't feel that the developers really wanted to make a game centered around what the game proposed it would be.

When I heard that Best Month Ever would be a video game centered around a single mother trying to prepare her eight year old son for the cruel world, I imagined nuanced discussions and experiences in which that same mother would be unable to shield her child from what was happening and have to help him understand why it was happening. That the game would be full of experiences, maybe gut wrenching and cruel, and that child would have to grow up faster than they really should have. Instead, I was given a game full of cruel experiences (some of which I could have made cruel for the sake of... character development(?), with no real payoff or explanation for them. Mitch, the eight year old, was never given a single conversation about these cruel things had happened and he never seems to care either.

This review is going into spoiler territory now, so be warned.

In the beginning, I could understand some of the choices being made. They showcase the mother as a desperate woman trying to get the last of her overtime pay in order to get out of town. The boss is a pervert who tries to get sexual favors in order to hand out more money, to which I said no multiple times. Whether or not you can actually do what he asks I do not know. Either way, Mitch is watching the entire time. Instead of him asking why her boss would get undressed in front of her or ask her for favors that he never outright explained, Mitch focuses instead on the fact that her boss had called him a bastard that no one wanted. Okay, that's fine. We don't need to get so into the super heavy topics and maybe he just doesn't realize what he meant or care to find out. This showcased some insecurity in Mitch about his father not being around. Then Louise, the mother, sets the boss's car on fire. At first I was like "That's amazing!! That pervert got what he deserved!" ... then I wondered why we did that and weren't given a choice not to. I personally thought that it probably wasn't the best example for a kid to see especially when he didn't know why we were doing it. We never talked to him about anything.

Then we go to our family's house which we already learn has a strained relationship with Louise. The little white boy that answers the door immediately shows racist tendencies but... again, we never have a discussion with Mitch about that and instead it's just assumed that Mitch has already dealt with his fair share of racism and it just doesn't bother him anymore to speak up about it and Louise doesn't seem to have any desire to stand up against it. The white boy, Butch, then breaks a window and begs Mitch to take the blame for him. Once again, I made multiple choices to not take the blame for it, expecting there to maybe be a conversation about Mitch, a black boy, refusing to the fall for Butch, the white boy, in the face of a potentially racist family. Instead they just kind of move on and blame Mitch anyway but it doesn't really matter since the whole issue gets thrown away in favor of something else messed up.

We find out that a 'family friend' and priest, Father Judd, had sexually assaulted an eight year old Louise. There was strain in the family because Louise told her family and they didn't believe her. Forcing her to apologize, eventually leading to her running away at seventeen. In order to give them a place to stay, Louise is ordered to apologize to Father Judd for her lies. I, again, said no and refused. However this was after we get to see a flashback in which we get to choose whether or not Louise had trusted Father Judd and had allowed him to touch her inappropriately or not.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think taboo and horrible topics like this shouldn't be touched on in media. But there was absolutely no reason to give the player a choice in this scenario where it doesn't really matter anyway. There's no grueling choice to make. There's no payoff for letting her trust him. There's no reason to put your dying character through something so awful for anything other than a personal image of her growth as a character. Maybe there will be a few players that feel they can relate to the issue and decide to go through with it to feel closer to the character. But other than that, I don't understand why we got this choice or even had to see it. It has absolutely nothing to do with Mitch's growth and we never even talk to him about it. Father Judd gets shot and killed and we just move on back on the road without even once having a discussion with Mitch about Father Judd or our past. Already the game feels less about us setting our child up for his future and instead a showcase of a dying woman's past trauma and how it's coming back to haunt her in her final moments.

And it only gets worse from here. Those last two situations I can accept. But then, after an old man throws out racist remarks against Mitch at a gas station, Mitch pulls out our trusty rifle and fires it out of nowhere. Louise then takes the rifle and performs a stick up, given the choice to rob or run away. I chose to run away and later scolded Mitch that we were not in an action movie and to be more careful. This doesn't really matter since Louise has already set a car on fire and used a gun to threaten her family right before this, which is where Mitch is probably learning this, but I had no say in either of those. There's no nuance to her actions and Mitch isn't learning from them, he's just replicating them. Maybe that was the point, but in a game with nine endings I would have expected some form of genuine choice and consequence and not a linear story.

The final straw for me was when Mitch was suddenly bitten by a snake after wandering off. Louise is concerned of course and thankfully we'd accepted a tow beforehand from a nice man that takes us back to his house to his uncle. These two are Native Americans and one is a shaman that works with spirits. Okay, that's fine. Maybe we'll have a discussion with Mitch about other cultures. No, instead the shaman uses an herb to send us into the spirit realm with him to talk to our ancestor spirits and get advice and THEN he sacrifices himself and dies so that we can continue living.

Maybe this could be seen as Louise's spiritual awakening and the push to continue living for Mitch. Maybe it could have been used to symbolize her will to live and fight for her son. Instead, it was a real situation that happened that caused a very real death. This took me out of my immersion entirely. Every culture and religion is valid, but using a culture without exploring it in any way and explaining to us the intricacies of what the Shaman was doing, not making it a learning moment for Mitch, and then using it to create real life consequence just took this game from a realistic, grim tale to a fairytale with action sequences instead. I quit the game from there,

Overall, I think this game simply doesn't deliver on the premise it was promoted with. It's not a story of a woman preparing her son for the world. It's a story depicting a woman's tragic final moments in the most exciting, cruel ways it can and allows the player to play into any of that cruelness to balance out how cruel the world really is. I think that the developers heavily missed the mark here.

If you're interested at all to see my complete shock and eventual disappointment, as well as the amount of hope I had going into this game, you can see my vod here: Twitch Vod

Fun game for story gamers. I liked the choices because some of them were intense. A short 3 hour game with moments where you can tear up. Would recommend!

This is more of an interactive story than a game, there are occasional dialogue choices and a few quick time events but most of the time you just check through the story. Having said that it is a really interesting story and I was keen to find out how it ended. Whether I will go through it again to find the other 8 endings I am not sure. I finished it in 3 hours so it is a short but memorable experience.

Is this game made in google sketch up? its good tho

it's a really good game!! it's very fun and the options are very different.

This Game is so good
So I just finished my first play through and even though I feel I got a Fairly good ending It was so hard to play. By the last few chapters I was bawling my eyes out and I don't think I will be ready to play through again to unlock the other endings. Loved the story though and It was a great game. if it wasn't so heart-wrenching I could play this game through so many times without hesitation.

Crying really hard at this game, but it's amazing!

Great game so far, I've achieved one of the endings. I just hoped that there were more choices and options.

I have to say i really enjoyed this game, i wont babble on but i would say to anyone out there its well worth buying.

I really do like this game it touched up on a diverse family and the challenges that we can have today as well~ The story was bittersweet and the experience with the characters was really nice & can be emotional sometimes.

Amazing game, like for real, play it. You will not regret it.

bro i sat for 3 hours straight just playing this game. then i realized it has 8 other endings. i will play the rest.

Really enjoy this adventure of a game! Art style was really gorgeous and there was never a slow moment. Wish it wasn't so short because I was hooked from the start and with also that being said the price might be a wee bit high for the length of the game. As far as replay value I feel like I wouldn't want to go through it again to get other endings, would probably just end up watching a video it. But none the less great game! 8/10

I'm not crying, you're crying.

I first learned about this game, when I stumbled upon a pre-release trailer, and a playthrough of the first location. The premise of the story in itself is quite intriguing: A terminally-ill, single mom is looking for a future home for her 8-year old, mixed-race son, in racially-prejudiced 1960s America. Even though it's not a type of game I usually play, that short story introduction was enough to pique my interest. I've been waiting for the release ever since.

And boy, did it deliver! The story is an expertly-crafted rollercoaster of emotions, featuring a cast of well-written, genuine characters, and plenty of plot twists. It is clearly visible that the people behind this project are film industry veterans, and stories like this are their specialty. Over the 3.5h that the adventure lasted, I went through some emotions that I forgot even existed. Legend says Zuck learned how-to-human by playing it.

Highly recommend!

Best Month Ever is, for me, quite a mixed bag. To my knowledge, it's the first major video game release from Warsaw Film School, a cinematic arts college. The result, perhaps unsurprisingly, is most successful when it's being like a film, and least successful when it's being like a game.

The central premise of Best Month Ever is that you are a single mother Louise travelling across the rural 1960s US with your son Mitch. A number of significant events are encountered, and how you decide to behave as a parent will shape who your son becomes. Interactions are frequently violent, and cover a number of serious themes including sexual abuse and racism.

The writing, voice acting, and shots used throughout are really good. The characters are believable, and it makes sense that these formative experiences will affect Mitch in later life. There is a really nice touch where Louise will be reminded of scenes from her past via flashback, juxtaposing her formative experiences alongside her son's. The music and sound effects are subtle, but also very effective, helping the environments feel very real. In short, everything you might expect a film school to be good at, Best Month Ever smashes.

Sadly, much of the aspects that make this a game aren't done quite so well. Gameplay is reminiscent of Fahrenheit and the later Telltale games. Dialogue choices have an impact on your son's personality traits, there are lots of "click on the item to progress" style tasks, and quick time events. These last two types of interaction have no actual impact on the game, at all. When clicking on items to progress, there's often many objects on screen, but only a single one is even interactable, making any player interaction seem a bit redundant. With quicktime events, it's not like the story plays out differently if you mess up - you just have to redo the event.

The dialogue choices are really the main gameplay mechanic, and it's a good concept, but I don't think it's pulled off very successfully. Oftentimes it wasn't clear to me what the options even meant, as they can be reduced to single words, and sometimes I would pick an option and Louise's delivery didn't really match what I intended to get across. I played through the game trying to maximise Mitch's confidence and social skills, while minimising his respect for authority. I thought this would be an interesting path, but the result didn't really match what I'd expect from those traits (either good or bad) so that was disappointing.

Overall, I don't think Best Month Ever is a bad game, and I can easily imagine lots of people loving this game. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but none of it is really on the game side. I still enjoyed it enough to play through once, but found the drawbacks too frustrating to recommend it to others.

I actually discovered this game when I came across it on TikTok. The premise of the game excited me; seemed like it may be a great game with deep lessons and themes.

While at times, some of these lessons & themes come through; it falls flat of actually teaching. Perhaps it's my fault for having that expectation of the game, but that's how it was advertised on the video I saw. So I took off the blinders of what I expected and realized it wasn't that bad of a game... until the direction with the story just completely went off the rails and ruined any kind of immersion that I had built up after the first 2 or 3 chapters.

It seems the game was building up to more as an interactive story; but burst at the scenes with a bunch of off brand events that the game. I had finished the game with the #1 ending; but I don't think I could even consider playing through another playthrough.

At the end of the game; though it sounds like I may not have; I enjoyed the game/story for the most part; but for $15 (or was it more, I don't remember (or want to)) it is much to steep of a price to consider buying. If you can find on sale for $5; you've got something great. $10 if you're DYING to try it out... but the value is not there past that.

Mechanics are everything in a game like this and at every turn it felt like the mechanics were hindering the storytelling experience.

Everything here feels clunky. The pacing, the voice acting, and especially the controls.

I really wanted to like this game but I think this one is a skip unless you find it on sale. I don't think it was worth the $20 I paid for it sadly.

Great game, my first run I just picked what I would've picked if it was my own kid and got governor. the graphics are pretty good too for these types of games. Over a great game!

7/10. Good story, though sometimes confusing, but the characters have depth. Only gripe in the pacing, its more dialog than game play, so if you can't stand that don't get it;

Best Month Ever is one of those games that starts off strong, but then it gets hindered by its progression, things feel rushed and the choices you did make changes one line at the end of the game, voice acting also got little weak, if you want a story game made by a indie company, try Tell Me Why, its currently free for the month june

The story itself is interesting and overall pretty good. The ending though felt like it was rushed and doesn't feel very satisfying. Overall game would be better if more time was put into the later stages of the game.

I was really looking forward to this game, I played games that really succesfully manage to tell you a story, and feel you are part of a grerater overall theme, time and place. Suzerain, We, the revolution had this meshed really well with gameplay mechanics that where incorporated to the whole overall experience and feel. But this is, sadly, not the case at all. Its so devoid of any player imput and clearly a product of people who are really familliar with film, the lighting and the camera angles as well the color palet are really cinematographic, but it gets to the point where this hinders the game as game. Meaning, I rarely felt that my input was important, more like this characters already are who they are, and I could watch this with no need for interaction whatsoever, the QTEs and repetitive gameplay bits feel like if a film you where watching suddenly had a pause for a cel phone game in the middle, and that is sadly almost true, The team behind this tittle where really not getting a way to tell their story and make it the players. It feels just like if they had one way they wanted to show this narrative, and then said, and we can put a game thing here, and carry on with the script.

Then there is the second and probably what made me feel like this was a game that was bad. The themes the and the story the game is mostly doing all the heavy lifting is really... well... bad- The writting is terrible, the voice acting is pretty good, so sometimes it passes by and you wont realice how much the concept of being subtle or shocking is not there. It´s preachy and it makes this presumption of morality, and I never got the period was being in any way well porttrayed, the racism part was so incredibly bland and predictable that I was laughing when I was suppose to be feeling a scence of reprobation or indignation, I do trully not understand why a Studio set in a country with such a complex and messy history went to 60s America to show me a "so bad thats good" moral tale that I ended up watchingh it on youtube, all the twists and turns are as predictable as they are plain stereotipical, and they never even had the balls to go and be over the top and try to make it as safe and saniticed that I was like SAY THE N WORD ALREADY, and that is a weird thing to want. But this is because they where afraid american audiences would go insane and kill all of the studio if they went a little bit too far, even if the game is SUPER clear about what its suppopsed to portray, and I got it exactly to have the experience of dread, racism, cultural shock, and tragedy the promoting material says im in for.

But a first try, is more than most can say and my opinion is, the people who made this should play more games, the exaples I quoted at the beggining are great examples of what they should have tried, and maybe the 2nd time will be the charm, I recommend to watch a playthrough on utube, and Im looking forward to see a second game from this developers, and what lessons they got. I have a feeling this team has a great pótential, they just are a little afraid of going of their confort zone for telling a story, and if they do puzzzle how I will be the first to jump in glee.

Tnx.

5/10, still recommend it if you want an easy game with a good story to fly through
The game starts off strong but eventually loses the best part of it: storytelling. The ending felt super rushed compared to the beginning. The visuals were clunky sometimes and some dialogue options were confusing. The game style is not my favorite with constant clicking. Also, it's not really replayable since you have to do basically everything all over again to unlock every single ending.
However, the story was still intriguing and didn't pull from gut punching moments. The voice acting was amazing and your choices really do influence the story and the kid you're raising. It was easy to fly through, I finished it within 4 hours except the all ending achievement, which could both be positive and negative.

Really good game. Point and click sucks tho.

It feels like they tried their best in the beginning, only to end up changing a little dialogue nine times. The rest stays the same. It's still good, but too superficial.