If you want to get a great deal from this post then you
have to apply such techniques to your won weblog.

Great weblog here! Additionally your website so much up very
fast! What host are you the use of? Can I get your associate hyperlink for your host?
I desire my website loaded up as fast as yours lol

Its a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Remeber those from Scholatics books in second grade. Cute graphics and nice music. It has limited replay value though once you've found 'the best' ending.

BTW: these kind of title were quite popular in early 80's. It was sort of the in-between step between Kings Quest and Legend of Zelda. These games are easy to program and jam out quick.

I wonder if this will be the last game offering in August??!!

Is there any way that the downloads could remain active until the new games show up? I think that way more people would be able to enjoy these great free games.

I did the game but found their was way to much dialog in it.Sorry but it wasn't much of an adventure to me.I didn't like this one very much but normally i love adventure games,I especially liked Siberia.& siberia 2.I hope some time I will see a good adventure game from GGOTD.Thanks GGOTD for the game though.

This sort of game is very popular in Japan, probably more popular than any other kind of game.

The game first loaded as too big for my screen (couldn't read the instrctions) fixed itself next time up...but none of the side games will play. Any ideas? Thanks.

Yeah, this wasn't interesting at all. The concept was different, and might have been enjoyable had there been any point to it besides which immoral act to perform next. The only subject (and apparently only goal) was who is Heileen going to sleep with? The constant themes of homosexuality and rape and abuse makes this more like a visual soap opera than a game.

No responsible parent would consider allowing their children to play this game, especially teenaged ones. After the lesbian kiss came out of nowhere, it was clear this game was just stupid. Free or not, this was stupid.

LSATeacher: what you think it means:
"The game contains mild language and has sexual themes. This game is intended for players age 14 and up."

If you don't read what's written on websites, sorry but is your fault!

I did not like this at all. How can you even call this a game. It is not a game. It is a book to read with pictures to go along with it. I uninstalled it after 2 chapters. It is good reading for an 8 year but for me NOOO.

didn't like this at all... it went from the 'friend' ogling the men on the ship to a homosexual situation with Heileeen!! :-0 I WAS NOT expecting that! I am glad I had a little game play before my daughter (16) got to it. I have uninstalled it. I give this a MAJOR THUMBS DOWN!! I think the creators should have divulged certain information so ppl who would be/could be/will be offended by such content wouldn't have to find out the hard way!

This game is entertaining for a few hours. It would make an okay free game but it's not worth any money. It's too bland, short, and unrealistic. If you really want that visual novel experience hold onto your money and save it for when a better one comes out.

Good Day whiterabbit, Just wanted to say thanks for all you do.
I was wondering is you know of any free,or cheap shooters games. I just got done with area 51,well had to leave it alone for awhile..Them little aliens.mmmmm I do Appriciate your time and have a Wonderful Day. Bella

I'm a fan of those games. I recommend you check the more recent games like Bionic Heart. Those are really pro, fully voiced, and rather unique. Not like those crappy HO/match3 games... :)

How annoying! I downloaded the game - but when I went to install it it said that because I didn't install it on the same day that I'd downloaded it, and the free day was over, it wouldn't let me install.

I wish that you'd said that in the introduction.

Well, I guess there is no support, and I might as well delete this.

Wonder when there will be another giveaway that actually works/that I can use.

Hi Derek, Half Life Coast to Coast is only free if you have a ATI or NVidia graphics card. Otherwise you have to pay for it. However, that said, the offer is not a permanent one. I'll have to recheck to see whether the original offer has changed; though yesterday it was still valid (I got my free copy back in April).

To Watcher, Thank you for a very thoughtful review of this game. It leaves me wondering whether there are many Japanese community members here. If such visual novels are so popular there I would have thought we would have seen at least a few comments. Then again, if this type of 'game' is so popular, this one may seem rather rushed off the presses.

regards

Whiterabbit.

To whiterabbit aka Stephen, what a rip off.... I went to site and they want me to pay for Half-Life 2: Lost Coast.

Oops, I missed it. Heileen has 3 different endings. Hope the other two are better.

My impressions: looking on their website it's clear that game is manga like dating sim. I.E., it seems to be more preoccupied with sex and love life than anything else. In fact, the one ending I saw - maybe the only one - is more concerned with the outcome of the character's love lives than their fate.

Also, you pretty much have to play the game, not play as the character. I played through one scenario trying to make the logical choices for Heileen's character and scored 18 out of 40. Not that I'm complaining, but you have to concentrate on completing the quests, even if you think the actions are something Heileen would never do. Apparently, the quests, not anything with the overall outcome of the game, are the only way to score. Which kind of makes the outcome pointless, even it SHOULD be the point. Also, I don't really see much of how to determine where the quests are. Unless, possibly, Heileen goes completely out of character and does the boldest or most thoughtless thing every time! But that's just a guess. From my point of view, you basically stumble upon your scoring chances. Also, the voyage is pretty much trivial. Maybe it's hidden in there, but there's more than one logical at sea adventure that the authors seem to not have considered that would be more exciting than who was in "love" with who.

That pretty much frames my take on this game. This is somewhat of a harelequin romance. However, you can either argue that 17th century morals were a lot more "earthy", which is reasonable, or that this is manga influenced in it's treatment of women. I suspect the latter. And that cuts down on the appeal for me. Your supposed to be playing a 17 century British girl, but all the women seem if they were written by someone writing for learing Japanese school boys. Maybe that's their market.

You have to have a certain of amount "game" play to make a "game" interesting. Maybe, I just don't get this type of game, but why not just write a manga instead. You have to wade through a lot of "romance" before you get to anything that's mentally challenging or that's dramatically interesting beyond sex talk. If it was me, I'd significantly expand this game - and charge more - like offering more logical typical sea occurences, or adding more levels, like a "New World" adventure. Or are they saving that for a sequel?

Which makes me suspect the real problem is that these games from Tycoon are just dashed off. Case in point: the cutout of the character often has the wrong facial expession. The main characters are often frowning when they should be smiling and vice versa, or even crying for no reason. And the character of Lola is manga dressed. No woman in the 17th century would go on a ship or even dress like that. A couple of other laughers: the cook looks like a young Chef Boyardee, or for our non-American friends - he dresses like a Cordon Bleu dropout. In the 17th century! And the dining hall on this 17th century sized ship it large enough to be on a cruise ship.

Tech. note: though it installs a desktop icon and start menu entries and has some reg entries and some files, at least in Vista, created outside it's folder, I was slightly surprised to find out it's portable.

Bottom line, since I have the files I won't uninstall right away, but I'm not sure if I'll play again. As soon as I need space, there gone. Sorry Tycoon, maybe I just don't get it, but my final impression: more of a sex obsessed manga than a game.

LOL - I think I found a new time-waster,
at least for a while :).

@ NotABot55 & @ J :
Thanks for the links.

Looked like an interesting diversion. But like #22, also only have part of the screen -- with only part of the play and options buttons showing. How to play window cut off and only shows "How to play" title. Did manage to click around and get into full screen mode but that put 3 overlapping columns of menu on screen and they flipped continually. Unable to click exit. Gets a thumbs down for not playing nice with video card

caleb - lol. it's not an educational game at all. some people actually enjoy reading. :) if you don't, then no, this is not the game for you! go play something else.

I don't feel this is qualified to be called a game. It's just "a book on disk". If any of you have young kids please check it out before you let them "play" it. In my opinion it's just plain sleezy and disgusting. The only thing nice about it is the music.

Thanks for trying something different, guys, but this one's a loser for me, I'm dumping it.

I like this game. Thanks GAOTD!

To those denigrating this game because it's not what the Anglo-Saxon world is used to or saying you can't see much of a market for it, to be honest, I also drew the latter conclusion.

BUT, check out this quote from the wikipedia article that Binky was nice enough to link:
"Visual novels and ADVs are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released."

Wow! Never would have thought that! And remember, GOTD is a worldwide project. So, please don't fault GOTD because it tries to keep variety in the giveaways. "One man's poison is another man's passion." Maybe some of our Japanese guests are happily downloading as you read this. Getting ready to install and test, myself.

Wow. Finally a Western company tries the dating sim market.
This is a style of gave extremely popular in Japan where it has been around for years. Some are exceedingly interactive and complex others pretty basic. Also some are for children and others are solid XXX.

this game is the most boering thing i have ever played. now granted the people who made this are trying to make a educational game, but they failed. there is no action. no suspnece. its just all reading with pictures...a picture book if u will. i give this game a 2 out of 10

It's been awhile since there has been a game on here that I don't already have or has intrigued me enough to download it. I haven't tried it but some of the games advertisements off to the side also look very interesting. Perhaps you could share more games that are similiar.

How is this install supposed to work, all I got in the program directory is a lot of .py and .$$A files (looks like python and temp files)?

Vista HP 32bit.

It's pouring cats and dogs, plus it's muggy as a swamp in my little part of the world. Thanks GAOTD, this was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Dare I say it? I love to read! Just as you have fans of TMs and shooters, you have fans of Sci-fi and Mystery. So seperately this game type numbers may not be huge but together they're pretty nice. No one has ever given this type of game, one handle that's stuck.

Thanks #30 Binky, haven't seen this list before. Hats off to you and your very few mistakes! If you'd like people to think it's your first language, you should make more mistakes!

Well, finally something that's not another match-3, racing, or shooting game! Maybe we'll see KQ: The Silver Lining on GGotD or another one of Tycoon Games' offerings in the near future?

Just to remind the haters on this board, "gameplay" is a very fluid concept. One would not expect C&C to play like Sudoku, would they? So what if this game is mostly pretty visuals and a novel's worth of text... and if you still can't understand that, well, there are plenty of other fish that wear out your WASD keys, dontchaknow!

Sorry about that. For those that liked Heileen, http://renai.us has more to sate your appetite....

Oh wow, a visual novel? I normally wouldn't put them in the 'game' category considering how little interaction there usually is in these, apart from clicking next and perhaps making a few choices to get different endings. Now, that being said, I love visual novels and think they're great for getting kids and teens to read more, since there's a fair amount of reading comprehension involved.

Comparing this to other VNs I've played through: I think the character designs are better than most free VNs and maybe even some non-free ones (YMMV, as I don't like the giant-eyed preteen anime girl VNs too much), but the background images could use a little work. I understand that backgrounds take a backseat to the character images, but when a background is shoddy, it stands out regardless. (Check out the pic of the Captain and the cat for an example -- that background looks like it was thrown together in two minutes.) The text is okay, though I'd have chosen a different font. The text box is simple and doesn't match the choice boxes. I'd have gone with one style or the other and kept it all the way through.

For anyone interested in seeing how deceptively easy it is to build a visual novel, see:

Novelty: http://www.visualnovelty.com/index.html
Ren'Py: http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page
Blade: http://www.bladeengine.com/

This game is the biggest bag of rubbish I think I have ever experienced. Clicking continuously, boring as hell. No gameplay at all, no action, time for bed, zzzzzzzzzzz

Got interested because I didn't know this kind of game. Found a lot of information on the internet by searching for "visual novel game"; for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel

Here a review on this game Heileen: http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comment/gamertell-review-heileen-for-pc1/

I think I skip this one and are going to look for a better free one.

There seems to be many free games of this kind; here are some listed: http://shii.org/translate/

{I hope I didn't made too many language mistakes for this isn't my birth language)

I'm disappointed it won't work on my netbook (1024x600). Tried to change game to window, but got error message that it needed 1024x768 screen resolution (which was nice since I knew I didn't need to play around with it any longer). Will try on my desktop, but would have liked to take along for my long boring plane ride tomorrow - since it sounds like an interactive book.

This got my interest because I didn't know this gametype. So I searched on the internet: Visual novel game; there is a lot of information. Here for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel

Here a review about this game Heileen:
http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comment/gamertell-review-heileen-for-pc1/

Also found out that there are some free games; for who is interested, here is a kind of list: http://shii.org/translate/

(I hope I didn't made too many language mistakes, because this isn't my birth language)

Not a very exciting game, but it was free, so can't complain..
Installed, and worked just fine on my windows xp pro settings..

Probably one of the most boring games ever given away on this site. I got tired of reading and waiting for actual game play. Yawn

the style is most popular with anime fans and people who enjoy romances and adventure, not the mainstream game market. there are many different types of games and many different types of game fans after all.

virginia - try Bionic Heart, that one has voice acting.

@20 - You can't be that old, unless you're calling me old, which I am not. I remember the XT and Apple IIe days - Oregon Trail was one of my Favorite games.

However, nowadays I do not think this style of game has much of a draw. I could be wrong, but it seems that the text adventure days are long gone.

whiterabbit aka Stephen - thank you for writing reviews for every game I always read what you think about them before deciding to download. You are very informative. Thanks again

intresting game, would be nicer if there was audio of the voices

I installed and played. The installation went very smooth. The instructions page(very little needed) was accurate and complete. The game play was fast and the images are nice. Clicking through the dialog and being able to scroll back are 2 great features. You have made a good product.....still unsure of the target group.

On my UMPC's 1024*600 screen, the game does not go fullscreen (the bottom quarter of the screen still has the desktop showing). Shame since this would be a very UMPC friendly game. Since the res of the game is 1024*768 it probably won't work anyway though.

This is quite unlike any other game I have tried. Thank you, GAOTD for bringing us new experiences.

Most of you are not as old as I am and don't remember the XT and apple 2e days (That was XT not XP). This type of game was popular when our graphics cards were only good for text. The graphics, content, and speed of this game are superior. Yet today this would be a hard sell with out he action. The "sexual themes" label might generate interest.....but I don't think enough for a profit. It would need to be all "Adult" or all "Educational" to get a larger group willing to buy.
I have enjoyed these type of games.....but I'm old.

I won't download this, but would be very interested what this "sexual themes" actually is... :-)

The themes relate to parts of the story line where Heileen is involved in Romance, plus some of the images may be deemed inappropriate for younger children by some parents.

save game is disabled?!!!

Note from Moderator:

I think you may have to progress to the end of a chapter to be able to save. I had no problems saving.