This game is the epitome of the term "choose your own adventure." The player chooses different characters to play, with unique dialogue options. All choices are extremely important since hearing all branches of conversation can lead you to many different endings. Each playthrough feels completely different from another, yet they still manage to connect together in a fantastic way making for an epic finale that both confuses and delights players in equal measure.
Scarlet Nexus begins in what I assume is the future with our main character waking up on a submarine filled with other survivors. They're traveling through uncharted waters in order to find the Red Queen named Scarlet Nexus. That's when she takes over your screen with her red eyes and crisp voice explaining how she can save you from the horrible thing that's been happening to humanity. The story was a little hard to follow since it jumps around a lot and is very confusing, but I feel like that just comes with the territory of being a choose your own adventure game. You can't have everything laid out for you because then there's no fun in making choices!
This game is meant to be played multiple times so you can see all of the different endings. Each playthrough offers about an hour of gameplay depending on how much reading you do and how fast you make your decisions. I played through this entire game in one sitting because I couldn't put it down! The best part about this though is that if you don't like your choices and want to change them, you can just go back and play again. I know that's not normally an option with these types of games, so it was a welcome surprise.
The game itself is very simple-looking with the background being just one color (red in this case) and white writing for dialogue. This works really well since it makes the proceedings look serious instead of cartoony, which is nice considering how often people are dying in this game! It can be hard to read sometimes though because all the text looks similar so if I hadn't played this game before or knew what to expect, I'd probably get lost in reading subtitles pretty quickly.
My favorite thing about Scarlet Nexus was definitely the fact that each ending was so different. Because you have to play the game several times to see every ending, it becomes impossible to predict what will happen next since each playthrough is so unique. This makes for a fantastic story-telling experience where you never know what could be around the corner!
I give Scarlet Nexus 4/5 stars because while the gameplay is amazing and refreshing, the graphics are simple and aren't anything special. It's easy enough to look past this though when reading through everything that happens throughout your multiple playthroughs!
