Asphyxia
According to the Steam page, the game is described as "Samantha and Lillian are best friends. At least, they were, until everything fell apart. Now, Samantha has a day to repair their relationship - but is it already too late?" And that is, indeed, the main gist of the game. It's a visual novel in which you play as a girl who is trying to repair her fractured relationship with another girl who used to be her best friend.
However, as you play the game, you may start to notice things, mainly the names of the characters. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Southey. De Quincey. Byron. Shelley. And so on. So... yeah. In this game, you are actually playing through a (very) loose reenactment of the lives of gender-flipped English Romantic poets from the 18th and 19th centuries, except set in modern times.
When you finish the game once, it explicitly tells you this in the "Extras" section. "I hope you don't feel too cheated to learn that this is an 'edutainment' game disguised as a girls' love story~ ❤" Also, there are biographies for each of the poets/authors upon which the main characters in the game are based, and if you didn't already know the histories of these people, then you can read it there, from which you learn that there is pretty much no true happy ending for any of these characters from the game itself, if you assume that their subsequent lives mirror those of the real people on which they are based.
So, as for the game itself... it's a visual novel, like many others that exist on Steam (though some of the games that are tagged as "visual novel" on Steam aren't actually true visual novels, at least not in my opinion). However, I found this one somewhat more interesting due to the art style, which is more like Victorian dolls than the typical anime/manga style that you see in most other VNs. The music is pretty good as well. There are four endings in all, only two of which could even remotely be considered "good" endings (and, as I said above, even those are overshadowed by the actual history of the real life people on which the characters are based). Some mature subject matter, drinking, drug use, and that sort of thing, is discussed (but not depicted) so be warned, if you're not into that sort of thing. Though there are a few lighter moments here and there, the overall tone of the game is pretty dark and moody, which is fairly appropriate, I think.
All in all, it was a pretty decent use of the six hours or so it took me to get all of the endings. I'd recommend it.
Oh, and as mentioned here, there is another, free game made by the creator of Asphyxia, which features the two main characters from Asphyxia, if you wanted to take a look at that as well. I haven't (yet) played it myself, though.
However, as you play the game, you may start to notice things, mainly the names of the characters. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Southey. De Quincey. Byron. Shelley. And so on. So... yeah. In this game, you are actually playing through a (very) loose reenactment of the lives of gender-flipped English Romantic poets from the 18th and 19th centuries, except set in modern times.
When you finish the game once, it explicitly tells you this in the "Extras" section. "I hope you don't feel too cheated to learn that this is an 'edutainment' game disguised as a girls' love story~ ❤" Also, there are biographies for each of the poets/authors upon which the main characters in the game are based, and if you didn't already know the histories of these people, then you can read it there, from which you learn that there is pretty much no true happy ending for any of these characters from the game itself, if you assume that their subsequent lives mirror those of the real people on which they are based.
So, as for the game itself... it's a visual novel, like many others that exist on Steam (though some of the games that are tagged as "visual novel" on Steam aren't actually true visual novels, at least not in my opinion). However, I found this one somewhat more interesting due to the art style, which is more like Victorian dolls than the typical anime/manga style that you see in most other VNs. The music is pretty good as well. There are four endings in all, only two of which could even remotely be considered "good" endings (and, as I said above, even those are overshadowed by the actual history of the real life people on which the characters are based). Some mature subject matter, drinking, drug use, and that sort of thing, is discussed (but not depicted) so be warned, if you're not into that sort of thing. Though there are a few lighter moments here and there, the overall tone of the game is pretty dark and moody, which is fairly appropriate, I think.
All in all, it was a pretty decent use of the six hours or so it took me to get all of the endings. I'd recommend it.
Oh, and as mentioned here, there is another, free game made by the creator of Asphyxia, which features the two main characters from Asphyxia, if you wanted to take a look at that as well. I haven't (yet) played it myself, though.