Imagine having your entire life ruined by one man. Imagine having this hatred grow so much that you just have to go and kill him. That is the situation that Red is in, and the situation that you will have to work your way through in Dear RED.
It’s hard to figure out what to say about Dear RED other than it is exceptionally short. The game features a multitude of endings (somewhere around 17), however each playthrough of the game is probably only going to last you 30 seconds – 5 minutes. This really isn’t very long, especially considering the price of the game. It’s very likely that the plot will confuse you too, even when you go down the real path.
One of the scariest aspects of Dear RED is Red’s character portrait, and I don’t mean this in a “scary good” sort of way. Any time you see her portrait in dialogue boxes when it’s not on top of a black screen, you are going to be terrified by how she looks. Her eyes look extremely off from how human eyes should actually look.
There are some very minor bits of voice acting present. Supposedly there was some in the intro but I never heard it and used the save prompt when I had the ability so that I could skip going through the intro over and over again. When you’re on the real path, you’ll hear “Murderer” crying after what happens in that path.
Speaking of “Murderer”, let’s talk about this for a moment. The man you are getting your revenge on is actually named Murderer. While he’s talking with his daughter, you’ll only ever see his dialogue boxes with that name. It’s a little bit off putting, and it would have been nice to see that he actually, well, had a name instead of just being called “Murderer” the whole game.
My biggest issue with Dear RED is the price for how little game you are actually getting. At $3, you are only going to be playing this for around 30-40 minutes for all endings. Something this short would be much more appropriately priced at $1 or so. Thankfully I was able to get the game within a bundle, else I would have probably waited a long time for it to go on sale for a much more reasonable price. On top of the short length, the story hardly makes any sense, and it can get extremely tedious going through even trying to get all of the endings. I do hope that maybe the developer can try and clean this up some to make it make some more sense, possibly add achievements, and get the price to be a bit lower for how long it is. At the current price for the amount of content, I just cannot recommend this game at all.
Dear RED Review Score
1.5/5
