Masq

By: Derek Yu

On: July 5th, 2007

Masq is a visual novel game that puts you at the head of a fashion design company that needs money to advertise its new line of clothing. A line of clothing that apparently combines the chic of being a clown with the elegance of practically being nude!

I have very little experience with visual novels, but I have plenty of experience with Choose Your Own Adventure books (I once famously tried to do a book report on one in the third grade). Masq is very much like a baudy, hardboiled CYOA book, and as such, it suffers from the same problems. Namely, that the consequences of your actions feel very arbitrary and also, in order to see all the possible outcomes you have to go through the same scenes and choices over and over again.

The game actually is quite fun, though, and it’s easy to get caught up in the story and characters. It’s also very fast-paced, often moving forward if you take too long to respond – this definitely alleviates some of the repetitiveness. It’s just not the kind of emotional thrillride that it is touted as on its webpage.

Update: According to the author, the game must be played online, which is a fallout from when it would track your “lives” and charge for more. Now, however, the game is completely free to play.