1f y0u're a gh0st ca11 me here!

So I recently finished (and I have no shame in admitting that I copied this from steam) “1f y0u’re a gh0st ca11 me here!” which is a really short VN with a pretty fun gameplay element. Normally I start these little posts off with how I discovered this small indie game but honestly, I have no idea how I discovered this one. I just remember picking it up on a sale but I don’t remember why I wishlisted it, but regardless I’m glad I did!

It’s really short and it basically follows our main character, Vanitas who is a ghost that starts a new job as a call center technician. At the call center, you’re expected to route calls from new ghosts in the overworld to the relevant service, whether that’s police, location, or medical. Due to the number of calls, you’re often juggling multiple calls at the same time which leads to some really frantic gameplay moments of trying to read multiple conversations at once and figuring out the right places to direct them.

The gameplay is honestly… pretty fun haha. I liked the multitasking and because each gameplay segment wasn’t too long, it never felt like a huge drain. I also appreciated it being relatively easy to backtrack/retry them so it wasn’t a huge hassle even if I did mess up.

One downside technically speaking is that I felt the text speed was a little slow in English, I was clicking pretty constantly to advance dialogue and I think this is mainly in part due to how clicking only advances text to end of line, not end of sentence. So if a sentence was four lines, you’d have to click four times to get to the end of the sentence.

Now, beyond that though, what I really loved about the game were the characters and the art! There’s really only five characters, and each of them is very distinct from one another. Their conversations and dynamics are fun, and I really appreciated the little “side” stories.

Vanitas, the main character I in particular liked her attitude towards work. Her being someone looking for a place she belongs after the incident and finding it was really endearing to me. That combined with her being a former maid. I’ll admit my opinion of her went up after that (I’m a simple person, I like maids).

And Carpe also has a cute character arc with becoming more comfortable around everyone and her dreams/goals. What I really liked about Carpe was her cute sprites and her dynamic with Vanitas (For a short VN my mind went to many places… perhaps a fic is in order haha…).

Memento and Ars’ dynamics were also really fun and I enjoyed both of them bickering and arguing with each other. I liked Ars’ journey for innovation, as well as Memento’s concerns about how her innovation might render her career pointless. Their arguments and the discussion around it felt pretty accurate to a lot of real world technologies and advancements.

Ultimately, if there was one “issue” I had with this VN, is that I felt it was too short! I loved the characters and would greatly LOVE more with them! As I’m writing this, I’m actually struggling to clear the hundred call run (my poor short term memory) because there is one little bit of dialogue locked behind it (got as close as 95 once). I’d really recommend this game, it’s cheap, short, and a lot of fun and filled with cute and charming characters!