Celebrate the holidays with strangers
Not Another Advent Story, Episode 1 is a free simulation video game wherein you experience Christmas in a more meaningful way with Christianity. A collaborative project between Ludogood and the Checkpoint Church, this story-rich visual novel is an episodic interactive fiction game made using Twine.
Similar to Wednesday and ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS, Not Another Advent Story, Episode 1 offers a mostly text-based gameplay experience—quite like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game. You can easily play this on your browser. Take note, however, that the episodes are played separately, and continuing your save file will require your special code.
Miracles can still happen
In Not Another Advent Story, Episode 1 you play as a run-of-the-mill young person who’s not too religious but strives to go to their local church every Christmas Eve just to uphold the family tradition. Since you live alone, you can be on time or whatnot but whatever the case, the story will always push for you to attend Christmas Mass. It can get pretty lonely during the holidays, though.
Thus, you are also given the choice to change up your plans and try to hang out with other people for Christmas. Episode 1 highlights the start of your trip to church and you will encounter several roadblocks and forked paths that would influence your night. It’s pretty short and the end credits will give you a random code to let you access your save file on the next episode.
Gameplay-wise, the controls are pretty easy since you’ll just be clicking on highlighted words on the screen. The main draw of the game is the multiple choices you can take to unlock several endings. However, the game has separate episodes—released over the four weeks of Advent—and to access the next one, you either need to visit its appropriate webpage or download it.
Not very intuitive with its episodes
All in all, Not Another Advent Story, Episode 1 is a lovely little Christmas-themed game that you can finish in one sitting. It has relatable and relevant storytelling and it’s pretty easy to play. However, if you downloaded the first episode, you need to get the other episodes separately to continue. If you don’t mind playing again, though, you can simply start with Not Another Advent Story (Complete Collection).
