I really liked the story to Serena and thought it had some good twists but I really disliked the game play. It all takes place in one room and you basically find items you can click on that will reveal story details and allow you to click on other items. My issue is that after you are done all of them there will be subsequent details available from some of the other items but you never know which one so you have to go clicking on them all to see what has new info. There are no clues given nor is there any real logical reason that these items now have new info as they aren’t referenced by any of the preceding dialogue. Once you have clicked on enough of them enough times the game allows you to open certain things like an armoire and a chest. One again there is no reason why you couldn’t open them before as none of the dialogue explains why you can suddenly do these things. There are no puzzles or conversation choices or anything else at all to do except click on random items and try to progress the story. I think the game would have worked out better as a kinetic visual novel than what we got. The voice acting is alright but nothing special. The graphics are much the same. I wouldn’t call them bad but they didn’t wow me at all even taking into account the release date of the game.
I played Serena on Linux. It never crashed and I didn’t notice any bugs or glitches. I was really disappointed in the game when it came to the nitty gritty. There are no options at all, not for sound or graphics or controls or anything else. In fact unlike most games where pressing the “Esc” key brings up a menu screen where you can choose various options, in Serena pressing “Esc” closes the game. This is an even bigger issue when you realize there is no save option. This is a short game but the fact that pressing a key that in any other game would be normal will now exit your game without any option to save is just plain stupid design. Alt-Tab works. Performance was fantastic but given the visual quality I wasn’t shocked. The game has built in V-sync as it respected my 144 Hz monitor.
Graphics Engine: Dagon Engine
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 367 MB
GPU Usage: 0-77 %
VRAM Usage: 679-846 MB
CPU Usage: 7-18 %
RAM Usage: 2.6-2.8 GB
Frame Rate: 143-144 FPS
The great story and free price tag didn’t make up for the annoying game play or the terrible design choices. Overall there are much better out there even for free games. I finished Serena in forty three minutes.
My score: 5.5/10
My System:
AMD FX-9590 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 22.1.3 | Manjaro 21.3.4 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.18.12-3-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz