Sometimes when considering released titles I get for review, I’m forced to begin to grapple with the question of what constitutes a game. Especially where a heavy narrative emphasis is involved, I’ll concede that it’s possible for traditional gameplay elements of action or even extensive interaction can be more limited, but surely there still needs to be some sort of standard to consider. While I usually trip on this sort of thinking with interactive digital novels, in the case of Decollate Decoration it lacks the depth and breadth of any such distinction, so in my mind that makes some of my issues with it more concerning.

While it tries to bill itself as a visual novel, at best I’d contend that instead it’s more of a digital short story, with a typical full runthrough taking perhaps 15 to 20 minutes. While it at least doesn’t fall into the trap of a game featuring never-ending walls of text to read through, it would have been nice to at least dig far deeper than the game’s pretty shallow opening where it explains aspects of your current situation. So you’re a ghost who is trying to get the attention of her still-living boyfriend, but to what realistic end? Without understanding the nature of the relationship or having any investment whatsoever in either your character or her boyfriend, let alone the deeper nature of their love story, what is the motivation here to see through something you don’t particularly understand in the first place?

What’s worse is that your options for interacting, which are limited to once a day over a pretty short number of weeks before the game is forced to end, are also extremely limited. Without any direct means of communication you’re left to make a best effort by attempting to talk to him, come to him in his dreams, curse him, or act out like a poltergeist. Each has their own little pretty repetitive animation, and the only way to reach each of the game’s pretty limited 6 potential endings is by trial-and-erroring your way through divining what combination of these actions, in what order, will give you a different result. While most narratives out there may not share this title’s odd sensibilities, the lack of depth in both the story and the gameplay itself make this very difficult to suggest.