7 Months of Service
We can recall the projects by SerialNumberComics (Jen's Dilemma, FOTM, Tangled Up). The peculiarity of these games is that it is quite difficult to complete them even with the walkthrough. A very typical example is Tangled Up, even with a detailed walkthrough in front of my eyes, I couldn't complete this game. I do not know how to characterize this developer. Perhaps he enjoys deliberately mocking the public, who knows? There was another VN/game - Ring of Lust, the champion in the number of softlocks per unit of playing time, they occurred even when following the walkthrough carefully, as it turned out later, he made some mistakes in the code. I don't know how this epic ended, but at some point I just stopped following this game.Another example, however, is a game, not a VN, Straitened Times. A significant part of the plot episodes in it are triggered by RNG, i.e. writing a walkthrough for this game is a hopeless task, there were attempts, but they all failed. But the game has good gameplay and you can complete it if you have strong nerves and stoic patience.- crookedness is a bit harsh. IMO things like that are mostly tied to inexperience or very particular vision. Most of (a)VN's i played are impassable because... they are simply never finished.
But on more serious note, most of "modern" (a)VNS are what i call "hidden kinetic", in other words they may present you with some choices, but those choices at best affect what scenes you will see and thats it. In comparison to classic japanese (a)VNS that had actual routes and multiple different ending this is a gigantic simplification.
As for "impassable" part... i have to disagree here too. There are really no such thing in VN's. As even bad ending is an ending. The whole gameplay of any proper VN ( not kinetic ones ) is built around finding all available content in the game. Which obviously includes "bad endings".
Now the problem with some VN's ( not just A type ), is that their authors either inexperienced or have really weird and particular vision... I can give you few examples for non (a)VN's. Untale - a VN about prince inheriting a throne during "time of troubles", in this game any attempt to hold on to power will lead you to bad end. So its variation comes down to a single choice - hold to crown and you will get bad end no matter what. Is that really a crookedness? Or just inexperionce/really particular vision of dev? Id say its second. Other example - Everlasting Summer. A game about a modern russian b-tard isekaied to soviet era summer camp. The game has quite few different routes and many endings... but "good" variations of those are hidden behind so convoluted choices, that they are not realistically achievable without either walktrough or really meticulous trying-every-possible-choice-combination type of play. And again same question - is that a sign of crookedness or just inexperience/really particular vision behind project? Frankly, i never in my life seen a VN that i would have called to be made by a crook. Unless we count modern crowdfunded indie AVNS entering milk mode.
