A beautiful mix of Visual Novel and Resource Management, GIRLS MADE PUDDING tells a heartfelt post-apocalyptic story. It’s unique, well-written, and clearly made with a lot of passion, and I adored every minute of it. Story and Setting The world has all but ended. After humanity encountered a disease that spread via eyesight, they developed and launched a satellite to intercept the imperceptible waves of information that are transmitted via looking at the world; however, with horrendous consequences that only had become apparent once it was too late to stop them: Namely, people had started to disappear. Specifically, people disappeared when not looking at each other, though it is a bit more complex than just that. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3762761804 GMP follows two surviving girls in a world that is almost entirely abandoned, approximately six months after these disappearances started. One of them, Nikomi, a catgirl cook at a local café, and the other, Sumibi, a regular high schooler who frequented it. This doesn’t mean that they are the only people around, and over the course of its roughly five-hour story, players get to encounter two more characters, which illuminate the mystery behind what is going on: Why everyone has disappeared, what these disappearances imply, and how to technically stop it—but none of this is too relevant for the two main characters, who are simply trying to find comfort in a dead world between each other. Traveling on a bike and trying to keep themselves focused with a goal just barely out of reach: Recreating the favorite pudding of Sumibi from when the café still existed. Structurally, GMP is split into three chapters, which are characterized by their meetings with the other aforementioned characters. Within each chapter, players can pick and choose stories to follow via cooking meals. For example, the pair may meet a character, and during their introduction, they may note various terms players can follow up on. They may tell you about their childhood, they may talk about the pandemic that started the disappearances, and maybe they'll talk about their own current plans. All of these three, as an example, could then represent stories players can follow up on, sort of like an RPG quest, by cooking the meal specified via the story tracker on your UI. “Stories”, here, refers to simply chatting between characters with very rare dialogue options. GMP is a short game and nevertheless manages to do quite a lot in those five hours. In particular, I just found the worldbuilding surprisingly compelling. And the game just really nails this melancholic atmosphere in an equally unique setup for an apocalyptic setting. It is something that has an actual subgenre term for in Japanese media as Mono no aware , an appreciation of the transient nature of life, and is an incredibly interesting way to represent a setting like this. Gameplay The most important thing to note about GMP is that it is mainly a Visual Novel. The extreme majority of your playtime will be spent simply reading conversations as you follow the roads on your bike, and even this driving can be almost automated. Apart from your driving, players need to manage three stats: Hunger, Energy, and Sanity, which are used to solve encounters on the road, such as a wild animal blocking your way, or for scavenging supplies. This may sound like GMP is, in part, a survival game, but it is not and could not be further from one. None of these three bars are actually tied to fail states and will simply force the day to roll over if you manage to completely exhaust any of them. Similarly, the game tasks you to find shelter before nightfall but, likewise, does not tie this to any palpable punishments. Effectively, this means that managing these three bars is almost solely an immersive element for the story. This unimportance is further reinforced by the player being allowed to completely turn such things off via difficulty settings. A better way to look at these is not as a means of a genuine gameplay element but as a way to make the VN storytelling more engaging to the player over the course of its runtime. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3762761625 Your inventory management and your cooking is a bit more involved. While you cannot strictly fail and die due to hunger or exhaustion, you still want to manage your gauges to keep going with your current day and finish out the available stories. All three bars can be restored by cooking food, which you will be constantly doing to advance the story, which also means that you are constantly scavenging buildings and picking up items on the road and from events to find the exact ingredients you want while simultaneously listening to the dialogue. The game actually also skews your pickups towards whatever you need for your currently available quests, meaning that you will never need to wait for lucky pick-ups for some obscure recipe to continue any of your stories. This is a surprisingly intuitive push-and-pull that works to keep you more engaged than if you were truly just reading the text on screen, as you are genuinely planning ahead on what supplies you will need next even without the threat of a game over looming over your head. Virtually all gameplay is kept to be very unintrusive and is designed in a way that you can effortlessly follow the text on screen first and foremost. Graphics and Sound GMP isn’t exactly a game that I would call pretty. While I do really enjoy the character artwork, the environments and actual character models are quite lacking. I wouldn’t say that this would be too bad if at least the various towns you drive through looked at least a bit distinct, but overall each settlement you drive through looks the same: foggy, bland, and undetailed. A nice aspect that is somewhat rare but that I always appreciate is that GMP unlocks a gallery with some concept art, as well as additional character artworks for you to browse after finishing the game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3762881713 The soundtrack fares better than the visuals, and the game even includes collectible cassettes you can play during your travel; however, it will also default to environmental music whenever you are in a story segment (read: constantly). This means that during most gameplay, the music is pretty repetitive, but the tracks are nevertheless good to even great, as is especially the case with A Story Just for Two (二人だけの物語) . While the game does not feature any voice acting during the story, there are optional cassettes to be found after the ending that actually do feature the intended character voices, which was a neat thing to find. Final Thoughts GMP is a fantastic little game if you know what you are in for. The story, while not necessarily deep or overly complex, presents you with a unique take on the post-apocalyptic setting that is easy to understand and follow. The game excels in writing and developing the very small cast of characters well, though of course the two protagonists stand out in particular. It’s unique and tightly designed, even if that design relies on minimalist gameplay that people should be aware of before purchasing. That said, GMP offers a unique experience and an amazingly consistent atmosphere throughout its five hours of playtime along with a, to me, absolutely great ending.