Firstly, flowers to the fan translation team for doing such a good job with The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya. The characters feel very much like themselves, and the narration and dialog feel like they're straight out of an episode of the dub—which is my personal preference for the Haruhi anime, due to the rapid-fire character speech leaving very little breathing room for subs. If there were any errors in characterization or even grammar and spelling, I personally didn't see them. It's a remarkable task to translate such a word-dense game like this out of passion, and to do it so well makes it apparent that the team are dedicated fans.

 It does make me wish I liked this more, though. Playing The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya feels like watching a less-important episode of the anime at 0.25x speed, and this is primarily an unavoidable fault of the story sections being a visual novel. To briefly summarize the plot: Haruhi Suzumiya drags the SOS Brigade into staying overnight at the school for "summer camp" as they investigate paranormal leads given to them by a visibly shaken Computer Club. As the power of Haruhi's desire for something spooky makes those urban legends come true, the rest of the Brigade have to stop her from noticing and "deal with" the supernatural occurrences before she sees. It sounds like it's straight out of the anime, and mostly feels like it too.

 So... about that "speed" issue. Haruhi is, as I mentioned before, a fast-paced show. Even its slow and atmospheric moments can be loaded with heavy and quick dialog (think of the first time Kyon meets Yuki at her apartment), but the average reading speed is much slower. That doesn't account for the occasional moment where you might have to go back into the history to re-read something or catch an accidentally-skipped line. The result is that lines that feel like they should be delivered quickly—like they would in the show—are delivered much slower. It's hampered even more greatly by Kyon being kind of a moron, regularly asking other characters to repeat what they've said to him but in a dumbed-down fashion. The result is a barrage of lines that are essentially repeat information—a character will explain something to Kyon, Kyon expresses his confusion, the character will state it again, and then Kyon will be like "oh, I see, what you're saying is _____." Maybe some of the most skippable dialog I've ever read in a visual novel, and this deep into the timeline of Haruhi, Kyon has no real excuse for it. Ultimately, this comes down to the dialogue and narration feeling more adapted for the anime than a visual novel that will be read at a slower pace—and I'm a decently fast reader!

 And ultimately, it's not a very special story for the Haruhi universe. And how could it? If it was a really good plotline, they'd have used it in the anime instead of confining it to a "side content" NDS game, right? So the story here is pretty self-contained, and doesn't really reveal anything particularly interesting or special about any of the characters or the world they're living in. It's very inessential, and despite a few gestures at helping potential newcomers get acquainted, it's not a great starting point for the Haruhi series and has a lot of references to events from the anime that would go over the heads of the uninitiated. Very much a "fans only" experience, and even then, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate for new material.

 There are a few pieces of gameplay that feel underutilized, but that I can imagine being implemented in an interesting way. The best of these is managing your party members—when the SOS Brigade has to split up, Kyon can dole out specific tasks to each member, which can result in different dialog unlocks... but not really any different results. What you do get out of this is different "Topics," which are like little cards you can use during the "Puzzle Phase" sections to extend your time by distracting Haruhi. Not that you'll really need them—the "Puzzle Phase" is laughably easy and not very interesting, a mini-game of sorts that takes place in the moments where the team is getting rid of the distortions in reality caused by Haruhi. You search for spots on a grid that will tell you if a target is nearby, and when you find your target, you clean it into non-existence by rubbing it on the touch screen. You need to find a specific amount of targets to win, and can get a perfect clear by finding all of them. In the meantime, Haruhi will close in on your location and get into "Accidents" that cut into your time. These Accidents can be negated entirely with the strongest Topics. I held onto all of my powerful Topics until the very last chapter, and even then only used them because I knew I wouldn't need them again. I got perfect clears every time.

 Oh yeah, there's also chess puzzles. Well, just one chess puzzle near the very end of the game, if you aren't interested in optional bonus content. It was very strange to me that Cavia programmed a whole chess minigame to only use it once and then confine the rest to post-game bonus content.

 It wasn't really a bad experience or anything, maybe just underwhelming. It very much feels like an episode of Haruhi that you kind of forget about until you go in for another re-watch, and neither the visual novel's presentation nor the puzzle elements feel like they suit the story or world very well. If you're really hungry for more Haruhi, maybe give it a shot. People worked hard on this, and then more people worked hard on translating it. But there's nothing really Earth-shattering hiding in this one.

 Small flashes of brilliance tempered with frustrating moments. The grounded, down-to-earth approach to snowboarding is appreciated as an alternative, but there's a little too much friction to really make this work. I constantly feel like I'm fighting with the game instead of actually playing it.

 Playing with others is definitely more fun than the missions, which often want you to do specific tricks with specific sets of flips and/or rotations. The trick system is really finicky, though. It uses one joystick for rotation and the other for flips (which both often feel unresponsive), but the direction of both of them determine the trick you're doing. So you have to pre-load your spin/flip and then switch your joystick direction after you're in the air to perform your trick—but it's really touchy and rarely feels like it does quite what I wanted. Trying to line up your board to hit any rail in the game is like pulling teeth.

 There's a "re-shred" mechanic that, on paper, seems like a really great anti-frustration feature. But it rarely seems to place you where you wanted to go—you'll end up either right on the ramp you just failed, which doesn't give you the time to prepare for it, or way too far back, which sometimes also resets some mission progress.

 Menus are pretty ugly overall, and aren't super easy to read. Voice acting and dialogue are... well, I turned the voices down. You can't really even blame them for the annoying script and voice acting when they're... you know, snowboarders—not script writers or voice actors.

 I had an okay time with Shredders, but I was hoping for something closer to "good."

[Demo Review]

 Extremely promising little sandbox game for building dioramas and rooms, as well as anything else you can think to create with blocks. Features some really awesome "smart scaling" features—for example, you can make a kitchen pot taller or wider without messing up the handles, or make a lamp taller or shorter without stretching or squashing the lamp shade. It's got some nice bonus features too, like world lighting, point lights, and adjusting the reflectiveness and paint wear of an object.

 My stream of this demo can be found here!