One chapter has her working in a store arguing (or not arguing, depending on your choices) with some very rude, annoying customers, with another putting her in the hot seat and being interviewed by the police for murder. Nancy finds herself in some pretty unique situations, to say the least. All four can be completed within an hour, making the game a little on the shorter side, but they are incredibly entertaining. The story is set across four separate chapters, displayed as VHS tapes (which I found pretty cool), and these can last anywhere from ten to thirty minutes, depending on your choices. It reminded me a lot of my own experiences within retail, and the characters you come across – while annoying at times – are certainly memorable. Where Negative Nancy really shines is in its comedic writing and multiple branching storylines. There are times where staying silent proves better for everyone involved, and others where it can be fun to repeatedly say no to someone in order to rile them up even further – an annoying ‘Karen’, for example. Depending on what you choose, the outcome of the story will alter, slightly.

The only options you have throughout are saying no – which you can say in response to pretty much everything – or keeping quiet and not saying anything at all. If you have ever worked in retail before, you will be wishing you could have reacted the way Nancy does in these situations – Nancy is my retail hero.Īs is the case with most visual novels, the gameplay is minimal. Nancy works an awful job at the Megamart with her best friend, and seems to make it her mission to annoy as many people as she possibly can by simply saying ‘no’. Negative Nancy is a short visual novel game that sees players assuming the role of Nancy, a character who only has the word ‘no’ in their vocabulary.

Just how negative is this particular Nancy, though, and is the experience as a whole a positive or a, well, negative? I think we’ve all been called a negative Nancy at some point in our lives, haven’t we? I know I certainly have.

Quotes about negative nancy