Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
From Dischan Media, creators of the highly acclaimed Juniper's Knot, comes Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos.Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel series featuring Winter Harrison, a student mediator from a utopian world. Learning to Manage Chaos is the first entry in the series.What is a mediator?
Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is a visual novel, indie and anime game
developed and published by Dischan Media.
Released on September 26th 2013 is available in English on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
It has received 786 reviews of which 595 were positive and 191 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.2 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 4.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP
- Processor: 1.2 GHz Pentium 4
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Graphics
- Storage: 500 MB available space
MacOS
- OS: OS X 10.6
- Processor: Any 64 bit processor
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Graphics
- Storage: 500 MB available space
Linux
- Processor: 1.2 GHz Pentium 4
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Graphics
- Storage: 500 MB available space
- Additional Notes: "ia32-libs" package required for 64-bit Linux users
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a fantastic short story and a brilliant concept for a visual novel with great art and a wonderful soundtrack. From what I understand of the story there is what seems to be a perfect society (I believe they refered to themselves as "Earthen") that monitors and mediates with other less advanced sentient societies on different worlds. I'm unsure to the scale but some worlds shared a "plane" which I assume could mean a galaxy or even a universe. The utopia the Earthen live on is a complete mystery which is positively intriguing. I purchased this some time in 2014 during a sale and played through it yesterday(aug 30 2017) and was sad to find there was no continuation of the story due to, from what i've read to be, a mismanaged kickstarter. I can't recommend the series as a whole since it's likely the continuation isn't coming but I'm going to leave a positive review on the game's own merits and as if I'd played this on release. edit: better sentence structures, added date
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Dysfunctional Systems Episode 1: Learning to Manage Chaos is a Western-made visual novel from Dischan Media available on Steam it features features two distinct endings, unlock able bonus art, an animated opening video, and a jukebox of in-game music. I stand on a neutral ground for this visual novel. Meaning yes i do recommend it but to a certain extent. (Go to the bottom for reason of standing on a neutral ground) The Story Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel series featuring Winter Harrison, a student mediator from a utopian world. Learning to Manage Chaos is the first entry in the series. What is a mediator? A mediator is someone who travels to chaotic worlds, attempting to resolve the issues plaguing them. The first entry in the series follows Winter's second mediation, where she shadows the experienced and aloof mediator: Cyrus Addington. Audio and Visual elements Character sprites are used in the standard visual novel style, but sometimes characters are integrated into the backgrounds which really brought the images to life. I loved the detailed background work. The color palette was extremely "muted" which suited the world they are on, gloomy and dark. The music in Dysfunctional Systems is beautiful, especially ‘Terminus’, the theme track. Sound effects are well used too overall really a good job of fitting into the Visual Novel's environment. Reasons for a neutral stand Dysfunctional Systems Episode 1: Learning to Manage Chaos is in an episodic format providing episode by episode is satisfying, while still leaving you wanting more. Unfortunately this isn’t the case with Dysfunctional Systems Episode 1: Learning to Manage Chaos, which serves as little more than a teaser for a story that could be potentially interesting. Meaning if you do get this there will be no continuation of Episode 2 because it is confirmed by Dischan Media there will not be Episode 2 at all. [I honestly wish there is Episode 2 because I liked it overall] To sum up Yes I do recommend this Visual Novel but be warned there will not be an episode 2 forever[as off now] so take this visual novel as just something to be read when you have nothing to do. Review with images click [url=https://azusantiara.com/2016/01/18/dysfunctional-systems-learning-to-manage-chaos-review/]here
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AT A GLANCE (Full review follows below) [*] Game Name: Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos [*] Original Release: 2013 [*] Genre Tags: Visual Novel; Sci-Fi; Anime; Story Rich; Great Soundtrack [*] My Overall Grade: A- [*] Estimated Playtime (Campaign): 2-5 hours [*] Multiplayer Aspect: None [*] Recommended To: Established fans of the genre; Those intrigued by the genre; Aesthetes; Strong narrative advocates; Visual novel buffs REVIEW Visual novels are not for everyone, and that is fair. Even fans of the genre can admit that some of them are boring and disinteresting. That said, Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is one of the best visual novels I have “played” to date. Instead of relying on cartoon drawings of “waifus” in underwear to keep your interest, it actually has a very interesting and well-told story. (But don't worry, there are still some cartoon drawings of "waifus" in underwear). The artwork is high quality and the soundtrack is one my personal favorites in the realm of video games. In fact, it’s one of my favorite music albums in general, but I also like that genre of music a lot. Anyway, if you like a good sci-fi tale, and enjoy visual novels with real substance, this is one you probably want to consider trying. Unfortunately, the game was intended to be episodic and it does end on a cliffhanger; and at this time it seems unlikely the development team is going to be able to produce more installments. Such is life. There is still a very interesting and self-contained story within the game that I think most sci-fi fans will find interesting. You can just ignore the epilogue and still enjoy the primary narrative. If you think you would like this game, but only don’t want to try it because of the open ending, then that is your choice. But I think you will be missing out. The universe created and the primary storyline are both products of premiere sci-fi writing. I was enthralled the entire time. The soundtrack is comprised of amazing songs, and each one perfectly captures the emotion of the game at the time it is played. The art style is mostly traditional and nothing overtly special, but it also is pleasantly not overloaded with stereotypical anime cringe and unnecessary sexuality. It is a nice, well-produced visual novel that can be taken seriously. Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos isn’t for everyone, but I think it will appeal to fans of good sci-fi and fans of the standard visual novel paradigm. Yes, it is unfortunate that we (probably) won’t get any more installments set in this universe, but this visual novel is still very highly enjoyable. Some things will be left unanswered, but that happens all the time in storytelling. And, honestly, if you can find it for a good price, I would recommend it for the soundtrack alone. I know music tastes are highly subjective, but damn do I love these tunes. [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/murphyslawyercuration#curation]Follow my curation page to see more of my recommendations!
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tl;dr: 6/10 - Pretty good but really short. Full review: As a rather critical visual novel fan, I can't say I'm easily pleased. A visual novel being sold on Steam does raise some eyebrows, but nonetheless I decided to give it a go, and I was pleasantly surprised after reading the disappointing World End Economica a while back. Although Dysfunctional Systems is an original English language (OEL) visual novel, which is generally a good indicator of poor quality, my past experience with another OEL VN (Katawa Shoujo) was actually rather good, so I wasn't deterred from the beginning. Overall, the visual novel was quite good, all things considered, but we can take a bit of a deeper look into things. First thing's first: the writing. I can't vouch for the story being fresh and original, but it was well executed regardless. The characters' personalities were generally consistent and the story developed in a logical order. However, the visual novel was painstakingly short. I felt like I was just thrown into the middle of things, and even though the story wasn't too complex to figure out what was going on, a longer introduction would've been welcomed with open arms. There's also the issue of how easy it is to get to the bad end. After several playthroughs of making and recording different decisions, in desperate search of the good end, I was sorely disappointed to find that there was none . As it stands, the story is good , but much too short for my liking, and a lot more content is due. The ratio of number of choices to length of story was horribly skewed in the wrong direction, but I can respect the amount of tedious coding it would've taken to link everything together the way it was done. Technically, the English was rather good. It was by no means perfect, but it made good use of stylistic devices and all of the other things English professors like to rant on about for an easy-to-read experience. There were a few mistakes that the more pedantic of us (such as myself) may wince at, and the word choice was often pretentious, to say the least, but otherwise, Dysfunctional Systems was well written. If anything, it was better than the disgrace World End Economica was, which I can only imagine was a machine translation done by an IBM 5200. On to the art and sound - long story short, they were also quite good. While the drawing didn't exactly fit the conventional visual novel clique, there was something about the brushed watercolour style art that appealed to me. All the ren'py animations (yeah, I actually bothered to look through the game files to confirm it was a ren'py game) were used well and surprisingly weren't skimped on - this kind of production quality I can appreciate. I'm not much of an audiophile, but I can also vouch for the soundtrack being great on its own. In the game, it can be a bit overpowering at times, but the volume controls presumably exist solely for that purpose. If only they had some voice acting to go with it - in Japanese, of course, since I'm a filthy weeaboo and English sucks - but alas, one can only dream. It might seem like I'm bashing the game pretty harshly here - and that's probably true - but I actually did enjoy the game. Although it was extremely short (short enough for me to get 100% completion after only 3 hours), and there were the other issues I'd mentioned previously, it was an interesting story and fun to read. Even though I'm bringing it up again - the sheer lack of content was detrimental to the score I gave - we mustn't forget to interpret the ten point scale correctly. 5/10 is perfectly average , and not garbage by any means. Going from there, 6/10 isn't a bad score, despite what IGN and whatnot want you to believe - but that's a story for another time. I know episodes 2 and 3 of this series are due to come soon, though, so hopefully they can make up for where this episode fell short and salvage the trilogy as a whole.
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This game is so engaging if you like to be challenged on moral decisions. The political dilemmas and agendas and the issues that plague humanity are experienced from the innocent point of view of a child. Playing as a young girl on what was supposed to be a simple 'shadow' lesson of following an experienced mediator, suddenly having "xxxxxx <spoiler> xxxxxxx" thrust upon you, and being forced to make choices with little knowledge and no experience. This is a visual novel... That means lots of reading. Do not buy this game if you can't rest your WASD fingers long enough to get to know the story. Just going to add in here for anyone who skims over long reviews, since mine is the first shorter one, please, if this game, or genre interestes you, Kuro's review (above) has a link to a kickstarter page for the next 2 episodes, it's active until March 24th, please consider helping out to get the rest of this story done!
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Last Updates| Steam data | 07 April 2025 21:07 |
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| SteamSpy data | 09 April 2025 22:40 |
| Steam price | 12 April 2025 20:43 |
| Steam reviews | 11 April 2025 12:12 |
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Online players
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Developer
Dischan Media
Publisher
Dischan Media
Release
26 Sep 2013
Platforms