Yup, here it is, a few days later than the blog's 10th anniversary - a small roundup of more VN stuff I played /replayed recently.
A leftover of the days when I was still subscribed to the Jast USA newsletter, before the company's owner produced a crude, sad joke on one of Italy'd deadliest tragedies. Go you, boy.
Cringe aside, this is the only visual novel I ever bought from the site, and with good reason. I'm not sure if it's still practice or not, and I have no interest in finding out, but back then you had to log into the site to play. Yup, pseudo-DMR for a visual novel.
And it's not even that great of a visual novel - or, at the very least, not one that lives up to the hype. Three supposedly thought-provoking, 'today kids' problems' routes that mostly fall flat on their face. Aeka's is a cringe bullying revenge story we've already seen a million times before, and in much better versions; Mizuki's is the usual 'first world problems' fest that really stretched believeability to its extremes; Necoco's catgirl route is still not much but by far the best, as well as the only route that has anything to do with the novel's title.
Art is good, but dialogue is cringe and the H is the usual, high pitched J-whine I just can't stand. Not reccomended.
Back in the days when I prowled (strictly as a lurker) LemmaSoft's forums, Mikey and his ATP Projects were a household name, mostly by sheer volume of releases - take a look at their itch.io if you don't believe me. I was an avid, but wary consumer: as you may know by now, I'm a big fan of minimal production values and 'great deeds done with zero funds' projects, so I didn't mind too much that a lot of their projects were very short and very, very barebone: the stories were good, and often tackled stuff other VNs didn't want to bother with - adult problems, established sexual relationships, etc. Still I did feel like a lot of their products could have benefitted more cooking and, after a couple too many duds, I simply didn't bother anymore.
Here are my two favorites of that bygone era. Ori, Ochi, Onoe is, once you get to the meat of it, a rather far fetched pseudo-magical-realism story that could have sat in The Twilight Zone's lighter episodes; still, its sheer production values go above and beyond most novels of the era, while retaining that indie feel I appreciate. Special mention to ButtercupSaiyan's art and Renesis' music, some of the best I've heard in any VN (finally no fucking piano, thank you). Extra points for characters that bang right from the start, and no threesome route.
River Trap also has the same Twilight Zone-ish feel to it but, mostly thanks to its simpler, dirtier at style slathered in blue, manages to get a far creepier mood across. This one does feature a threesome, though an appropriately creepy one I can only applaud; the barebone, atmospheric music really gets across that feeling of dread and existential despair the three main characters seem to thrive upon. I once had to make a short film for a college course and, before settling on another idea, I actually did entertain turning this one into a script. Oh well.
My so-called future girlfriend
Meh. Middling Korean comedy romance about a girl time travelling to rekindle love with her future boyfriend / current unlikeable slob of a man. Seriously, some day VN writers will understand we don't need the protagonist to be the lowest common denominator in order to symphatize with them. Story goes through the motions, art is serviceable but nothing special. A bit overpriced at four bucks, but occasionally it goes on sale so it might be worth a shot.
This one does actually feature some puzzles / actual gameplay, but I'd still call it a VN at its core. Dude trapped in a mysterious room with a mysterious girl and no way out might sound like a Zero Escape setup, but here the mood is far more relaxed and there are pretty much no horror elements, unless you consider spooooooky ghosts (that the protagonists considers getting it on with) horror. The puzzles are rather simple and not always telegraphed as well as they could, but overall you should have no problems getting to the end of a disappointingly commonplace ending. Shame, production values were nice and the co-protagonist is a true babe. Better luck next time.
Yes, why, I shall help you indeed.
Next shipment from Japan is due in a few days, when we shall be back to regular doujinshi programming. Stay tuned.
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