Michi has been living nothing short of a shoujo manga romance with her perfect boyfriend... until he asked for a break up. Lost and confused, Michi asks for one last date. Now she aims to find out the reason he chose to do it and get him back!
 Overview
Written, drawn and programmed by Macuyo (melyui) and distributed through  Lemma Soft Forums,  this game is completely free to download and fairly quick to play. It follows Michi through a week of school in which her boyfriend dumps her and she must figure out the reason why and, more importantly, how to win him back.
Main Character
Michi is our protagonist and she is⊠interesting. She is obsessed with her boyfriend in a really unhealthy way, as the intro to the game shows quite well. Their one pre-break up conversation is really uncomfortable because pretty much every single thing she says to him during it is a lie. She tells him her classes were cancelled when in fact she skipped them to go to his games and as a result bombed on her practice exams and is worried that she might have to repeat the year. She tells him she made a special box lunch for him when in reality she woke her mother up early to have her make it. She tells him she isnât having any lunch because sheâs on a diet but she actually just spent all of her lunch money on nice clothes for their dates. She isnât a bad person, really, what she is is a very good character. Sheâs short-sighted, selfish, irresponsible and awkward. In other words, sheâs a teenager. A very realistic teenager. I was rooting for Michi by the end of the game. Not for her to get her boyfriend back, but for her to learn and grow as a person through the experience.
Story
The story follows Michi through one week of school, getting dumped on Monday and having her final date with her soon-to-be-definitely-ex-boyfriend on Saturday. You have the chance to confront all of Michiâs insecurities about herself as well as her jealousy as she tries to figure out why she was dumped and how she can convince her boyfriend that sheâs changed enough to make him take her back.There are a series of false ends you have to get through and each of them have him breaking up with her for good for a different reason, some of those shallow and stupid, one of them a very sound and reasonable reason to run away from a relationship very very quickly. Each one of the false endings seems to zero in on a particular insecurity Michi has. She lacks the requisite girly homemaking skills, and so one of the endings has you try to make him a romantic lunchbox for your date and inadvertently poisoning him into the hospital. She doesnât think sheâs pretty enough for him: cue the ending where she tries too hard with way too much makeup and a mix of crazy fashions from a magazine and gets dumped because âI was embarrassed to be seen with you.â And so on. After you get through all the âjust a terrible nightmareâ endings you finally unlock the real one, which Iâll talk about more in the next section.
Romance
This game actually gave me one of the things I said I wanted back in my Anatomy of a Review post; a game that focuses on some part of the relationship that isnât the very beginning. This one actually focuses on the end of a relationship. And no, it isnât actually possible to salvage the romance in this game. There is no ending in which Michi gets what she wants and she and Arashi end up back together. And I love that. You see so many of these games that contain relationships that are unhealthy or even downright toxic that still end on âAnd somehow through the Miraculous Power of True Love she completely fixed all the horrible things she hated about him or else just convinced herself that all those things were endearing instead of frightening signs that he is totally unsuitable for her or maybe for anyone.â (This statement also works with the genders changed around in any order you like. It is a terrifyingly common trope.) This game doesnât do that. Instead it acknowledges that sometimes relationships just donât work out, no matter how much you want them to. It is a lovely thing to see.
Arashi
While he does come off as a shallow jerk in several of the false endings when you get to the real one and get to his real reasons for the breakup Arashi turns out to be⊠well, honestly too freaking perfect to be a believable high school student. *spoilers ahead: skip to the next section if you want to avoid them* Turns out he initiates the breakup because he can see that Michiâs obsession with him is starting to lead her into a downward spiral and also because he feels that she isnât really able to be herself around him and because of that he was never really able to fall for her, because he never really got to see her, just the facade she was putting up to try and impress him. These are all perfectly valid reasons to break up with someone. Good reasons, even.
True story: I can relate to Michi quite a bit because in my junior year of high school I also had a boyfriend I was obsessed with in this same unhealthy downward spiral sort of a way. I pretty much stopped going to Geometry completely because The Boyfriend and I had different lunch periods and I would skip the conflicting class to go and wait for him in his car so we could have lunch together/make out over lunch break. My Dad bought tickets for the two of us to go and see Supertramp together, a band that I love btw BUT I couldnât imagine spending a Friday night with anyone but The Boyfriend and so I just blew the concert off, stood my Dad up, and ended up just driving lazy circles around the backroads and then eating gas station hotdogs with The Boyfriend before going home to face my very disappointed Dad who didnât even yell at me about it. He was just really quiet. For weeks. I still get a guilty stomach ache thinking about it. Did I mention that by this time we all knew he was moving back to the other side of the country again come summer and also that he worked as a waiter and concert tickets were not a thing he could just buy whenever on a lark? Yeah. I was a terrible terrible person at 16. I really wish that The Boyfriend had been a decent enough person to do for me what Ara does for Mishi at the end of this game. But, sadly, mine was a real 17 year old boy, not a Bishi Prince Charming and so when we did finally break up it was because he wanted to date one of my friends instead.
Writing
For the most part the writing is very good. There are some grammar and spelling errors but nothing that was horribly cringeworthy. I felt that Michi, in particular, was written in a very realistic and relatable way. The breakup itself is very blunt and jarring but I think that works in the gameâs favor, conveying the shock Michi was feeling when it happened.
Art
The art is cute but nothing spectacular. There are only three characterâs rendered (with a couple more in one of the CGs) and the designs are pretty basic, though I did really enjoy Michiâs grey death face. The backgrounds are much more detailed and interesting visually than the characters though that changes in the CGs.
Music/Voice Work
Some of the music sounds like it belongs on Sesame Street but, yâknow, in a good way. Mostly. The game does do the somewhat annoying thing of having the music stop entirely from time to time so that the sound effects come out of nowhere and startle you when they crop up.
Gameplay
Another game with no gameplay elements beyond deciding which of three options Michi will pursue on any given day. There are no right or wrong answers. No. Scratch that. There are only wrong answers. Every choice will end in a terrible comedy of errors. Itâs that kind of game.
Inclusivity
With only three characters, the options for inclusivity were a bit thin on the ground to start with and, as usual, those characters are all white, all assumed straight, all assumed cisgender, all able-bodied. Disappointing but, sadly, unsurprising.
Final Thoughts
6/10 Itâs a fun little game. The concept is unique and well executed and I enjoyed playing it though thereâs not much there. A few hours of playing will have pretty much given you everything the game has to offer. Itâs a risk-free proposition to try it out so you definitely should if the idea is at all appealing to you but I donât think itâs going to be one I replay much if at all. Unlike the game I'll be reviewing next week which I have replayed literally dozens of times.
A game by Beemoov. It is a âfreeâ browser run game. The original French version of the game, Amour Sucre, has spun off a manga series, a pair of art books, a pilot episode for an anime and a sexy talking boys alarm clock ap. There are 18 different versions of the game translated into various languages for various countries. The two English language sites are My Candy Love (US) and Sweet Crush (UK).
And I am going to step away from the standard format for a second to talk about monetization models and the reason that this will probably be the only game of this type that I end up reviewing.
Games are expensive to make. Even the comparatively low-tech visual novel style games I tend to review here take time to write, to program and to create or find art and music and sound effects for. And all of that stuff takes time to learn how to do in the first place. The people willing to put in that time and effort and money to create these things deserve to be compensated for them. And if they put a price tag on the product that I can pay up front and then just have the game to play as often as I like, I am usually more than happy to pay it. But when the price of the game is a series of gates that prevent play completely until money has been paid or a certain amount of time has elapsed I will usually immediately judge that game to be too expensive to be worth it. This game, My Candy Love, is simultaneously the reason that I have that rule and my one exception to it.
Unlike some âfree to playâ browser or phone games I have tried, My Candy Love has only two very straightforward pay gates; Action Points (AP) that you spend 2 of every time you move from one area to the next and Money ($) that you need to buy things to advance the plot and clothes to wear on the end of episode âdatesâ. The game starts you off with 100 of each (110 if you officially verify your e-mail address) and you get 10 AP and $15 for free every 24 hours (provided you log on to collect them) and can win more via a few free once a day RNG based mini-games, so technically you never actually have to pay a dime to play this game. However there are currently 22 episodes in total. My very rough estimates based on about how much $ and AP I burned through per episode on my own playthroughs put the overall totals to get from âI just started the game.â to âBring on Episode 23 already!â at something like 9,000 AP and $3,000. Your totals may vary wildly from mine depending on your choices and how lucky or unlucky you are. If one is assuming an extra 5 AP every day from the mini-games (can win as much as 25 or, more often, win nothing at all) then saving up that amount of AP and $ to get from Episode 1 through Episode 22 would take a little less than 2 years of logging in every single day. Or you could spend about 300 dollars of real money and have your complete playthrough right now.
I have played every episode at least twice. I have all the illustrations (except for a few of the pesky Halloween ones that my fingers just havenât been fast enough to get. Someday fish. Someday.) I have every possible item of clothing you can win from the first X-Mas episode. I have probably spent more on this game so far than I have spent on every other otome game I have ever purchased in my life combined. I would do it again. For this game. But Iâm not ever going to do it for another one. Sorry, Eldarya. Fool me once⊠oh, who am I kidding? Itâs a fantasy themed romance game with pokemonesque mini-pets, Iâm doomed. DOOOOOOOMED!
Main Character
In the French version of the game she is known as Sucrette. The American version calls her Candy. In the manga her name is Lynn. You can give her any name you like provided it hasnât already been claimed by one of the other 2 million people playing the game. Just bear in mind that all the characters in the game will address your character by this name so if you pick something like *PrincessSparklebum88* or ~DeThRaZr666~ it might be slightly immersion breaking. For the purposes of this review Iâm going to call her Candy.
Candyâs personality is pretty much set. You have a little bit of wiggle room to adjust her responses via dialogue choices but most such choices will also move the relationship meter up or down for the character youâre talking to so the choices can be harshly limited by which romance path you are pursuing.
As a baseline she is friendly and eager to help her fellow students out. A little too eager, in some cases. Sheâs a bit of a busybody really, and incredibly nosey, sometimes to the point of outright stupidity. (The time she decided to hide in a locker in the boys locker room to watch one of the boys changing so that she could see his tattoo springs to mind.) She has a fun sense of humor, especially if you have a high affinity with Castiel. My only real complaint with the character is that she follows the very common otome trope of being Oblivious to Love. Seriously. One of these guys could sweep her up into a dramatic kiss and she would probably walk away from it thinking, âGosh, does that mean he likes me? Maybe Iâll ask him if it happens again.â Twelve episodes later the subject will still not have been broached.
Story (so far)
The story is your fairly standard high school drama. Candy transfers in as a new student mid way through the year and you meet lots of new people, join a school club and slowly get settled in while being bullied by a pack of mean girls. Along the way there are school exams to prepare for, a beach episode, an orienteering race to get lost in the woods during, a concert to organize to raise money for the school, a devilish ex-girlfriend of one of the boys to unmask before itâs too late, a school play and an open house where you get to meet all of the parents. All of the episodes have their own interesting twists and turns and subplots though some of the choices are a bit⊠odd. (You get the deciding vote to determine which play will be performed. The choices? Alice in Wonderland, Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. At least it wasnât Romeo and Juliet?)
Romances
Romance may be a bit of an exaggeration, really. We are 22 episodes in and there has been some very brief hand holding or one kiss if you opted to abandon your companion on the beach to wander off with the Aussie surfer boy who comes over to flirt with you. The game does not have romance so much as it has awkward flirting and bouts of irrational jealousy both of which are immediately written off by Candy as unimportant. At this point itâs looking like itâll be episode 87 before we get a peck on the cheek from any of the boys who arenât Dake. And episode 236 before Candy realizes that maybe, just maybe, that kiss meant something romantically significant.
(Note: Iâm not going to do an individual write-up for Leigh or any of the special episode characters because I donât consider them to be ârealâ romantic options. The one being spoken for and the others being canonically probably just dreams, odd cameo appearance in the mall notwithstanding. Iâm only doing a write up for Dajan and Jade because itâs still possible they might get developed further in future episodes the way Dake has been. Though hopefully not exactly like Dake has been because, well, youâll see when we get there.)
Nathaniel
 The student body president and twin brother of the head mean girl, Amber. A bit of an underrated character, I think. He likes a girl whoâs serious about her educational responsibilities but also likes to be reminded to relax and have fun from time to time. Over the course of the story Candy seems to bring out a more carefree side to his personality reflected in a significant wardrobe change in one of the later episodes. He and Castiel really hate each other and Nath has been shown on more than one occasion to have a bit of a vicious streak. It has been all but flatly stated that much of his studious and respectful nature is owed to the impossible standards his parents set for him. There have even been hints that he is being abused at home and the next episode of the game is looking to focus on that theory in a very awkward sleepover Candy has bribed her nemesis into inviting her to. As an aside, if I am not trying to choose my responses based on the boyâs preference and am just blithely going along picking the responses that make the most sense to me, Nathaniel is the boy I end up getting along with the best even though he is not my favorite of the available options.
Castiel
 Moody, sarcastic, bad-boy loner who plays the guitar. He is this gameâs Jerk With a Heart of Gold. (Itâs always the redhead. Though in Casâs case the red is a dye.) He likes a girl who enjoys the same kinds of music he does and isnât afraid to snark right back at him, though he does have a temper and certain subjects are right off the table for poking fun at. He was the first of the boys to get an entire multi-episode plotline devoted to him and so his character is a bit better developed and more nuanced than the others. (Nathaniel looks to be the next character getting this treatment and Iâm hoping that all the boys will get storylines of their own before the game ends.) I think I like Candyâs personality best when sheâs playing off of a high affinity Castiel in the late game. The witty banter warms my soul. (In my initial, just bopping along picking whatever fit playthrough I never got that far. Tried to go for the snark too soon and ended up pissing him off. He can be really stressful to talk to in early/mid game.) In real life I would definitely not have the emotional energy to deal with all of this boyâs baggage but in the game heâs fun and even kind of adorable once you get past all the prickles.
Lysander
 Quiet and reserved with Victorian sensibilities, or at least fashion sense. Heâs a bit of an odd character to classify because we really know very little about him, so far. Lysander talks very little in general and talks about himself hardly at all so heâs still a bit of a mystery. I am very much looking forward to having the plot spotlight shone on him more fully because the little we have seen is intriguing. He is a singer, a songwriter and a poet and is perfectly comfortable on stage. He usually serves as the calm port in the storm of drama boiling around our protagonist, there to lend steady support and to counsel patience. (Advice that Candy usually ignores.) He has a bit of a jealous streak and once your affinity with him is high enough you will start to see harsh drops in it whenever you choose to perform an activity with another boy. This is the romantic option I personally favor most because I am a sucker for drama/lit nerds and always have been. Also, heâs stylish as hell.
Ken/Kentin
For the first few very early episodes Ken is the nerdy kid who followed Candy from her old school and is obviously smitten with her. How she reacts to him is determined by player choices and you can opt to be outright cruel if you just really enjoy kicking puppies. Amber and her friends certainly seem to because they make it a goal in those early episodes to be absolutely vicious to him. Then his dad finds out that heâs being bullied by girls and itâs off to military school for poor Ken. In the later episodes he comes back having lost the glasses, gotten a decent haircut, put on some muscle and having had performative masculinity probably literally beaten into him. I really want to be more sympathetic but I just canât make myself like New Ken.
Kentin, as he now prefers to be called, is kind of a jerk in the first few episodes after his return. He eventually starts to soften and I have found myself almost liking him again as the episodes veered into the twenties but all of the macho posturing just makes me sad and every time I try to tell him that he gets angry. I miss my friend, Ken.
Armin
The gamer. I find myself liking him more and more with every new episode. Heâs a laid back goofball, completely obsessed with video games and other geeky things and I want him to be my best friend. He has actually started to slowly supplant Lysander as my favorite ever since the school play planning episode when he suggests that there should be a fight scene between Beauty and the Prince because, âGuy kisses her while sheâs sleeping. Wouldnât that annoy you?â He doesnât have a lot of depth, but heâs fun and sometimes thatâs enough.
Dake
The aforementioned hot Aussie surfer guy. I hate this character. I didnât want to. When he first showed up I sat up a little in my chair and may even have purred. Then⊠he started talking and all of the hot went away and never came back. This character should come with a trigger warning.
He seems nice enough, at first, if a bit arrogant and pushy but hell, after so many episodes of awkward blushing and changing the subject with all of the other boys it was kind of refreshing to have one who was very upfront with his attraction and his intentions, though even with his completely unsubtle approach Candy still makes a valiant attempt to stay oblivious until the moment he sweeps her up into the gameâs only real kiss so far. (At least the only one the protagonist has but⊠spoilers.)
Of course, all of that stuff only applies if you decide to ditch your current companion for him when the invitation is issued. If you try to turn him down he very quickly turns⊠kind of scary. Because Dake does not understand what no means. And that was my experience with Dake through the game. He seems like a really nice, if a bit overeager, guy⊠until the first time you tell him no. Then he rapidly starts to seem more like a potential rapist. Heâs only been in a few episodes so far but the creep factor keeps ramping up with every appearance as he continues to test and push at Candyâs boundaries in a way that I really canât help but view as predatory.
Some people really like this character and I really wanted to because: a.) heâs a Taurus and so am I and
b.) seriously just look at him
but I just got too strong a creep vibe off of him.
Jade/Dajan
Depending on which school club you choose you will get to meet and possibly have a single âdateâ with one of these guys. Whichever one that is will have a very brief cameo in a later episode but there is no change in dialogue between the two of them in that episode aside from the name of the club (gardening or basketball, take a wild guess which boy is attached to which club) which kind of shows about how much personality they were given in the first place. Some members of the fan community have made efforts to correct this in fanfic but canon Jade/Dajan are both pretty dull and largely absent from the game, though this could always change in later episodes.
Writing
I very much enjoy the writing for this game. Itâs fun and witty with appropriate amounts of actually well-plotted drama. And even if I sometimes facepalm so hard Iâm surprised I havenât bruised at the ridiculous choices Candy makes, I have to admit to being entertained all the while. I canât vouch for the quality of the translation into languages other than English but the French to English translation has been very good though I have found some of the name changes from version to version to be puzzling and unnecessary.
Art
I spent twenty five dollars to buy the art book in English, and Iâll do it again when the second art book is released. The art is lovely and improving all the time. It has also been interactive. Every now and again the game will host design contests urging players to send in concept sketches for new characters, many of the girls in the game as well as Candyâs parents were designed by players and then redrawn in Chinomikoâs style.
Music/Voice Work
Sadly non-applicable. The game is completely silent. I really would have liked to have had some background music during the concert episode, at least but I will admit to preferring silence to some of the looped/canned music that incessantly plays in the background of other free games.
Gameplay
Most of the gameplay involves wandering around the school looking for objects or people to complete your mission objectives. The objects have a set location but the people have multiple possible locations in which they can appear and this seems to function on RNG making the amount of AP needed to complete any âGo and talk to Xâ objective highly variable. This can be immensely frustrating if youâve just spent a week saving up points only to lose all of them trying to find one person. True story, the first time I broke down and just bought some extra AP in this game was in my first replay of the second episode. You have to do a fair amount of running back and forth ferrying messages between two of the boys. There are three screens to get through. One of them will be in the Student Council Room or the Hallway. The other will be in the Courtyard or the Hallway. RNG gave me a big fat middle finger and I ended up wasting a weekâs worth of AP (roughly 100 with bonuses and such) walking from the council room into the hallway out to the courtyard and back again over and over without finding either of them. And donât get me started on the damn dog in Episode 3...
Inclusivity
This is one of the areas where this game kinda⊠well⊠fails. Li, Kim, and Dajan are the only non-white characters. And yes, they named the one asian character Li and the one black male has almost no personality aside from a love of basketball. The protagonist can have a wide array of hair/eye colors and one of three hair styles which will all be reflected in every CG but her skin tone remains white regardless. There is one gay character: Alexy, Arminâs twin brother but he is kept safely asexual by the complete absence of any other non-straight character and so serves as the gay best friend trope played absolutely straight. No pun intended. There have been hints that he has developed a bit of a crush on Kentin and let me just say OH MY GAWD YES I SHIP THIS SO HARD! *Ahem* Anyway⊠Some of Candyâs internal monologuing seems to allude to a small crush on Rosalya but that is still firmly in the realm of fan speculation and not at all canon. All of the characters are able-bodied and (unless a very big surprise is planned for a future episode) cisgender. It is a very privileged cast of characters on the whole.
Final Thoughts
I am not going to give a score on this one because I adore it too much to be remotely objective. It is imperfect. Inclusivity is sorely lacking, the gameplay seems specifically designed to take my money and if some sort of actual progress is not made toward genuine romance and a real freaking date in my dating sim very soon I will⊠will⊠keep playing it forever anyway because this game makes me completely irrational and I love it for that. This game will devour your soul. And you will end up thanking it, as I am going to do right now. Thank you, Chinomiko and co. You made me a lifelong otome addict. I am eternally grateful.
A game by Hato Moa. The English FAQ and download links can be found here. The game is also available on Steam but I had some trouble with the Steam version not wanting to load from a saved game. This could just be another case of Windows 8 not playing well with many games or it could be a bug that wasnât caught in the conversion. Just consider yourself warned.
In this game you play as a human girl attending an exclusive school for super-intelligent pigeons. Who you can date. Somehow the game manages to be even weirder than that description makes it sound but the weirdest thing about it by far is how good it is.
Main Character
The default name is Hiyoko Tosaka but you can give the character any name you like. Sheâs a bit of an airhead but in a usually amusing way and some of her more verbose lines (like the one above) are crazy awesome. She does kinda hold the idiot ball in a few of the routes but sheâs still a likable character overall especially when her hunter-gatherer blood rages.
Story
Thereâs actually a surprisingly detailed story here, especially once youâve played through all the romance arcs and gotten to the Bad Boyâs Love storyline where the game becomes less dating sim and more suspense/thriller/sci-fi visual novel. I wonât spoil that story for you. The basic storyline for the otome portion of the game centers around Hiyokoâs various misadventures during the school year. Think slice of life, but with pigeons, and a murderous political conspiracy centered around the school doctor. Yâknow, typical high school stuff.
Romances
The romance options here run the gamut from sweet to heartbreaking to what the hell were you thinking? to what were the writerâs smoking? There are too many manga tropes and cliches to name really. Theyâre just everywhere. Every character is a cliche or a trope of some kind. It works surprisingly well, possibly because it gives us some familiar things to hang onto to stay afloat in the really bizarre concept pool.
Note: Despite the bishounen human pics that will accompany the bird images in all these screenshots the characters are all birds except for the protagonist. The game never treats this as weird. In fact most of the romantic arcs donât really acknowledge the cross-species aspect of the romance at all.
 Ryouta
The childhood best friend. Sweet, supportive, hardworking and innocent. This is the only arc that really comes flat out with the whole. âYeah, but, weâre not the same species.â thing and itâs a mark of how good the writing is that by the time that argument comes up you, the player, will probably be arguing against it in your heart because damn it they need each other,  just let them be happy oh cruel cruel world⊠uh.. *cough* there were feels ok?
 Sakuya
The arrogant aristocrat. Infinitely punchable. Through his entire arc. Seriously. Right in the face. He does eventually get some character development but itâs too little too late. (until BBL which Iâm not going to get into because spoilers.) And he has two endings. And you have to get both of them if you want the âtrue endingâ epilogue for Bad Boyâs Love. So I had to suffer through his smug, arrogant, racist arrrrggghhhh just let me hit him, please? Ok. Deep calming breaths. In and out. Ok.
Twice. I had to romance this insufferable prick twice. The things I do for this blog.
Yuuya
The playboy. Either highly amusing or even more punchable than his brother (Sakuya) depending on how well you tolerate ham-handed attempts at over-the-top flirtation peppered with incredibly cheesy French affectations. I found it adorkable. Your mileage may vary. This was the romance arc I think I enjoyed the most, overall. Which just made Shuuâs route that much worse.
Spoliers: And he turns out to be sekritly a spy. Which is amazing. Because, really, if James Bond were French, and a pigeon⊠did I seriously just write that? What has this game done to my head?
 Nageki
 The woobie. Seriously. So much. It just gets worse and worse the more you find out. Itâs like watching a whole basket of puppies slowly starve to death because they refuse to leave the train station where their master usually greets them after work only he had a heart attack and wonât ever be getting off that train again but theyâre still waiting there and I have just lost this metaphor utterly but itâs really sad, ok? And that is what this character is. Just a great big cloud of sad feels. I want to throw a blanket around him and snuggle him forever. But I canât because spoilers.
Okosan
 The Cloudcuckoolander. I⊠what? Seriously, what the hell? I canât I donât even. What? Pudding.
 Kazuaki
 The teacher. Because thereâs always a teacher. This one is of the harmless bumbling genius eccentric variety. Or is he? *duhnduhn DUHHHHHNNNNN!!* There are hints throughout his arc and others that he may be more than he seems and of course he totally is and the truth has scarred my soul forever and I will never trust again.
 Shuu
 The evil doctor. Cold, creepy, dead inside, murderous, utterly irredeemably evil, obviously the most popular character among the fandom with mountains upon mountains of creepy fanart and plushy pillows made in his likeness because there is something seriously wrong with a lot of people or, by force of numbers, with me. I appreciate, at least, that the game acknowledges that there is absolutely no scenario in which becoming emotionally involved with someone who vivisects and dismembers high school students professionally and really enjoys his job is ever going to end well for you. This is another character with two endings to collect because the game apparently just really needed to force me to eat my favorite character for Christmas dinner twice. Iâm fine. Really. No emotional scars or sudden crippling fear of partridges at all.
 Anghel
 The very large lampshade hung over every manga hero trope ever. Another fan favorite and I can see why. He is awesome. And hillarious. And hilariously awesome. He is, essentially, a demon-hearted, spiky haired, secret-ninja-demon-magic warrior guy plopped down in a normal (ahahahahaha lolsob *twitchtwitchshudder*) high school but still reacting to everything as though this were a fantasy manga that he is the tragic anti-hero of. And I would probably have loved him immensely had I not been completely traumatized by actually knowing this guy in real life.
Storytime!
 I used to LARP. Through the LARP I met this guy who at first I thought was just playing sort of a secondary LARP style game with his friends between our other gameâs events. It seemed like a fantasy version of Killer almost and was kind of fun, at first, the way that my little brother and I playing at being secret psionic space spies when we were kids had been fun. Then I started to get these hints that this guy did not think we were playing a game. That he believed, completely, that he was the child of a goddess and a dragon and therefore King of Both Elves and Dragons. That I was also of divine/draconic blood and therefore his soul sister and rightful queen. (Did I mention he was married? Because yeah.) I remember walking around downtown with this guy once and having him pull us both into an alleyway to let some random person walk past us and then falling in behind them and stalking them for several blocks on suspicion of being an evil magus or demon in disguise. That was when I first started to suspect my friend might be a bit unhinged. The 3am phone call in which he frantically demanded I drive to his house right that second to help him reinforce his warding spells because some horrible dark magic was about to destroy them was kind of the last straw for me. I got out prior to him actually being arrested for drunkenly fighting invisible demons in his underwear with a broadsword in the middle of the street at some stupid early hour of the morning. Given this context, I found Anghelâs arc a bit uncomfortable. Itâs super funny in a game. Muuuuch less so when youâre out on the real live streets wondering if the guy standing next to you is about to attempt a flying kick to the back of the head of some innocent passerby before challenging them to imaginary magical combat and possibly landing you in jail as an accessory to assault.
 Azami
 The biker babe. Or⊠well⊠scooter babe. Who always follows all the traffic laws. And does martial arts. And is a sparrow. Carve it into your soul!
 Her arc is pretty short and is another one youâll have to do twice, but at least thereâs nothing horrifying and traumatic in this one. Or is there? *duhnnduhâŠ* No there isnât. Itâs light fluffy comedy goodness.
Writing
 The writing is, I think, the reason that this bizarre game has such a huge fan base. It is very well written, presenting an engaging world, compelling characters and an entertaining story with twists and turns I never saw coming (plus a couple that I totally did from several miles away). Also, it's funny as hell during the bits where it's not giving you nightmares.
Art
 Stock images of birds against pretty basic backgrounds with no CGs to speak of and yet, somehow, it all works.
Music/Voice Work
 Some of the music choices are⊠odd. I am never going to be able to listen to Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy ever again without having a mild anxiety attack and checking under the bed for killer partridges. Again, somehow, it all works.
 Gameplay
 Mostly itâs just a visual novel with some dialogue choices to make along the way. Thereâs some stat building but itâs very minor and essentially boils down to which single stat you wish to focus on in pursuit of whichever ending youâre shooting for that game.
 Inclusivity
 I commend this gameâs dedication to presenting a diverse cast, especially the bold choice of making the protagonist a hunter-gatherer human rather than another fantail or everyman rock dove. I hope this choice is indicative of a new trend in⊠Seriously what did you expect in this section? Theyâre birds.
Final Thoughts
9/10 Â This game has left me with some profound mental scarring and a deep desire to play the sequel. I really cannot give any recommendations for this one because there are no other games like this. There should be. One with penguins. Someone make this happen.
A game by Studio Super63. This seems to be their only game to date which is a pity because this game is a blast to play. Itâs very funny and well written with a great set of characters. Itâs also unique for an otome game in that it is set in Britain. And not even in stylish London but in some fictional town in northern England apparently just a few hours from Glasgow by train. The game is peppered with British slang most of which I already knew from endless hours of BBC sitcoms but there were a couple of educational jaunts onto Urban Dictionary over the course of my many playthroughs.
Main Character
At the start of a new game you are given the chance to give the protagonist any name you like as well as select a birthdate for her. I am going to refer to her as âBeretâ for the rest of the review because that is the (eventually) affectionate nickname one of the boys gives her and the game does not otherwise provide a default.
Beret is a fun main character; snarky, genre savvy (there are so many lampshades hung in this game) and willing to stand up for herself and to flirt (or not) with whichever of the boys catches her fancy. Thereâs not a lot of wiggle room in shaping her personality, but the personality sheâs given by default is (at least) not boring or whiny.
Story
The bare bones of the story is very simple: you start at a new school, meet some new people, crash a fellow studentâs Halloween party, pass or fail your practice exams, have a very young and attractive substitute teacher take over your art class, run a pancake stall at the school open house, pass or fail your final exams and end the year and the game with the Leaverâs Ball. And if you make no friends, join none of the school clubs and donât apply for any of the part time jobs available then thatâs the whole game, but each club, job and person you befriend provide subplots of their own so the game has a lot of replay value in trying to find all the little substories hidden away in the wings.
Romances
While the game does do the irritating will they/wonât they dance up until the inevitable last minute confession at the very end of the game it seems to be an intentional homage to that trope and its overuse. The game actually hangs a massive lampshade over that exact trope in the introduction (see illustration above) and then stages all of the âBest Endingâ CGs in a comic panel format so the inevitable actually ended up amusing rather than annoying me in this case.
All of the romances (even the creepy one and the Guide Dang It hidden one) are believably written and entertaining and, for the most part, feel like real high school relationships. If your high school was also a veritable romance manga trope factory. I wish mine was.
There are between one and three endings available for each of the boys as well as a Best Friends ending available for each of the girls if you max out the friend-o-meter with one of them but fail to max out the luv-o-meter with any of the guys. For most of the guys you can get a Good Ending, a Dual Ending (where you have to choose between two guys who are both at max relationship level) and the Best Ending complete with several âpagesâ worth of adorable comic styled CGs.
Marius
The jock. Sort of. If track and field qualifies for jockdom. He prefers Beret to be athletic and a bit of a tomboy and most of his scenes take place in either the gym or the arcade where he works (and so can you if you want to). Heâs flirtatious and sarcastic but never mean spirited and of all the choices heâs the one who I think reads the most like a high school boy, albeit a very witty and intelligent one.
His ideal ending requires you to join the athletics club and become his unofficial coach trying to motivate him to beat his best sprinting record. The dual ending requires you to also have maxed out your relationship with his best friend, Shuppin. This arc contains my favorite scene in the game which I will leave completely unspoiled save for simply saying that if you play the game you should play through a Shuppin/Marius dual romance arc at least once. You just should.
Shuppin
The musician. Some of the other characters will tease him about being âemoâ but he swears heâs past that phase. He has something of a fan club amongst the younger girls at the school who flock to fill up tables at the bakery where he works (and so can you) so that they can ogle him and make big eyes at him for free food and drinks. Not doing that yourself will earn you some points with him.
His ideal ending requires you to join the music club and to eventually recruit him into it, giving him a quiet, safe space to practice the violin (his preferred instrument is guitar) in preparation for an audition for a prestigious music school. The dual ending is with Marius and, once again, it is highly recommended.
Rhett
The jerk. Every otome game seems to have one and Rhett is this gameâs Jerk With a Heart of Gold. He has a very dry wit and a tendency to insult anyone heâs speaking to. He is the one who gives the main character her nickname âBeretâ and he seems to really enjoy trading insults with her, slowly softening until by the end of his arc the jabs are mostly affectionate and almost endearing.
You can meet him by applying for a job at the library where heâll be your unofficial supervisor or by joining the drama club which he is the head of. The Best Ending requires you to join the drama club and obtain the starring role in the school play (Romeo and Juliet, because of course it is). His dual ending requires you to also max out your relationship with Beck and this romantic rivalry is much less friendly (and much less funny) than the Marius/Shuppin one.
Beck
The teacher. It was inevitable. In any otome game set in a school you apparently have to include a teacher as a romance option. I donât know why this is a thing. Itâs creepy as hell. And the creepiness is not much softened by his being âonly a substituteâ and being âonly 22â.
In addition to being your substitute art teacher he is also a model, an aspiring tattoo artist and an unrepentant womanizer. Heâs pretty shallow in his tastes as well, only deigning to answer your calls once your Charm is quite high and only approving of your clothing choices if they line up exactly with the latest fashions. (More on that in the gameplay section.) I will give him points for not actually pursuing the protagonist, though he doesnât really do anything to discourage her either. He wonât call to ask her on dates and any âdateâ you have with him is more you hanging around his work like a creepy underage stalker until he has a free moment to talk. Really this whole arc just made me feel dirty and not in a good way.
His Best Ending actually has two possible routes. One route requires you to fail your practice exams and get sent to a monthâs worth of remedial weekend classes which he will be in charge of. Then you have to turn things around and ace the final exams, inspiring Beck to think that maybe he has a shot at turning himself around as well. The second option requires you to pass the practice exams, befriend his younger sister and have your charm high enough to catch his eye. This will lead to him calling you out of the blue to offer you an interview at the fancy boutique in the mall that he works for. If you get the job you then have to compete in and win a modeling competition sponsored by the store. He has a dual ending with Rhett that is the love triangle played for drama. (The Marius/Shuppin one is mostly played for laughs.)
Perth
The woobie. Heâs a year younger than Beret and looks even younger than that which is a source of some embarrassment for him. Treating him like a child is a quick way to get on his bad side. Heâs almost a hidden character in that you can only meet him by either joining the music club and choosing not to recruit Shuppin or by joining the netball team and getting into the finals. His best ending requires you joining netball and winning the championship. He works at a smoothie stand in the mall but you cannot get a part time job there. He also lacks a dual romance path. His romance arc is cute and innocent if a bit brief compared to the other options.
Mardi
The real hidden character. Unless youâre on his romance arc he wonât even be given a name. Heâs just the Sullen Shopkeeper at the sporting goods store in the mall and unless you spend every Saturday of the game going into that store, thatâs all heâll be. If you do opt to give up your Saturdays heâll eventually come over and introduce himself properly, eventually even inviting you out for a date. Heâs a pleasant enough character but thereâs not much to his arc and it makes for a fairly boring game since you have to spend every Saturday doing the same thing and miss out on chances to build up your relationships with any of the other characters.
Writing
The writing is excellent, very tongue and cheek and humorous. The characters are well developed, distinct and interesting. The romances feel authentic even if they do sometimes go a bit over the top in homage to well-tread otome tropes. Depending on your familiarity with British slang you may need to keep Urban Dictionary up in the background to translate some of the dialogue but I found that to be a feature rather than a bug. There was one piece of common slang that I did really hate seeing, but Iâll get into that down in the inclusivity section.
Art
All of the art is done in a very informal, almost cartoony anime style which fits very well with the overall style of the game. The comic panel themed intro and ending CGs were a really neat feature and I would love to see more games utilize that.
Music/Voice Work
There is no voice work in this game but there is a fair amount of music, usually tied to a location or a mood. All of it is pleasant with a pretty wide range of instrumentation. Beck even has his own theme music which sounds, appropriately, like something out of a porno and made me laugh the first time I heard it. Sound effects are well integrated into the game as well, never overpowering the music.
Gameplay
Mostly your standard stat builder. Certain events and endings require certain stat levels which requires some careful balancing and juggling of activities over the week. Opting to pursue one of the BFF endings rather than the romantic ones will net you an item from your friend that raises the stat gains in their preferred stat so long as youâre wearing it. Thereâs a fashion element to the game as well with three stores selling a variety of clothing in different themes (sporty, cute, elegant, ect.) Each of the guys have certain styles they prefer and styles that they dislike with the exception of Beck who has no preferred style (though he does still dislike a few) and instead insists that you follow the latest trends to the letter. The game provides a monthly fashion column to let you know what you should wear to impress the picky model. Thereâs also a small cooking mini-game during the open house where you make pancakes to order.
Inclusivity
While the main character is (as usual) white there are several characters of color who are all written as complete characters and not stereotypes. Disabled characters are, sadly, nowhere to be seen and my singular (though fairly large) complaint with the gameâs writing is that several characters, including the protagonist, make casual use of the R word as a synonym for stupid which threw me right out of the game and made me cringe. I know the word is still very commonly used in that manner by teenagers here and in the UK but I really wish that it werenât and would like my games to be better than real life in this respect. Also, though the idea of queer characters is mentioned in at least one conversation without judgement or ridicule, all of the characters are either assumed or outright stated to be straight.
Final Thoughts
8/10 Would have been a 9 if not for that one grating word. It really is an excellent game, all told and any fan of the genre should definitely check it out. If you donât want to drop the cash for this one there is a âfreeâ online game on a similar theme called My Candy Love which Iâll be reviewing in a few weeks. But if reliving high school sounds too childish for you thereâs always college...
Planet Stronghold is a sci-fi role-playing game with a turn-based combat system.
You take the role of a young, new recruit that somehow gets assigned to the most well-known, and well-defended, human outpost in the whole galaxy: Planet Stronghold.
As the story goes on, you'll have to choose a side in a  war that will change the destiny of the planet, and of humankind, forever.
Featuring old-school turn based tactical battles, a dynamic plot that changes based on your choices, several possible solutions to each situation using various non-combat skills, Planet Stronghold delivers a very high replayability!
Overview
Another game by Winter Wolves more an old school tactical RPG than a romance game, but there are romance options available so Iâm calling this one fair game for review. There is a sequel in the works but no release date as of yet.
 Main Characters
You have the choice of playing either as Joshua or Lisa Nelson. The gender choice affects very little; a few lines of dialogue, your training partner for the tutorial section of the game and your choice of romance options. Other than that the characterâs basic personality and story arc is the same regardless of which you choose. You arenât given a lot in the way of personality customization options in this game. Most dialogues have only two choices; a ârightâ answer and one that you will be penalized for either by loss of relationship points, an otherwise unnecessary combat or the loss of an item or questline. If you go through the game selecting only the âright answersâ then the character comes off at first unsure of their capabilities and eventually grows to be so sure of them that they cannot shut up about what a great leader they are. I found this character to be kind of bland when they werenât being eye-rollingly arrogant and annoying. Your mileage may vary.
 Story
You are a new recruit in the military at Planet Stronghold the most heavily fortified human colony in the galaxy but all is not well at your new post. There are human rebels, malfunctioning robots (the malfunction has rendered them all homicidal because of course it has), and a resurgence of those pesky native aliens the humans thought theyâd wiped out when settling the planet. Dealing with all of those problems is the basic plot of the game though the plotline with the rebels never really gets a proper resolution to my mind. For example, I still have no idea whatsoever what the rebels were rebelling about. They were offered money, I guess? But there seems to be the implication that they were already an organized group even before that offer led them to start directly attacking the colony itself and their reason for existing prior to those attacks is never addressed or resolved.
The main thrust of the story deals with the aliens and you are given a choice about a third of the way into the game as to how you want to deal with that particular problem; by trying to form a peaceful alliance with the native species or by trying that whole genocide thing again in the hopes of getting it right this time. I was not able to bring myself to try the latter approach, so I donât know if the story attached to it was any good or not. Maybe that branch of the story actually explains the rebels in a way the peaceful approach does not. If you play through it let me know. I couldnât do it.
 Romances
The romances feel very tacked on, as a rule, and not well integrated into the story. With the exception of Prince Cliff who you only need to talk to a certain number of times and Damien the rebel leader who you have to jump through several hoops to unlock dialogue with, each of the romances serve mostly as just an additional bonus for completing that characterâs personal subquest. There are no bisexual characters in this game, no crossover between Joshua and Lisaâs romance options and up until the very end each subquest plays out in exactly the same manner so the romances tend to come up very out of the blue and then are promptly forgotten completely until the epilogue. I only actually played as far as the epilogue once so I do not know the ending proper for each romance. Some games have romance arcs that hook me in enough to desperately need to see all the endings, this one just didnât get me that invested.
 Tom
A romantic option for Lisa, Tom starts the game as your commanding officer and ends it as your second in command. Most of the dialogue with him revolves around your skills as a leader. I was a little disturbed by the inherent power imbalance in this relationship but there really isnât a relationship in the game where there isnât one with the possible exception of Damienâs arc which has its own problematic elements that Iâll discuss in full in that section. The Tom romance felt a little less rushed and out of the blue than some of the others if only because thereâs more time and attention given to the character by the main game story so that, if you are romantically minded, you can sort of write romantic focus into your interactions with him from early on in the game and the dialogue lends itself well to that.
 Rebecca
A romantic option for Joshua, Rebecca is the officer in charge of training the new recruits. Most of her arc is your standard defrosting ice queen trope and I donât really have much to say about it that the linked description of the trope does not.
 Michelle
The same sex option for Lisa, Michelle is kind of a weird character. A heavy drinking party girl often dismissed as frivolous by the rest of the team, highly emotional and soft hearted except when the plot calls for her to be selfish. Her arc primarily deals with her tragic(ish) backstory involving her former boyfriend turned rebel and his gun collection with a last minute reveal that they actually split up because she realized that she was only really attracted to women, something the story didnât build or allude to at all prior to the reveal and that is the biggest flaw I found with this character in general. She isn't really given much development at all aside from whatever the plot requires of her at any given moment so she left no strong impression on me one way or the other.
 Rumi
A romance option for Joshua, I actually found Rumi to be the most interesting of the side characters with a backstory reveal that was well paced and believable motivations across her story arc which I will not spoil too badly. The only problem I had with her at all was the somewhat odd development choice that turns her into a Soldier if you choose to play as a Psionicist. Iâll talk about the mechanics of that a bit more in the gameplay section but it struck me as an odd choice to take the character whose psionic abilities the story emphasizes and talks up the most and stick them in the role with the least psionic potential. This actually bothered me enough that after my initial playthrough as a psionicist I played as a soldier in every replay to avoid causing such a weird dissonance with the informed abilities of the party and their actual abilities in gameplay.
 Cliff
The same sex option for Joshua, Prince Cliff is only available if you opt to side with him against his father and try to build a peaceful alliance with the alien races instead of exterminating them. There isnât a great deal of build up in this arc nor much personality given to the Prince himself. Itâs kind of a boring option, to be honest.
Damien
A romantic option for Lisa, Damien is the rebel leader and I was not really fond of his arc. The lack of explanation for the motivations of the rebels bugged me and the patronizing way the protagonist, either protagonist, deals with Damien grated at me. The romance is very abrupt and I found it to be a big pile of unsatisfying cliches. Your mileage may vary. The illustration was pretty, at least.
Writing
While I didnât find the writing itself to be lacking I did feel that the story was a bit more ambitious than the game gave it space to be. There were many elements of the story that were very interesting but I never felt that any of them, with the exception of Rumiâs sub plot, were given enough time and attention to bring them to a really satisfying conclusion. The game story felt very rushed with plot elements skimmed over rather than being properly built up and resolved. Hopefully the sequel will have more satisfying pacing.
 Art
The art is quite good, with beautiful CGs and interesting character design, especially with the enemies. Some of the character expressions are a bit strange. Tom, in particular, has some very odd expressions in some scenes but on the whole the character design is solid if not particularly inspired. Some of the backgrounds are a bit bland but others are beautifully rich and detailed and nothing feels wildly out of place with the setting or tone.
 Music/Voice Work
The music is largely forgettable which isnât as harsh a critique as it sounds. I feel game music is really doing itâs job well if it focuses you on the story and setting without distracting you either by being too ear wormy or being too  jarringly out of place. The music here does that well. There is some voice work in the form of combat reaction sounds and exclamations all of which fit the characters and tone. I particularly appreciated that the sounds for the women being hit sound like pain noises instead of sex noises. Itâs kind of amazing how many games seem to get those two confused.
 Gameplay
The combat here is most of the show and itâs entertaining enough if a bit slow. While it is menu driven there is some strategy and tactical considerations to take into account. For a start the game employs a crude threat system to determine where the enemies are likely to focus their attacks. Some attacks and psionic abilities like healing will draw more threat than others and enemy attacks which land no damage on their target will reduce the threat on that target by a great deal so there is some careful juggling to be done between keeping your tank protected enough to take hits without making them so well protected that the enemies decide to focus on softer targets. The game also employs various attack types: piercing, energy, explosive ect. Different enemies have different levels of protection against the various attack types as do the armors your party can equip so having the right weapon and armor to face down an opponent becomes vital especially at the higher difficulty levels. Fortunately you can swap between weapons and armors in each characterâs inventory as a free action at any time, a fact I was not aware of until halfway through my first game in which I was boggling over how difficult the boss fights were even on the lowest difficulty setting. I facepalmed at myself pretty hard when I figured it out.Â
 The game has four classes, each one excelling at a particular aspect of combat and a particular out of combat skill set. The skills are often used to solve problems, avoid unnecessary combat encounters or to weaken tough opponents to make fights easier. The game will give you an even spread of classes amongst your party with two of each class being available no matter which role you choose. This is the mechanic which caused me to always choose Soldier (the tank) in my replays rather than my usual preferred Sniper (rogue) or Psionicist (healer/mage). This seems to be the default role the game assumes for you and if you choose one of the others it will take one of the two characters who would otherwise have that role and assigns them the Soldier class instead.  Itâs a good mechanic for balance purposes but an odd one for the story. Particularly, as I noted above, with Rumi who is constantly played up to be a very powerful psionicist but who will, if the PC chose to be a psion themselves, have almost no psionic ability in gameplay.
 In addition to the combat thereâs also a bit of map exploration which almost serves as a mini-game in which you try to avoid or outrun random enemies while searching for plot points but if youâre really aiming to maximise your XP you probably want to fight all those random battles anyway.
 Inclusivity
This one is a mixed bag. Many of the characters are Ambiguously Brown but both of the protagonist options are decidedly white. The game does contain one disabled character in that Rumi is blind but her disability is largely glossed over. While I am glad that they didnât make it her sole defining characteristic or use it as an excuse to damsel her it did feel a bit like they went a little too far in the opposite direction to the point that her blindness almost becomes an Informed Attribute.
There are homosexual characters but all the characters are assumed cis unless there was another reveal in one of the epilogues I didnât get. There is an overweight character (Bellamy) but, as usual, the character is an older male. At least he isnât the comic relief.
 Final Thoughts
I would rate this one 5/10. While I did enjoy the game it didnât inspire the usual urge to replay it again and again to see all the major outcomes and all of the endings the way that most otome games do. Possibly it was the time consuming nature of the combat system that discouraged me or the way that the romance (usually the main draw for me) was largely glossed over but this one simply failed to pull me in past the first full play through. I found Loren to be a much better game in terms of story and pacing as well as in terms of fully integrating the romance into the greater game story without dominating it completely. But Loren was a later game and the sequel in production for this game may very well take lessons from Loren and combine the better pacing and better integration of the romantic subplots that Loren had with the more interesting and dynamic combat that this game has to make something truly epic. Iâll be buying it as soon as it comes out at any rate.
Embark with Heileen in a unforgettable voyage to the New World!
Met with old friends, and make new ones.
Find romance, avoid dangers and life your life to the fullest!
Overview
 Published by Winter Wolves; an awesome indy game company that we'll be seeing quite a lot of in these reviews because, really, this is what they do, and they do it well. If you're a fan of the genre and you haven't checked them out yet you owe it to yourself to do so and to sign up for their newsletter to know when one of their (actually pretty frequent) sales are going on and to keep up to date on the newest releases.
Heileen is an earlier game, the first visual novel by Celso Riva, and it shows. I got this one in a bundle pack with its two sequels and itâs a good thing that I did because I donât think I would have been willing to pay for games 2 and 3 after playing this one. The sequels are much better but this first gameâŠ.
Just how bad is it? Read on.
Main Character
Heileen is a sheltered young upper class white woman from England. This is a hard character concept to write well and I donât think they pull it off in this game. She is insufferable. Sheâs whiny, sheâs selfish, she spends the entire game thinking horrible things about all of the characters around her and the attempts to show her sheltered naivete just make her seem gratingly stupid. But heyâŠ. she looks good, at least.
Story
I bought the game looking for high seas adventure with some romantic subplots. That is not what this game is. The story mostly focuses on Heileen trying to figure out how she feels about her very first crush while dealing with the drama explosions caused by the best friend who has developed a crush on her and trying to figure out what secret her uncle and his mistress have been keeping from her. The fact that theyâre on a ship while this is happening is only occasionally relevant to anything at all. The game should also come with a trigger warning for rape because it is full of attempted sexual assaults and matter of fact allusions to sexual predation as an inevitable consequence of women going about unchaperoned on this boat full of uncouth sailors. Rape is a difficult subject to include in a fictional narrative and is rarely, if ever, a necessary inclusion. It was definitely unnecessary here. Another trigger warning for attempted suicide, another delicate subject that is handled with all the grace of a rhinoceros in a mosh pit. Iâll talk a bit more about it in the next section.
Romances
Itâs hard to point to a weak link in this game because all of the links are kind of falling apart but the romance is certainly a top contender. The game doesnât have romance so much as ridiculous feelings flail drama barfing that eventually resolves itself into âSo this has been TRUE LOVE all along!â It was utterly unsurprising to me that they ended up deciding to retcon all of the endings into âJust a dreamâ when the sequels came out because they were all terrible. How terrible, you ask? WellâŠ
John
This is our default option and heâs actually not that bad, as a character taken by himself. Iâve known dozens of guys just like him, if less beefcakey. Really itâs Heileenâs reactions to the character that make this romance arc so painful. Every time he glances in the direction of another woman, ANY other woman, Heileen is quick to write him off as âNothing but a bastard womanizer.â This is the main point of conflict/drama for this arc. He is flirtatious and that is, apparently, terrible. Obviously as soon as she saw him and thought that he was cute he owed it to her to immediately stop paying attention to any other female whatsoever. Have I mentioned how annoying Heileen is as a character? It all ends with a confession of love that leads to âWe were in love all along,â in what I felt was the weakest of the three endings.
Marie
Was Heileen not immature, whiny and annoying enough for you? Meet Marie! Sheâs even worse. This is the childhood best friend character. She and Heileen are supposed to be eighteen. They both read like theyâre maybe twelve. Or more like they are eighteen year olds as written by a twelve year old. The aforementioned suicide subplot is part of Marieâs arc and is (literally) written off as a cry for attention with Marie herself saying nearly those exact words. That, by itself, would have put my teeth on edge but coupled with the characters tendency to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, her constant self-criticism and whining and her occasional bouts of vindictive pettiness Marie was just impossible for me to like. She actually made such a terrible impression on me in this game that even in later games where her personality has leveled out into something more tolerable, I still found it difficult to like her. She is the most physically affectionate of your three romance options with a kiss, some necking and a foot massage that borders on assault since it was unasked for and continues on with Heileen very plainly telling her to stop but then they cop out completely by ending on âAnd now I know that weâll be friends forever.â
 Lora
I think, of all the characters in this game, Lora is the one I hated the least. Or, well, the one that was given anything like a personality that I hated the least, but weâll get to Robert and Ebele in a moment down in the inclusivity section. Lora is the mistress of Heileenâs Uncle Otto. She is implied to have worked as a prostitute at one time and both Heileen and Marie lay some pretty heavy and uncomfortable (for me at least) judgement on her for that. Part of Heileenâs growing up over the course of the story is her coming to accept that Lora is a good person despite her past. I would have greatly prefered if that past werenât treated as a major fault to be seen past in the first place. She is largely treated as a comic relief character through most of the game then makes a sharp u-turn in her ending where she is forced to kill a sailor who is trying to rape Heileen and is wracked with guilt over the deed. She suffers as much as any of the characters in this game from poor writing but sheâs the one who seems to have the most avenues to turn into a truly interesting character under more careful hands.
Writing
The writing for this game is pretty sloppy. Character motivations seem to come out of nowhere and vanish again just as quickly. There was an obvious lack of research leading to head-scratching in some parts and flat out shattering of my suspension of disbelief in others. There was a whole lot of utterly unnecessary attempted and implied sexual assault. It felt very like reading a work of fiction from a first year creative writing class. There is potential for the writing to be good with practice, fine tuning, and research, but it's not there yet.Â
Art
The character designs are pretty decent though the backgrounds are a bit generic. There are no CGs. Nothing terribly exciting but nothing laughably bad, either.
Music/Voice Work
 There is no voice work in this game but there is music here and there and it is mostly good music that fits into the theme well. I would advise, however that your first act before starting the game should be to go into the sound options and turn the volume down. Most of the game has no music or sound so the few times that background music or sound effects show up they can be jarring especially if you are playing on the default setting with both turned up to maximum volume.
Gameplay
 All of the game play here is reading and making choices. There is a point system based on the number of âquestsâ you complete but the quests crop up based on the choices you make and very rarely have any sort of clear path to resolution. For example:  an early quest wants Heileen to find some way to embarrass her Uncle in front of a crowd, the solution to this comes along a few choices later when you have the option of either accepting Loraâs help in unpacking your bags or brushing her off by insisting youâre no longer a child. One of these leads to Lora making a scene that completes the objective, the other does not and you have no idea that this choice is related to that quest at all until you get the Success or Failure message at the end of the scene. So itâs either Guide Dang It or just blunder through and trust to luck.
Inclusivity
Hooo boy⊠So, there will be lots of spoilers here for the main investigative portion of the story. Just a friendly warning. Letâs talk about Robert and Ebele.
At some point during the voyage Heileen will realize that her Uncle and Lora are hiding something from her. It turns out that what they are hiding is people. A man and a woman of color that her Uncle apparently purchased years ago when they were children because he felt sorry for them and he brought them back to England with him pretending that they were his slaves and raised them quietly. So quietly that his niece who he has also been raising since childhood had no idea that they existed. Now he and Lora are taking this dangerous journey to the New World because they have realized that Robert and Ebele âcould never have a normal lifeâ in England. So they are giving them away to a plantation owner in the Americas who has promised that they will be very well treated. Not like all his other slaves. There is so much fail in this subplot that Iâm not even sure where to start.
Given the quality of the writing over all I think I am going to chock this up to serious research fail and the common (utterly, utterly, utterly incorrect) belief that there just werenât any people of color anywhere in Europe until like twenty years ago and these poor children would have been viewed as aliens or something if they had stayed there. Clearly chattel slavery was the best possible alternative to be hoped for.
Another harsher in hindsight option which I think was unintended because even at the seriesâ best the writing is never this subtle, comes when you look at some of the information given in the next game which implies that Otto was having some serious financial problems and was very near to losing everything. His trip to the New World was taken in large part to try and establish new connections and a new business in a burgeoning market. But that requires start up capital and he was nearly broke except for those two healthy slaves he still had. You can see where Iâm going with this. I donât think this is what the game intended with this arc, but itâs where my brain took it and I canât be the only one.
Along with the race fail there is only the mildest nod at the existence of homosexuality in a âWhat is this feeling? No, itâs not possible, weâre both women, weâre just friends. very good friends. Yes.â kind of a way. All the characters are also cis-gender and able bodied as well, with any "overweight" characters made into either sleazeballs or comic relief.
Final Thoughts
3/10 My honest suggestion would be to just skip this game and start the series on game 2. The sequels will catch you up on any important plot information this one contained and you wonât have to struggle through all the fail to get a painful and confusing ending that the next game is just going to retcon out of existence anyway. Hands of Fate and New Horizons are both much better games which I genuinely enjoyed. If you think Iâm dead wrong on this review and that this was a wonderful game then you might also enjoy the Shall We Date series of mobile aps. The writing is of a similar quality, the art is actually quite nice and theyâre âfreeâ.
Cinders is a witty young woman living with an overbearing stepmother and her two daughters, as if she was reenacting a certain well-known fairytale. But unlike its protagonist, Cinders is not afraid of taking fate into her own hands. Even if it means breaking the rules.
Overview
Produced by Moa Cube. I havenât yet checked out any of their other games as all of the released games are RTS or more classic hack nâslashy RPG games. There is another visual novel in the works (a mystery game rather than romance) called Solstice and I was impressed enough with Cinders that I will definitely be checking that game out as soon as it releases.
Cinders is a twist on the classic Cinderella story subverting many of the tropes of the original and focusing very heavily on the characters involved to present a more nuanced story with a more active protagonist. Itâs cool.
Main Character
Cinders is your protagonist and sheâs actually really interesting which is more than I've been able to say for most takes on the character of Cinderella (Into the Woods notwithstanding) Player choices shape her personality to a degree though sheâs always going to be witty and intelligent. But she might also be a naively innocent romantic trying to please everyone, a pragmatic realist whoâs more than willing to manipulate those around her to achieve her goals or a selfish and frivolous young woman who doesn't care who gets hurt (or killed) so long as she gets her way. How the other characters react to her is based on which of these options you choose as well as the dialogue options you select when talking to them and some subplots are only available to certain personality types which gives a fair amount of replay value.
Story
The story is your basic Cinderella shell. Beautiful girl has a loving father and a dead mother. Father remarries a horrible woman with two daughters of her own. Father dies. Horrible stepmother turns beautiful girl into a household servant. Prince throws a grand ball to choose his new bride. Stepmother wonât let beautiful girl go with them to the ball. Fairy Godmother does some hocus pocus to get beautiful girl into the ball anyway. Prince falls in love with beautiful girl. They get married. Happily ever after. There are a few twists thrown in here though. There are two potential âFairy Godmothersâ (neither of them is âniceâ), the stepsisters and stepmother donât have to be the villains of the piece and marrying the prince is strictly optional. You can even get a happy ending where Cinders ends up taking over her familyâs household and bringing it into political prominence with her stepmother and stepsistersâ full support. She can also end up dying young with no one caring enough to mourn. Itâs all about the choices you make for her. No pressure.
Romances
There are three romanceable characters, all of them are male. One of the endings does give you the option to run away with Madame Ghede but it is presented as more of a platonic lifelong partnership than a lesbian romance and so I am not including it here but will talk a bit more about Ghede herself the Inclusivity section.
Your three choices for romance are:
The Prince
Prince Basile is not your usual cardboard cutout Prince Charming. He has Plans for his country and wants to find a strong and intelligent wife to help him make those plans a reality. Sadly the player gets no interactions with the Prince at all. You see him only in scenes of courtly intrigue and in the final climactic scene at the ball. Your choices in the game so far to determine which of the three personalities Cinders will have determine how the Prince reacts to her in that final scene and how she reacts to him, but there are no dialogue choices to make in that interaction. This choice can seem like the âblandâ option because of that, which is a pity because he really is an interesting character, just one you donât get to know as well as the other two. (Even if I do kind of quietly ship him with Sophia.)
The Guard Captain
Captain Perrault is not a White Knight. More of a Gray Knight, really. Some of his dialogue seems to suggest the he did really try to live up to the knightly ideal in his youth, but he isnât a youth anymore and the harshness of the world has certainly left its cynical mark on him. He still holds enough of that idealism to find courtly politics, with the masks and the lies and the quiet knives in the dark, intensely distasteful but his nostalgic pining for the good old days of simple, honest bloodshed isnât exactly heroic either. While not my favorite romance option, I did find him to be a very compelling character largely because he has a cynical, often bitter, self awareness that I found really enjoyable to read. In any other game he probably would have been the character I luuuuurved the most, however this game also containsâŠ
The Merchant
Tobias is Cinderâs childhood friend which is a trope I usually eyeroll at in these games but I ended up just really loving this character. Heâs every bit as witty as Cinders (if not more) and gets some genuinely funny lines. Perrault is probably more popular being the broody guy whose emotional baggage you get to carry around for him. The audience for these games seems to really be into that. The writers certainly are, at any rate. Tobias is more the nerdy guy you snark with between actually healthy adult conversations about the State of the Relationship. I found this to be a refreshing change of pace from the angst and drama filled standard romance game fare. Tobias is the kind of guy I could see myself being in a happy and functional real world relationship with. That may be a turn off for people who prefer the heavy drama in their fiction. I really liked it.
It is also possible to rebuff the romantic advances of any of the three without it causing pointless drama. They just accept the decision like they maybe actually respect Cinders as a person. This shouldn't be a revolutionary thing, but it, sadly, kinda is. I appreciated it so I thought it was worth a mention.
Writing
The writing here is fantastic. Thereâs a great deal of wit and a lot of depth given to all of the major characters. The choices are broad enough that I was never left scowling at the screen thinking âI hate all of these choices. The character in my head would not say any of these things.â None of the characters are one note and I actually ended up really liking both of the stepsisters a great deal. Slowly being able to repair the relationships and become tentative friends with both of them was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me. Of course, the option to be endlessly snarky enemies is also there and too much fun not to try at least once.
Art
The art for this game is lovely. The characters and backgrounds are beautifully detailed. Screenshots really donât do justice to the backgrounds in particular. The candles flicker, flowers and trees sway in the wind, light sparkles on the water, shadows dance. It works beautifully in the backgrounds but when similar effects are applied to the characters the results are mixed. The character models blink and their eyes rove slowly back and forth. It was just Uncanny Valley enough to be really distracting. The game doesn't have CGs, but at key moments in the various romantic plots the characters will move into an embrace and the art as a whole is so pretty that I didn't really miss the CGs. The ending illustrations are very plain in comparison to the main game art, but as this serves as more of an epilogue it didn't bother me much, and with something like 332 possible variations to the ending I think trying to create more elaborate illustrations would have been ridiculously ambitious.
Music/Voice Work
There is no voice work but the music is very nice, several different pieces to match the various settings or sometimes matched with a character. It enhances the mood without being distracting. Most of the sound effects and ambient sounds are the same way with one somewhat grating exception. In several of the outdoor scenes there is birdsong in the background and there is a particularly loud trill that pops up just often enough to start getting under your skin, especially during the longer scenes. That one sound is my only complaint for this section though. Apart from that the sound work is top shelf.
Gameplay
Hope you like reading, because thatâs almost all there is to do in this game. This is not a complaint as far as Iâm concerned but some people might prefer a bit of stat building or combat or mini games to break up the big chunks of text and they will not find any of that here. That doesnât mean the game is boring, however. With story choices and dialogue options being the whole of the gameplay every one of those choices is significant in some way, either helping to establish Cinderâs personality, her relationship with the other characters or the choices she will have available when itâs time to decide her ultimate fate. Getting any particular ending requires very careful balancing of those choices so the game has a fair amount of replay value.
Inclusivity
Well⊠thereâs one non-white character, so we've already got most of the Disney canon beat but still; itâs a fantasy world, we could have done better. Madame Ghede is an interesting character but I have to seriously side-eye the singular POC being a voodoo priestess. I could easily have been behind that idea for one of the âFairy Godmotherâoptions if there had been any other characters of color. As it is it feels too much like a cliche and as though the only reason for even this small amount of inclusion was a desire to have The Voodoo in the place of a more traditional fairy tale witch. Your Mileage May Vary but it felt just slightly icky to me in a way I am having trouble putting into eloquent words. There isn't even a nod given to the idea of non-straight, non-cis, non-able bodied people in this story either. Cinders is a good step forward from the source material, but has leaps and bounds yet to go to make it a story for everyone.
Final Thoughts
Despite the lack of inclusivity it is still an interesting, beautifully rendered and well written game that is well worth a playthrough (or dozens if you suffer from the same brand of gotta catch em all crazy completionism that I do). Iâd give it a 7 out of 10. Great game, but it does lose some points for lack of inclusivity, the lack of player interaction with the Prince and the fact that Iâm still a little bit bitter that Shady wasn't a romance option. If you liked this game and you have a smartphone you might also enjoy Everlove: Rose. There are dozens of other games on a Princess or even Cinderella sort of theme that play the tropes straight instead of deconstructing them. I canât vouch for the quality of those games, however as I have not played many of them.
With a bonus side of my own opinions on the genre as a whole.
Overview
A basic summary of the game with information on the production company and links to help you score your very own copy. No opinionating here. Just the facts.
Main Character(s)
Some info and my own opinions on the player controlled character or characters for this game. This is a major sticking point for me. I have a lot of trouble getting into a game if the character whose choices I'm guiding is boring or obnoxious or otherwise off-putting. Ideally, for me, the game should give you some wiggle room for sculpting a personality for the character yourself through your choices in game. There's little in this genre that annoys me more than a passive protaganist whose choices have little to no effect on the story as a whole or an insufferable jerkass who keeps making terrible choices over which you, the player, have no control.
Story
The larger story of the game outside of the romance elements. Sometimes the story is just a flimsy pretext for the romance to start. I'm... actually pretty ok with that so long as that story is both interesting and shaped or changed by the choices of the character in some way beyond simply Good Ending/Bad Ending.
Romance(s)
All of the romantic elements in the game, the good, the bad and the ugly. This is where I am going to pull out my soap box because, you see, I have a love/hate relationship with in game romance, particularly in games where that is the main draw. Nothing hooks me into a game faster than a good romantic subplot (or plot as is the case with many of the games I'm going to cover here) but I get so very tired of the same old tired rehashed cliches. And I hate the way that most games focus all of the writing and story around the courtship and then end the story (or at least the bits of it that were focusing on the romance) as soon as the relationship starts. This is a thing that pretty much all media is guilty of, really. And I get it. I do. Conflict is interesting. Contentment is boring. But there's so much potential in this genre of gaming to really explore the ins and outs and ups and downs of a relationship and.... nope. Most games just milk the will they/won't they tension until the first kiss or 'first time' for the more risque games and then Happily Ever After, roll credits. I think we can do better. I personally would kind of love to see a game that brushes past the early tension and dives right into the relationship itself. Replace the "Will they get together?" tension with "Will they stay together?" and make it ok for the answer to be no. Some relationships are just toxic and I think having a character learn that could be a great ending (and an important lesson for the many teenagers that make up a big chunk of the market for this type of game), but I may just be a weirdo.
Writing
The quality of the writing. Great concepts can be dragged down by bad writing. Bland or bizarre (I'm looking at you, Hatoful Boyfriend) concepts can be made engaging and vastly entertaining by excellent writing. I'll give you my opinion on which camp a game fell into for me.
Art
The artwork; characters, backgrounds and those all important CGs. Highly subjective and just my own opinion which counts for not a whole lot given that I, personally, have trouble keeping all the limbs proportionate on a stick figure. But hey, those who can't do, critique!
Music/ Voice work
Not every game has it but for the ones that do, I will give my review of it. This will also be highly subjective.
Gameplay
Whether it's combat, skill building or mini games there is usually some mechanic in place to make it a 'game' instead of 'novel.' Some of these add to the game and make it more enjoyable and some are just a grinding annoyance that make me rethink trying a replay to get more endings.
Inclusivity
Where did I put that soapbox? This last cattegory is where I talk about how much effort was made on the part of the game designers to make anyone who is not white, straight, cisgender and able bodied feel like this game is also for them. I'm not going to lie, many of these games fail at this. Hard. But some of them take small steps or even large leaps toward being inclusive and I will pass out cookies where cookies are due.
Final Thoughts
Any extra miscellaneous rambling not covered in the above cattegories and a 1/10 rating of the game as a whole along with suggestions for similiar games for those who also played the game and loved it or very different games for those that hated it.
Now you know the system. Let the rambling commence!
