"Data Lion is a short visual novel about a lion who gets a camera collar put on him by a group of scientists wanting to document his journey. It has choices, 2 love interests, and many alternate endings including bad ends (game overs)!
The idea was inspired by masterpieces like The Lion King and the manga/anime Kimba The White Lion."
Found this game while searching around on Itchio, the game is completely free to download and can be completed within just a few hours. It is described by the author as being unfinished in its current state, but I think it can be played through completely with a feeling of some satisfaction.
Here is the link for those interested
More in depth review under the cut featuring spoilers. If you're looking to play I do recommend going in blind, it's fairly simple and the fun is really found in unlocking the CGs, which isn't too hard to do.
This is a short game that reminds me a lot of media I grew up with on dA back in the day, so it was very entertaining. I can definitely tell this takes a lot more inspiration from Kimba than it does TLK with a lot of its story concepts and overall character design. The game itself runs on a seven day cycle so it's fairly short.
I enjoyed the main character's design, he's an intersex, mostly maneless lion that you can name, though the default name that pops up is 'Lion McLionface' (your character was supposedly named via an Internet poll made by the scientists attaching your radio collar)
You're also able to choose your stats, as this game does have (extremely basic and limited) combat. For my playthrough I named the lion 'Lasaga' to be a bit silly and I dumped all my stats into strength.
I'm not really sure what the stats of Skill and Speed do for you. I completed the game by getting all the CGs and didn't encounter anything that was explicitly skill or speed required, perhaps it has a factor in combat that I'm unaware of.
You make a series of choices, some meaningful some not as most of them lead to the same exact events playing out. You can acquire the only pickable item, a thorn you can use in combat, in the game earlier on based on where you choose to make your home if you pick the Acacia Tree.
At some point a Safari Car will come by and observe you, if you make the right dialogue choices you can get some exposition on the setting you're in.
The animals in this particular section of Africa are apparently Bio-Engineered to have heightened, near human intelligence. The author of the game, Caveboy Tup has elaborated in a comment on the game's itchio page which I'll leave below;
This is definitely something that shows a lot of Kimba inspiration though it goes in a different direction that has some interesting implications. I would have been interested to see this explored in a more elaborate narrative.
The two love interests in this game are Jetsway and Rrred;
Their routes are very straight forward, I'd say you would have to really go out of your way to not pursue either of them, which makes it easy to pick and choose which one you 'romance', as it's also pretty bare bones in that regard too.
The one most advertised is definitely Rrred the lion who is featured more prominently on the game's page. He's not got a whole lot of depth, you have the choice to fight him or join up with him in a coalition immediately upon meeting him.
I do like the game's expression work, I find the animals emote in ways that are fun to look at and easy to read.
If you defeat him he will simply retreat and will show up again later to give some brief exposition on Jetsway's character.
Joining up with him starts his short route, which mostly consists of him scaring off crocodiles at the watering hole for you, which you are able to avoid without him regardless (The only time my character got a bad end was when I chose the wrong evasion option at this point in the story)
The other portion is an encounter with a clan of hyenas that was pretty comedic, this got a good laugh out of me. It was the only time the game was particularly vulgar.
You escape the hyenas, as you are outnumbered no matter how high your strength stat is. The rest of the route is pretty uneventful, you travel together and it's implied there's some romantic interest between the two of you.
I will admit I found Rrred to be the less interesting of the two routes but I can see what appeal they were going for here.
The other route is Jetsway's which I found to have slightly more meat on its bones.
You meet Jetsway first in fact while looking for food but he only says that the radio collar you have on means you aren't one of his 'targets' before sprinting away.
Encountering him later finds him injured in the middle of the night after a fight.
There's more lore exposition with Jetsway regarding the largely left out bio-engineering aspect. He's some creature part of Glo's work that was created by them, it's specified he has some sort of Tech in his eye that isn't explained very much.
Poking around the dialogue options with him will give you the option of fighting him once he reveals he got these injuries fighting and killing lions, which explains why he specified you weren't a target earlier.
Upon defeating him, you can kill him here which I found interesting. But you can also choose to stay the night and nurse his wounds until he recovers.
You are given the option to walk him back home, and doing so will trigger an interaction between you two and Rrred, who calls Jetsway a murderer. Pushing Jetsway for more answers will only get you this in response.
There is no further elaboration on this plot point after this. I assume given the larger narrative that was mentioned by the creator that he's killing lions that are either human aggressive or resistant/unsuccessful in the Bio Engineering stuff. But that's only an educated guess.
Walking him home will after lead you to Utke town, where he says the humans will give him more medical treatment but that your character cannot stay.
You're able to stay the night, where you'll find Jetsway gone in the morning, but you are spotted by a Glo operative prior to this who takes this photo of you and Jetsway to 'share on the internet'.
After these two CG's, the final day is always the same. Your radio collar falls off on the seventh day and the scientists come to retrieve it. You have two options after this, to hide in wait to observe the humans at first, which will lead to you being tranquilized again while they retrieve your collar.
You can also attack the scientists, which will result in you ripping off the arm of one of them, the one named Saito.
They escape you after this, and leads to the final CG where Saito has been given a replacement prosthetic arm.
This concludes the game as currently published. I found it very charming to play and a nice way to spend part of an afternoon. It was definitely worth sharing since I haven't seen anyone discuss playing it or knowing it exists.
