#operation eventide

[madhogthymaster]

Master Recs: Toxic Yuri Taste Tester

CW: slurs, mentions of transphobia

Playing Operation Eventide served as a gateway drug that pushed me into the intoxicating embrace of the independent Yuri VN scene. A space that formed itself around Itch.io and self-organized game jam contests. Thousands of hours of reading material, unconventional stories, the antithesis of mainstream genre conventions, right at the tip of my keyboard pressing fingers. Naturally, I had to write about these games. Consider this article naught but an appetizer for the massive (and very specific) meal that's to come in the future. You don't need to be a licensed toxicologist to handle these unhealthy dishes... but it might help!

di/aphragm para/digHm by Azalinworks

Hey, you. Yes, you! You like Toxic Yuri, don't you? Don't lie to me. You like it when the girls are PrObLeMaTiC and not good for each other. You enjoy a bit of Degradation Play, right? One-sided abuse? One girl being deeply traumatized, the other a murderer? Then check this one out. It's a short visual novel with a "fun" conceit, an abundance of allusions, repressed memories forcefully brought to the surface through S&M dynamics dressed up as "exposure therapy", voyeuristic objectification and a whole bunch of relatively obvious Wonderful Everyday references. I think it's interesting, definitely worth the price of admission - which is nothing. The art direction has that rough, sketchy presentation reminiscent of an underground comic book scene from 30 years ago by way of "How to Draw Manga", which creates a distinct aesthetic.

You will probably have a miserable time with it... Go on and have fun, you crazy kids!

Id & I by Throwpup

Id & I is a harrowing experience, one I was not emotionally ready to behold. It left me shaken, crestfallen, perturbed as it hit dangerously close to my mental abode. That is probably the second best way to sell you on it. Here's the first: it's Psychological Horror Selfcest Yuri. Technically.

Id & I unfolds in claustrophobic darkness, softly lit by computer monitors, enveloped in alien purple hues as squiggly, floating thoughts mercilessly intrude themselves upon the world. It's an aesthetic that grabs you by the chest, throttling you by the collar bone. The writing is subsumed within said aesthetic, fused with it, creating this suffocating atmosphere. It captures a feeling of profound, crippling loneliness, drenched in depression, self-loathing, guilt and a desperate yearning. Interactions with the environment are limited yet significant. There's an optional clicker game titled HEARTBREAKER, browser search "gameplay", and a piss bottle emptying sequence... On that high note, I must refrain myself from saying anything more.

This is a short visual novel. It can be completed in less than two hours. It was created by Throwpup, with character designs by Kolulu (Operation Eventide), and music by Lolratz. It honestly looks and sounds great. Still, heed the warnings and approach it at your own discretion.

PASSENGER X PRINCESS: NO HOPE // MUST DIE by Lunaticker

This novel hits you in the lower abdomen with an oppressive feeling of manic melancholy; red-tinged backgrounds and surreal visages juxtaposed to dire mental states, a third-person narration akin to a purposefully dissociated inner monologue hating itself. In preparation for this, I read GIRLS' SYMBIOSIS by the same author, made for the Toxic Yuri Jam 2025. It certainly laid some of the groundwork for the game. Namely, the dynamic between a domineering cis woman and the deeply traumatized trans girl she treats as her property. Also, the colour of violence red.

PASSENGER is about an abduction, a suicide pact, a road trip towards an inevitable destination with a looming oblivion hanging above the world itself, as if to emphasize the depressing finality of it all... There is more to it, lurking in the subtext.

The two main characters, Clover and Lotus, appear as twisted, "gendered" mirrors of each other. The latter projects her self-loathing unto the former's trans body, the former is willing to cede agency to her abusive, transphobic yet weirdly validating affections.

A certain interpretation emerges from reading between the lines. One that re-contextualizes the entire diegesis in an allegorical key, from the writing format to the particular texture of the entwined characterizations, to the existentially terrifying backdrop. The ending all but confirms said reading, but I won't spoil what it was actually about. You shall have to discover it for yourselves. PASSENGER X PRINCESS is well-written, well-illustrated, well-composed, generally well-made. Play it while in a good head space. Hey, does anybody want to grab a snack at WOMAN's?

LONER_DOG//:Snuff Puppy Carnage Society by Snek RK

This novel is as interesting as it is un-sanitized. A colour-bleeding maw of unsavoury, unmarketable, viscerally authentic queer art. Aesthetically pungent, its backgrounds akin to viewing the world from the inside of a cataract smeared in the abrasive lights of LSD-induced acid trips. Its UI is a Dark Web's chatroom with low-quality popup windows. The characters who inhabit it are monochromatic sketches on an alien canvas.

It's uninviting for all outsiders but it's familiar to those who live in it, those who would not function within "acceptable society." This is a small community of non-conforming, drug-addicted, trans queers who only have each other - and their inpawssible fetishes.

The writing reflects the frantic, intoxicating pace of their lives, often fragmenting its structure to check on what everyone is doing at any point in time, always discarding a more traditional format in favour of this... carefully crafted mess. As messy as these people are.

LONER_DOG is not gentle. It exists in the foreground of a truly horrific, bleak landscape, wherein trans "puppygirls" are used, abused and abandoned, collected by state-funded shelters, killed off and mutilated. Their corpses lay half-buried in a massive ditch filled with the gore of their entrails, a monument to violence.

It's a slaughter that's been tacitly normalized, easily ignored by society at large, the disposal of undesirables atop which the Status Quo is maintaned. Simply existing is an act of resistance, and the occasional puppygirl rescue is the most anyone can do when they themselves are at the bottom. And yet, in spite of the horror, life must continue: Argo works its night shift at the gas station. Argo and Nessa cut each other romantically. Maya and Haley have relationship problems. HarshNoise and Roaches broke the toilet. Audrey shot her dick off. It's a flawed community, but a community nonetheless. It's all they have.

So, yes, this is an emotionally raw journey, bordering on the psychotic, the repulsive, the downright unpleasant. Its destination isn't a hopeful future but, rather, a present where you're (hopefully) still kicking, surviving past your episodes, desperately clinging to what gets you going. I shall say, it did not occur to me it was thematically and narratively possible to earnestly reframe necrophilia as a means to process grief while still being fundamentally rooted in ultra-complex psychosexual feelings. These characters are capital F Freaks and not in a cute way.

In case I didn't make it abundantly clear, you should not read this novel if you're too "normal." You should behold its brutal atmosphere as a window to the souls of deeply unwell queer people surviving at the barest minimum, stuck together in the depths of a fascist dystopia. The vital necessity of togetherness supersedes the inevitable toxicity that percolates in their circle. This is not a story about things working out fine thanks to the power of companionship, it's a reminder of how much worse it would all be without your only (bad) friends around you. You have to firmly, desperately love each other because no one else will, outside of your group. You have to keep on living for the same reason. This is both, somehow, bittersweet and bleak beyond anything I'll ever experience in my cisgender life. ... Well, I feel like shit now so I'll call it a review. Great game! Thumbs up! The final sequence is Cinema! Support your community-run puppygirl centres! Trans rights and death to fascism, forever!

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[madhogthymaster]

Brain Bubble: This Cyber-Yuri Game Hurt My Brain (and My Eyes)

Operation Eventide is a visual novel by Kolulu. It's a queer narrative, a bio-mechanical take on Magical Girl fiction, that goes as hard on the scientific aspect as it does on the gay interactions. It is visually captivating, with a particular, keen (as in, horny) eye on cybernetics. I had a rather enthusiastic first impression on this diegesis based solely on its premise.

The world of Eventide is conceptually large, filled with unknowable eldritch terrors, machine body horrors attacking the planet and magical girls fighting them off; they are referred to as Aberrations and Arbiters, respectively. The plot isn't really about a large-scale conflict for the future of mankind, though. It's about what comes next, to live after the trauma as the world trudges on in whatever passes for the new "Normal." It's about body dysphoria, disability and humanity.

These days, I enjoy science fiction (or, indeed, anything of the fantastical persuasion) when it grounds itself in a more intimate exploration of the human experience. When the cosmic-level stakes are a background, a backstory or a setting informing a more personal story. Adelle, a former Arbiter, awakens after a five years long coma to discover she didn't die battling The Final Boss. A quirky scientist, Miriam, has rebuilt her with robotic prosthetics in an effort to restore her body. She seems totally trustworthy, by the way.

The early portions of the game focus on Adelle's distraught feelings on this matter. The alien sensation of the mechanical limbs, the perceived loss of her identity, both as a soldier and as a person, the disdain and fear of machines tied to her traumatic past in the war. All are tackled in excruciating detail as she's forced to adjust to her new life. It's not all bad, though. She's surrounded by a lovely cast of fun, quirky babes who drive her insane at every interaction. Other than Miriam, there's her ex-girlfriend with whom she had a rough breakup and... a weirdly out-of-place demon girl that looks like a character from a Disgaea game.

On paper, this sounds great. A good time to be had, all around. Well, not quite. I have a few, subjective grievances to air, a not-insignificant criticism in regards to the writing style and pacing. I shall carefully calibrate my words but this may still come across as a backhanded compliment: I do believe the prose is too "smart" for its own good.

Now, let me preface that whole tangent by passionately praising the characters and their interactions. The dialogues have a naturalistic flow to them, making for delightful back-and-forth conversations, enriched by nuanced dynamics. I enjoy learning about the girls' inner turmoil as they all struggle with self-perception, self-loathing, feeling detached from their own body and the world around them which, in turn, re-contextualizes how they intersect with each other - Adelle is a perennially yet justifiably grumpy jerk, for example.

Miriam's high-minded scientific dissertations feel like natural exchanges, they fit the character and tell us more about her mindset - even if I can't understand most of what she's saying and could have really used a lexicon. Celia is drowning in guilt, unresolved grief and I can't even begin to tell you about Akira, the weird Etna cosplayer.

Generally, this VN excels in the characterization aspect, in giving texture and pathos to its already memorable cast. That is why it's a shame that the prose (as in, the incessant monologues) gets in the way of that natural flow, bogging down the overall pacing as a result. These characters have a rich inner world, one they tend to express with an inordinate amount of aphorisms, allusions, metaphors, analogies and everything in-between. It's the kind of overwrought text that yearns to be evocative but it's actually exhausting to read. It's made worse when the game has to inevitably address the setting itself, the backstories and the larger overarching narrative, resulting in prolonged expositions written in that style. It's a classic case of an overly ambitious title caught up in its own momentum.

However, I refuse to be the kind of person who would criticize a small, indie project for being too big for its britches. If anything, I respect and encourage this behaviour. Go big, make mistakes, learn from said mistakes, try again, hone your craft, and always create what you want to create! Eventide still works best as an intimate character exploration, mind and body, and I seldom have encountered a work of fiction that could offer me a mature take on Transhumanism, phantom pain and internalized ableism. Alas, I cannot bring myself to fully embrace it.

Several hours, 140k words and a pair of egregiously strained eyes later, I must conclude that Operation Eventide is... fine. Once again, I want to applaud the effort on display. The distinct flavour of its world and many moving parts is simultaneously subtle and Larger-Than-Anime. There was a strong vision of hard-nosed science fiction, in open conflict with the decisively unscientific Magical Girl genre, emphasized by the erotic fusion of machinery and flesh. The chimeric understanding of the Soul and the human condition haunting the vistas of its theming.

It's high-end objectum fetish rewired as a means to explore Personhood smack-dabbed in the middle of large beefy brained scientific/spiritual/philosophical queries, and it's a little bit much. Its verbosity on that front is compounded by the aforementioned drawn-out prose. I would be tempted to say that it's a solid work of fiction that has room for improvement and simply leave it at... Except, I can't leave it at that because there's more Operation Eventide for me to read! Let me tell you this: if I had legibility issues with the first game, then its prequel (aptly named DOLOROSA) has only made my life significantly worse.

The central premise is about the relationship between Slater and Lucielle (two women barely present in the original work), the doctor tasked to test the limits of an Arbiter's regenerative abilities and the magical girl in her "care." It gets somewhat gory but not too much. By my significantly skewed standards, that is.

What's remarkable about Slater as a character is that she's absolutely insufferable. Her inner thoughts are akin to a mental Venus fly trap, she's got unresolved issues off the wazoo and she has a few worrying tendencies when it comes to flesh bodies and "creative" torture methods. And yet, compared to someone like Lavandula, the one who's in charge of all these girls, the woman who's been grooming every single Arbiter into her ideal sex object to a, frankly, absurd degree of shamelessness, Slater almost seems like a caring, kind person. On second thought, I cannot even be bothered with the plot summary.

I must force myself to accept that the Operation Eventide games are physically incompatible with me. The first one already had an issue with the way the unending internal monologues would constantly beat around the bush, trapped within imaginary debates, philosophical and pseudo-scientific quandaries, making the story weirdly difficult to parse. To be clear, understanding the actual plot of Eventide is not too hard once you realize it's basically Kingdom Hearts - I'm only half-joking and, no, I shan't elaborate. What made the experience difficult for me, specifically, is that both the nature of the prose and the actual formatting of the text were poison to my ocular vision: the long bunched-up paragraphs, the colour-coded character-specific dialogues, the choice of font, the small size of it, all conjoined with the unwieldy writing.

DOLOROSA leans harder in every single category, and it's made worse by completely replacing dialogue boxes with walls of text covering the screen. In short, I read thousands of words ranging from scientific jargon to quasi purple prose in a format that physically hurt me. It is definitely living up to its title, I say!

I truly wanted to like what was presented here. There are brilliant ideas at play, spicy rendezvous of deeply unwell lesbians and tired bisexuals being the most screwed up creatures in existence, an earnest dissertation on trauma and self-loathing, but it all falls apart at the altar of legibility. Even conceptually great scenes such as the Naked Roulette Drilling Pain Scale and the Shotgun Scissoring are over-encumbered by a prose that undermines them by attempting to seem "clever" and distant. Regardless of how painful it is to read, I still would have been disappointed.

It breaks my heart, especially since I think the way this artist draws women is too powerful to be contained, but this literature is too visually taxing for my tastes.

Nevertheless, my accessibility issues are not universal. If magical science fiction, hot neurodivergent girls, objectum shenanigans and beautiful artwork are your morning cereals, and you can stomach the less tasty bits, you may find these titles on kolulu.itch.io for free! Consider tossing a coin to this skilled creator, while you're at it.

Reading these novels, while an unfortunate experience, did lead me down a deep, girl-shaped rabbit hole. Let's just say, I am not done with covering Yuri games, not by a long shot. Here's a Part 2!

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[madhogthymaster]

Operation Eventide Skiprun - Day 6 Walkthrough

Floor 1 

1. "Travel down the hallway" 

2. "Look for oddities" 

3. "Check on Miriam" 

4. "I have a question about one of the rooms" 

5. "Ask about the doors in the far side of the hall" 

6. "Ask about the strange machines" 

7. "Nevermind" 

8. "Leave" 

9. "Enter the suspicious door" 

10. "Node B" 

11. "Check on Miriam" 

12. "Tell her about puzzle" 

13. "Leave" 

14. "Go to the stairwell" 

15. "Go up" 

Floor 2 

1. "Travel down the hallway" 

2. "Look into the offices" 

3. "Go back downstairs" 

4. "Travel down the hallway" 

5. "Check on Miriam" 

6. "I have a question about the third floor" 

7. "Ask about the central core" 

8. "Nevermind." 

9. "Leave" 

10. "Go upstairs" 

11. "Travel down the hallway" [Secret CG: Lucielle] 

12. "Observe the central core" 

12. "Go downstairs" 

13. "Enter the Arbiter's room" 

14. "Stick to the plan" [Floor 3]       "Fine" [NO_MATTER_WHAT END] 

Floor 3 

1. "Server Room" 

2. "Quarantine" 

3. "55" 

4. "Repair Depot" 

5. "65" 

6. "Server Room" 

7. "Enter the Library"     "Enter the room" (and then commit) [BAD END 2 (two CGs)] 

Floor 4 [ . . . What the hell is with that?] "I won't listen to you anymore." [BAD END 3 (CG)] "You love me, just admit it." 

Finale 

[As if giving me a choice, my executive officer smiles compassionately at me.]  “Kneel” [FOR_LOVE END] "Don't" [FOR_ETERNITY END] (choice only available on a second playthrough)

Walkthrough provided by Kolulu.

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This Cyber-Yuri Game Hurt My Brain (and My Eyes)

[madhogthymaster]

A Pleasant Car Ride with Miriam - Operation Eventide

This game is a lot: https://bsky.app/profile/madhogthymaster.bsky.social/post/3m7bba3sr2s2y --- Why you should consider boycotting Microsoft: https://www.bdsmovement.net/microsoft Find out how you can help Palestine: https://arab.org/