Friday 25 January 2019

NewWestGames's Visual Novels, Part 2 + Developer Interview

A while ago I’ve made a Shovelware Adventures episode about NewWestGames, a one-person studio from Canada creating primarily erotic yuri titles. For the first time since I’ve started doing my semi-serious (and borderline mockery) short reviews, I was actually approached by the developer and had an opportunity to discuss my criticism of their games, in a respectful and constructive manner, that was probably way more forgiving than the tone of my original post would warrant. After a brief exchange, I proposed to take this discussion public, giving Katie, the person behind the NewWestGames label, a chance to respond to my commentary on her work and talk a bit about the general ideas behind her VNs. I also decided it was a good moment to take a look at the NWG titles I haven’t reviewed before, completing my coverage of the studio’s catalogue and giving Katie the ability to comment on it in full. So, without further ado, I hope you’ll all enjoy my reviews and the conversation that comes after them!

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Frequent Flyer, released on Steam in March 2018, went unnoticed by most EVN readers and received mixed reviews, mostly due to its simplistic visuals and a relatively brief, linear storyline. It is, however, arguably one of the most interesting NewWestGames titles, telling a story about a toxic relationship between two girls with some apparently autobiographical elements. The protagonist, Emi, is an average-looking girl, living in a large American city and working as a freelance journalist. Rejected by her family due to her sexual orientation, depressed because of her failed ambitions of becoming a writer and recovering from another failed relationship, she decides to go for a trip to Scotland, hoping that a change of scenery and an opportunity to meet a close online friend can invigorate her. There, while watching an evening stand-up comedy show at a local bar, she meets Isobel, a gorgeous and charismatic young Scotswoman. The two quickly forms a connection, leading to an affair that first restores Emi’s happiness and then crushes it in the most disturbing ways.
            Those that experienced a toxic relationship with a mentally-unstable person themselves or know stories of such couples, will find many elements in Frequent Flyer familiar – all the lies, manipulation and emotional blackmail involved, along with Emi’s reactions to more and more obvious betrayal from the person she loves, are portrayed in a believable and properly heart-wrenching manner. The minimalistic & inconsistent presentation might take away from the overall impact of the story, and many of the events are pretty easy to predict, at times making the whole experience feel a bit like a PSA, rather than a “proper” piece of fiction. Still, it is a game with an important story to tell and an underlying message that is worth hearing out, and despite all the gripes I had with its execution, I couldn’t help but appreciate it.

Final Score: Recommended

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The only two “monthly games” created for NewWestGames’ Patreon supporters, these VNs are both short yuri nukige, with only a bare minimum of context attached to the h-scenes. Catgirl Highschool involves an attractive math teacher motivating her student (both are, obviously, catgirls, although not for any specific reason) in a highly unprofessional manner during individual tutoring. What most likely sets it apart from most other creepy teacher-romance fantasies, is that her advances are actually a didactic method of sorts, even if the constant stripping, teasing and promises of sexual rewards could only be successful in the game’s fictional universe – or at least, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to focus on any math problem while being sexually harassed by my tutor.
            Santa’s Bedroom, on the other hand, features a slightly less disturbing scenario, in which two of the Santa’s elves have a little get-together in their employer’s bed. It gets to the point much quicker than the previous title and spices things up with the power of friendship futa. Regardless of the plot details, both games are ultimately extremely brief and, sadly enough, not particularly pretty – just like the NWG’s older nukige Densha Girl, there’s really little reason to choose them over many high-quality nukige available in English nowadays, quite often dirt cheap.

Final Score: Not Recommended

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While the Main Character Simulator’s title kept me confused since I’ve first heard about it (I mean, that’s just another way of saying “a game”, isn’t it?), I was mostly expecting it to be some kind of meta-game with a lot of fourth-wall-breaking humour. What I’ve found, however, was a rather standard, het eroge VN (notably, the first one of this kind in NewWestGames’ catalogue), spiced up mostly by some “witty” inner monologues and comments from the protagonist. For the most part, stays focused on a brief, silly storyline about three teenagers finding a piece of alien technology and being chased around by its extraterrestrial owners, while also delivering a decent amount of very vanilla, nicely-drawn hentai scenes. Somewhat disappointingly, it’s even highly linear, up until very late into the game, when it split into three different romance endings (with two h-scenes for each of them). Thankfully it never gets tedious thanks to its relatively short length and the focus on reasonably funny gags.
            If I have to point to something interesting about Main Character Simulator, it’d probably be unusual body types of some of the heroines – from my perspective, the slightly overweight Kiyoko and muscular Erodani were highly-welcomed pieces of visual variety in the usually very stale world of erotic EVNs. The game also includes some amusing pieces of partial voice acting, including a major character voiced by the VN-focused YouTuber Bosskwar – a person I’ve spent watching more than any other VN let’s player and I have to admit it was highly amusing to hear him in this role. Other than that, the game was simply… Fine, never surprising me the way I hoped it to do, but also not being a bad experience in any major way. And for the low price of $5, it should be a relatively safe buy for any eroge fan ut theere (and especially so when on sale). 

Final Score: Recommended

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Starship XO is a game I covered briefly in my Yuri Game Jam 2018 overview and which I still consider as one of the strongest entries in last year’s event. While this story of a team of misfits being assigned a wreck-of-a-warship and sent to their deaths on the frontlines of a galactic war suffers from serious pacing issues, it’s genuinely fun to read and ultimately satisfying. Above everything else, this is the case because of the rather unique, appealing character art and the colourful personalities of the vast.
            The game advances its plot at a neck-breaking speed, leading the 5-person team (including the protagonist and three romanceable heroines) from one near-hopeless battle to another and concluding after 2-3 hours (in a slightly overly-optimistic manner). The backstories of the crew and interactions between them are interesting and despite the short script, all of the girls end up having a lot of personality and charm, while also being believably flawed and troubled by their hopeless position. The plot explores LGBT+ issues a lot, both in the brief romantic arcs and the overarching plot, but also makes very decent use of its space-war setting and shows the crew banding together to win despite the overwhelming odds. While it could be easy to criticise for its narrative shortcuts and over-the-top victories of the crew, as a free game, it’s really just pleasant enough to justify its existance. The minor technical issues, like the distracting UI animations and occasional slow-downs, are slightly irritating at first, but can’t ever nullify the overall enjoyment factor of Starship XO – if you’re not afraid of queer characters and VNs explicitly discussing minority issues (without overdoing it), this one is really worth checking out.

Final Score: Recommended


And this concludes my coverage, for the time being, with literally every currently available NewWestGames title included. Approaching the latest games under the NWG label was quite an interesting experience, different from reading through and writing about the earlier ones, as most of these recent projects were to some extent experimental, escaping the formula of typical yuri eroge. They offered interesting ideas and often included important messages, even if their production quality was still inconsistent. While to be perfectly honest, after first encountering Katie’s work in the form of Sweet Volley High I was completely put off by it, now I’m genuinely interested in what the future VN’s of hers will look like. And as we’ve got all this out of the way, I encourage you to check the interview I’ve done with Katie, talking about her games, inspirations and the future of the NewWestGames label.

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Plk_Lesiak: Welcome and thank you for agreeing to this interview! Before we get to our main topic, would you like to say hello to our readers and tell a bit about yourself?

Katie: Hello, I'm Katie. I'm 33, live in Canada and I'm the owner of NewWestGames. Definitely a Jill of all trades, master of none sort of woman, I've done little bits of everything on the games I've produced, to varying degrees and varying results!

PL: You saw both the Shovelware Adventures episode and my coverage of your more-recent games. Are there things in my articles that you would like to address directly?

K: I did indeed read your articles, and I enjoyed your in-depth looks. Though I'm not sure there's anything specific to respond to in the articles (without writing 10,000 words) I'd like to state that my journey in game development has been one of learning.

Sometimes, in games like Sweet Volley High, for example, hindsight has shown that although I was on the right track with the concept, some of the characterization, the overall shock value and plotlines, the execution fell short in many ways, as you quite rightfully pointed out. I just hope people can still enjoy these stories, despite the flaws.

PL: Before, before we talk about specific projects of yours, let’s tackle VNs in general. What motivated you to work on creating your own visual novel?

K: I think I wanted to create more specific experiences. The human race is a diverse group, and I wanted to make experiences that were more relatable to people, where they could really see themselves in the characters, or get into relationships with the sort of people they are attracted to. It's an ongoing journey, and I plan for even more inclusion in the future.

PL: Are there any yuri titles or creators you’d consider major inspiration for your games?

K: As far as inspiration goes, I've played VNs for years, from the old classics like Season of Sakura, to more modern titles. Though I love Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Saya no Uta, the Grisaia games, and more, one of my biggest influences is actually Love Plus on the DS. More a dating sim than a VN in the first half, it really gets you connected to your date of choice, going not just through the introductory flirting, but through the real relationship part too. It was that part I really connected with.
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A Wild Catgirl Appears!

PL: Are you reading many VNs nowadays? Are they more often Japanese titles, or EVNs?

K: I try and read when I have time. It's probably a fair share of both JVN and EVN, just to keep a good mix of things. I'm currently reading Cursed Sight by InvertMouse and I'm enjoying it so far!

PL: And to the main topic! Your debut title, A Wild Catgirl Appears, was a rather controversial one. What kind of feedback did you receive when it first came out and what do you think about that project today?

K: AWCA was originally designed as a side project to a game I was developing at the time, Impulse!. The game was a nightmare at launch, making the front page of Steam, but ultimately being horrible. It was a huge lesson for me. I ended up remaking the game entirely, and even have plans to completely remaster it, alongside some other exciting stuff. For all of its faults, of which there are many, people still really connect with some of the characters, and that gives me a lot of hope for the future.

PL: AWCA was also your first Yuri Game Jam entry. Were you aiming for the event from the beginning and what motivated you to participate in the Jam in later years? 

K: Yes, it was definitely planned as a Yuri Jam game. Though Impulse! was in development, it was an exciting event (in its first year, if I remember rightly) and I was really happy to make something for it! I did take time off from participating after that, but Starship XO was my way of showing improvement to the community and providing a fun story for people to read through for free, while highlighting the wonderful artists who'd helped work on it. I think the jam is a great way for creators to get noticed, and I know others have seen a lot of success from participating.

PL: As you've mentioned Impulse! twice already, while I was trying to complete your catalogue before this interview, I’ve noticed that this particular title became pretty much impossible to find, despite originally being a freeware release. What happened?

K: Impulse!, now there's a game. Originally released on Steam for $15, it was a 4-ish hour VN featuring full voice acting, a boatload of CGs, animated character sprites and more. It was a murder mystery surrounding an indie rock band, who had to find their own justice and work out why their friends were dying. Sounds great, right?
 
There were huge issues, however, from extremely inconsistent voice acting, a buggy engine (which plagued Catgirl, too), to poor plot pacing, bad writing and foreshadowing, some inconsistency with art – just real structural issues. I eventually took the step of withdrawing the game from sale. I do plan to re-use some of the characters one day, as I still really love the designs.
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Impulse!

PL: After this project came games such as Sweet Volley High and probably your most highest rated VN, Ecchi Sketch, but it’s pretty safe to say most of them received mixed receptions. Is there a project of yours that you are especially fond of, or one you’d clearly consider your best work so far?

K: Mixed receptions is a good way to put it. Both games had their flaws, but many positives as well. Though some pacing issues existed in Sweet Volley High, I really liked the overall story, but I could've perhaps done a better job with how I marketed the game, where the plot twists left a bitter taste for some who were maybe expecting a happier adventure. But Ecchi Sketch is something I'm proud of. Again, not perfect, but it's nice to see that people really did enjoy the game. Definitely the most proud of that one.

PL: You focused exclusively on yuri in the past, but lately made a shot at creating het eroge with Main Character Simulator. What was your experience when working on this title and are you planning on approaching other genres in the future?

K: I wondered whether it would be worth trying a light-hearted, more nukige-aligned title for straight people, but giving them an option in terms of dateable characters. Kiyoko, in particular, was designed to feature the sort of women that aren't typically seen in VNs, and she received good feedback overall. Though I think the end product turned out okay, I felt my passion for the project wane throughout development. It ended up being a rather different story from what was imagined (which was actually inspired by a viewer of Bosskwar and the Weebathon in one of his Twitch streams, who eventually lent his voice to the game).

I certainly will be sticking to what I know in the future – games aimed at a female market.

PL: When you say "games aimed at female market", what does that mean to you? After all, yuri VNs, especially erotic ones, are also commonly enjoyed by men. 

K: So, if men can get something out of my games, awesome, I'm glad. When I say aimed at a female market, I mean relying less on the tropes that most yuri games seem to rely on unrealistic depictions of sex between women, schoolgirls, cliched romance - and instead adopt things I know women are looking for in their stories, namely more contemporary settings, more realistic and adult characters, and sex scenes that line up with their expectations.

I could talk about this particular topic all day, but I know there's an audience out there for this type of content. When I get the formula and the experience right, I know I'll find success there. Until then, I'll continue improving my craft.
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Queerly Just Friends

PL: In my initial review of Sweet Volley High, I made a wrong assumption that the story was written by a guy and attributed much of the protagonist’s characterisation to that fact. I’ve later seen similar opinions from female reviewers, notably in Lady Storyteller’s review of AWCA. Do you think there’s something in your writing style that could prompt these kinds of reactions?

K: I think my writing on AWCA was rather inexperienced – it was my first time writing a game after all. I've had no formal writing training, my training has been writing scripts for games. I think I often struggled with conveying the voice of my characters, which may have made them come across differently than intended. I think as time has gone on, this aspect of my writing has improved dramatically, through practice and training.
PL: You’re now working on Queerly Just Friends, which seems like one of your most ambitious projects to date. Can you tell us a bit about it?

K: I sure can! Queerly Just Friends is a story very loosely based on some real-life experiences of my self and others. It's about the blurred lines that can occur when you consider a sort of 'friends with benefits' relationship, and what happens when one of the people involved catches feelings. It also explores what happens with relationship dynamics in a close-knit social group. The game will be featuring animated characters, full voice-overs, gorgeous hand-drawn art and some interactive, online connected elements too. I'm taking my time with it, and it won't be released until it's perfect, even if it takes me another year!

PL: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers before we wrap up?

K: To those who have played my games, thank you. You enabled me to do what I love. Through your feedback, you've encouraged me to improve. To people who haven't played them, I recommend either Sweet Volley High or Ecchi Sketch as a way to jump in. I'm still really proud of those games. And, thanks of course to you for inviting me to this little discussion, and encouraging me to improve as well!

PL: Thank you for your time!

Friday 18 January 2019

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: fanservice Sakura games, part 1

Wondering what this series is about? What's with the "crappy" rating system? Find out all about it here​​​​​​​!

Welcome back to the Shovelware Adventures, the series that most likely no one was missing, but it came back regardless! It's been a while since I last delved into the Sakura series, so with only a few of those games still not reviewed, and staying true to my grossly counter-chronological coverage of the Winged Cloud’s trashy catalogue, let’s finish it where everything started. When Sakura Spirit appeared on Steam in mid-2014, on what was still a fairly barren EVN landscape, it quickly became something akin to a viral sensation – achieving not only sale numbers that most likely no one ever expected, but also popping up frequently on YouTube and becoming popular enough on Twitch to quickly get officially banned. It also established a peculiar variant of ecchi formula, which took the fanservice usual for eroge and trashy anime, and dedicated every CG and the whole plot to showing it off, without ever going into actual porn to stay within Steam’s, at the time, strict adult content policy. Before Winged Cloud made a transition into actual hentai games, this model spawned an impromptu franchise that turned "sakura" into a dirty word for most Western VN fans, with a total of six "all ages" fanservice VNs released within it. Today, I’ll take a look at first three of those not-quite-porn Sakura games – in a distastefully biased manner, considering my relative affinity towards fanservice and cliched romance, and dislike for hentai.
 
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Sakura Spirit has been ridiculed countless times, but apart from the immense amount of typos and terribly implemented popcultural references, it’s actually not the worst thing Winged Cloud has even created (even not counting the obviously-trash-tier free games like Sakura Clicker). It offers both a semi-coherent, low-fantasy isekai story (although, of course, a poorly executed one with a highly anticlimactic ending), and a somewhat appealing cast of heroines (two fox spirits, who helps the protagonist after his accidental travel to a parallel world, and two human girls acting as village guards) which could all work as a decent basis for an enjoyable ecchi VN. However, it strangely doesn’t utilize the biggest strength of visual novels as a medium, offering pretty much no meaningful choices, very little romance and an inconclusive harem ending straight out of a shitty fanservice anime.
            Sakura Spirit also lost much of the appeal that the sheer scarcity of anime boobs on Steam gave it at the time of its release – for many it was an introduction of sorts into the world of Japanese and Japanese-inspired ero games, definitely having its role in preparing ground for the whole genre entering the Western market and the massive success of "proper" adult VNs such as Nekopara. Hilariously enough, it was also so badly written that many people thought of it as a poorly-translated Japanese game – this by itself might be clear enough indication that reading it nowadays is not really worth it, unless you treat it as a rather shameful, but still important piece of EVN history – maybe not fun to read, but worth it for curiosity's sake.
 
Final rating: Smelly Poo 
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The second Sakura title is a bit forgotten nowadays and didn’t achieve as big of a success as some other titles in the series, but is still remarkable in a few different ways. Learning from the shortcomings of Sakura Spirit, the studio made slightly more effort to tell a proper story, with a clear focus on the two main heroines and a decently-paced fantasy/magical girl-themed intrigue driving the plot. Its biggest strength, however, might be characterisation – not only Wanaca’s designs are nice to look at, but the heroines themselves have quite a lot of personality – especially Sayaka, who at first glance looks like a typical airhead, but soon after shows a rather devious and dominant personality, far-detached from her cheerful and carefree facade. The merciless teasing she subjects both the protagonist and her mildly-classic-tsundere partner to is one of the highlights of the game, escalating throughout the plot in a highly amusing manner. Even the endings (one for both heroines + a “harem” one), while a bit abrupt and inconclusive when it goes to romance, were nice enough to be satisfying from my perspective.
            Still, while I enjoyed the story and characters in this game quite a lot (it’s also a bit longer than a typical Sakura game, which makes everything feel just a bit more fleshed out and meaningful), it’s obviously still a rather basic plot-serves-the-boobs setup with numerous problems. Maybe the biggest one it how little we learn about the heroines – while they can be vaguely identified as magical girls and both of them give hints about some rather dark backstories (fighting evil magic seems like a really shitty and draining job, I tell you), nothing that isn’t directly connected to the main intrigue is explained properly. It was the only time in the Sakura series when I’ve been seriously interested in the lore and pretty much none of it ever materialized. There’s also a fair share of WCs typical, cringy moments and fanservice showing up in the most inappropriate situations, but it’s not something you can seriously complain about after approaching this kind of game. In the end, I think Sakura Angels is one of the best titles in the series – at least if you don’t play them for actual porn, as even the fanservice here is among the mildest in the whole franchise.
 
Final rating: Golden Poo!
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One of the first Sakura titles to feature character art by Inma was also a surprisingly ambitious project by Winged Cloud’s standards. With three fully-fledged character routes and four endings, it offered a fairly impressive amount of content and heroine-centric storytelling, maybe getting closer to being a proper moege than any other game in the series. It’s also possibly my favourite one of them all, for a simple reason – it’s absurdly dumb, but fully embraces that stupidity to deliver relatively inoffensive romance scenarios that are simply fun to read, apart from delivering the necessary amount of fanservice CGs. The heroines – a clumsy daughter of Santa Claus, a lonely fox spirit and a childhood friend with an attitude – are a bizarre mix of themes, but all of them are amusing and well-designed enough to carry their own little stories. Adding a protagonist likeable in a way which makes this whole scenario borderline-believable (I mean, he's nice and selfless to the point he actually could get a girl to like him) and a genuinely funny harem ending to the mix, it’s maybe the very few Sakura game (not counting the generally recognized, positive outlier in form of Dungeon) that tempt me to sincerely recommend them to others. Really worth it, if approached with the right mindset.
 
Final rating: Golden Poo! 
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I have to admit that I have a peculiar affinity towards this early "fanservice age" of Sakura games. While hentai usually requires little imagination to make, trying to create a “sexy” game that can fit within Steam’s and similar platform’s limitations requires some creativity and when done well, can give a game something of a trashy charm – one that nukige, spending most of the time on bombarding you with plain porn, will rarely have. While Sakura Spirit wasn’t able to capture that ecchi “magic”, Sakura Angels and Sakura Santa were just the kind of mindless fun you would hope for from a fanservice VN. They also come from the age when the formula still wasn’t repeated to the point of pure absurdity – now, 20 Sakura titles later, it’s hard for the new entries to replicate this appeal and keep any kind of quality standards. Obviously, the games were never anything beyond “somewhat ok”, but being just “ok” is absolutely fine by me. Not every developer can create masterpieces and I can appreciate even the trashiest formula if there’s actual effort put into it – sadly, soon after these two games, Winged Cloud stopped fulfilling even that basic requirement. In two weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the final free non-hentai Sakura games – Sakura Beach 1 & 2 and Sakura Shrine Girls – last of the dying breed, but at the same time, symbols of things to come for the whole franchise…
 
PS This time, my special thanks go to Noble, whose videos made creating this post a lot more fun than it would otherwise be.

Wednesday 16 January 2019

The Tail Makes the Fox, Episode 1 Review (otome visual novel)

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This review was originally published on Fuwanovel Forums, on March 16th 2018.

 
Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this game by the developer. All opinions expressed here are solely my own.

What better way to link my otome-themed weeks and the upcoming yuri event, than with a game that has an equal share of male and female romance options, especially if its one made by a studio most known for their Yuri Game Jam contributions? The Seven Districts of Sin: The Tail Makes the Fox episode 1, developed by Reine Works and published in October 2017, came to my attention in an unusual way – a review copy of it was, to my genuine surprise, sent to my freshly-created Steam Curator page. Adding to my confusion, while the game’s release date suggested it was out for a few months already, it had no VNDB ratings or Steam reviews whatsoever.
            While contacting the game’s developer clarified a few things (like the large gap between the initial Itch.io release and the game actually hitting Steam in early February 2018), a few weeks later its generally overlooked status seemed to change only a little. So, is this comedy otome not worth people’s attention? Or rather a testimony to the growing problems of the Western VN market? Even though the first episode of The Tail Makes the Fox is far from being perfect, I will strongly argue for that second interpretation.
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The humour is the game’s main selling point and works for the most part, but it also prevents the characters from growing beyond fairly simple caricatures
 
The game follows the story of Lilim, a female fox spirit working as an auditor for the central government of Hell. While merely being a low-level bureaucrat, she has major delusions of grandeur, considering herself a powerful demon (a gumiho) and desperately looking for approval from the whimsical, abusive Lucifer (who, of course, only considers her a disposable pawn). At the beginning of the game, she’s sent to one of the Hell’s seven districts to uncover any secrets or conspiracies the local governess might withhold from the Devil – there she meets the somewhat-hostile administrator and her small staff (all of them and the governess herself being romance options – two male and two female ones in total) and can follow four different character routes.
            You might have noticed the caricatural characterization of the protagonist – this applies to each and every member of the cast, some being hyperbolized versions of common archetypes (Gaki and Saleos especially) and others slightly more atypical, but equally over-the-top. While their traits are pretty effective when it goes to fuelling the comedy, with how short the first episode of the story is, all of them end up feeling rather shallow and underdeveloped. And this problem is even more noticeable thanks to the strange pacing of the game – it has a proper introduction, in which we learn the basic information about the characters and the setting, but very quickly moves to wrap up the intrigue and give us a temporary conclusion, without proper build-up and deepening the plot. In most routes even the story’s main premise, with Lilim being a spy trying to uncover governess’s dirt, doesn’t go anywhere, effectively eliminating the only source of suspense and mystery. With the cliff-hangers at the end of every path (after all, it’s just the first episode) and only minor progress in the romance arcs, at this point, it’s hard to call the story satisfying, even if it creates some promise for the future.
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The game’s visual quality, for an OELVN made by a small team, actually leaves little to be desired, especially in the character design department
 
Possibly the main thing saving the characters, and maybe the whole story from being slightly boring and stale is the surprisingly high-quality voice acting. Everyone, other than the protagonist, is fully voiced and while there are some inconsistencies and poorly-acted lines, for the most time it works excellently, adding a lot of personality to the cast – especially in the case of Saleos, who could feel rather bland if not the stellar work by his voice actor. I’m usually sceptical about the added value of voiceover in OELVNs, considering their small budget and weaker availability of talented video game VAs than in Japan, but here it definitely does make a difference, compensating for some of the flaws in game's writing and structure of its story. It also makes the comedy, on which this VN relies much of the time, more effective than it would be with just plain text.
            The rest of production values is also on a pretty high level, with character designs and chibi-CGs standing out positively, and the rest of the assets being on a consistent level, without really giving much to criticize. The music consists of a set of very standard ambient tunes, but serves its purpose well without even getting tiresome. If I had to complain about anything, the most likely candidate would be the protagonist’s sprite, which for me felt poorly-designed when compared with the rest of the cast and lack of alternative poses or clothing for the characters. Their facial expressions were for the most time very good and scripting, apart from the rare situations in which it seemed to simply glitch-out, was quite good.
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While the voice acting might be slightly inconsistent at times, it’s good enough to give a lot of personality to characters that otherwise could turn out rather bland
 
In the end, The Tail Makes the Fox remains pretty hard to rate. Its humour can be quite amusing, but also quite often misses the mark. Its story starts intriguing and has moments of genuinely good writing, especially in the more serious moments, but for the most part, doesn’t develop its most interesting ideas enough and offers underwhelming routes. On the other hand, it’s definitely a well-produced and ambitious project that might still expand and improve significantly with future episodes. For now, I give it a cautious recommendation – as it is now, offering 4-5 hours of decently-enjoyable content, it’s just barely worth the 10$ asking price. I just hope that the devs will be able to capitalize on this start and turn this title into something truly memorable. And I definitely hope it won't be buried under the tons of VN shovelware that swarms the Steam market and makes the serious OELVN projects harder and harder to promote with all its faults, this game definitely deserves better.

Final score: 2,5/5

Pros:
+ Good character design and art quality
+ Decent humour
+ Good-quality voice acting 
 
Cons:
- The story feels rushed
- Shallow, caricatural characters
- Could’ve done a lot more with its premise


VNDB page
Buy The Tail Makes the Fox on Steam

Friday 11 January 2019

Kaori After Story Review (English Original Visual Novel)

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A short while ago I’ve reviewed PixelFade’s Crystalline, expressing my disappointment at what was a visually brilliant, but rather hollow experience, in many ways inferior to that studio's first project, Ace Academy. While AA, a mecha-themed game set in near future’s Japan, mixed convincing drama, a cast of archetypical, but compelling heroines and great SoL sections, providing a fairly balanced and enjoyable game, Crystalline focused much more on comedy and despite the fantasy adventure framework, failed to produce an engaging plot or characters interesting enough to make the whole experience satisfying. The genuine chemistry between Ace Academy’s characters and its compelling atmosphere let me even forgive its anticlimactic ending – PixelFade struggled heavily with that game's development, being forced to cut a large portion of the plot and rush the conclusion, infuriating many fans. The cuts and omissions were definitely visible, for me however, what was already there was simply too good to disregard and I still consider AA as one of the best EVNs I’ve ever read.
            As you can imagine, it was hard for me not to get excited when, shortly after Crystalline’s release, the studio announced Kaori After Story – a spin-off to Ace Academy, continuing the romance arc of Kaori, arguably the primary heroine of the first game. Using the Live 2D engine and animations from Crystalline, it promised to be another eye-candy, this time directed to the fans of PixelFade's debut title. What worried me, however, was that it was also described by the devs as primarily a comedy, most likely ignoring the bitter-sweet climate of the original and its somewhat ambivalent ending. Thankfully, as much as some might be disappointed with this game’s obvious disinterest in continuing Ace Academy’s main intrigue, connected to protagonist’s father’s scientific research and tragic death, there are many things here they should find highly satisfying – and even I, as reserved as I was when approaching KAS, couldn’t help but to enjoy it quite a lot.
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The spin-off might disappoint those hoping for any kind of elaboration on Ace Academy’s main intrigue, but the SoL fluff it offers is of excellent quality
 
Kaori, the leader of the protagonist’s team of mecha pilots (the story is based around a futuristic sport, involving team battles between specialized mecha called GEARs), was the heroine with probably the most intricate and fun romance arc in Ace Academy. While her modern-tsundere attitude might be off-putting to some (she can be standoffish and often rude towards the protagonist even after they become a couple), there were many highly amusing interactions connected to her and fairly unique, memorable scenes that still stick to my mind, more than a year after reading AA. Especially if you chose the athletic archetype when starting the game, it was easy to create a genuine chemistry between her and the protagonist, both highly skilled and ambitious pilots, pulling each other up on their way to the very top. However, maybe more than any other route, it lacked genuinely romantic moments, in which Kaori would truly open up to the protagonist or show him affection, even though it was clear enough that she loved him. Whether connected to the whole project being cut short or not, it left me feeling just slightly unsatisfied with the whole scenario at the end of the original game.
            Kaori After Story feels like it was created exactly to fix this issue. Starting a few months after the end of Ace Academy, it involves the couple spending their Holiday break in Kaori’s hometown, along with her family. It focuses on the blooming relationship between her and the protagonist, completely forgoing the drama and delivering a few hours of absolutely lovely, light-hearted romantic fluff. Also unlike Crystalline, it toned down on the popcultural references, which I really never enjoyed that much in PixelFade’s games (although I admit that in this case, the sequence of the protagonist playing one of Kaori’s otome games is rather hilarious), instead delivering the humour primarily through some highly-amusing SoL scenes. The chemistry between the couple is definitely there, and Kaori’s family is highly likeable – as always in PixelFade’s games, all of it enhanced by good-quality voice acting.
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Kaori’s romantic arc in Ace Academy felt particularly inconclusive, with few compelling, romantic moments – After Story makes up for this perfectly
 
Obviously, it doesn’t mean the experience is flawless. Just like with Crystalline, my possibly biggest gripe is connected to choices offered to the reader. While the romantic/slight teasing ones feel lovely and satisfying, you also have the option of being an over-the-top pervert or an annoying grump. The problem is, making these latter choices is nearly completely ineffectual for the plot and the ending – and there are paths in which there is really no reason for Kaori to not lose at least some of her faith in the protagonist. In what is essentially a piece of “fanservice” for people that liked Kaori’s arc and want to see her romance with the protagonist blooming, some of the choices really make no sense whatsoever, especially considering the fact that the conclusion is always a decisively positive one. While I can see the reason for including a few over-the-top, “stupid” choices, the unromantic/insensitive options simply leave a bad taste with your mouth, also serving no real purpose other than creating additional “interactivity”.
            The game, as mentioned before, is absolutely lovely visually, capitalizing on the technical expertise and assets the studio gained during the production of Crystalline. I was worried that with the repurposed animations and new sprite, the story might lose some of its personality, but in reality, everything felt appropriate and genuinely nice to watch. All things considered, this should be a great treat for the fans of Ace Academy, and especially those like me, who really enjoyed Kaori’s arc. And if you haven’t played AA… What are you waiting for? Go grab it already! It’s really worth it.

Final Score: 3/5

Pros:
+ Lovely visuals
+ Satisfying SoL/romantic content
 
Cons:
- No substance beyond light-hearted SoL fluff
- Choices are ultimately meaningless and some of them can be obnoxious


VNDB Page
Buy Kaori After Story on Steam

Friday 4 January 2019

2018 Curator Connect Wrap-Up, Part 2 (The Wilting Amaranth; NEKOKORO; Perseverance, Part 1; Event-D)

Welcome to the second and last part of my 2018 Curator Connect Wrap-Up (if you missed the first half, check it out here)! The horror themes were strong in the VNs sent to me this year and while it will be less explicit in this part, they’re not completely gone either, mostly represented by Perseverance – an episodic, postapocalyptic game which strives to prove that story-driven experience featuring zombies is still not passée in 2018 (and, possibly, that the Telltale storytelling formula is not as dead as the studio that created it). Other than that, we’ll get to experience an ominous sci-fi mystery Event-D and two low-budget, simple romance VNs, all of them holding some surprises… Not always positive ones, though.

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I have pretty complicated feelings about Reine Works’ visual novels – on one hand, they show genuine effort, have decent visuals and are not cynically exploitative even when implementing sexual content. On the other, they always struggle when it goes writing and characterisation, to the point where they consistently fall short of providing genuinely compelling experience. The Wilting Amaranth showcases these problems especially well – while the set-up protagonist’s personality and her backstory are all simple (a lesbian-in-denial princess, pressured by her parents into an arranged marriage, is accidentally summoned by a witch to her remote tower), they’re interesting enough to carry a simple, romantic plot.
            Where it pretty much falls apart is the heroines and how their characters are developed: the witch is shy and stuttering to the point she’s barely able to hold a conversation at any point of the plot and her quirks grow tiring very fast. The other possible love interest, a prisoner of the witch who tried to assassinate her for a bounty, is a first-class sociopath who can do all kinds of despicable things if it makes her some money, but switching her attitude in certain scenarios for no clear reason. Even with how short the game is (around 3-4 hours of reading) there’s no real justification for how these characters are developed and sadly, it takes away quite a lot of fun from the experience, with contains not-awful production values and some fairly cool ideas. While reading it is not a complete waste of time, it’s also not something I would ever strongly recommend, even for yuri fans.
 
Final rating: (Cautiously) Recommended
 
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When talking about NEKOKORO, the first elephant in the room that has to address is the character art (I’ll ignore the “riding the Nekopara bandwagon” issue completely, as in reality, the game has nothing in common with NEKO WORKs’ series beyond catgirls themselves). While in Jake’s Love Story, which was made by the same Polish developer, the sprites were simply very basic and lacked variety, here they are just unsettling, with proportions and perspective simply feeling wrong, and with chibi CGs multiplying that effect even beyond what’s appropriate for "super deformed" artwork. The solid background art, simple animations and the tidy-looking UI only make the contrast worse, showing that the game had the potential to become much more than it ended up being.
            Beyond that, NEKOKORO offers pretty similar content to JLS, admittedly with a better English script, but still giving a very basic romance and SoL experience that might have a few cute and fun moments, but doesn’t offer any real twists or anything particularly memorable. It also does a surprisingly poor job at fleshing out the heroines – while Iris, more or less the game’s main love interest, is given enough meaningful dialogue and interactions with the protagonist to establish her as a proper character and make her relatively appealing, Rose shows pretty much one identifiable trait (being an "idiot") and Lilly barely exists before the beginning of her route – at the point in which you decide which catgirl you’re going to pursue, you barely know anything about most of them! This is especially hard to justify in a game that is all about lighthearted romance. In the end, the whole experience ends up feeling rather hollow and I can only advice to skip it altogether – although with some slight adjustments, it could've been a fun piece of moe fodder, and I genuinely hope that the author's next game addresses these problems effectively.
 
Final rating: Not Recommended
 
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The first episode of the post-apocalyptic survival story by the polish studio Tap It Games (any sexual connotation apparently not intended) is a very promising start to what might become a memorable horror franchise – it is, however, still a rather short and fundamentally linear prologue with some significant flaws. The story, presented in a nice, non-anime artstyle follows a rather average protagonist, Jack, struggling to keep his marriage and his life together in a small, secluded American town. While, after a major argument with his wife, he leaves to his late father’s forest cabin to seclude himself and think things through, the hell breaks loose in the town due to the unknown disease brought in by a test subject of some kind of medical experiment.
            Part 1 mostly sets up the characters and the basic storyline, ending pretty much at the beginning of the outbreak. It gives you some choices, but those were actually the biggest issue I had with the game. Apart from a few life-or-death situations, you basically choose between Jack being a somewhat decent person or being an over-the-top asshole, to the point of defying common sense. Other than that, it was quite an interesting and immersive experience and I’m very eager to see what else the developers have in store for us – if you’re not sick of zombies (in a very broad definition of the word) and post-apocalyptic horror by this point, give Perseverance a try and keep an eye for the upcoming episodes or any other projects by its authors.
 
Final rating: Highly Recommended

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I'm usually quite comprehensive to even approach EVNs created with 3D models and environments I've seen enough teasers of horrible, creepy porn games made with this technique for the sheer sight of it to make me uncomfortable. This, however, made Event-D, an assuming sci-fi mystery by a debuting Freedintale Studio, even more of a pleasant surprise. While its visual side is still far from perfect, the slightly cartoonish stylisation of the character models makes it quite bearable, while the 3D graphics allow showing more than a VN normally would when it goes to space travel and some more dynamic/dramatic scenes. While I think it would still be more effective with good 2D illustrations, it has a set of decent assets and uses them in a surprisingly effective manner.
            What makes it potentially worth your time, however, is the story, which has all the clunkiness and peculiar charm of a low-budget Sci-Fi Channel show, but manages to build some interesting characters and an intrigue which develops in a satisfying manner throughout the experience. The premise itself – the whole crew mysteriously disappearing from a spaceship on its way to start a colonisation effort on Mars and another mission being organized to recover the ship – is pleasantly ominous and promising. Event-D manages to expand on it in a well-paced manner and introduce meaningful twists, without ever explaining too much or turning the whole plot into a convoluted mess. It ends in an open-ended manner, clearly signalizing the sequel, but manages to stand on its own as a complete and relatively satisfying experience. If you're into classic, sci-fi TV shows, with their technobabble, questionable production values, coupled with genuinely interesting and imaginative stories, you'll feel right at home reading this VN. And with the $5 price tag, it won't cost you much to give it a chance.
 
Final rating: Recommended


And this concludes my Steam Curator Wrap-Up for 2018! While it’s hard to predict the future and I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to dedicate to the blog in the coming year, I’m extremely happy with the progress my little initiative made since the rebranding and launch of the Blogger site back in June. Hopefully, I’ll be able to expand my presence both in the VN community and on Steam even further, having new opportunities to make contact with developers and experiencing the titles they send my way. But, whatever 2019 might bring, I hope you’ve all enjoyed these posts and will continue to follow my work. 

I wish you all a wonderful year, and until the next Friday!