Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Yuri Sakura Games, part 2

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

Hello again and welcome to the second part of our journey through the world of Winged Cloud's yuri shovelware (if you missed it, the first part is here)!
 

The release of the Legends of Talia’s was undoubtfully a small disaster for Winged Cloud, not only failing to kickstart the new non-ecchi franchise, but also being quite harshly rejected by WC’s already-existing fanbase. It didn’t, however, end the yurige streak which made the straight Sakura porn, once definitely the dominating format, surprisingly rare in last year and a half (and the het games that actually did show up in that time were all very much underwhelming, even by the series’ standards). Still, whether this “Golden Age of Yuri” translated into us customers receiving anything of quality is, as always when we’re talking about Winged Cloud, a bit more complicated issue. So, what exactly the latest yuri Sakura games have to offer, apart from an unreasonable amount of boob-centric CGs?

 

Sakura Gamer

A Sakura game about making a Sakura game, Gamer is one of the first examples of Winged Cloud trying to include what would normally be the basic component of any ecchi VN: actual comedy and humour. This development undoubtedly connected to the hiring of a new writer, Waffle, who replaced the veteran Liberty, whose track record was progressively getting more and more awful. In the case of Gamer, the satire is mostly directed towards WC's own products, resulting in some highly-amusing and accurate episodes of self-ridicule. Although it might be slightly hermetic to an outside reader, with a lot of references to other Sakura titles, it’s probably the first instalment in the whole franchise that on occasions was genuinely funny to me – and still remembering the jokes and references in Sakura Spirit, dryer than the Karakum Desert, this was a very welcome change.

            The plot of the game, if you can call it that, seems more like a semi-random set of interactions written to fit previously-drawn character sprites and CGs, but also features a fairly amusing cast of female characters (the protagonist, Nekohime, is probably my third most favourite Sakura lead after Dungeon’s Yomi and Fantasy’s Raelin) all of which receive traces of actual development and, when it goes to heroines, can be seen as serviceable romance options. Inma’s character designs, while rather absurd, are also among the best ones she’s ever made for Winged Cloud – those buying Sakura titles solely for the CG’s (as much as I’m puzzled by that practice) will definitely have something to look at here. While this might not be, objectively speaking, one of the best WC titles ever, it was one of the most enjoyable ones for me and I can recommend playing it as strongly as it is ever possible with a Sakura game (that is, just watch Bosskwar’s playthrough of it, it will be a lot of fun).

 
Final rating: Golden Poo! 
 

Sakura Cupid

Winged Cloud’s 2018 Valentine’s Day surprise is, putting all the possible Gabriel Dropout inspirations aside, a relatively competent VN, once more utilizing the arcane art of comedy to make the Sakura formula slightly less stale and generic – this time mostly in the form of some over-the-top CGs and character interactions, that, especially in the opening segments, give the whole game some actual personality. Cupid also stands out by, very surprisingly, throwing the fanservice and hentai scenes at you in a way that is both logical and fits the story, and it's probably the only time I’ve seen this particular feature in the whole series.

            The actual plot and characters, however, are more on the bland side of the spectrum, mostly due to lack of any interesting development – especially Mitsuki, the waitress that out protagonist teases constantly in the café she frequently visits, starts as a pretty amusing, snarky heroine, but quickly turns into an over-the-top deredere, whose only clear quality is her obsessive love for our female lead. The endings also are among the more anti-climactic and dumb ones I’ve seen lately, making the whole VN rather hard to recommend. I have to admit though that the CG presented above and the scene associated are among the funniest things I’ve seen in WC’s games – thanks to it and a few other highly-amusing moments I don't actually regret reading through the whole thing.

 
Final rating: Rabbit Poo 
 

Sakura Sadist

Sakura Sadist is another gloriously contradictory example of Winged Cloud’s simultaneous progress and regress when it goes to quality – an initially nicely written and fairly funny VN that pretty much completely falls apart later into the story and is incapable to capitalize on its best assets. The game, following a female pervert protagonist, starts quite amusingly, with our lead constantly teasing and bickering with her childhood friend, Mari, who serves both as a straight man throughout the story and as one of two love interests (the second one being a certain beautiful, dignified star of the school, who we can instantly identify as the titular [closeted] sadist). The actually competent dialogue and nice chemistry between the main girls made me at first quite optimistic about the game and the possible direction it might go to.

            Sadly, if you thought that anything interesting would be done with the BDSM theme or there would be any kind of twist to the story that you couldn't easily predict after first 15 minutes, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Not only the main premise is realized through a few episodes of pet-play and the second heroine trying to control the protagonist in vaguely BDSM-esque fashion, but it can also be… Skipped completely, by choosing not to be a total creep and in that way reaching Mari’s route, with its 10 minutes of dialogue and 20 minute-long hentai scene (at least I have to admit it might be the most extensive porn segment in all of Sakura games, whatever that’s worth to you). The already short game, ending an hour early in one of its main conclusions is not a thing I see every day, but also not something I ever want to see – just like I don’t want to ever see more of Sakura Sadist.

 

Final score: Rabbit Poo 

So, as we've reached the most recent instalment in the whole Sakura franchise, what the future might hold for these trashiest among trashy Western yurige? I would expect them to keep coming out, more or less, till the end of times – while not all Winged Cloud fans are happy about the switch to mostly f/f smut, the company’s dedication to the theme shows that it’s a viable niche and sells at least well enough to justify constantly spewing new iterations of the formula. I’m also pretty sure that Winged Cloud isn’t going anywhere, considering its relatively stable Patreon support, which should at least partially compensate for possibly dropping Steam sales (obviously, with the effective death of SteamSpy it’s very hard to say what the numbers look like for their latest titles). I’m very sure that before I’m done covering the whole already-available roster of Sakura games, they’ll be new ones coming to keep the Shovelware Adventures alive. 

SUCH JOY! SUCH HAPPINESS!  

PS Once more, my special thanks go to Bosskwar, who made this series possible (or at least much more enjoyable to make) through his let's play videos.

Carpe Diem: Reboot Review - what went wrong?

This review was originally posted on Fuwanovel Forums on January 5th 2018.

Warning: Heavy spoilers ahead! If you want to play this VN yourself, stop reading now.

As much as I’m a fan of independent VNs and appreciate the possibilities that crowdfunding opened for the Western visual novel market, it’s not completely rare for these projects to end with spectacular disappointment, for various reasons. Carpe Diem: Reboot is an especially interesting example of a visual novel that ultimately failed to live up to the expectations, but not because of lack of effort or poor production values, but through the sheer “virtue” of really bad writing. As I’ll be treating this as a case study of how to utterly waste a good concept and a lot of work, unlike my normal reviews, I’ll be revealing many major plot-points, including some details of the games’ endings. As Reboot mostly relies on its plot twists and mystery elements to keep the player interested, if you want to play it yourself, ignore this review or read it after you’ve completed the game.

             While the title we’re talking about was released on Steam in September 2017, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, its history starts a bit earlier, with a free VN from late 2015 simply titled Carpe Diem. This very short, but nicely written visual novel served both as a prologue of sorts and an advertisement for the crowdfunding effort which later spawned Reboot. In it, a simple story about two friends (lovers?), Jung and Ai, deciding how to use a rare opportunity to spend a full afternoon together, ended with a twist – the girl was actually a computer program, an object of delusional love of a shut-in trying to escape from his real life. The Steam achievement for reaching the end of the game, “What are you doing with your life?”, served as a somewhat ironic punchline, making clear the main themes the author tried to tackle. Good dialogues and decent execution of Carpe Diem, while in no way breath-taking, definitely showed promise and made many people (including me, although I've discovered it after the Kickstarter campaign was already over) somewhat enthusiastic about its continuation. So, what went wrong?

The prologue game, while very minimalistic, showed enough promise to interest people and mobilize support for the Kickstarter campaign – at the very least, it was a brilliant piece of marketing

 

Reboot picks up exactly where the first game ended, that is at the scene of Ai revealing that she’s "not real". We’re soon introduced to the initial portion of drama – she’s a sentient A.I., created by a shut-in programmer, who uses her to earn money by forcing her to take on freelance programming jobs (as she can do them at an insane speed, he’s already got quite rich off her back). Jung, Ai’s creator and our protagonist, quickly proves to be one of the most apathetic and irritating characters I’ve ever seen in VNs – a supposed genius, who absolutely lacks any initiative and during the whole story pretty much follows other characters around and occasionally provides bland exposition. The reasons behind his awful attitude and passiveness are somewhat explained by the end of the story, but doesn’t change the fact he’s an atrocious lead character, never showing any of his supposed skills and virtues. Ai, on the other hand, acts with light-heartedness and cheerfulness of a child, losing the sarcastic edge that made dialogues in the prequel amusing. However, there’s a definite bond between the two, made problematic by one fact – Ai is “dying”, her programming slowly deteriorating and limiting her activity to smaller and smaller periods of time. 

            As a starting point, it’s not an awful piece of storytelling – already we can tell that something’s off in Jung’s behaviour and what’s happening doesn’t really add up (what’s the problem with Ai? Why there’s no backup of her program? Why can’t it be fixed?). The resolution of this part of the story, however, breaks any possibility to treat this VN seriously. Ai, knowing she has little time left, promises to bring Jung one last present for his birthday. She sets up a workplace in a corner of the room, buys two robotic arms and various stuff over the internet and creates… A human body for herself. Not a mechanical body. Not an android. A fully functional, human body, only “with a CPU instead of a brain – because the brain is hardest to replicate".

The first plot twist, while surprising, is so ridiculous that it’s hard to maintain any suspension of disbelief. From there, it mostly gets worse…

 

Well, let’s take a deep breath, because this is not where the fun ends. At some point in the first chapter of the game we learn that Jung likes a certain bakery, where he regularly meets a female employee – as it’s a voiced character, we already know she’ll be important. After the first plot twist, he goes there again, taking with him his near-human A.I. companion and thanks to Ai’s straightforwardness and urge to make friends, gets to know the cashier, whose name is Yume. Soon after they learn that Yume is actually one of the best programmers in the world (of course!), and Ai’s rival on freelance programming website she used to make money. Not long after that, Jung somewhat suddenly announces that he was a part of some Illuminati-style secret society and also is a murderer (although pretty much no one cares or even mentions it later), and Ai’s programming is based on some kind of “weaponized software”, created by the evil-splinter-group-leader he had to kill, to prevent him from taking over the world. So, soon the government will be after him and Ai, as her existence is considered a threat. Admittedly, there are some cute, enjoyable slice-of-life moments between the "story development", but they only make the stupidity of the plot that much more obvious and irritating, as every major event immediately takes you out of the experience. 

            However, all these insane plot developments soon lead us to a final decision, which can produce two possible outcomes. In the first one, the protagonist sends Ai and Yume away, to protect them from their pursuers and covers all the tracks behind them. This scenario is concluded with a scene of him standing on a cliff, which suggests that he might have ultimately committed suicide to make sure no one ever finds Ai, but leaves the details to our imagination. This is, however, a non-canon “good” ending. The “true ending” involves Jung trying to confess to Yume, saying that they should sell-off Ai to the government and be together, being harshly rejected as a spineless coward he is, going crazy and murdering Ai (although she later “reboots”, foreshadowing a possible sequel). While I’m not on principle against sad/depressing endings, this establishes Jung as most likely one of the most pathetic characters in the history of visual novels and makes the whole experience, as over-the-top silly as it already was, ultimately distasteful and pointless. The authors definitely went for shock value, but only with a partial success, considering how disconnecting and irritating most major plot-points in the story already were. What could’ve been an interesting tale about the nature of life and the things that make someone truly human (these questions are seriously present in the story), ended up as a kitsch mess, memorable mostly by the virtue of its writing mistakes and ability to make the reader miserable.

The production qualities of the game are beyond what you would expect from this kind of indie project, but they couldn’t possibly save it from being a general disappointment.

 

What makes this truly sad is the contrast between the storyline and the general production quality of the game. While visually it’s mostly just decent, with everything being pleasing to the eye but not in any way exceptional, there’s one thing that definitely makes it stand out from most western VNs – it has high-quality, full voice acting. Actresses voicing Ai and Yume, for the most part, do a great job, while the supporting cast, usually being the place where this kind of productions fall in quality dramatically, is all very much acceptable. Even the casual dialogues, the personalities of the girls and the pacing of the story aren’t awful – they’re simply quite insignificant when confronted with sheer stupidity and pretentiousness of the overarching storyline. 

            Carpe Diem: Reboot is a story of wasted potential – of easily avoidable mistakes, that more or less killed a project which had everything necessary to succeed in a rather spectacular way. Even as it is now, it’s easy to realize the authors’ dedication, hard work put into the game and traces of genuine talent, which with help of a few beta readers or better thought-through development process could produce a memorable, interesting game. What we got, in reality, is a rather spectacular flop, which should be taken as a warning by anyone interested in creating original VNs, and probably any kind of story-driven game. And unless you’re really interested in finding out for your own “if it’s really that bad”, I don’t recommend playing it – there might be a way to find humour in its flaws, but it will ultimately be a waste of your time.

Final Score: 2/5

Pros:
+ Interesting premise
+ Decent art
+ Good voice acting
 
Cons:
- Ridiculous, over-the-top writing
- Repugnant, useless protagonist
- Pointlessly disturbing “true ending”


VNDB page
Buy Carpe Diem: Reboot on Steam

Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf Review (Visual Novel/RPG Hybrid)

While Loren: The Amazon Princess, which I reviewed two weeks ago, if fairly well-known among western VN fans and did a lot to establish WinterWolves studio as a respected OELVN developer, the second RPG placed in the fantasy world of Aravorn, Seasons of the Wolf, flew very much below the radar of most gamers and VN fans. Published on Steam in January 2015, this game pushed the series in a slightly different direction, with a smaller cast, more casual story and far fewer romance options, to a very mixed reaction from the players.

            However, Seasons of the Wolf was also the title that made significant improvements to the core gameplay mechanics of the series and refined the whole experience in a way that created a standard for future WinterWolves RPGs to follow and build upon. How then this “less of a dating sim” (citing the developer himself) looks like three years after its initial release and is it worth attention from VN fans, especially those that are more interested in the story, rather than RPG gameplay?

The smaller cast was a disappointment for many fans of Loren: The Amazon Princess but fits the more toned-down, focused story of the game

 

While Loren told an epic story of world-ending threats and large-scale battles, the plot of Seasons of the Wolf is much smaller in scale – and one could even say, intimate. It follows the story of snow elf twins from a remote village, Shea and Althea, who after a chain of unfortunate events ends up in slavery, forced to risk their lives as gladiators in a foreign city's arena. There, they find new comrades, with whom they fight for their freedom, and to eventually find their way home. While this might seem less exciting than waging a war against a demon lord, I actually enjoyed this aspect of the game very much – it makes it easier to avoid some over-the-top developments and fantasy clichés, while also the game makes it clear that our team’s adventure leaves its mark on the world, for better or for worse.

            What however gathered a bit more criticism is downscaling of the cast – from 13 character’s in the party in Loren to 8, and from 8 available romance option to 4 (two of which were exclusively homosexual and the others exclusively straight) – this meant that players usually had only one option in their favourite configuration and not always the one they found most appealing – and while this would be a pretty significant variety in other cases, WinterWolves’ fans just expected more. This most likely wasn’t made any better by the fact that Chalassa, the female assassin who has the probably the most interesting and involved romance arc, was only romanceable when playing as a female, which the player could easily learn only after she rejects his advances late into the game. Still, the general quality of the character development and design, both with the romanceable and non-romanceable ones, is actually very high and much more than it was the case in Loren, every member of the cast had a crucial role to play as several points of the plot, never being sidelined by the plot or becoming useless in the RPG portion of the game.

The RPG aspect of the game, very much unlike Loren, is rather well developed, with a strong sense of progression and decent class balance

 

Another thing has to be said about the protagonist gender choice, which once more is well-implemented, but with a slightly different technique than in Loren. While there male and female protagonists were separate characters, only the one you chose appeared in the story, in Seasons of the Wolf both twins play a central role throughout the game and your choice only decides which of them will make decisions for the group and romance options available to you. It’s a very seamless, but effective way of implementing this feature and with the addition of VN modes, which skips all battles, makes replaying the game for different romances very smooth.

            Talking about battles, while the RPG mechanics in Loren were heavily unbalanced and underdeveloped, here they remained similar on the surface, but changed in a few crucial ways. The first addition, the importance of which is impossible to overstate, is a “time limit” on most quests and portions of the story. You can spend limited amount of days in every zone and between crucial plot-points, and while it doesn’t limit the number of battles or moves you can make on the overworld map, your party does not fully regenerate HP and SP between the fights – your stats can only be recovered through sleeping, which progresses the timer, or paying a hefty fee in a tavern. This makes every fight meaningful and makes you pay attention to gear and resources available to you at all times.

            The second major improvement is a good class and gear balance. Every character has a unique set of properly powerful skills and while still some setups, such as a 1h weapon + shield on warrior, are still pretty inefficient, no party members are stuck with unwanted gear combinations or overly role-specific abilities. There’s also a decent number of powerful passives that were sadly absent from many skill-trees in Loren, adding some actual customization to levelling up. There’s also a very good sense of progression, with gear and most skills scaling properly throughout the game and powerful, unique items being regularly rewarded for special quests. The combat can get slightly repetitive in later parts of the story, mostly due to the limited variety of enemies, but it never becomes unbearable.

Time limits make the RPG mechanics and resource management much more important than in Loren, adding meaning to most fights or trades you make

 

Obviously, the game isn’t without major flows and, maybe more importantly, will not be to everyone's taste. The visual style of Seasons of the Wolf is a direct continuation from Loren, including a significant amount of reused assets and its peculiarities might be off-putting to some. Unlike Loren, however, there’s no poorly scaled or pixelated assets that would objectively look bad. Elements such as skill icons or the pixelart in the overworld maps are simple, but consistent in quality and as I was already familiar with the general aesthetic, I enjoyed most of them. Sounds assets in battles (including voiceover) and music also did their job well, creating a strong climate – once more, I think more convincing than in the first game. 

            Other possible complains are connected to the story, with underdelivers in a few aspects, especially if you look at the main campaign, without the paid Bad Blood DLC. The main story ends rather abruptly and in an anticlimactic manner, clearly leaving a place for a proper conclusion in the expansion. The romance arcs also feel pretty minimalistic without the peek into them blossoming after the game’s initial conclusion. The full version, however, felt satisfying for me, both as an RPG and as a VN. In the end, I see this game as a major improvement over Winter Wolves’ first title in this style and it made me want more – I’m sure I’ll get to playing Cursed Lands and Reign of War, new Tales of Aravorn titles, sooner or later. For now, I strongly recommend you trying out Seasons of the Wolf if you enjoy this kind of hybrids – with all the complains and controversies around it, I think it’s a very good game, from one of the more interesting veteran devs of the OELVN scene that is definitely worth supporting. And while the game might seem pricey, it offers possibly dozens of hours of good-quality content – especially if you can grab it on sale, you should easily get your money's worth from it.

Final score: 3,5/5

Pros:
+ Interesting setting
+ Well-developed characters
+ Solid RPG mechanics
 
Cons:
- Limited romance options and short romance arcs
- Somewhat inconsistent art
- Repetitive combat
  

VNDB page
Buy Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf on Steam or Itch.io

Stellaren Review (mobile-exclusive visual novel)

This review was originally posted on Fuwanovel Forums on December 22th 2017.

Mobile phones and tablets, especially Android devices, are strangely underutilized as a platform for VN publishing, with few high-profile titles being ported to them (especially when it goes to English versions) and underwhelming selection of dedicated mobile releases. Also, existing Android versions of famous visual novels, such as Narcissu, suffer from technical issues that you wouldn’t expect from what is ultimately a very simple application, based on text and still images. Occasional Ace Attorney spin-off or an original iOS title such as Fragment’s Note doesn’t change much in this general picture.

            This apparent disinterest of JP VN producers in the mobile market (not counting the literal dozens of mass-produced, free-to-play otome romances) makes the western-produced VNs dominate Google Play store, and while most of them might be tiny, amateurish-looking games, there are also a few notable titles that could deserve some attention even from an experienced reader. One of the most popular and interesting among those is Stellaren, a simplistic, but surprisingly enjoyable sci-fi VN, at first released in episodic form throughout 2015. This review will be based on a complete, paid version of the game, that became available in March 2017. 

It’s easy to get discouraged by Stellaren’s clunky UI and hard-to-control starfighter minigame, but the story hidden under that rough exterior can surprise you.

 

The first impressions Stellaren gives you are definitely not that great – the main menu and the chapter selection screen that comes right afterwards are confusing and hard to navigate. From the technical point of view the game is very simplistic, letting you play its story in any order and only tracking certain decisions, that affects specific romantic endings (those become available as soon as you accumulating enough "story points" with a specific character, without the need to read through all the chapters). This structure means that story is fundamentally linear, with bad choices effecting in game-over screens and all the other ones only affecting to which characters you grow closer. The side-scrolling starfighter mini-game, which is a recurring element and major “selling point” of this VN also doesn't impress – with touch controls it’s barely possible to operate it precisely and even when you get a grasp of it, it’s not that satisfying (although it’s admittedly well-embedded into the narrative and never shows without a connection to important events within the story).

            Playing the free version of the game might further reinforce this poor impression, with ads interrupting your reading experience and no possibility to skip or lower difficulty on the combat segments (which, if failed, will prevent you from progressing the story). The $5 “pro” version, on the other hand, both lets you skip the combat when you have problems with it or want to focus solely on reading and starts you with additional money to upgrade your ship, which makes most fights much more manageable – after getting the paid version I didn’t really feel the need to skip them, as they flowed with the main theme of the game and its story quite well.

While the combat mechanics aren’t that great, the starfighter segments are intertwined with the story in a way that makes them immersive and motivates you to play through them regardless.

 

Talking about the story, it’s definitely where the game shows intriguing qualities and quickly surpasses your expectations. The protagonist, M., starts as a simple mechanic, living on a poor colony and getting along by conning NGC (Earth-based government) pilots into buying faulty equipment. First minutes of the game already establishes an interesting dynamic, with corrupt and hated central government that treats colonists as second-class citizens and doesn’t hesitate to brutalize them for minor offences. Soon after, M. accidentally ends up trapped on an NGC ship and becomes involved in a conflict that can bring the end of the human race as such. As standard as this synopsis might sound, it’s both a solid base for a space opera and something that the author manages to develop in interesting ways, that quite often subvert your expectations. With no clear “good guys” in the overarching conflict, constantly high-stakes and personal bonds that the protagonist builds during the story, 

Stellaren have an emotional impact I’ve never expected from a simple mobile game like this.

Its ambivalence and tendency for plot twists are maybe best represented by X., a (female, obviously) rebel captain and basically a warlord, who acts as the antagonist of the first few chapters of the story. Though she is extremely cruel towards her enemies, whimsical and doesn’t hesitate to lead her subordinates to certain death when necessary, she’s also the closest thing to a leader her faction has and seems to care deeply about its fate. Later, she also proves extremely pragmatic, ignoring the previous hostilities with the protagonist when facing a common enemy. Similar things can be said about the protagonist, who might prove to be suspiciously talented and heroic later in the story, but suffers through numerous defeats and huge personal sacrifices, making him somewhat realistic and relatable. No one here is simply a villain or simply a hero – every character has their flaws and problems, and even the worst of them can show positive traits in the right context. And while the overall story might still no be extremely deep, doesn’t avoid certain harem tropes and would most likely show numerous plotholes if analyzed carefully, it manages to keep the reader emotionally invested and constantly provides enough suspense to not leave any space for overthinking it.

The visual side of Stellaren is of mostly decent quality, but can be very inconsistent – the bigger screen you use, the more noticeable it becomes.

 

Maybe the biggest shortcoming of Stellaren is its visual quality, with generic-looking sprites that often hardly match the sci-fi theme, stock backgrounds (both drawn and photographic) and only a few, often-reused CGs of starships and space battles. When I played the game on a 10-inch tablet these low production values were at times very visible, making it clear that the game was more likely designed for phones, on which many unappealing details would be much harder to notice. Still, it was never bad enough to completely take me out of experience or distract me from the story – and the story content itself rarely disappointed. Music similarly was more or less neutral – I’ve played without sound most of the time, so it didn’t get tiring, but with as little variety as it offered it probably would become stale quite fast (especially considering that the full game has at least 5-6 hours of content).

            Stellaren is definitely a deeply flawed game, but as a VN it manages to overcome its technical limitations and deliver a fresh, intriguing story that is in my opinion definitely worth the modest asking price and the time required to read through it. For the more patient readers, the free version is also an option, as while definitely less convenient, it’s still a feature-complete product. For me, it was also a pleasant reminder that an interesting story can be hidden even under a very rough exterior of a no-budget indie game when a talented writer is involved. The game ends on a cliffhanger of sorts and has a somewhat decent continuation, called Stellared: Acrux, but it works fine as a standalone product – the sequel actually ends in a much more abrupt way and it's unclear whether if the series will ever receive a proper conclusion, so I advise you to ignore Acrux, unless you really liked the original and desperately want to see more.

Final verdict: 3/5

Pros:
+ Interesting story premise and setting
+ Well-paced, engaging storyline
+ Decently written, interesting characters
 
Cons:
- Very basic visuals and sound
- Clunky UI and mediocre space combat mechanics
- Wasn't able to avoid some silly tropes and writing mistakes


VNDB page
Download Stellaren for free or buy the pro version on Google Play.

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Yuri Sakura Games, part 1

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

Yuri as a fully-fledged main theme came a bit late to the Sakura Gaming Universe (they’re all connected, I tell you!), but for the last year, it absolutely dominated Winged Cloud’s production, with their last het hentai game, Sakura Magical Girls, released in early 2017. That transition, however, was a long and inconsistent process, which produced both the absolute best among Sakura games (especially Sakura Dungeon with its never-ending stream of good-quality f/f porn and fanservice CGs) and some… Less fortunate projects. Today and two weeks from now I’ll take a closer look at WC’s iterations of Girls’ Love, without ever hiding my intense bias for the genre – one which makes me that more excited when the formula is applied well and that more furious when it’s desecrated by really crappy, uninspired VNs.

 

Sakura Fantasy, chapter 1

Fantasy, one of WC’s most ambitious, but never-finalized projects, proved above anything else the biggest advantage of yuri-themed ecchi VNs – having a protagonist who is more than just a faceless self-insert, given the minimal amount of character development and as few significant traits as possible, to not disturb the player filling this hollow husk with his own fantasies. Realin is not only an actual character, with a sprite and proper personality (and a convenient, voyeuristic gift of “farsight”, mostly used to peek at people in baths), but even gives out traces of interesting backstory and compelling relationships with the other heroines. The game also, as one of the very few entries in the Sakura series, does some effort to build a setting and a linear story of sorts, predictably based on fairly common fantasy tropes, but nonetheless semi-serious and interesting. The biggest problem is, however, that we’re unlikely to ever know what happened with the crumbling Empire, besieged by magical monsters and the quest to retrieve the Fallen Star – as much as anyone can tell, after the first chapter (which is still rather worth reading by itself, but obviously doesn’t conclude the plot in any way), WC buried this series forever.

 
Final rating: Golden Poo! 
 

Sakura Space

After the positive surprises in the form of Fantasy and Dungeon came a bitter disappointment called Sakura Space. While we all know that it’s normal for WC’s games to take a theme and make the absolute bare-minimum effort towards utilizing it in a compelling way, I still wouldn’t believe it’s possible to make space mercenaries this boring and mundane if I haven’t seen this particular title. With little variety in locales, uninteresting characters and one of the poorest excuses of a story I’ve seen in VNs (that is, btw, told primarily through text, as action scenes barely ever have CGs or even sprites representing the enemies), it’s wholly underwhelming even by the Sakura game standards. Considering Inma’s character designs also being on the slightly less-fortunate side of the spectrum (apart, maybe, the crew's captain portrayed above), even the fairly nice yuri scenes couldn’t save this adventure of an all-female space privateer team of being simply forgettable.

 
Final rating: Rabbit Poo
 

Legends of Talia: Arcadia

If anyone thought Sakura Space was bad, a true disaster was awaiting them in an unlikely place. It came with WC’s attempt to go beyond the pure ecchi VN formula and spawn a “dark fantasy” series called Legends of Talia, taking the form of the first and only entry in that franchise - Arcadia. This super-short yuri VN was meant to give a new tone and new quality to WC’s productions, following a tale of a disillusioned knight, worshipped throughout the kingdom as a hero, but now wondering the land without mission or purpose. While it sounded interesting in theory, it failed to deliver on its promises in the most spectacular ways – from stiff and overstylized dialogue (repeating words pointlessly and use obscure terms will obviously make your sentences more refined and serious), through fanservice’y art not fitting the plot, all the way to the tone-deaf writing, it’s a kind of disaster I haven’t seen before or since among commercial OELVNs.

            After seeing 5 minutes of expository dialogue inserted in the middle of a nearly hopeless battle against a fire-breathing dragon, you’ll appreciate every other fantasy VN you’ve read in your life that much more. Still, the saddest part of this might be that this failure cemented WC’s commitment to low-effort ecchi VNs and made it pretty certain that we won’t see this company evolving in any kind of interesting direction in the foreseeable future.

 
Final rating: Smelly Poo
 

 

As you can clearly see, the early history of WC’s yurige is a bit of a downward spiral, starting from the very strong entries, showing the full extent of the studio’s creative powers, all the way to the disastrous attempt at creating a new franchise and new style for their VNs. However, as I will show in the next Shovelware Adventures, this tendency thankfully didn’t hold and after Legends of Talia, yuri Sakura games still held a few nice, even if minor, surprises.
 

Be sure to check out part two of this journey through the land of crappy yurige, coming up in two weeks!

PS Once more, my special thanks go to Bosskwar, who made this series possible (or at least much more enjoyable to make) through his let's play videos. 

Starlight Vega Review (yuri visual novel)

   This review was originally posted on Fuwanovel Forums on December 15th 2017.

Disclaimer: I’m supporting Razz, author of this game, on Patreon and consider myself a fan of much of her work – this might obviously influence the scoring and tone of my review, although I stand by the opinions presented here wholeheartedly.

Yuri/shoujo-ai, as much as some of us might enjoy the theme, is still a fairly small niche among Japanese VNs – one that undoubtedly spawned some great titles and has a loyal fanbase, but is nowhere near being a dominant formula in the genre. It’s enough to look at VNDB statistics on romance elements and protagonist’s gender to see how relatively few quality JP titles yuri fans have available to them (especially if they have to rely on the titles translated to English or/and are looking for more than just erotic content).

            On the other hand, among western VN producers and audiences, F/F romance seems to gather a much broader appeal, with many highly-regarded titles focusing exclusively on yuri themes and some of the most appreciated developers, such as ebi-hime, devoting much of their work to them. Starlight Vega, developed by Razzart Visuals and published on Steam in March 2016, is definitely not among those most popular or critically-acclaimed western yuri VNs. Still, I think it’s in many ways a notable game worthy of a closer look – most importantly because it shows that visual novels created outside of Japan, even when they stay faithful to the general format of the genre, can have their own identity and style.

A western VN set anywhere else than Japan and with non-Japanese characters? Impossible!

 

What might catch your attention early when approaching Starlight Vega is the setting – it happens in an unspecified western country, with characters and scenery appropriate for this context and nothing Japanese in sight. Much of the action happens in places like the old manor inherited by protagonist’s family or the woods surrounding it, producing a believable climate of (most likely) European province and giving a unique feel to the story. When people argue that western VNs are simply inferior imitations of the Japanese originals, it’s often hard to argue with it – especially when non-JP developers copy the absurdly overused high-school drama format and set everything in Japan, no matter how unnecessary it is for the story or how silly it might feel when coupled with originally-English writing (or even worse, English-only voice acting). Starlight Vega definitely looks for its own identity and for the most part succeeds to differentiate itself from the crowd.

            Without a Japanese high-school as a starting point, we’ve already escaped many of the VN tropes and clichés that could plague this story – and SV does a good job of using this potential to do something a bit different with its plot-line. It starts with the protagonist, Aria, moving into a new home – aforementioned mansion once belonging to her grandfather – using this occasion to invite her best friend Melody for a sleepover. Quickly, strange events start happening, leading the girls to a discovery that suddenly confronts them with a reality of magic, supernatural creatures and various deadly threats, also biding Aria’s fate to a demon she accidentally freed from a crystal. The plot is somewhat relaxed when it goes to pacing, but offers high stakes and decent amounts of drama – much of it is focused on romance, but even in more-relaxed moments it doesn’t forget the life-or-death intrigue happening in the background.

At first glance, the game might look like "demon-porn" and does a questionable job of dispelling that notion with how it advertises itself – still, it’s nowhere close to being porn by any reasonable definition.

 

Speaking of romance, this aspect of the game is definitely its selling point and comes out as a positive, even if it's not without problems. The three heroines are very different from each other and offer unique perspectives on the overarching storyline (although there are some inconsistencies and confusing differences between the routes that weren't properly explained in the game). I’ve really enjoyed the emotional dynamic between them and the protagonist and the sexual tension building up in Lyria and Scherza routes. Aria herself is maybe the weakest point here, being rather indecisive and oblivious to clear signals of interest, especially in Melody route (“My best friend can’t possibly love me, even though she confessed to me three times already, right?”) – although this is a very common tactic for prolonging the drama and can be excused to some extent, while in general Aria isn't without some personality and agency. Every romance arc has at least one sex scene, which is mostly delivered through text, accompanied only by partially-nude CGs. The end effect for me felt quite tasteful and enjoyable without ever going into obvious pornography.

            The CGs and the artstyle in general also need to be mentioned in some details, as it’s another way in which this VN differentiates itself from many similar projects. The drawings are often not extremely detailed, but uses softer lines and pastel colours in a way that creates a look distinct from most anime-style visual novels and which for me felt very appealing. Sprites are pretty simple, but good-looking (maybe with a single exception of Aria’s mother and her dead eyes), while CGs vary between pretty and absolutely gorgeous. This style also works very well with the rather-mild eroticism of the story – even at it's most graphic moments, it doesn't feel like hentai. Music, from the catchy menu screen tune to the background music throughout the story matches the overall climate of the game and didn’t make me turn it off at any point, which is much more than I can say about many other indie VNs I’ve read.

Romance in VNs often feels rushed and contrived - in Starlight Vega all heroines were at least given backstories and motivations that explain their interest in Aria.

 

The praise I’ve given to SV so far might seem a bit far-fetched, but I think it’s well-deserved and reflects the immense enjoyment the game gave me – obviously, there are also important flaws in it. Some parts of the writing, especially at the beginning of the story, are pretty inconsistent, doing a mediocre job of establishing the characters and making them likeable. Same goes to some endings, like Lyria’s epilogue, which puts the protagonist in some unnecessarily awkward situations, and especially the tacked-on, nearly incoherent bonus harem route – a rather unfortunate execution of a Kickstarter stretch goal. The yuri romance itself suffers from the same problem that's present in many Japanese titles, that is making all the characters gay by default and never elaborating in any meaningful way on their attraction towards woman (what might be somewhat understandable with “demons” from another world, but much less with an apparently average high-schooler such as Aria).

            For me, all these are fairly minor gripes though, for the title which is above all a very sweet yuri romance with an imaginative story and interesting setting. It’s rather short and lacks voice acting, so it definitely cannot compete directly with high-budget titles like Flowers series or Kindred Spirits on the Roof. In its own category though, it’s one of the best indie yuri VNs I've read and a memorable experience, that is definitely worth investing the 7-8 hour necessary to read through the three main routes. It also regularly goes on sale on Steam, so if you’re patient, you can grab it for very little money and receive a decent amount of quality content.

Final verdict: 3.5/5

Pros:
+ Interesting setting and a fairly unique story premise
+ Well-done yuri romance and (non-pornographic) erotic segments
+ Good looking, distinct artstyle
 
Cons:
- Inconsistent storytelling between routes
- Pointless, tacked-on harem route


VNDB page
Buy Starlight Vega on Steam

Sunrider: Liberation Day Review (Visual Novel/Strategy Game Hybrid)

After the impressive success of the freeware VN/strategy hybrid Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius the game’s developer, Love in Space, soon started working on a sequel, doubling down on their policy of directly imitating the Japanese visual novel formula and apparently devoting much of their newly-found resources and experience to exactly that end. When the highly-anticipated Sunrider: Liberation Day finally released, on March 2016, it came armed with Japanese voice-acting, Japanese theme song and extra amounts of fanservice, ready to conquer the Western-otaku audience with its bombastic facsimile of Japanese eroge. Thus, one of the most amusing chimaeras in the history of the OELVN scene was born, once more to a decent commercial success and mostly positive reception.

            Setting the slightly-absurd “Japanization” aside, Liberation Day is, above all, a sequel of a well-known and, for the most part, respected game, that did much to promote visual novel formula in the West. Mask of Arcadius, as I think most people would agree, remains to this day one of the best VN “space operas”, especially among those officially released outside of Japan and fills a niche mostly unexplored by EVNs. As a sci-fi fan, a good continuation of the Sunrider story was something I really wanted to see and Liberation Day promised to offer just that, in an even grander and more compelling style. Did it deliver on those promises though and does it stand the test of time as well as its predecessor?

The very average female cast and forced romance that ignores player's previous choices are at the center of the story in Sunrider’s sequel, taking the focus away from its strongest part – the galactic war drama 
 

The already mentioned “remodelling” of Sunrider even further into an imitation of Japanese VNs is the first thing you notice after running the game – the pompous theme song, combined with Japanese voices of the heroines and gimmicky opening sequence, with tons of “cinematic” cuts and animations are simply overwhelming. It’s something I honestly haven’t seen in any other OELVN and which makes Liberation Day a quintessence of a “weeb game” – trying to be more Japanese than actual Japanese VNs themselves and ending up laughable in its obvious over-stylisation. Thankfully, after the initial shock passes, it has a lot of campy charm and can be very enjoyable if you don’t take it too seriously.

             Besides that though, the game retained the general formula of its prequel, which only minor changes to the dialogue system (talking to the crew between missions, through a ship-map interface) and the turn-based strategy segments. The hex-based combat was slightly streamlined in the graphical department, removing some animations and effects that overly prolonged every move, while adding a few new ships for player’s use (as mercenaries, because the core mecha squadron didn’t receive any expansion) and some new enemies. This, however, shouldn’t bother the people that enjoyed Mask of Ardacius that much, as the tactical depth and challenge they know is still very much intact and should be probably the most important factor of their enjoyment of the game. For those less interested in strategy aspect, the story-oriented difficulty from the first game is still present, this time shamelessly labelled as “waifu mode”. 

The game’s strategy elements are as solid as in the first game, but disappoint slightly with lack of innovation
 

However, the actual problems start with the game’s story, which this time is even more linear and leads the plot in directions that are simply alienating to the player. While the first game mostly offered an illusion of choice (dialogue options didn’t influence the ending and have only a minor impact in the sequel), the moral dilemmas did a lot to enhance immersion and make you empathize with Sunrider’s captain and crew, even if their characterisation was not always the best. Here, you have no control over their actions and can only passively observe their obvious mistakes and protagonist’s forced romance with a character I personally didn’t care about at all. What’s worse, all this leads you into a horrible ending, which simply nullifies everything you worked for the whole duration of the two games and leaves you with little hope or satisfaction, adding a clunky cliffhanger on top of that.

            This would be an absolute deal-breaker for me – and probably was for many people playing the game at its release. However, the authors most likely understood their mistake and released a DLC which at least partially mitigated this blunder – an alternate timeline scenario, focused purely on VN-style storytelling and sending the protagonist back in time to fix his failures. This content, now available for free with every purchase of the game, not only opens a way towards a more satisfying conclusion, but also provides the player with an opportunity to pursue romances with the girls other than the one from the main plot (along with h-scenes unlockable with a free patch). While I was sorely disappointed with the main story of Liberation Day, I was positively surprised with the quality of this “bonus” content, especially because it directly answered to my disgust with original conclusion, making averting it both mine and protagonist’s main motivation to go forward. It was even written well enough to make the characters I previously completely didn’t care about somewhat amusing – the cast, of course, remained pretty flat and generic, but I’ve warmed up towards even the most annoying members of it after finishing their respective routes (although the first officer, Ava, is still the only character I really ever cared about in this game). Against all odds, it let me leave this game with purely positive feelings.

The alternate-timeline DLC offers a more classic VN experience and does much to salvage the otherwise underwhelming story 
 

The game’s visuals are at the same solid, but never-impressive level of the first Sunrider, with decent-looking, but simple sprites and CGs (I honestly couldn’t force myself to unlock the h-scenes and assess their quality, but I would expect them to be at a similar, average level) and backgrounds. The battles, while less flashy than in the first game to overcome some engine limitations, still have quite a lot of impact to them and are generally nice to look at. The new additions, Japanese voice acting and the theme song, are of very decent quality and can be appreciated after the initial cultural shock passes.

            In the end, Sunrider: Liberation Day felt like a step backwards from the original, initially offering much less variety and weaker immersion, and only later somewhat making up for its shortcomings. It’s a strange example of a misguided attempt at boosting the appeal of an OELVN not by offering something unique, but through clunky mimicry of Japanese games, which in the end only proved counter-productive. It also contained some absolutely awful pieces of contrived, depressing storytelling, leading the main campaign’s plot into that awful place of “baiting for a sequel you never want to see”. But it was also, thanks to its DLC and fun game mechanics, an ultimately positive experience and decent point of closure for the Sunrider franchise. With all its flaws, I still wholeheartedly recommend playing it, especially if you’re into sci-fi or the space-opera formula.

Final score: 3,5/5

Pros:
+ Still solid and challenging strategy game mechanics
+ Good quality of voice acting and sound design
+ Compelling DLC content with traditional VN storytelling and romance
 
Cons:
- Alienating main story with no player agency
- Lack of meaningful innovation in strategy sections
- Horrible ending for the main campaign
- Over-the-top “weeb” feel


VNDB page
Buy Sunrider: Liberation Day on Steam or GOG