Yuri Game Jam 2018 Visual Novels, Part 1

Check out part 2 of my summary here!

Yuri Game Jam, having few limitations on what can enter the event outside of including some form of yuri or LGBT themes, was always a good arena for various devs to show off demos or prototypes and gain visibility or feedback for their projects. At the same time, it consistently attracted many complete projects, often surprisingly solid when it goes to their quality and the amount of content they offered. This year this was no different, with over 20 full games entering the event, including 11 original VNs, ranging from extremely short and basic, to a few-hours-long and artistically impressive ones. In the last month, after the end-of-October YGJ deadline has been reached, I was going through all these titles and today I'm offering you a full overview of what a VN fan might find in this year's event's roster. Or, well, at least the first half of it...

          In my coverage, I will, for the most part, ignore all the in-development titles – the production cycles of indie games are always a bit unpredictable and I’m highly distrustful whether some of the demos we can find in YGJ will turn into actual, finished products in foreseeable future. Instead, I’ll be focusing on the fully-released visual novels in the event and providing a short overview of each of them, along with a simple rating on a scale of “not recommended/recommended/highly recommended”. I will also, obviously, skip on the games from other genres that took part in the Jam (although if you value story-driven yurige, I encourage you to still give them a chance). So, I hope you’ll join me on the journey through this interesting collection of queer, freeware VNs and uncover all the surprises this year’s edition of YGJ holds for us. As always, all the games mentioned below are completely free to play, so if you click the Itch.io links in their titles, you can try them out right away with no charge. Let's get to it!

Valentine Disaster

We’ll start things off with what could be described as another quintessential YGJ VN – a piece of cute, visually pleasant and utterly heartwarming GxG romance with some minor, cool spins to it. In this case, the story of tomboyish Selene trying to bake a perfect Valentines Day's gift for her girlfriend after they had a falling out, is spiced up by brief point-and-click gameplay elements, requiring you to buy and select the right ingredients for the dessert of your choosing. If you follow the subtle clues the game provide you with along the way, you can easily find the best combination or home-made delicacies and bought presents to quickly salvage the threatened holiday. But if you mess up, there will be consequences… A very brief (up to an hour for 100% completion), but fun and lovely-looking experience.

 
Final Rating: Highly Recommended

 

Symmetra's Qualifying Matches

Probably the most substantial piece of fanfiction in visual novel form that I’ve seen to date, Symmetra’s Qualifying Matches is essentially a giant festival of gay shipping in the Overwatch universe (both involving the titular protagonist and lots of other pairings), but not one without some peculiar charm. Its artstyle will definitely not be to everyone’s liking, but grew on me during the experience (it's crude, but goes quite well together with the absurd story), to the point where I was even able to look past the persistent visual glitches and certain less-fortunate illustrations.
          Outside of the visual side of things, the game includes pretty elaborate references to Overwatch's story and offers some seriously amusing interpretations of the game's characters. As any other fanfiction, it doesn’t work well without decent knowledge of the source material on the side of the reader, so unless you want to do some major research just to follow what’s going on and fully understand the humour, I can only recommend it to actual Overwatch fans with a decent grasp of that game’s mechanics and its extensive, but scattered lore.

 
Final Rating: Recommended

 

Starship XO

NewWestGames’ entry into this year’s YGJ is definitely rough around the edges, but offers surprisingly satisfying characters and story, at least as much as it is possible within its brief reading time. It follows a team of misfits, dropped by their commander into a barely-running, decommissioned starship and having to survive on the frontlines of a galactic war with little more than their ingenuity and teamwork. It includes a variety of queer themes and talks about them and the discrimination characters have suffered from in a pretty believable way, why also offering a relatively fun main storyline and well-stylized artwork. The very fast pacing and short script do not leave that much place for depth, but what is there is simply fun to read through – and for the low price of nothing, there’s simply no reason to not give it a chance if you’re not completely averse to its subject matter.

 
Final Rating: Highly Recommended

 

Little Green Girls

As mentioned before, events such as YGJ are open to all kinds of games, including even the most basic, low-effort ones, put together with a bunch of free assets and a bit of original text and programming. Little Green Girls takes this approach pretty much to the point of pure trolling, with its super-cliched, short story, one stock character sprite (with some MS Paint-level modifications) and, for the most part, complete lack of sound. It can be a bit funny with how brazen and self-aware it is, but it’s still not something I would ever recommend reading – even considering how hard to find a decent fix of human x alien yuri romance, this one is simply not worth it.

 
Final Rating: Not Recommended (although I regret nothing!)

 

Crossed Paths: Connected Worlds ~At First Sight~

This remake of the first, freeware VN by MikomiKisomi (now working under the label of Mikomi Games and an author of some relatively interesting and stylistically distinct otome and yuri titles) is a great improvement over the previous version when it goes to visuals, but does not fix the core issues it suffered from. Based on a very promising concept of magical necklaces connecting people through space and time, Crossed Paths has all the building blocks necessary to create a satisfying story, but never manages to pace its plot properly and ends it in an incredibly abrupt and anticlimactic manner. While it’s not a terrible read while it lasts, in the end, it’s simply too basic, too unfocused and too lacking in any kind of impact to be worth recommending – you’ll probably have much more fun by checking out any of Mikomi’s other projects instead.

 
Final Rating: Not Recommended

 

Naxos

Inspired by Ancient Greek mythology and appropriately stylized, Naxos is more of a short choose-your-own-adventure book than a traditional visual novel, but still offers a visually-pleasing user interface and a compelling premise – a bond forming between an noblewoman, dumped on a deserted island in unclear circumstances and hopelessly waiting for rescue, and a female minotaur, who turns out to be much more than a violent monster everyone expects her to be. While the story is tiny and rather open-ended, not revealing much on what kind of future awaits the main characters, it's fairly unique, climatic and written well enough to be definitely worth checking out.

 
Final Rating: Highly Recommended

 

In The Cards

I usually have reservation towards visual novels made in unity, as if they follow the traditional format, they usually make for inferior experience in comparison to those created with dedicated VN engines – they not only rarely work as smoothly as games made in Ren’Py, but also lack various quality-of-life features, such as skip-read function or easy access to the backlog. It can be worth it, though, if the developers deviate from the traditional VN format and use Unity’s flexibility to offer an alternative take on the genre. In The Cards might put some people off with its visual quirks (VR-like environment, literal cardboard cut-out character models) and cryptic dialogue, but is also a very interesting experience which, successfully or not, tries to tackle some universal topics and tell a subtle, mostly implicit love story which most yuri fans should find satisfying.

 
Final Rating: Recommended

 

Honourable Mention: Mystics of Sapphia – Prelude

The sole exception to my "no-demos" policy is a prologue chapter for a simple-looking, but highly promising yuri VN which has been successfully kickstarted a few weeks ago. Mystics of Sapphia follows the story of a Princess in a fantasy world, who is assassinated, along with the rest of the royal family, and because of a magic necklace trades bodies with her personal maid moments before dying. Haunted by guilt for taking her closest friend's life and struggling to survive in her new role as a lowly servant, she still does not give up on the idea of solving the mystery behind the assassinations and during that quest, meets three powerful women who become game's heroines. While the campaign leaves a lot about the final product's length and content a bit vague, this is one of those projects that are definitely worth keeping an eye on as a yuri fan. And if the developer's promises can be trusted, should be getting our way in just a few months.

 

And this concludes the first part of my overview! From the VNs presented so far, Valentine Disaster and Starship XO are probably the ones that I would recommend trying out the most. While lacking polish, like it is often the case with these Game Jam entries, they are really fun and interesting little experiences, perfect to full up a slow evening with. Also, I hope you've enjoyed reading this and if you did, be sure to check out the second part of my YGJ 2018 coverage, coming up next Friday!

Ruler by Default Review (English Original Visual Novel)

 

This review was originally posted on Fuwanovel Forums on May 25th 2018

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

OELVN scene is, for many years now, heavily reliant on crowdfunding, with many small and high-profile projects made possible through Kickstarter and, more and more often, regular contributions of fans on Patreon. While these methods of financing VN development created opportunities that wouldn’t be available to the developers in the past and brought us many memorable titles, they go with their share if risk and problems – weak safeguards guaranteeing the final product delivering on its promises or even being completed at all, being the most crucial one. Crowdfunded projects disappointing their audience, getting stuck in development hell or simply never coming to fruition are at least just as much a reality as they are in the “normal” game development scene. However, in these cases, the consequences are falling mostly on the average backer, who took the double role of the consumer and the investor, hoping for nothing more than a compelling piece of entertainment in return.

           For this reasons, I very much enjoy seeing crowdfunded projects overcoming extreme difficulties and delivering even when everyone pretty much forgot about them or stopped hoping for a positive resolution. Lately, we’ve seen the release and warm reception of AIdol – a game that spent more than half a decade in development, went through both a failed Kickstarter campaign and changes in staff, eventually being claimed by Ebi-Hime, originally only the writer for the project, and released under her name. Today, I’ll look at another long-forgotten project, Pistachi Studio’s Ruler by Default, successfully crowdfunded in 2014 and released on Steam on May 4th this year, exactly 3 years after the initial goal.

The game’s long development left many problems behind – the reworked visuals however made a significant, positive difference from what was presented in the early builds

 

Ruler by Default’s plot is quite a typical (comedy) isekai – an average guy, programmer fresh out of college, is suddenly sucked into a fantasy world and recognized as a new (evil?) Overlord. The title, once held by a God-appointed ruler of the entire realm, lost most of its significance after the disappearance of the previous Overlord and his kingdom was reduced to a tiny domain of a castle and its immediate surroundings, guarded by a handful of still-loyal servants. Having at least a full year till another portal to our world can be opened, our protagonist has to accommodate to his new role and decide whether it will be just a temporary settlement, until he can return home, or something more permanent.

           The initial projects of the game, as presented in the Kickstarter campaign and Steam Greenlight page, showed it as a dating sim with stat management and some elements of political simulation. The final version, however, turned out to be pretty much a pure visual novel, with only choosable conversations and dialogue choices influencing the plot and the “ruling” part of the game basically out of the picture. For the first 30 weeks of your stay in the new world, you’re able to interact with one of the 6 heroines each week (5 of them romanceable, the sixth one having a supporting role and most likely getting a full route later as a DLC), using an overworld menu. If you finish all the events connected to one of the girls, you’re immediately locked into her route and the game continues as a normal, mostly linear VN. The project's past design is mostly visible through some of the still present flavour text, such as stat checks and stat bonuses from certain events that no longer mean anything and will most likely be removed with patches.

The heroines are definitely the game’s strongest asset – they’re all interesting, well fleshed-out characters, even if the actual routes vary in quality

 

Whatever Ruler by Default might have lost during its long and complicated development, it very much makes up for with personality and a great female cast. The first characters you meet, immortal elf-like sorceresses Mori and June are not only quirky and intriguing, but also show some of the game’s biggest strengths – good visual design and well-drawn, expressive sprites. All other heroines are similarly distinct and for a game that takes around 10 hours to complete, surprisingly well fleshed-out, with their own secrets and interesting backstories. All the routes also contain a nice mixture of comedy and drama, being lighthearted much of the time, but also producing seriously touching and dark moments – Mori’s route being probably the best one in this respect, completely changing your view of the character and delivering some compelling romance. Other story arcs are not always this consistent and enjoyable when it goes to writing, but also none of them feels underdeveloped or not worth reading.

           The protagonist, on the other hand, is much more generic, without any clear characteristics beyond being a nice guy (and, at least in one route, he acts consistently stupid and naive, enough to be rather off-putting). Also, unlike the heroines, it’s debatable whether he shows much growth during the story – this might be one more casualty of the missing dating sim (and political sim) mechanics, as in the narrative he often seems like just as much of a dork in the ending sequences as he was in the opening ones and there’s little you can do to lead him in a different direction without receiving a bad ending. This also makes the whole “evil overlord” theme very thin and mostly a comedic factor and personally, while I definitely didn’t expect this to be another Venus Blood, the lack of legitimate “darker” paths was a bit disappointing.

The removal of the dating sim mechanics didn’t hurt the romance, but definitely affected the political parts of the narrative, barely visible in some routes

 

Just like the character sprites I was writing about earlier, other visual assets are very solid, not being very high on detail, but well-stylized an appealing to look at. The overall artstyle isn’t far detached from usual anime drawings, but also have enough personality to be memorable. The pleasant music enhances that effect, giving the game a surprisingly strong climate. The only things that slightly spoils it are the persistent technical issues, not major enough to be game-breaking, but very much visible – the constantly bugging-out backlog, combined with the inability to roll back dialogue, was especially irritating. The nowadays rarely-seen 4:3 aspect ratio also was something that took me some time to get used to and could be a major problem for some readers.

           Still, those were definitely minor gripes when confronted with the overall enjoyment I’ve had with this VN. I came to me pretty much out of nowhere, from an era long before I was even interested in visual novels and when it goes to storytelling, delivered one of the most fun experiences I've had recently. While it might be advisable to wait for some minor fixes, and possibly even the addition of June’s route, before you read it, for the modest price of 10$ it’s still a great catch. If you can, support the devs behind this project – against all odds, they managed to provide us with a fun, memorable title and I really hope that they’ll work will ultimately be appreciated.

 
Final score: 3,5/5
 
Pros:
+ Good art and scripting
+ Great cast of characters
+ Highly distinct, compelling romance routes
 
Cons:
- Bland protagonist
- A LOT of small bugs


VNDB page
Buy Ruler by Default on Steam

Episicava Vol. 1 Review (English Original Visual Novel)

Chuunige is one of the visual novel genres that are barely present in OELVN scene, at least to any “serious” capacity – among the more popular and high-quality releases there’s very few that would even loosely fit the “fighting VN” formula, or especially effectively replicate the unique feel of this particular current in Japanese fiction. Recently, however, a fledgeling studio under the name of Epic Works decided to remedy this sorry state of affairs by creating a content-rich, Fate-inspired EVN called Episicava. The first volume, of what was apparently planned to become a longer series, was released on Steam in April 2018, in a slightly disastrous state – full of graphical bugs and various technical issues, the game made a rather poor first impression. However, since those problems were mostly fixed with patches in the months after launch, it’s a good moment to look at Episicava and ask the most important question – did it manage, in its improved state, to capture some of the magic of Fate/Stay Night or Dies Irae in a downscaled, low-budget form of an EVN?

The edgy opening of the VN is just as over-the-top and trashy as the rest of it, but the climate often shifts between brutal, gory action and comedy

 

While Episicava claims to be inspired by classic chuunige, I think it would be much more accurate to think of it as a VN adaptation of some particularly trashy and bloody shounen anime. The first feature it offers in abundance is edge – the game is full of over-the-top violence and gore (although nearly exclusively in textual form – CGs are mostly very tame), with even the prologue featuring a very graphic sequence of protagonist’s (who’s at the time still a young teenager) village and family being slaughtered without provocation by foreign invaders. Later, we go through many scenes with absurd death-counts and our anti-hero killing people rather indiscriminately in his quest for revenge, getting out-eviled only by the cartoonishly vile (and usually pretty dumb) antagonists. The fighting, utilizing confusing and overly-elaborate superpowers, involves other annoying shounen tropes, such as power levels and everyone shouting names of their techniques aloud whenever they use them.

            The protagonist, Arin, is the ultimate edgelord, initially driven solely by revenge and planning a genocide against the nation that he considers responsible for his people’s demise (although, for some reason, the game still starts in a high school setting with him masquerading as a student – after all, we can't just skip on overused tropes). While the game tries to communicate that he has some kind of basic moral code and gives him some development later down the line, he’s still a violent, messed up asshole who tries to resolve everything with brute strength and mistreats people around him, including the heroines, who he insults on a regular basis and even, in one case, coerces into sex (in an h-scene which also pretty much ruins one of the strongest female characters in the story). There’s even a scene where he ponders raping one of the game’s love interests – and while it’s clear where the writers were coming from, trying to portray a character broken and demoralized by his traumatic experiences, he’s primarily a piece of shit that you can barely ever relate to or truly care what happens to him. Some people might be okay with this kind of setup, but I barely ever felt such a strong disconnect between me and the protagonist in a VN – and every time it happened I very much didn’t enjoy it.

The heroines definitely are not the worst part of the experience, but they have only marginally more common sense and likeable qualities than everyone else in Episicava's story

 

Other characters, sadly, are similarly shallow, even though the two romanceable heroines, Alacria (a daughter of one of the game's villains) and Anian (a warrior and heir to a tribal nation's chieftain), are somewhat likeable. The latter probably received more development than any other character in the game and even more than that, she even has a semi-legitimate reason to care about the protagonist, while Alacria pretty much shows out of nowhere and immediately declares a crush on him (the game, by the way, repeats that the protagonist is extremely handsome and generally loved by women to the point it’s hard to tell what the authors were trying to achieve, apart from making the juvenile power fantasy even more obnoxious than it already was). Everyone’s personality and motivations feel underdeveloped and cliched and while the game has a lot of time to build the characters (if offers around 20 hours of reading between all routes), it very rarely manages to do something interesting with them.

            The general plot also offers relatively little excitement, with rather predictable twists and few, mostly meaningless choices (in the vast majority of cases they only lead to an abrupt game over screens or let you access the newly-unlocked route after finishing your first and second playthrough). It’s essentially linear, with three routes and an enforced playing order (starting with Alacria’s route, then Anian’s route and the “true route”, which somehow manages to be the dumbest and least satisfying of them all). The stakes are always kept high, with world-ending conspiracies and global conflicts at the culmination of every story arc, but the silliness of it all and the fact how hard is to really care about the cast make it all fairly insignificant. The same goes to fights, which are actually not terribly done, considering dev’s limited resources and do a decent job of presenting unique fighting styles of the lead characters and keeping them consistent. They, however, get repetitive fairly quickly and often have very little significance for the plot. Without the visual fireworks that would accompany them in an anime series or a high-budget Japanese VN, they start feeling like pointless filler – there was literally a few that get me somewhat excited and felt compelling in their results (for example, the first confrontation between Arin and Alacria and the final showdown of the Anian’s route). Other than that, they just don’t have the kind of impact every fighting VN relies on.

The protagonist is, of course, a magnet for women – after all, who would not fall in love with an unpleasant, cringy, borderline-suicidal scum like him at first sight?

 

The game’s visuals and sound effects are of decent quality, although not in any way impressive. The fighting CGs are very often recycled, with very few event-specific ones. There’s also a strong disconnect in the artstyle between the sprites and fighting scenes on one hand and the slice-of-life event CGs and h-scenes on the other. The sprites for some characters are fairly similar to each other, which make them even more contrasting with the vastly varied CG designs. The sound effects (like gunshots and explosions) and music mostly fit the “very angry shounen” vibe, but they usually show up in appropriate moments don’t get overbearing (the music at rare occasions might now fit the situations presented on the screen, with tense battle tunes turning on during casual SoL scenes, but that problem currently seems much less prevalent now than it was in the launch version).

            In the end, is Episicava worth reading? Who is it targeted towards? My answer to both is, at best, “I’m not sure”. The game definitely fails in the storytelling department, spewing cliches and obnoxious edginess as its main content. Fights are, ultimately, without much excitement, mostly because only in a few you actually somewhat care about whether the protagonist wins them – and even then, not because of him, but because of the causes he ends up fighting for. The degree to which he’s unlikeable also nullifies much of the pleasure the romance and SoL segments could’ve had – Arin is not enough of a villain or enough of a hero to be compelling and that makes everything around him similarly meaningless. Most likely, even fans of trashy shounen or dumb chuunige won’t be satisfied with Episicava, as the low budget didn’t allow it to be properly flashy and fun to look at. The h-scenes are also too few and far between to make it work simply as a source of fanservice and porn. In result, it ends up being a game for no one and without any merits significant enough to recommend it with a clear conscience, even with the relatively modest asking price. I also wouldn’t expect Volume 2 to ever be created, but maybe Epic Works’ team will learn from this game’s mistakes and their upcoming chuunige, Rainbow Dreams, will improve on the formula (the plot and character description suggest, however, that the cringe factor will be alive and well). For now, I can only suggest staying away from their VNs – there are many, many better things to spend $10 and 20 hours on, even within the EVN niche.

Final Score: 2/5

Pros:
+ Impressive amount of content
+ Decent production values
 
Cons:
- Obnoxious and shallow characters
- Poorly-written story with innumerable plotholes
- Questionable sexual content


VNDB Page
Buy Episicava Vol. 1 on Steam or Itch.io

Best discounts on EVNs during the Steam Autumn Sale!

Hear me out people, hear me out, because the Steam Autumn Sale is here! For the next 6 days, you'll be able to buy a huge number of visual novels dirt-cheap and as usual, I'll be encouraged to put your attention and credit cards not only towards the shiny Japanese kamige, but also our humble, native productions from the West. As I've tried many times to convince you, many of those EVNs are really, really worth it.

          To be completely honest, this is not the most attractive Steam sale ever when it goes to Western visual novels, but there are at least a few very notable offers. The main highlight, in my opinion, is the -90% for the Analogue: A Hate Story & Hate Plus duology. These are some excellently written and unique sci-fi games, that played a huge role in introducing me to VNs as a genre and sparking my love for it. Also, another VN by Christine Love, Ladykiller in the Bind is in one its deepest sales ever, with a much-telling -69% discount.

          Other than that, a huge discount for excellent An Octave Higher, with its fascinating techno-fantasy setting and memorable characters, -90% for Hanako Games' VN-puzzler Date Warp and -75% for Zetsubou's gruesome Sickness are definitely offers worth taking a closer look at. Also, PixelFade's overly family-friendly fantasy adventure, Crystalline, is at its cheapest since launch, with a -33% discount - with all my issues with this game, it's still an absolute eye candy and a serviceable, casual piece of storytelling. 

          So, with the highlights properly covered, here's a longer list of best deals for EVNs in this particular attempt at bankrupting you by Valve and VN developers. As usual, I've focused on games at least 1/3 off from the original price and decent VNDB rating (over 6.0 bayesian) - enjoy!

• A Little Lily Princess, -60%, $14.99 $5.99
• An Octave Higher, -75%❕, $11.99 $2.99
• Ace Academy, -75%❕, $19.99 $4.99
• AIdol, -50%, $10.99 $5.49
• Analogue: A Hate Story, -90%❕, $9.99 $0.99
• Asphyxia, -50%, $5.99 $2.99
• Brilliant Shadows, -55%, $6.99 $3.14
• Cinders, -40%, $19.99 $11.99
• Crimson Gray, -50%, $9.99 $4.99
• Cursed Sight, -50%, $5.99 $2.99
• Crystalline, -33%, $19.99 $13.39 
• Date Warp, -90%❕, $9.99 $0.99
• Demonheart, -50%, $24.99 $12,49
• Hate Plus, -90%❕, $9.99 $0.99
• Highway Blossoms, -35%, $12.99 $8.44
• Ladykiller in a Bind, -69%❕, $19.99 $6.19
• Long Live The Queen, -60%, $9.99 $3.99
• Loren the Amazon Princess - Deluxe Edition, -35%, $24.99 $18.75
• Love Ribbon, -45%, $9.99 $5.49
• Magical Diary: Horse Hall, -60%, $14.99 $5.99
• Max's Big Bust, -50%, $29.99 $14.99
• Sakura Dungeon, -50%, $19.99 $9.99
• Seduce Me 2: The Demon War, -50%, $9.99 $4.99 
• Sickness, -75%❕, $9.99 $2.49
• Solstice, -40%. $19.99 $11.99
• SoulSet, -33%, $16.99 $11.38
• Starlight Vega, -60%, $9.99 $3.99
• Strawberry Vinegar, -50%, $9.99 $4.99
• Sunrider: Liberation Day, -75%❕, $24.99 $6.24
• The Confines Of The Crown, -60%, $19.99 $7.99 
• The Letter, -40%, $19.99 $11.99
• The Falconers: Moonlight, -50%, $9.99 $4.99
• The Way We All Go, -50%, $5.99 $2.99
• VA-11 Hall-A, -34%, $14.99 $9.89

I hope you found this list useful and whether you decide to support our struggling, weeb creators, I hope your purchases prove satisfying and don't threaten your physical survival with the amount of money you spend. :> And before we part, I wanted to remind you all that some of the best EVNs ever produced, such as Cinderella Phenomenon, CUPID, Lucid9 or One Thousand Lies, are also available on Steam during this sale, just as free as they ever were. If your wallet can't handle any more pressure, consider giving them a try!

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

Panzer Hearts Review (English Original Visual Novel)

This review was originally posted on Fuwanovel Forums on May 18th 2018.

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

The themes of World War 2 and Nazi Germany aren’t completely foreign to VNs and manga/anime – some beloved and high-profile titles, such as Dies Irae or Hellsing take very direct inspiration from Nazi imagery and legends about NSDAP elites’ dealings with the occult. More down-to-Earth war stories are however much rarer in this context – prominent franchises such as Valkyrie Chronicles or Saga of Tanya the Evil not only utilize much less controversial political and military framework of WW1, but also add significant fantasy elements to the mix. Even if their stories touch upon the topics such as the fate of the common soldier and atrocities committed by the warring states, the actual historical parallels in them are pretty thin.

          To apparently remedy this sorry state of affairs, in April 2018 a small OELVN titled Panzer Hearts was released on Steam. Developed by a tiny Finnish studio HELYEES, this game promises a dark story of war, political oppression and romance in an alternate-universe WW2. To this it also adds the theme of tank-building, that should probably excite every military geek such as myself. However, as fantastic as this sounds, can such an unassuming indie game actually deliver on all these fronts?

The Panzer Hearts’ vision of totalitarian society is believable and well thought-out, but with an around 5-hour long story, the game's ultimately too short to explore it to a satisfying degree

 

Panzer Hearts’ story follows Bastian, a young soldier of the totalitarian, expansionist Empire (vastly resembling Nazi Germany, but with the national-socialist imaginary replaced by Ancient Egyptian themes), who idealistically enlisted for the army and was humiliatingly wounded the first time he saw combat. After long recovery and an emotional breakdown, he’s personally enlisted by an influential officer, colonel Kontar Ackermann, to work at a new tank factory, starting a journey that will lead him either to embracing or rejecting the oppressive system he lives in, while falling in love with one of two girls, each of them pretty much representing polar opposite stances on the Empire.

          The focus of the story definitely lays on the political reality of Bastian’s homeland and his personal struggle to understand the reality around him. The losses inflicted upon his family by the war, indoctrination he went through and his naive idealism are all explored in a pretty interesting fashion and the way they clash with brutal realities of the Empire’s terror and violence are the driving force of the plot. Also, the writing makes clear the moral ambiguity of pretty much all of the possible choices – while the Empire is clearly a bloody, potentially genocidal dictatorship, rejecting it also means betraying all the people that aided Bastian and laid their trust on him after he returned from the front. From this point of view, loyalist ending is maybe the most interesting part of the game, not only resolving the moral conflicts of the story in a convincing manner, but also pointing out to the rewards an authoritarian regime offers to its most loyal and capable servants and the allure of power it can grant to an individual.

Tank-building segments could’ve been a very nice touch if they were even slightly more involved and varied

 

What, however, is very praiseworthy in the general outline, it not always as good when it goes to details and the way some of these ideas are executed. Panzer Hearts on many occasions shows the cracks within the Empire’s perfect facade and various heresies against the dominant ideology, often coming from those publicly most loyal to the system and the first ones to silence anyone questioning it. This subplots, however, are pretty much never explored much beyond the sheer fact of their existence – and some of them begged to have deeper ramification and expose the characters more deeply to the dread of totalitarian violence, rather than just showing the inherent hypocrisy of ideology-driven regimes. Dialogues also disappoint slightly, feeling a bit unnatural and chaotic when they go into ideological discussions and conflicts between the characters – they never seem to reach the depth and impact that the authors obviously wanted them to have.

          However, a really major disappointment for me came from the tank-building “mini-game”, which seemed like one of the selling point of the game and in reality can barely be even described as a gameplay element. Only a few “assembling” segments are present in Panzer Hearts and all of them consist of simply dragging the parts vaguely around their appropriate places, without any skill or challenge involved. While they’re well-embedded within the story and relevant for the plot, they just begged for more complexity and variety – the German armoured vehicles of WW2 are a huge source of interesting designs and trivia, and using that potential seems like an obvious choice for a game which obviously was meant to appeal to fans of military history and equipment. Sadly, Panzer Hearts stops at absolute basics, just borrowing a few famous tank models and vaguely describing their capabilities.

The game’s simple visuals sadly take away some of the impact from the very dark, oppressive setting and storyline

 

Another issue, for many probably much more important, is the choice system in the game, which is pretty much meaningless past a few paths that lead you to immediate bad endings and the final decision that determines the ending you get. The games give you Telltale-style feedback to most of your actions (including the always-ominous "X will remember what you said about Y"), making you feel like you’re working towards something on every step, but none of it actually changes the plot, which branches out only at the very end of the story – I personally didn’t mind it very much, but those hating having only an illusion of control might be heavily disappointed.

          The possible dealbreaker, however, comes in the form of game’s visuals – while the quality of the art is not dreadful, it definitely has a problem of not really matching the extremely heavy subject matter. I have a feeling that the same story, presented with a more refined and darker aesthetic, could be much more impactful. The artist’s take on Egyptian themes also looks quite interesting and at times appealing, but lacks the polish necessary to really make it convincing. Of course, considering that Panzer Hearts was made by a small, more or less amateur team there’s no point in bashing those aspects of the game too much, but they’re definitely something to consider as a consumer.

          In the end, though, I do recommend giving this VN a chance – it’s a decent attempt at telling a kind of story and building a setting that we don’t really see within the medium, done with obvious knowledge and understanding of the topic is tries to tackle. Because of that, it’s something I would definitely like to see more of in the OELVN scene and if HELYEES decides to create another title in a similar style, I’ll be very interesting in seeing it. However flawed, it's a good start, hopefully, one that will lead towards more polished and expansive projects.

Update: As of April 29th 2019, the game was permanently made free by the developer.

 
Final Score: 2,5/5
 
Pros:
- Unique setting
- Serious approach to topics of war and totalitarianism
 
Cons:
- Mediocre dialogue
- Simplistic visuals
- Doesn’t capitalize on some of its best ideas


VNDB page
Download Panzer Hearts on Steam for free

Yuri Game Jam 2015-2017 Visual Novels Retrospective, Part 2

Two weeks ago we’ve started our journey through the world of Yuri Game Jam visual novels and today we’re gonna conclude its “historic” part, with another 6 games from the 2015-2017 period. As before, the order in which the games are presented is semi-random, but I’ve tried to mix commonly known and widely appreciated titles – ones you might be familiar with even if you never followed the event itself – with some lesser known entries, which are still worth a closer look. While even the list is obviously not exhaustive (and of course don’t cover the huge library of non-VN YGJ releases), it covers most of the entries I’ve personally found interesting. While I might still cover more of them in the future, it will most likely be in a different format and above all, I hope to focus on giving an overview of the latest event every year. But, that's in the future – for now, I hope you’ll enjoy this one last look at the GxG visual novel glory of YGJs past!

Once on a Windswept Night

Once on a Windswept Night by ebi-hime is definitely among the most ambitious Yuri Game Jam VNs, with an intricate meta-narrative and multiple layers of mystery for the player to uncover (starting with an element as basic as the identity of the protagonist). Featuring two touching, tragic love stories, up to three hours of content and very solid writing, it delivers much more than you would normally expect from a free game. The visual side of things suffered slightly from the relatively short development cycle, but it doesn’t change the fact that its a very creative and in many ways unique experience – and, for a game jam entry, an impressive artistic achievement, in many ways on par with ebi's commercial projects.

 

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

To Libertad

This story of a runaway slave and a warrior who saves her life and leads her to a safe haven of Libertad is a pretty standard and brief, but well-written fantasy tale with mild f/f romance added on top of it. The author’s focus on the main characters’ journey and fight for survival, and the bond that forms between them during that struggle, effected in something rather universal, that should prove appealing not only for fans of yuri visual novels or love stories, but anyone looking for a solid, short fantasy adventure.

 

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

Mermaid Splash! Passion Festival
 

Sofdelux’s first title is a rather impressive achievement when it goes to aesthetic – the underwater world it presents, populated by extremely varied types of merpeople, is vibrant and detailed, while character designs simple ooze personality and charm. All that being said, it suffers heavily from the predictable structure, rather shallow dating sim mechanics and repetitive routes. There are no real surprises or effective drama, especially after you learn the general structure of the plot in your first run – no matter what romance path you choose, you'll encounter similar situations and extremely similar outcomes depending on the schedule you set up. While I quite enjoy my portion of silly, cute yuri fluff from time to time, here there's simply too much of it and too little of everything else – it feels a waste of great art assets and a fun setting, even if in the end, it's still not in any way a bad experience.

 

Final Rating: Recommended

Princesses’s Maid

Princesses’s Maid is a tiny dating sim about a “maid”, who acts as a personal bodyguard and servant to the two young princesses of a fictional kingdom. During the hour-long experience, she builds up stats and gets closer to one of the princesses, uncovering their long-held secrets and burdens they kept from everyone around them – and the highly-inappropriate feelings they hold for the protagonist. While the dating sim mechanics are highly simplistic and fully open to save scumming, the drama, dialogues and characterization are really well-done and make for an ultimately satisfying experience. While it might not be especially surprising, it’s a great way to spend a lazy evening – and that’s sometimes absolutely enough for this kind of short, free visual novel.

 
Final Rating: Recommended

First Kiss at a Spooky Soiree

While not as interesting and brilliantly-written as Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet, this tiny VN has a lot of the same charming artstyle and heart-warming mood known from other games by NomnomNami. Even if it’s too short to offer a comprehensive story (it features a witch basically speed-dating during the titular soiree and experiencing her first kiss within tiny, ~10 min "routes"), it works great as an amusing distraction between “serious” readings, with some great lines and creatively-designed characters. Closer to what you would typically expect from a game jam entry, it’s still a pleasant, worthwhile experience.

 

Final Rating: Recommended

Magical Witch Bell and Her Non-Magical Friends

If being cute and lovely, while also touching on the problems of prejudice and discrimination are some of the dominating traits of Yuri Game Jam entries, Magical Witch Bell by npckc can be described as a quintessential YGJ title. This little VN with a simple, cutesy art and a straightforward love story featuring a witch living among non-magic users is minimalistic, but fun to read in this thoroughly drama-free, heartwarming fashion – while it might hold no real surprises, it’s a nice, relaxing experience, easily accessible the next time you need something to make you smile.

 

Final Rating: Recommended

And thus my retrospective of the previous years of Yuri Game Jam’s contribution to the EVN scene is complete. The event itself, however, is not going anywhere and I expect it to provide enough material for many more lists like this in years to come. Also, since last year there’s even a yaoi version of it and while participation was relatively small so far, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it grow substantially in the future and so far, it’s definitely visual novels that dominate it. While some authors who made the YGJ probably more than anyone expected it to be, like ebi-hime, are very likely not participating in it again, as they focus on their commercial projects, there will be other fledgling developers and hobbyists that will defy our expectations (for better and for worse – but considering the history of the event so far, mostly for the better) and make the event worth observing for all the yuri and EVN fans out there.
          But, this is not the end of my involvement with YGJ this year – in two weeks, I'll be publishing the first part of my comprehensive overview of visual novels that entered the 2018 edition of the event. Be sure not to miss it!