Our Lovely Escape Review (English Original Visual Novel)

Few EVN studios leave me with such mixed feelings as Reine Works – a small team creating otome and yuri VNs at an impressive pace since 2017, known for titles such as Blossoms Bloom Brightest and Reflections ~Dreams and Reality~. While I enjoy the ideas behind much of their work and there’s usually a visible improvement in quality with each new release, the storytelling in their games always proved lacking, leaving me either bored or weirded out in the end. Still, I was invested enough to still support their increasingly ambitious and interesting-looking projects, including minor Kickstarter pledges. This is how I ended up playing Our Lovely Escape – a small VN with choosable protagonist gender and three female romance interests, which appeared on Steam in late September 2019, after many long delays. Marketed in a way that suggested a dark twist to every heroine arc, hidden under a façade of a cute, New Game!-like story about an all-female game studio, it seemed to mix many elements I personally enjoy. What I got, however, is quite likely the worst Raine Work’s game to date and will stay in my mind as one of the most upsetting VNs I’ve read to date.

This passionate scene coming just a few minutes after Alexis’ drunken barfing session is a pretty solid representation of Our Lovely Escape’s romance

Atypically, I’ll start with Our Lovely Escape’s sex scenes – the main ones show up pretty early in the game, at the beginning of every route. They are also all happening in fairly uncomfortable circumstances: with both the protagonist and the heroine being heavily drunk after a party celebrating studio’s latest release, with very little build-up or romantic tension in the story leading up to it. In most scenarios, there will also be a second h-scene further down the line, usually even shorter and more generic than the first one. As it is often my impression with this kind of games, playing as a woman makes the creepy feel of the initial hookup a bit more bearable – otherwise the power balance, and even the protagonist’s status as an only guy in the studio make much of the prelude to heroine arcs pretty uncomfortable. Even in the yuri variants, however, I’m not sure the sex scenes serve any purpose at all – I’m not a huge fan of hentai, but I can’t remember the last time erotic content in a visual novel left me this indifferent, probably because I simply felt nothing for the characters involved at the point it happened. If you want to buy this game primarily as an eroge, it’s definitely not worth it.

                So, is the story any better? Well, not really. Because there’s barely any story to speak of. The game starts in a rather unassuming fashion, immediately introducing the protagonist – a new employee in a small gaming company making otome VNs – and his three female co-workers. The New Game! influences can be seen not only in the general setup, but even character designs: a shy and secretive Mayu closely resembles Hifumi and strict, professional Lissa gives a similar vibe to Rin. The undisciplined, childish Alexis is a bit of an exception, mostly because the New Game! girls were all meant to be likeable, with mostly positive traits outside of some minor quirks. The main problem with Our Lovely Escape’s cast is that while all of them hold really disturbing secrets, the first impressions they give are also pretty awful. I lost most interest in each of them even before their routes really started, finding their behaviour and the office drama they get into quite obnoxious. The game tries to be something of a bait-and-switch, but really underdelivers on the “bait” part – there’s no reason for the reader to care about any of the characters or get emotionally invested before things go awry, especially with how short and generic the common route is (less than an hour, with the whole game being at around 5 hours of content).

At first, the New Game! parallels are pretty uncanny…

After that, it only gets worse. Psychological horror works best when it introduces some relatable elements or interesting motivations for the characters. Even completely outlandish and brutal VNs such as euphoria can be compelling by creating interesting conflicts, like the dark urges of the protagonist he desperately tries to suppress. Here, the main character is a blank slate, without any interesting traits and a backstory that is only briefly touched upon (mostly consisting of being a childhood friend of Lissa, who watched over him/her for many years before they moved away from each other). The heroines are straight-up psychos, and are so in an obnoxious/edgy fashion that does not leave space for any real character developments of interesting twists. This also spoils the few “good” endings the game offers: knowing the context behind the heroine’s actions and attitudes makes the romantic moments equally or even more riveting than the macabre ones.

                At the same time, Our Lovely Escape also never really commits to its darker side, with the bloody moments never shown in CGs and no truly extreme content. The most disturbing scenes are definitely within Alexis’ route, which is also the only one with no good ending (just neutral and horrible ones), but even those do not introduce any ideas beyond the heroine being a homicidal maniac acting out with little to no provocation. It would be way more interesting if the protagonist was really at fault in some of these situations or proved unstable themselves, but it was really all about inconsistent, not very believable outbursts from the girls. The “plot twists” the game offered left me feeling upset, but for all the wrong reasons – similarly to Carpe Diem: Reboot, by the end I simply hated the story and everyone in it, rather than being unsettled in a meaningful way and feeling for the characters. This actually sets Our Lovely Escape as one of the least enjoyable VNs I’ve ever read story-wise. The minor issues, like some of the blind choices that require pure trial-and-error approach from you to reach your preferred routes and endings pale in comparison to the core issues with the game’s writing.

…but they’re very quickly replaced with empty edginess.

Contrasting with the deeply-underwhelming story, the game’s production values are really solid, even if the efforts of the team not always felt well-directed. In this, I’m referring mostly to Live-2D scenes, which show up in somewhat-random moments in both the common route and heroine routes, with relatively little impact. At the same time things like the h-scenes, which could really use some variety or extra visual flair, are very static. Otherwise, I don’t really have any complaints about the art: both visual design and quality of all the assets are really nice and consistent. The soundtrack was a little bit more of a mixed bag – while I didn’t dislike any of the tracks, some of the more dynamic ones, for example accompanying the previously-mentioned office drama, proved seriously distracting. I really prefer my VN music staying safely in the background, unless it’s really great and kicking in during crucial moments of the story. Here is managed to disrupt my reading experience on quite a few occasions.

                As you can imagine at this point, I can’t with a clear conscience recommend playing Our Lovely Escape – and this is a shame, because it was both a game I was seriously anticipating and one that had the potential to be really enjoyable. Psychological horror, even in its more trashy variants, is a fun genre and this VN only needed a little bit of depth and feeling of tension/entrapment to work. Hopefully, Reine Works can take some lessons from its failures and make sure their next move outside of the otome comfort zone is more successful. For readers… I can only suggest skipping out on this one – it’s not even interesting enough in its failures to be really worth experiencing. Truly a shame...

Final Rating: 2/5

Pros:
+ Decent-quality art

Cons:
- Unlikeable heroines
- Rushed story
- Works neither as romance nor as a horror
- Distracting music


VNDB Page
Buy Our Lovely Escape on Steam or Itch.io