The Spanish Privateer
Story
Set in early 17th century, just before the Pirate Golden Age, The Spanish Privateer places you in the shoes of Isabel Carlota de Castilla (but you can just call her Carlota). Carlota is an 18-year-old runaway escaping a marriage forced upon her by her parents. Not able to afford passage on a ship, Carlota offers to work for her voyage aboard Captain Rico’s ship, La Aguja. Captain Rico is a privateer, a pirate with a letter of marque allowing him to attack and capture the enemies of Spain. Carlota soon falls in love with the sea, and challenges herself to become a valuable member of the ship.
Amidst sword fights, balls, and drunken nights at the tavern, Carlota learns more about her fellow crew members and the world outside Spain. Visits to the archipelago of Azores, cities in the Caribbean and Veracruz, New Spain, teach Carlota about the effects of colonization and make her question her contribution and power aboard the Spanish ship.
No matter which route you travel down, Carlota must overcome her male crew members' prejudices, earning their respect with her hard work, determination, and intelligence.
Love Interests
Lark
Half Scottish, half Spanish, and entirely charming. Lark is a hired bard whose job is to entertain the men—and he takes liberty to entertain the women, as well. His specialty is playing the lute.
Flint
Flint is the ship’s quartermaster and protector. Fiercely loyal to the captain, Flint is equally distrustful of women. His specialty is gunnery.
Rico
Hailing from Puerto Rico, Captain Rico is no stranger to the sea. His kind and forgiving persona hides the past which granted him his scar. His specialty is swordfighting.
Features
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227K+ words
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100+ menu choices
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Three Good Endings
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Seven Bad Endings
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Six ‘Alternate’ Endings
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Love, Friendship, and Personality Meters
Trailer Music by Alexander Nakarada @ SerpentSound Studios
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
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Heileen 3: New Horizons
This game is definitely filled with pros and cons. While I did think it was an improvement from the first two games, there’s definitely some issues to be taken with it.
This game has a simulation aspect blended into the visual novel experience. Each day, Heileen has to choose certain activities to do in order to increase stats for skills and advance skills. While I definitely don’t have a problem with simulation aspects being put into visual novels, I must say this game’s sim system is quite tedious. It took me several hours and several playthroughs just to get all of the achievements, because the simulation portion of the game takes far too long. Those who don’t have a lot of patience would definitely dismiss the game quickly. Meanwhile, I almost developed carpal tunnel syndrome from clicking so rapidly and frequently. The basic concept for the activities and stat development isn’t terrible though. That idea is fun, but I definitely wish they hadn’t made it so tedious.
– Real player with 69.0 hrs in game
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“Heileen 3: New Horizons” is final chapter in Heileen saga of visual novels by Winter Wolves. In short, it’s telling the story of a young girl accompanying her rich uncle (who is pursuing the business in the New World) and eventually getting involved with pirates. It features all you can expect from a visual novel and it features elements of dating and raising sim. The game is running on Ren’Py engine and is not voiced (considering the number of characters, I actually see it as a sensible choice from the developer).
– Real player with 40.7 hrs in game
Cursed Lands
An outstanding VN-RPG-quest crossover
I was expecting another bland, unnecessarily dragged out visual novel with uninspired, repetitive missions, but I was taken for a real treat here—kept replaying with different initial conditions (race, job, supporting character branching choice) over and over, enjoying every single play.
Visual Novel (VN) perspective: Story branching is rich and, as general VN WinterWolves titles go, you have an almost immediate option to go back—typically less than half a minute in gameplay, couple minutes or hours in the game world—to the last choice and change it to study other outcomes. I like this unique branching feature—it is like a quick time machine, or a very smooth and synoptic reload action that permits me to change my choice without having to repeat a known portion of play and grind once again.
– Real player with 132.6 hrs in game
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I bought this game on sale, and I’m glad I did, it wasn’t worth the full price. I bought it because it was created by the same team who did Loren Amazon Princess, a game I loved. It’s unfortunate then, that this game is average at best. There are a few problems I have with this game that I feel affected my enjoyment of the game:
1. Characters/Romance
This is the big one, so i’m putting it first. The characters all had great introductions, and are really interesting. Unfortunately, the game screws this up deeply as it progresses. You don’t get to chose when to talk to the characters, their icon’s pop up when the game decides it’s time for their event to start, so you never truly get to know these characters beyond their surface introduction. The game prides itself on giving you romance options, and even advertises that you can trigger more then one romance scene. It isn’t hard, it’s like the game WANTS you to be a serial skirt chaser, and even when you do trigger these scenes, there’s no build up. Characters will spontaneously confess their feeling for you, claiming they always felt something for you. Your character will reply in kind, but you know this is false. Your POV character never felt anything of the sort, their lying.
– Real player with 41.7 hrs in game
Space Bar at the End of the Galaxy
I’ve played it through twice. Its got good player interaction for a VN. It also has good character development (as deep as you can get in less then 2 hours), my complaint is that game gives us a variety about Imperial and other factions, but you give no information about them. A few blurbs of imagination that has already gone into the game would help players except the characters be more real. I don’t mind invisible histories, but I nice blurb about them can a long ways towards making a player more sympathetic to them.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
It’s not bad at all but there are better options out there.
I’m really on the fence when it comes to giving this game a bad review. Here’s some points that stood out that led me to my negative review.
Pro’s:
-The writing is pretty decent.
-Characters react in a realistic way to what you choose to answer.
-The character models are good, although with only 5 people ever depicted in game, that’s to be expected.
-The world and characters are actually flashed out a bit, which is rare for such a cheap and short game.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game