Dear Mom: My Letter to You
_Dear Mom: My Letter to You_ is a slice-of-life/dating sim visual novel that combines an emotional story with a calendar system in which players can gain stats to initiate and develop relationships with other characters. Your choices and stats heavily influence the outcome of the game. The story emphasizes the impact of family grief, building meaningful friendships, growing as a person, and reflecting on past mistakes.
Genre: Slice-Of-Life / Dating Sim / Romance (Yuri/GxG) / Visual Novel
Rating: 16+
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: Windows / Mac / Linux (Steam & Itch.io)
Content Warning: Dear Mom: My Letter to You may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be safe to view at work. This game is intended for a more mature audience (16+), as it contains sensitive topics like bullying, suicide, and blackmail.
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Female Protagonist & 4+ romanceable characters, each with their own unique personalities and side chapters
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Story-rich narrative that explores the meaning of friendship, family loss, and self-reflection
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Point-and-Click adventure where you can explore various areas of interest, each with day/night variations
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Partial Voice Acting
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Stat system that heavily influences the story’s outcome and form bonds with other characters
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Diary-style Interface to capture the feeling of recording your life’s stories
This is an emotional journey of loss, acceptance, and the bonds made along the way. The story stars high school student Ayame Kawasaki who blames herself for her mother’s suicide. Having closed off her connections with her friends for a whole year, Ayame is finally restarting her life, repeating her second year at Yamada Hoshi High School. Since her absence, students have been spreading rumors about her, claiming that she’s a selfish person hungry for attention. Ayame struggles to fit in as they start shunning her and calling her out when she does something wrong. When she thought there was no chance of making friends, a kind classmate steps in to turn her life around–
It’s up to Ayame to build and maintain her relationships, new and old, while coming to terms with the reality of her mother’s death.
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Developer/Character Artist/UI Artist: Mangoku418
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Lead Writer: Renkka
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CG Artist: RyThae
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BG Artists: kjkjmulo, KeiraWorks, Ari Angga
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Isometric Map Designer: Arctic Fox
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Smartphone Template: ds-sans
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Music Composer: Red Robotix, Ankit22
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Sounds from Zapsplat
Read More: Best Emotional Colorful Games.
The Warmth Between Us
Note: I edited the English translation of this visual novel, so I won’t comment on that aspect. However, all other aspects are fair game. XD
The Warmth Between Us is a kinetic visual novel developed by Connection and published by Connection and Kikai Digital. It narrates the story of Nine and Tina, two strangers who meet by chance in Taipei as Nine searches for inspiration to write his story. This story describes the ten days that they’re together, from the first time they meet to their last time. When Tina discovers that Nine is writing a story, her interest is piqued and she wants to read his story, which means spending time with Nine. Although Tina comes off as the cheerful, teasing type, there is more to her. Nine discovers this as he spends time with her and observes her. Although he doesn’t know her circumstances (he barely even knows her, seeing that they’re strangers), he wants to help. I’d go into more details but I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I’ll end my summary here.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Emotional Indie Games.
I’m usually big on visual novels especially when they keep me on the edge of my seat, stuff like Danganronpa, Steins Gate, etc… This one however ended up being a bit different then what I usually play. A romantic story with moral lessons to learn! I love romance, and romance anime! My favorite series of all time is Oregairu for crying out loud. This seem like it’d be right up my alley. And it kind of was until I realized how seriously slow it is. The main character can be cringy at times with how overly serious he tends to be, some of the antics and dialogue too, but nothing out of this world. It does fall a bit too much into your typical self-insert character.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal-
Ame no Marginal from the author of Narcissu 1st & 2nd.
Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal. It is a short, serious tale which only includes one ending but does still showcase some branching pathways along the way. The storyline includes many questions to be pondered during a playthrough.
The story
We are introduced to a man who hates his job and in fact seems to detest living itself. So much so, he thinks of suicide on a regular basis but has thus far avoided any actual attempts on his own life.
– Real player with 37.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Emotional Indie Games.
This non-interactive story is about a suicide-prone white-collar (an unnamed decoy protagonist) who gets sent into a mostly empty parallel world, where he meets this (also unnamed) girl who’s been living alone there for over a millennium. Apparently because people can’t die in it. The rest i can’t spoil, but the story isn’t as lighthearted as the art style makes it seem to be. It’s an amazing tear-jerker if you don’t mind fantastical elements. But it’s still pretty good if you do.
You might first want to try “Narcissu 1st & 2nd”, which’s free on steam, to get an idea on how stage-nana works. And at least Narcissus tries to stay grounded to reality.
– Real player with 33.5 hrs in game
Dandelions in the Sky
i really love how this game is just a simple game.
don’t play it if you want a long visual novel with a very deep plot or deep characters , this game is just a simple with a short story about bullying with awesome Music and Artstyle nothing more , nothing less.
i really loved the story and how the choices although it’s simple is show you the different result of your decisions in a very realistic way.
good luck for the dev on their next project
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Short Summary
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Story 10/10
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Graphics 10/10
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Audio (music and CV) 10/10
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Story routes 9/10
Full Review
- A simple, yet touching story – I agree with this fully. The story is simple, it tells of a situation which happens quite often in our days. The main heroinne, Ran Xiaoyu, is so kind and gentle person that the fact she’s being bullied can’t let you feel indifferent. However, you should consider your actions too, since the protagonist, Shi Mo, is not an “usual” person… Though the POV character is male, the story itself shoudn’t feel very uncomfortable for female players.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Space Yandere
Amazing Good Story And Overall Fun Game To Play If You Have An Hour To Sparw
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Very nice short little game.
I can get used to being chased around and taunted!
Also really liked the badass easter egg, it was very manly!
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
Echoed Memories
It’s a great game with lovable characters and a fun, yet very emotional story. There are many accessability options to keep the game available to a wide audience. There is a also a difficulty setting for hard, normal, and casual - with casual making the game VERY easy if you are only interested in story and don’t really want to fight a lot of difficult battles.
Overall, Echo607 has knocked another great game out of the park, and I highly recommend this game for any RPG Lovers. Don’t expect another Final Fantasy clone. It’s so much deeper than that. Also flirting, lots and lots of flirting.
– Real player with 80.5 hrs in game
It was a joy to play through this adventure. It was such a satisfying conclusion to an adventure that was years in the making. Especially for someone who has been following the development of both games for years. Congratulations Echo for completing the story you wanted to tell!
– Real player with 62.9 hrs in game
Kiki & Ana - The Child
i recommend that you play this with no spoilers its really good and took me quite a while to complete
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Hi I have been playing this game for a month probably and I would like to say a suggestion, Well it’s the ending that is kind of hard to defeat so I hope that you can make Ana kind of slower when she follow’s you, Thanks for reading.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Silver Blue
Silver blue is a BL visual novel 15+ with anime style, containing adventure fantasy content.
♦Three love interests and their respective routes, with 10 different endings overall depends on your choices.
♦Around 150k-200k words in content.
♦More than 40 in-game Illustrations.
♦30 original backgrounds.
♦20 original soundtracks (currently we have 6.)
♦OP & ED videos.
♦4 different title screen for each route.
Aquadine
Overview
Aquadine is a story about friendship, family, finding hope in the hard times, and most of all, the secrets we keep and the manifold chaos they sometimes bring on us if we don’t reveal them to the right people, or if we don’t have said people in our lives. The store page description tells you that at least the main character of the story is hiding a big secret, but beware! He’s far from being the only person in this town with secrets! This VN is mostly billed as a comedy, but it really brings a roller coaster of emotions. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will probably gasp at multiple points. Aquadine is also a kinetic novel of sorts, which honestly is usually a turn-off for me because it usually means that you, the player, have no control over the direction and outcome of the story, and you are placing yourself solely in the hands of the writers and hanging on for the ride. This is probably also the reason why the game has no achievements, and why it has been so unjustly overlooked. But let me say a few things about why I think that was a good move for this game, and why I think that makes it better than the average VN. First, you won’t have to spend a long time with this game re-doing old parts of the story trying new decisions to try to get different endings. You just read through all the routes and you’re done. Second, you just read that right. Even though it’s a kinetic novel, there are still multiple routes! Once you finish the opening common route of the story, you will reach a character select screen that presents you with 4 routes, each of which focuses on the given character and imagines how things might go if Robin were to enter into a closer relationship with that character. Only one of these routes is canon (you’ll see), but they all serve to give you a lot of background info on those characters, and are where most of the world-building happens. And when you finish all 4, a new option will appear on the main menu, which is the final route to the true ending. Third, the ability to focus on telling the story the way they wanted to in each route, while not having to allow for different combinations of decisions, allowed this developer to create a story that was more consistently high quality than any of the indie VNs I have played before. So you won’t have to worry about parts of the story being given less attention or not being paced well. During my time with Aquadine, I went from seeing it’s potential but being skeptical, to seeing it come closer to my expectations, to having every expectation far surpassed in every way, to even being left speechless by the quality of parts of the story. I know you won’t be disappointed either.
! Actually, there is one thing I was disappointed by, and it’s the fact that I have some unanswered questions after the true ending. Maybe they’re leaving the door open for a sequel? I can only hope so.
– Real player with 36.8 hrs in game
After finishing Aquadine I can say with the utmost sincerity: It’s not getting the award for Sound Design.
A long gameplay later I managed to finish the game, I had fun for about half the time while the rest felt either disappointing or not that much engaging. Unfortunately more things in this game drag it down than elevate. Sound side of this is pretty poor, voiced lines get irritating pretty fast (I wish Grandpa would just shut up) while background sound at times is just too loud (Elisabeth bike ride hurt my ears). Music was average but I played without any sound with my own music in the background, thanks to the game’s overall sound design that did not encourage listening to it. In the graphics department the game looks quite beautiful but I do wish it offered more “places to visit” because at times it really undermines the story (with Cameron route for example). I would take the voice budget and put it into more graphics and add more characters (Cameron route could use a few more visible characters). At different times we will see full-screen static images, those are well done.
– Real player with 35.7 hrs in game
Fallstreak: Requiem for my Homeland
Humanity has tapped into the very power of possibility and has doomed itself in the process. The MC is a child soldier tasked with fighting a war over scraps, and a chance for a few humans to survive advancing armageddon. This VN is a vicious look at war, love and human ambition. There are waifus, war crimes, well written scif-fi and extreme violence. Although there are certainly better looking visual novels, the character designs are appealing and the music is surprisingly good. There are even genuinely comedic moments in all of the grim dark (An old man’s joke about painting his wife’s canvas comes to mind). Of course those happy moments are a set up for an absolutely brutal series of events that will leave you feeling hollow at the end of it. Best $5 I’ve spent all year.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Rather than being a sequel to the original game, this game is the prequel. It explains alot of what happens in the original game.
While definitely shorter than the one before it, the writing, sound design, CG’s, etc. are still very good, if not better. Taking the brutal and gut wrenching descriptions of gore on a whole nother level (coming from my mind). The OST’s of this VN is amazing, perhaps at times better than the original one. While I am sad that this one doesn’t have as much gameplay to offer as the first Fallstreak, it is still a masterpiece. A diamond in the rough, just waiting to be found. Was it well worth the 4 euros I spent on it? Very. If you are reading this to see if you should buy this or not, then let me say that. This game isn’t a requirement, but if you enjoyed the first Fallstreak as much as I did then it is well worth the price.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game