Please Be Happy
Please Be Happy is a comfy, slice-of-life visual novel set in a fictional version of Wellington, New Zealand.
Born as a fox in the forest of Korea, Miho carries with her the memory of a traveler who showed her kindness and spoke of home. Now more human than fox, Miho has spent a long, long time searching for her person. She arrives by airship to Wellington Skyport, one of the jewels of the floating island of New Zealand.
Despite her years spent observing humans, she still has a lot to learn about their culture and society. She’s made a living so far as a thief, her heightened senses allowing her to easily take advantage of people. She’s also seen a lot of the worst of what mankind has to offer.
It’s only after meeting Juliet, the owner of a small library, and Aspen, an aspiring novelist, that Miho starts to understand what kindness is, and that there’s more than just the bad stuff when it comes to people.
Miho’s earliest memories are of her time as a fox, and the kind human she met back then. Now more than just a fox, she’s spent her life searching for that person. Her journey has brought her to a new life in Wellington, New Zealand.
She changes her name every time she goes to a new country. Her previous names include Gumi, Migu, and Mimi.
Aspen is a human girl in love with words and stories. A barista at the Bellhouse Café, she dreams of being a popular author someday. She tries to take a little inspiration from every person that she meets.
She has an hour long phone call with her mom every weekend.
As a vampire, Juliet is one of Wellington’s oldest residents. She’s made the treasures of her life open to all in the form of a library. Aside from books, she also provides wisdom, kindness, and shelter to those who need it.
She dislikes having to resort to echolocation to find her reading glasses.
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Two heroine routes, with 2 happy endings each
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A gorgeous original soundtrack by Sarah “Esselfortium” Mancuso
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Character designs and CG’s by Kobuta, with additional art by minute and adirosa
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Accessibility options for vision and hearing impairment
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Full voice acting
Read More: Best LGBTQ Visual Novel Games.
Arcade Spirits
First things first: I really, truly enjoyed this game. That maybe sounds like an understatement, but I think it’s worth stressing: Arcade Spirits is just. so. enjoyable. It’s good-natured, goofy game about pursuing your dreams and the power of friendship as much as it is a dating sim, and I was completely charmed by the total sincerity of its story and characters. My literal only complaint is that I couldn’t spend more time with all of them (more on that below).
Arcade Spirits’s core cast is obviously the main draw, and in terms of characterization, the game really delivers. I was really impressed by how the game avoided obvious dating sim archetypes and introduced a lot of depth to characters I wasn’t certain I would connect with (particularly Ashley and Teo). I also appreciate how the game doesn’t shy away from more serious issues, particularly in Percy and QueenBee’s routes – it’s not a coincidence that these are the two routes that I think are the game’s strongest, and it has a lot to do with how Percy and QueenBee’s problems (and dating hang-ups) are rooted in real-world issues. The overarching plot is goofy (in a good way!), but the characters feel grounded and real, and you’re encouraged to take them seriously in ways that I think really, really work.
– Real player with 37.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best LGBTQ Dating Sim Games.
I’ve only had the time to sit down and play through this great game once, but I feel like it’s given me a pretty good grasp of the game as a whole. And I love it. I’m a huge fan of visual novels and throwing in a dash of romance is…just another nail in my coffin. I’ve been following this game for a while now, exactly how long I can’t say, but I’ve been waiting. And it was worth the wait. I’ve never played a visual novel that has allowed me the customization this game has. I found I was playing me rather than playing the who can I romance game VERY early on. Sure, the game has it’s issues, and I’ll detail the good and the bad shortly, but I highly rec the game no matter what I say below. If you’ve got a hankering for a good story, high amounts of customization, and arcade game references abound this game is for you. And never fear, I’m leaving spoilers out of my lists. (As of writing this review there were still some wrinkles in the game but the dev team seems very on top of it when it’s reported. Don’t let the fact they are there dissuade you from buying the game.) I will update this review pending further play time and any additional content that might get released.
– Real player with 31.4 hrs in game
Lingua Fleur: Lily
Check out my full review on YuriMother.Tumblr.com
A significant part of my job is knowing the details of the goings-on in the world of yuri. It, therefore, shames me to admit that I almost missed out on the visual novel Lingua Fleur: Lily as I was completely unaware of it until Taiwanese studios Narrator and Storia, the game’s developers and publishers, messaged me. Thank the great goddess of yuri that they did, because I would have regretted missing this experience.
Lingua Fleur: Lily is a short kinetic visual novel set in a university told from the perspective of student Yuyi, the protagonist. Yuyi is a quiet and introverted student, hardly interacting with her classmates and having no close friends. Her isolated circumstances change when she is paired with the outgoing Yile, the deuteragonist of the story, during physical education. Slowly Yile beings to befriend Yuyi, helping her to come out of her shell and be truthful about her identity and difficult past.
– Real player with 21.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best LGBTQ Visual Novel Games.
Lingua Fleur : lily was an huge surprise to me. Specially taking in mind it’s an 2h long VN, it has a lot of content. Not only how the text looks like an Chinese poetry book. Or the music that despite be simple, it’s really well placed, specially at the best moments this VN has to show. With that be said, there are VN and comic talking about the whole “open up” when it comes to sexuality. But I really like how Lingua Fleur : lily did. By telling an story without losing the main focus of it, while match pretty well with an text that makes everything they are been thought quite charming and frank. I think it really remembers me when I first read Seabed, it’s not about the “what” but “how” you do it.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Purrgatory
Purrgatory is a visual novel. It’s not just that, but also a fun mix of independent, LGBTQ+ culture that comes together to make an adult-themed, immaturely-mature and charming (dare I say) masterpiece of a game. Purrgatory defies what is conventially a visual novel and forms a universe that makes you fall in love with the characters, feel addicted to the personalities, and most of all, have a hearty chuckle. The lowercase, almost online-chat-esque style each character speaks in is incredibly unique to their personality and is incredibly charming! The puns, the cats, the incredibly-done art (yes, I do mean that), and the simplistically-complex character designs are compelling and loveable. There are even easter eggs! The detail put in is genuinely really excellent. And the rooms are surprisingly easy to navigate, as most of them tend to loop around. The multiple endings are also very rewarding but also leave you satisfied. (I honestly cried when it was over, I didn’t want it to end).
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
This was a very cute game and sat through it in one sitting while my partners watched me here and there. I loooved the dialog as they felt more typical of actual responses you’d get from your IRL friends. You know the ones who just dunk on you in a tease or just meme it up whenever they can.
Every character has their charms as one would expect in a visual novel but I dunno. They felt a bit more real in personality rather than ham it up to the player like a robot. The music? Very nice, very relaxing background tunes to wander about Purrgatory. Yes, With two R’s~
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
![Winning Love by Daylight [Ep 1 Demo]](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1539780/header.jpg)
Winning Love by Daylight [Ep 1 Demo]
In all honesty for a two person project (coding\story\writing and artist) it’s pretty good. The character designs and personalities are interesting and some character powers are pretty unique. Like (spoilers) but someone being a siren was in my opinion a pretty under appreciated thing, and being able to sing people to sleep is pretty interesting. though my main gripe is in certain story skips and dialouge. Like for example, the protagonist is told in a huge moment of exposition that shit is wack and the world might end and that he/she/they might have powers. thing is somehow everyone else in the story knows this later on. Without the protagonist ever explaining that to them. there are also times where the dialouge is akward at point but i think that adds to the charm of it. Like characters are all highschoolers, it makes sense that sometimes the conversations are kinda stiff and akward cuz that’s how it would actually go in real life. Like if a goth girl who most likely is a fan of arson came up and started talking to you, of course you’d be a bit akward in your speech. But my last two complaints about it are the music and facial expressions. In all honesty, the music is terrible, it’s better than that royalty free ukelele from hell but im sure theres other stuff out there you can use without copyright. mainly the music I’m talking about here is the resting abd casual time music, it’s a weird mix of meowing and beeps and i often found myself turning the music all the way off and playing my own mix. And the complaint i have abnout the expressions is later on in the story, i don’t have any complaints about reused assets especially in visual novels, but (spoilers ahead here) maybe after a character like willow loses a loved one maybe don’t show a kind of ‘meh’ face when what she feels is true sorrow. You see that sorrow shown later on but my point still stands. other than those (admitibly small things for a game made by two people with one doing most of the heavy lifting) I think it’s a great game and absolutely my new fav comfort game. good work on the game guys hope you get episode two out soon :)
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
This is overall an ok experience. I’ve only played through it once and it’s not really that long but there are a lot of different choices and I assume tons of backstories to discover. The characters are overall pleasant to talk to but the story doesn’t really come together well. It feels as if every choice somehow expects me to have taken all the previous options as to create a more authentic group feeling from knowing the characters. That is to say, a lot of characters I hadn’t interacted with were friendly to me and I to them and I even knew their secret or something at times. This made no sense from what I had played. Usually visual novels circumvent this by having routes and a long intro section as to establish a backstory. This is not the case here at all and the game has tons of choices early on. I would assume that at least the first one is just for flavour but overall it starts too early for meaningful ones or doesn’t incorporate the choices made on future events. Another big problem I had was figuring out how fantastical the setting is. From the start I was expecting a normal world setting with abnormal characters but later on it seemed that supernatural phenomenons were actually canon and well known. This was quite a jarring switch for me and I couldn’t really figure out if the early events were just not the kind of abnormal people were used to or if the setting was inconsistent. The plot later on felt really quite weird but I was imagining some kind of child detective setting and therefore not as unusual for this group or something, even if I wasn’t even aware how close they were. Overall it felt like I was supposed to have read the web comic or played out each choice to be eased in. The story itself felt quite unengaging and frankly unrealistic from my point of view. The only truly engaging part was just at the end of the demo, which was too late. Apart from that, the art looked quite good but there were tons of small problems, some weird lines in some character’s drawings, some really rough edges on objects, a character’s art was extremely blurry and the way side character’s were displayed was inconsistent and the distance to the camera was very different to the main cast’s. Also there was a clock which was quite wide. There also was a night sky picture that certainly didn’t seem drawn and was fairly low quality. There was a rain scene in which the rain drops' position resetted on the next text box. I’m looking forward to how the finished release will be.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
2ECONDS TO STΔRLIVHT: Forever My Diamond
As graduation looms, true feelings begin to surface. Will Grace find the courage to overcome her shyness and bare her heart to Sera, or will her handsome rival Akira get to her first?
A free VN about being really gay for your best friend. A standalone entry in the NOISZ series, and prequel to NOISZ STΔRLIVHT.
– Real player with 912.7 hrs in game
I DO NOT RECOMMEND AS A ACHIEVEMENT HUNTER DETAILS BELOW
honestly this “game” isnt bad but its short and has limited choices that dont really change much… its about two girls who are in love with each other but they dont know how the other one feels yadda yadda….
as a gamer: this game is… too short and theres not alot that changes in this… i suppose that its because a its a prelude to a visual novel game… that im probably not gonna play
as a achievement hunter: the achievements for some reason didnt work… i played the game like 5 times reset it a bunch and did everything apart from downloading things to force it to give me the achievement but nether one popped its strange to me because one of my achievement hunter friends got it not even a 2 weeks before i started playing… but i cant make my set on other people i have to get the achievement… and if i cant get it… something broke which means someone else has to have had the issue… well i looked it up, and some do have a issue, some dont… no one knows how it breaks but everyone kinda irritated
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
A Little Lily Princess
I absolutely loved this romance sim. It was very delightful and interesting.
There are 4 romance routes, and 2 friendship routes. It involves stat raising, but it is not tedious or annoying.
It takes place during the Victorian era in London, England. That is a vague time frame considering Queen Victoria ruled for 63 years. However, since the book this visual novel is based on was published in 1905, I would assume the story took place late in her reign before she died in 1901.
The young protagonist arrives at a boarding school for girls after living in India her whole life; do remember that The British Empire ruled over India for a long time. She is a tad out of place in her school for having grown up in India, and for also being half-French; The English and French are long-time rivals, after all. Although, elitist English aristocrats would have prejudice against anyone who wasn’t completely English anyway.
– Real player with 34.9 hrs in game
This was a rather unique experience for me. I’ve played visual novels before, and I had a cursory knowledge of the source material going in.
In short, this is a visual novel retelling of the story “A Little Princess.” It takes a few liberties with the source material such as Miss Minchin’s sister being completely absent, and they created one character wholecloth.
Being a visual novel, there’s really not much that you can expect from the game. The interface is clean, the mechanics are explained well enough, though the RNG element can make it frustrating if you’re shooting for a specific ending. Jessie’s route, for example, requires a high number of high count skills, while characters like Mariette and Becky tend to have lower costs. It also completely goes out the window in the second have of the game, where you can completely cheese the system.
– Real player with 18.8 hrs in game
Blooming Nightshade
This VN was designed with mobile phones in mind, which results in an unusual graphic layout and generally very simple visuals. Only two sprites show up on the screen at any time and there are no dedicated illustrations to portray important scenes. Music is also super-simple, and the default font is kind of hard to read (thankfully it can be changed in the menu). It doesn’t give a bad impression, but still looks pretty stiff and basic.
So, how’s the story? Well, also basic. The protagonist is pretty much a blank slate, receiving little introduction and mostly standing out by being the tallest girl in the game. There are six potential love interests who you can either romance or befriend, with each one having a theme (eg. being a gamer, baking, but also things like slight disabilities) along with some kind of issue they have to resolve during the route. It’s your typical slice-of-life fluff, but I can’t say I hated any of the stories or the chemistry between the girls and the protagonist. This is probably still better as a smartphone game, letting you burn some time on a bus or a train with its bite-sized, cute yuri romance… But was still fun enough to keep me reasonably entertained on the PC. Just don’t expect anything deep or elaborately illustrated.
– Real player with 25.7 hrs in game
I love dating games - and games in which you are not action,action,action - all the time and for me this is perfect
I too thought like many when i first came across this free game it was nothing more than a girl on girl sex game and nothing more - i was wrong, very wrong
First off there are adult themes in mention only -but gladly never shown (no need to be shown either)
Secondly the girls you get to date each have a good story to them - though the game is short and really for a VN is more read than play with mostly a single option per girl - i really love the stories inside
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
My Dear Prince
My Dear Prince is a cute yuri romance VN through and through. Sweet and cliched, it will rarely surprise you with anything major and features rather typical anime comedic tropes – exaggerated, quirky characters fumbling their way to a happy ending, with the conclusion being pretty much obvious from the first act. There’s a lot of solid writing in it and wholesome moments, but this kind of story is not necessarily where ebi-hime’s craftsmanship shines the most – the comedy she writes relies very much on caricature and central characters behaving in outlandish ways (if someone remembers the parent characters from Strawberry Vinegar, they’ll know what I mean). It’s not bad, but not necessarily subtle and the opening chapters relentlessly bombard the reader with such content, which for some is likely to feel a bit overbearing.
– Real player with 25.4 hrs in game
A nice story actually. It’s fun to read until the very end. Also includes a
! second couple.
– Real player with 24.9 hrs in game
Sentimental Trickster: Yaoi BL Gay Visual Novel
After going through all the routes and numerous edits of my review, I have decided to give this game an upvote instead of downvoting it. That said, I will point out some serious flaws this game suffers from.
The quality of the dialogues is alarmingly inconsistent. It varies from great to abhorrent and the same can be said about the story. Concerning the common path, it is precisely what I find horrendously unrealistic. The first group of people in a large city you bump into turn out to be your classmates. Even more, one of those people is your flatmate who shows you the way to your new home. Then you find out all of your flatmates are also your classmates. But, oh-ho, the best is yet to come. Not only every character you’ve met up to this point is your classmate. Your landlord is your teacher as well as your potential romantic interest as well. Then you meet a random guy in front of a store. Guess what,
! you meet him the next day at the school where he works. There’s just one incredibly improbable ‘coincidence’ after another. Needless to say, nearly every male character is either your potential partner or someone the main character drools over – sometimes both. It is strongly suggested with the exception of your father(s) and brother, all male characters are, in fact, into men. Which is just so improbable; a VN for €13 should reflect reality at least to some extent – especially when it comes to characters' psychology.
– Real player with 71.4 hrs in game
Overall….
This game was not for me, it felt like it was written by a highschooler who watched too much bad anime. The setting didn’t make sense for such a western way of thinking/vocabulary. The main character is a weeaboo who was written by a weeaboo and although there was a few funny scenes in all I couldn’t find myself taking it seriously or actually enjoying myself. I read some of the reviews that the game got ‘darker’ but in all honesty it was bland to me. Although the main character did grow on me I kept on thinking how I could have re written him (and the VN as a whole) so he would actually make sense and be a bit more fleshed out. Some of the music got annoying real fast for me real quick, especially the louder happier one.
– Real player with 23.8 hrs in game