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
Read More: Best LGBTQ Romance Games.
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
A Wild Catgirl Appears!
To start out this review, I’m going to go ahead and say that I’m a dude who really appreciates kind of shoddy/nonsense VNs, so when I saw this game appear on the front page of Steam the day after the Holiday sale for about as much money as I had in my Steam Wallet, I was in. I went in with no expectations or desires, and that was definitely beneficial to the experience.
This game is just very innocent, like an 8 year old’s journal entry except with a little bit more cleavage. The writing looks like the authors used only the 100 most frequently used words in English, so it’s very easy and fast to read. This honestly would be a pretty good game for someone learning English as a second language. They go to a mall! A beach! A cafe! It reminds me of a Spanish 102 lesson, and it kept my attention more than a Spanish 102 lesson because it had anime cat girls with big boobs in it.
– Real player with 32.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best LGBTQ Choose Your Own Adventure Games.
Alright, I’m trying to be real fair here on the game. This game is rough in so many ways. Just booting the game presented major challenges that do not lend to a sellable product:
No music on the title screen, bare bones UI of “Start” and “Load,” and the game crashes when you alt+enter to full screen. This is a major red flag and should have been polished considerably more.
As far as UI goes, the interface is buggy, skipping text is hard to stop when you want it to stop and going full screen makes the window spill out of your screen if you have a smaller monitor. Hitting the log button reveals a similar issue to the save and load screen of very hard to read text, but with the added issue of the background image failing to load due to a broken asset link. Slogging through the game becomes a severe pain with these issues, especially when replaying for the other endings.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Cafe Deux Femmes
This is one of the 1st in this world..
Though these girls are not, at presnt, linked to others in the following stories, Boston, Aspen and Seatle are
in some of the others and the Creators say that this will change in the the the coming months.
I forgot that I had played this when it first came out as I got side tracked by the brilliant VN’s that followed in it’s wake.
I did enjoy this story,, 2 Love interests, both at different ends of the scale, a loving older sister who is very hard working and she is straight BUT,,, issues in that area and it’s over Thanks Giving.
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best LGBTQ Visual Novel Games.
It’s simple and short, but really nice. Just a cute little week in a life of changes. Nice arrangement of choices for little personality moments, but they kind of just add to basic tallies. A plus though is nice background music.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
Detective Rosie Morgan: Murder on the River Thames
Another enjoyable VN which actually links to The Bahamian Rhapsody and Colorado Cocoa Club VN’s.
I did expect more options like the Others But I feel the one you can end up with is lovely.
Though the Doctor was cute to.
I would guess this was Before Cocoa though as her sister had just gone to Jamaica.
Nice little Yuri
– Real player with 62.3 hrs in game
As a fellow British Englishman who enjoys the pleasures of drinking Tea & Coffee, I’m also a Yuri fanatic and I Approve of this game.
Don’t let my hours trick you in thinking there’s LOTS of content to play, I accidentally left the game on a couple of times. At MOST you can finish the game in around 5 hours, if you wanted to read everything and see the different option outcomes and enjoy the lore.
What I did expect was more romance options and people to choose from but nope, didn’t really mind though.
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
Eldritch Academy
A nice mild magical girl (without the flashy change scenes or clothes change)
type horror with mild yuri romance. This is the prelude of the Eldritch University VN which is The Girl who got Badly hurt and her girlfriend..
You have the 3 girl endings and a harem and a secret ending, I have the secret and harem to find.
It is a good VN so give it a go.
– Real player with 68.3 hrs in game
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cute yuri game
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interesting mystic concept
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a few fun conversations
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this is NOT a horror or a thriller. there are definitely no scary or tense moments in the game
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the game is short, but terribly repetitive
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I expected more from Akomi, almost all her innuendo are dull
This is a cute short game with misleading tags in the annotation. The characters and the story itself lack depth. Even so I enjoy this game. You should give it a chance
– Real player with 27.3 hrs in game
Eldritch University
Eldritch University is a fun visual novel. I didn’t like it as much as Eldritch Academy, but I still thought it was a super good read overall. This game also sets up the possibility of a sequel. Eldritch Investigations anyone? :D
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
This is an interesting VN that has one massive thing going for it – while it stylizes itself as a supernatural thriller, the best part about it is without any doubt the relationship between the protagonist, Kasumi, and Misaki, the girlfriend she was recently reconnected with after three years. Their story was rather briefly established in this game’s prequel, Eldritch Academy (mostly in bonus content, as they were secondary characters in that game), but here it developed into really satisfying, well-paced love drama about overcoming the baggage of the long years of separation forced by Misaki’s conservative mother, and the social stigma of being openly gay in Japan. Of course, this kind of story is nothing new, but here it was executed in such a natural-feeling and emotionally gratifying way that it think it genuinely stands out from your average yuri drama in a very positive way.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
King of Spies
they made a game out of me that is cute
– Real player with 181.6 hrs in game
Good stories not bad graffices but very incomplete not much of an adult game needs improvement don’t waste your money or time
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
The Expression Amrilato
My review of this game is long overdue, but with the release of the next game in the series, I figured it was around time to get to this. First off, I will say that, as some others have pointed out, this game alone does not teach Esperanto well, and it doesn’t feature an incredible yuri story. However, I think it does a very good job creating a believable world and likable characters, and I was particularly impressed with the portrayal of language to this effect. I would argue that this, in turn, made me significantly more interested in seeking other sources to more properly study the language, which I believe to be far more important than a single good lesson.
– Real player with 34.8 hrs in game
When I first bought this game in a sale I didn’t expect very much. I thought it would be an educational game…and I didn’t (and still don’t) find video games an effective medium for serious learning. Maybe they are useful to children, but at my age, if I intend to learn something, I want to get a good idea of the overall picture and the basics in the shortest possible amount of time; video games just tend to dilute down things so much that it becomes hard to keep track of the big picture.
But I was wrong. This game, at least for me, is still first and foremost a visual novel. It tells a lovely story, and lets me experience the life of a girl struggling in a world where everyone uses an unfamiliar language. Learning the basics of the language is part of that experience; it does not have to be an end in itself. And the game does a wonderful job in conveying that experience, from the utter helplessness at the beginning, the fun and frustration in guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words, to the satisfaction in understanding something I didn’t understand before.
– Real player with 33.5 hrs in game
Aisling and the Tavern of Elves
It’s short, but sweet and well structured. The characters have great banter between them which is really nice. it actually feels like authentic dialogue. Choices feel like they make sense when given too. Being so short, not sure it’s worth full price, but if you see it on sale then definitely worth it.
– Real player with 21.7 hrs in game
Cute and fun short story based on a cute but strong human and a very cute elf, also
a crazy witch and a devious Baroness.
Nice art in this as well, which is often the case from this developer.
Worth a read for Yuri loves and romance lovers.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
Flowers -Le volume sur printemps-
This is the first in a series of a planned four visual novels. The second and third entries are already done, and the second one is slated to be released in the English market sometime this year. That’s important to note because this is not at all a complete story by itself, which is why I wouldn’t unconditionally recommend buying it. I don’t like saying that, because I think it’s good as far as yuri goes, and I’d personally like to see more content like this, but they are charging you $20 for one-fourth of a story. As long as that’s not a dealbreaker for you, and as long as you’re interested in about 20 hours of (mostly) 14-year old girls being very passive-aggressive, Japanese, irrational, and sarcastic by turns, then I would recommend it.
– Real player with 171.8 hrs in game
Flowers -Le volume sur printemps- is the first game in a 4-part series of VNs (the final entry is just now having its Japanese release, the second one already have an English one planned). It’s a pretty expansive (circa 15 hours for a full playthrough) Shoujo Ai, that is a female/female romance without explicit sexual content (it never goes further than a kiss). It tells a story of a shy, insecure girl who enters an all-female boarding school to find friends and change her previously solitary life, but also comes to terms with her attraction to women and finds love.
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game