Ballavita
Its nice to see VR films like this on Steam. I would reocmmend showing this to people that are new to VR or prefer casual vr movies with filmed actors. Especially if they appreciate experimental dream-like visuals and elegant dance choreography. Its nice that there is a director’s commentary in the menu, I always wondered how they shoot movies like this.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Romance 360 Video Games.
A very interesting fillm experience with fantastic colors! Thank you for making a German version available. To me hearing it in German with English subtitles made it more authentic.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Ochitsubaki
A fallen camellia is a beheading, every time, every petal falling at once: a severing.
════*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*════
TW: CSA, animal death, violence, suicidal ideation
OCHITSUBAKI || 落ち椿 is a visual novel about the impossibility of translating trauma. It is a bilingual JPN/ENG game about translation and how it can run as deeply as the way hypermarginalized people constantly “translate” their identities and trauma for the understanding of others, no matter how far it is from the source material. It’s about recovering from trauma through the genuine compassion and consideration of another person, who manages to See the aftereffects of trauma and are willing to meet that person’s unique needs, regardless of if they “understand” them or not.
Ochitsubaki is only loosely a visual novel, which is to say it is a story-based game with a strong aesthetic component. Ochitsubaki has a deep, rich tapestry of aesthetics in unifying modern elegance with unique retro anime-inspired character portraits. The original soundtrack derives inspiration from traditional Asian pentatonic scales, particularly but not limited to Japanese ones, that also derive a modern, Genshin’s Liyue-type twist that sets it firmly in contemporary times. It has three language options: JPN, ENG, and JPN translation. The ENG/JPN versions are two different renditions of the story, thus requiring a separate JPN translation, emulating what happens when you try to translate something as complex as identity. You can consider that the only real choice you make in the game is which language to play it in, and each language option provides a different “route,” a similar but very distinctly different iteration of the story. The language modes mimic the powerful loss that happens when stories–when trauma–is translated.
The demo only contains the first two ENG chapters, an estimated 30-45min of playtime.
════*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*════
Hanashiro (he/she/they) and their few remaining kin all react differently to the trauma of being immortal and witnessing the apocalypse over and over again in different cycles of reincarnation. Shiragiku is unfazed and cheery and flippant and whimsical and capricious; Shirayuri is nowhere to be found; and Hanashiro? Hanashiro is planning on their death in 10 years, when the camellias fall, if they cannot find a reason to live by then.
Hanashiro and Shirayuri have witnessed THE END OF THE WORLD before. But no one believed them. Shiragiku has seen many, many apocalypses, but she has never been hurt by any one after the first. Shiragiku has remembered every single end; Shirayuri has remembered none; and Hanashiro only remembers some. Which? Even he doesn’t know.
Hanashiro misses speaking her fey mother tongue, but she can’t seem to find anyone willing to listen to her, not even her own kind. And then she makes an enemy who just might. Their name is Lun Kochouran.
And they might be the first one in a millennium to learn the Amayuri tongue.
They also might be the first to kill an immortal.
Read More: Best Romance Experimental Games.
In Blood
After a night of drinking Eleadora takes a shortcut home through the woods. She’s angry, frustrated, and sad. At the crossroads she trips and cuts her hand on some broken glass. While looking over her wounds she mutters a wish out loud that calls upon an ancient and forgotten force that changes her life forever.
She wakes up in an unknown room, in an unknown house, on an unknown plane of existence. Surrounded by horrors and death she must attempt to find an ally among the other occupants of the house. It’s clear they don’t have her best interests in mind, and trusting them could be deadly.
Survive and try to maintain your humanity.
Escape, if you still want to.
Escape, if they’ll let you.
Features:
-
4 romance options (3 guys, 1 woman)
-
Multiple endings
-
4 routes
-
5 CGs in demo (More planned in final game)
-
English voice acting in the demo (More planned for final game)
Characters:
Romance Options:
Credits
Writer, Developer, Programmer: Jaime Scribbles
Production Manager, Editor, Voice Director: PMscenarios
Character Artist: Illuminate001
GUI Artist: Sitraxis
BG Artist: Saleha Chowdhury
Illustrator: Meagan Trott and Scherville
Additional Artist: Jen Bird
Audio Director and Sound Designer: Tim Reichert
Music: Antriksh Bali and Kyle Mesce
Voice Actors
Brenton: Kevin K. Gomez
Karon: Kieran Flitton
Tristin: C. W. “Seedub” Brown
Seta: Abigail Turner
Nyarbalte: Bradley Gareth
Eris: Wes Haas
Read More: Best Romance Visual Novel Games.
Heart of the Woods
Heya! Zombie Cecelia here!
This is gonna be my first proper-ish game review on Steam so expect a not so much a review than me waffling review
So I bought this game on release (15.02.2019) and played a bit of it before work and stuff happened so was too busy then kinda forgot about it for over a year and only just got back into it about a week ago… Oops!
I guess because I can’t physically go outside due to sickness and the lock-down, meaning my favourite bookstore is closed, gave me the incentive to pick up Visual Novels (VNs) again (I usually prefer reading from a physical book rather than online buut let’s not delve into the reasons for it lol plus VNs have their own magical quality so it wouldn’t be fair to compare the two… but I digress because this is meant to be a review)
– Real player with 34.7 hrs in game
(This article was written as a blog post )
Heart of the Woods looks like a nice interesting love story about 2 girls, one human, one ghost. It’s homo, so it’s just what I needed to escape from the real world. Although it appears to involve love across the living and the dead, which is a concept that’s been done to literal death. But hey, the game is well-received, it’s on sale, the artstyle is new to me, and most importantly, it doesn’t appear to be too long. So I guessed it’s going to be a nice fit for the spare time I currently have.
– Real player with 21.9 hrs in game
When The Night Comes
Before anything, I want to say - Gideon Emery (Finn’s voice actor)! He is my all time favourite voice actor - Fenris from Dragon Age, Balthier from FF12, Lor’themar Theron from World of Warcraft and many more. I really did not expect to hear his voice, I almost squealed when I heard it! Also, August’s voice actor (Jonah Scott) is AMAZING! I usually don’t like voice acting in indie VNs, but the voices are so good.
Game has a nice sort of mystery plot. It’s nicely written, doesn’t get boring and keeps you wanting to find out how it ends. Also the “bad ending” paths are well done.
– Real player with 120.2 hrs in game
I give this VN 7.5/10
Pros: Beautiful character creations (especially Ezra, he’s unique, breathtaking witch)
Lovely voices (Finn, Erza, Alkar, August), although, Omen' voice seem a little off
Have a lot of romance options. When you officially engage in one romance route, things seem more focus, I like it better than dilly dally between them all in the initiation.
Full well spoiled by the end game and 3 mini stories after.
There are more missing parts make you want to play anew, and those beautiful galleries sure help make it interesting.
– Real player with 44.0 hrs in game
Episicava - Vol. 1
This review was brought to you on behalf of Abyssal Ascent Reviews in collaboration with its publisher. If you liked it, please Follow the Curator and Join its group. Thanks!
For a focus on lewd games, check out Superfabs Candy Tray !
Curation is here . Thanks!
– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game
Good art- bad story. Meaningful choices are actually just guesses that zap you dead if you guess wrong. It reminds me of a comic book someone could write about an immature 13 year old trash talking super villain. I had to force myself to finish it as it would not be fair to review it if I had not finished it. It was a struggle. The writer created an interesting world but the story leaves alot to be desired. Example: Main character is in a tough situation so we give him a new power or say he wasn’t really trying hard until now–ect. Save your money!!!
– Real player with 12.1 hrs in game
Order from Caos
(Note: I will NOT judge this game based on its language. I don’t speak Portuguese, but I certainly understand what it’s like to have English as a second or third language. Just know that it is possible to understand everything that is said in the game, even though some things sound a bit strange to us. I take it as fun to try and figure out what the author initially meant to say in the first place, like a puzzle in a puzzle game!)
This certainly looked like an interesting game, so I decided to check it out! I also wanted to support the Developer since it looked like they put a lot of work into the game. It shows. The atmosphere, music, OST/SFX, and all the goodness are fun to play with and I wasn’t bored once! Sometimes you gotta grind… still wasn’t boring.
– Real player with 24.0 hrs in game
I still did not finish the game, but at the time of this writing, I’m about 15 hours on the story.
I’m really loving it! The story is captivating, the art design is quite charming and the original soundtrack is beautiful to hear.
The combat system is the classic turn-based combat. At this moment I’ve didn’t find any true difficulties (besides not staying low on mana), but it’s still quite challenging (and I’m probably still in the beggining). Trying to learn which type of spell is more effective against each monster was fun. And the spell animations are gorgeous!
– Real player with 16.6 hrs in game
Demonheart: Hunters
If I loved the first one deeply, this sequel disapointed me so I cannot recommande it, even if I enjoyed so much the prequel.
The good things :
-
We find back everyone, Ari, the Raze and Brash. I though we’ll meet Tunes another time as we see ihim n the trailer but he takes no part in the new senario.
-
Nothing change for Bright, she can still be good or bad, defiant or kind and can flirt with the recurent characters from the prequel.
-
All characters had kept their original personalities and way to speak, Ari is still a kind witch loving everything speaking about demon, Brash is still the cold obsessional knight deeply in love with you, Raze is still a childish demon looking for attention, but they also changed and it feels like they matured with past adventures.
– Real player with 58.8 hrs in game
Initially, I wasn’t going to write a review for this game. I expected to play it, like it, and move on because I generally have a hard time explaning why I like things. But this is a very difficult case. Something I’m really struggling with after playing Hunters is this thought: was Demonheart actually bad all this time and I refused to notice because I… liked it?
After playing through this game 4 times going on 5th, I find that I have less and less good things to say about it. So let’s first get one thing out of the way. Do I recommend you buy and play Hunters? …Yes. Even yesser if you have played the prequel and liked it. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have fun on my first playthrough. I would be lying if I said I hated the addition of combat, exploration and flower gathering for ability upgrades on my first playthrough. No, I actually loved all of that. On my first playthrough. Which took me somewhere around 8-9 hours to complete with me taking my time, exploring everything, disarming each and every trap, picking every single flower I could find and killing all the mobs I could reach with my shiny poisoned daggers.
– Real player with 37.2 hrs in game
Demonheart
(Note: This review was written after chapter 4’s release. If the final fifth chapter impacts this review, I will update it accordingly. I am also a man.)
Female-driven visual novels have become increasingly common among western audiences. Unfortunately, these games are also peppered with groan-inducing young boys seeking to win the hearts of adolescent girls through affection. Where are the games with dark storytelling and evil men, and why is it taboo for women to fantasize about them? Demonheart wisely accommodates this void with a cast of evil love interests and a thought-provoking dark narrative.
– Real player with 40.8 hrs in game
Demonheart is a dark fantasy tale about a young woman, who has her life taken completely out of her own hands, in the most unusual circumstances. Follow this aberrant tale as she is lead down a dark path of no return.
Plot: Step into the role of Bright, a young red-headed maiden as she goes about her everyday life. She lives with her parents in a tiny house as the three of them try to scrape together to simply put food in their stomachs. That is, until one fateful day, an unexpected job offer reaches her. The town’s famous healer wishes to extend an invite to Bright to work alongside her in her shop as her assistant. This could be the break Bright and her family so desperately need, but is it too good to be true? Well, of course, it is or the story would end pretty quickly, wouldn’t it?
– Real player with 36.9 hrs in game
Creatio Ex Nihilo III: Amor Dei
After the conclusion of ‘The War of Gods’, some of the divine immortals decided to settle down on the planet of Astea where they created their own heavenly domain from where they could watch over and judge the mortal realm. They would see mortals wage war and die; over and over again. And thus, the sacred order of the universe was kept… Until a forbidden love shattered the balance between divines and mortals.
For the first time in the series, you will take on the role of a mortal. You will guide her through the barbaric life on Astea, where the road to a civilized society seems very long and uneven. You will go on an epic adventure where you will meet elves, centaurs and many other fantastical beings. But, most importantly of all, you will be swept away to the beautiful heavenly realm by a god who has been watching you and loving you as long as he remembers. However, not everything is going to turn out just like the fairy tales you were told when you were a child. Your love is not appreciated by the deathless gods ruling over you. And that has consequences. Soon you and every mortal on Astea will feel the wrath of a scorned god.
Features:
-
Strategic Turn-Based Battles
-
Immersive Storyline
-
Visual Novel Style Cutscenes
-
Female Protagonist