Songs and Flowers

[got_quiet]

Name: Songs and Flowers
Status: Complete
Site: https://cowboy-starshine.itch.io/songs-and-flowers
Pairing: M/F
Description: Two separate high school stories about people supporting each other.

This game doesn't lean much on novelty. It's a high school VN with two LIs, a straightforward plot with very few choices, and no real meta elements (unless you count playing a VN as a part of the story being meta). Your character is an abrasive, cursing, high energy girl who has just transferred to a new school and has never really made a friend. She's determined to become an  intelligence broker in order to achieve her childhood goal of finding her mother, who left her and her father when she was a small child. But she's super bad with people and generally oblivious to all social cues. Her process of training is to just brute force ask people as many questions about them as she can.

 

The game has two routes, and the route you take is decided by the very first choice you make. Once you do that you are locked into one guy's route and the other guy never even appears, as each route is completely independent of the other. There are only 3 or 4 choices you are asked to make in a relatively long story, but you have to pick correctly to get an option at the very end to decide to pursue a romantic rather than platonic ending. I thought I was going for the romantic ending on each route, but didn't get it for either. When I skipped through in a replay and picked the opposite choices there was no real change to the story (only brief alterations to the scene immediately following) and that got me the romance option. I was honestly a little surprised that I got it because I felt I was certainly making the worst choices. So the pathing was nothing to speak of really, and there are no additional mechanics.

That said, the stories themselves are heartfelt and executed with sensitivity. The game has a pastel tone, and the characters are very soft, on the surface at least. The first LI, Noct, is pink haired and loves cute stickers, sweets, dresses and bows. He's also constantly getting into and winning street fights. The other LI, Carol, suffers from crippling anxiety that initially manifests in his blurting out cheesy VN lines and hiding his face behind his hands a lot. He's constantly on the edge of a panic attack, but rather than hold his hand gently, the MC is very direct towards him and the relationship is supportive in a way that doesn't feel like it's giving you a script for "how to deal with anxiety." As I was playing the beginning I was kind of bracing myself for some ham-fisted very special episode type language, but the game doesn't really go there. The characters engage with each other in ways that make it clear that they care, and that they are helping each other deal with real problems, but without sounding like they are reciting a tumblr post. And the situations they end up in, particularly the MCs, ended up carrying real emotional heft. I was pleasantly surprised, as jaded as I am, when I felt myself getting a little sniffly at what the MC was going through.

 

There are a few extra mini stories that are just texts and unlocked after you complete each path, which is it in terms of extra content. While the choice elements of Songs and Flowers are bare-bones, the two stories for the LIs are sweet and simple, and I enjoyed my time playing.