Brassica

[got_quiet]

Name: Brassica
Status: WiP
Site: https://boyslaughplus.itch.io/brassica-a-marry-tale
Pairing: f/f (npc) and m/m
Description: A princess sends some princes on a mission for love.

This is simple twist on a classic premise. A young princess is set to be wed to a prince, but she's gay as hell and doesn't want to, so she collects a bunch of princes and sends them on an impossible mission. The princes undergo many trials, including such things as getting chased by bandits, having to share a single hollow trunk in the rain, sharing a bed, and catching each other as they fall out of trees. All of this adversity naturally draws them closer, and romance begins to blossom between them... if you choose to pick those options.

 

Before going on with the review I need to note that as of writing this the game is unfinished, has not been updated since 2018, and really only seems to be getting started when it cuts you off at a chapter break you simply can't continue from. This was frustrating not just because I was getting into the story and liked the LIs, but because I haven't run into an m/m game while going down the list of VNs for the BLM bundle in what seems like forever! It's been something like 16 games since I've hit a romance where you can at least chose your gender. As much as I enjoy other types of games, I started playing VNs for the m/m content so I was getting excited about this one.

So, considering the unfinished nature of the game, what is there to say about it? It's setting up a nice little fantasy medieval story, with a trio of princes, one of which serves as the MC. One is a bloviating heir who is capable of magic, and another is a slightly self conscious younger prince who can talk to animals. The two princes you are not don't like each other very much, so sometimes the choices are about moderation tactics, or deciding which prince you agree with when in a crisis. The choices feel organic and interesting while still usually directly pointing at the prince they are for. So I had no problem getting to a little bit of a romance scene before the game cut off. It would be easier to determine the impact of choices offered if we got to the end, but as it is it feels like it hits a good medium between too few and obvious, and too many and meaningless to me.



 

The game breaks the fourth wall forcefully. The conceit here is that you're watching a play, with the UI dressed up like a stage and everything, and you the player sometimes will end up in discussion with the narrator about how you want things to go. But these things tend to happen in intermissions, not within the story itself, so you don't have princes turning the the player to make some sort of aside or anything like that. I do wonder what my choosing  "Can you make it even more gay?" could possibly do to the game state, but maybe it's just there for fun.

So this is a game to watch, but there is not much of it right now that is available to play.