Love Hues

Jun. 5th, 2021 09:30 pm
got_quiet: A cat in a happy hoodie not looking happy. Captioned "aaaaahh" (Default)
[personal profile] got_quiet
Name: Love Hues
Status: Complete
Site: https://oneirocritica-games.itch.io/love-hues-2020
Pairing: Any/Any or Gen
Description: College meet cutes


Sometimes I watch or play something that makes me feel old. This game did that to me pretty hard. It's a dating VN set on a college campus, where all of the routes appear to be 100% wholesome at all times. For a long time I've been uninterested in any high school stories because my patience with high school drama is at 0. Now it seems I need to update this to some college campus plots too.
 

Read more... )


 

Because the path stories are about stuff that happens without you, the paths are devoid of tension. In one scene you literally do nothing but listen to NPCs do some conflict resolution planning. After running through two of these I decided to go for a bad end, and... it was also boring. I picked all the meanest options I could and the game sort of brushed them off for the most part, with the LI still treating me like a friend even though I told them I wasn't interested in things they liked, made them injure themselves, and so on and so forth, and finally I informed them their ex was dating someone else. They got upset about that, the two of us drifted apart, my character stopped caring about the school rivalry, which wasn't resolved, but like, I didn't care. The end.

 

There is clearly some sort of meta ending that must unlock after investing a little time completing paths, and those paths constantly allude to relationships between LIs that aren't explained in a single run, but if the leadup to the answers isn't interesting I don't know why reveals would be. Most of the time I'm willing to accept that the issue is a taste missmatch when I bounce off of a game like this, but even outside the cute handholdy tone and unappealing characters there are just fundamental problems with how the player character engages with the narrative that makes me feel like this is more a "you're doing great, sweetie" simulator than a story that the player has any stake in. If you're attracted to the fantasy of a supportive friend simulator you might like this. Otherwise I'd avoid.



[identity profile] got-quiet.livejournal.com
I've been playing through a lot of renai games lately so I'm going to do this to keep track of them.

Name: The Sun Misses The Moon
Status: Demo.
Site: http://gamejolt.com/games/the-sun-misses-the-moon/45012
Rating: ?
Pairing: M/M?

Description: "The Sun Misses The Moon is a LGBT visual novel with elements of college-life, unrequited love and supernatural alternate dimensions. It has been under production for over five months and early versions can be found on Game jolt. The story continues to grow and gather strength in concept each day.

There are currently several characters that make up the spine of the visual novel itself; Sol Kasmay, Lukas Archibald, Marvin Archibald, Turi Sisiro and Shin Kwon. Each of these characters have up to eight unique emotions and their own theme to go with personal situations.

The story is focused around Sol who is a young freshman in college attending with his best and only friend Lukas Archibald. Like most people, Sol has no idea what is in store for him in the near-future. However one thing IS for certain, the protagonist isn't always the center of his/her own story."

Art: Pretty good. Cohesive style, UI is clear, the character designs are cool and the character art is clean and cell shaded. The POV character Sol in particular is a cutie. My only gripe was over Lucas' pose. I wanted to push his hand down the entire game. The backgrounds are photos, slightly blurred, and they're also nice and clean, and for a demo there are quite a few of them. At one point you go from one room on campus to another and this is animated with a series of shots down a stairway. It was a nice touch.

Writing: For a demo there's a lot of it, and it's decent. All of the characters have clear voices and the dialogue feels natural. There were a few spots where the script seemed to jump a little. Either things got rehashed, or a jump wasn't smooth, but those issues were minor and rare. The story as it's revealed in the demo sets up some interesting questions and includes a major cliffhanger, so there's some promise here.

Choice: 1 (ish). This is where most games and I part ways, as I'm in the "more is more" side of choice in VNs. There were technically two places where I had to click something but in one case there was only one choice. In the other case there were two. Since this is a demo it's hard to tell how divergent things will get in the final product, but as it is it is only hitting the minimum required to keep from being a straight up kinetic novel.

Gameplay: There were no additional gameplay elements.

Overall: If a complete game is released I think it would be worth checking out, though a lack of routes in the demo is concerning.


Put your hand down!


Another main character.

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Playing games with an emphasis on story.

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