February Game of the Month: Valentine's Otome!

[alias_sqbr]

You and your house mates are NOT spending valentines day with a romantic dinner with that significant other - so what’s a girl to do? Party of course~ Dragging your best friend and cousin with you, you are determined to make sure that at least one of you has a blast.

Valentine's Otome Website

This free game from US based indie games company Synokoria is a sequel to the earlier (and more popular) Halloween Otome, but can be played as a stand alone game. I played it so long after Halloween Otome that I'd forgotten everything and it was fine, the references to the earlier game are more like cameos and shoutouts than any sort of continuing plot.

Here's a detailed review I wrote when I played it. I uh...didn't like it as much as I remembered when I suggested it as game of the month, but discussing flawed games can be interesting too!

One thing I really liked is that while there's no onscreen sex, the protagonist is cheerfully sexual, with the sort of "I only want commitment free casual sex....OH NO FEELINGS??" arc you usually only get with male characters. The love interests are varied and mostly endearing and I had shmoopy feelings about all the romances.

But I also found a number of the plots irritating, heteronormative, and nonsensical, and there is some very unfortunate writing around queer characters.

Still, it's free, and I don't regret playing it!

Has anyone else played it? What about Halloween Otome? What did you think? There's supposedly a Christmas Otome coming out for Christmas 2021.