Monthly Check In Post

[alias_sqbr]

What's everyone been playing? Any recs? Made some fanworks? Post here! Lurkers and first-time posters are always welcome :)

Also, a reminder to post to the introduction post if you like.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

I have entirely given up on the Cinderella route of Taisho Alice, I just couldn't bring myself to keep playing even though it wasn't offensive or anything.

I haven't started anything new since then but am eyeing some of these recs: https://www.vngameden.com/top-ten-best-otome-games/3463/

[scytale]

Oh, what happened with Taisho Alice? Was it just boring?

And that recs list looks interesting. :D

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, it wasn't objectively that badly written but for some reason I was unbearably bored.

[scytale]

I finished Tei's and Yeonho's routes!

...and didn't get any of the intense bad endings, which was a bit of a letdown! In the middle of the route, I kept going, "well, that was OBVIOUSLY the wrong choice, I'm bracing myself"... and then kept bracing myself through emotional and cathartic scenes that did not end in death.

[alias_sqbr]

Haha, aw. Good luck having a bad time with Red, I guess?

[scytale]

Haha, I didn't get any of the bad Tei endings in that route, either, until I replayed. But the good ending was stressful enough on its own.

I just finished! That was an excellent game, thank you for the rec! And Nameless definitely hits Cafe Enchante Noah notes.

[alias_sqbr]

I'm really glad you enjoyed it! And yeah Tei is A Lot even at the best of times.

[icecheetah]

For Otome I've just been leaving games on my phone and collecting dailies this month, but one of the Storytaco/Lucydream ones, Queen's Number, had an update early this month that somehow stopped ads from working, so that's kinda slowing things down. It hasn't had an update to fix that bug either -_-. The ads for OTHER Storytaco/Lucydream games work fine, so I don't think it's that I keep hitting it when there's no ads to serve... .
It still has the other dailies I can collect, it just means it'll take longer to reach the point I can play it.

I am also playing a game called "Normal Me and Abnormal Friends" and I might suggest another game from the same people come the next otome of the month post.

[alias_sqbr]

Ha I looked up "Normal Me and Abnormal Friends" and for a moment my brain went "Wait, some phone-based VNs have MALE protagonists?" before realising that presumably a lot of them do I just don't hear about them.

[icecheetah]

heh! Well, Lovestruck recently started having stories that have female and (gay) male MCs, and I've seen a few phone otome companies do games that have gay male MCs, though outside Lovestruck I haven't tried any of those.

But outside those contexts Normal Me is pretty much all I've seen. Well... maybe if you count some of Gagex's games such as Oden Cart as Visual Novels? It might be stretching the defintion though given there is (simple) gameplay to get that text that is the bulk of the appeal of the game (Gagex's games are excellent, powerful enough that some of them really give me Nostalgia for a childhood in Japan in a time before I was born.)

OH! Lady Wizard do Visual Novels with Idle game mechanics and one is "Prince Snow White". I didn't play much of it but the protagonist is a male Snow White (and instead of Seven Dwarves it has Seven Grandmas).

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, interesting! And I didn't know that about Lovestruck, I should check them out again.

[icecheetah]

For mxm in Lovestruck Prince Charming's route in Ever After Academy is pretty good (at least, the first chapter was. I'm quite behind) and the newest series, Immortal Heart Society, has one mxm but I haven't tried it at all yet. Prince Charming was the first mxm route in Lovestruck iirc, so that they're doing another indicates that it was good enough to be successful.

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you!

A m/m romance with Prince Charming sounds fun :)