A community for otome/dating sim fans

A website for my games recs/reviews.

You can filter for dating sims with the romance and visual novel tags, and then for like...gender options, whether it's free, the emotional tone etc. There's about 30 otome-ish games.

Some new games have just been announced just as I bought a Switch myself :D

Cafe Enchante US Fall 2020
When Kotone inherits her grandfather’s Tokyo café, she discovers the shop holds more secrets than anyone could imagine.

Piofore Memories US Fall 2020
Liliana Adoronato was born and raised in the church in the center of the Italian town of Burlone. Three criminal organizations control parts of the city, and Lili discovers that she is literally in the center of their turf wars.

Have any of you played these games? They certainly look pretty. I hope they come out in Australia too (even if I have to wait for our Autumn)

Under the cut: some otome games that are already out on the Switch.
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It's a timely cause and these are also very good deals.

The Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is a ridiculously huge collection of games from every genre imaginable, including some great stuff. I listed all the romance games I could see here, I haven't played any of the pure otome but Verdant Skies is a fun and diverse farming sim set in space with cute if minor romances.

SakeVisual is having a 50% sale with all proceeds going to Black Girls Code. I specifically recommend Backstage Pass, it's a surprisingly grounded but entertaining story about a young woman getting into the entertainment industry as a makeup artist, with mostly male but one female love interest.

Since it's the game of the month I decided to make a review post with all the games that are free right now...but alas the current crop are largely not to my taste. Still, maybe they'll be to yours!

Here's a post I made about Voltage/Love365 in general explaining the payment structure and reviewing the games I've played. I've found a few I really like, including Dui from Star-crossed who is free for the next week and a bit.

Note that there's some variation in when these games are free for, and what "free" means.

Irresistible Mistakes: Shunichiro: The protagonist wakes up realising she had a drunken one night stand she can't remember with one of her coworkers. Shunichiro is her cheerfully hedonistic boss, it glossed over the consent issues too much for me but he had a certain skeezy charm. This seems to be permanently free.

Irresistible Mistakes: Yukihasa: a brilliant but emotionless doctor who thinks love is a delusion and just wants to be friends with benefits. I had complicated feelings on him as a character, but the route seemed to be going in a "fix the neuro-atypical person with loving sex" direction. Free for February.

Butler Until Midnight: Yuma: The protagonist finds out she's the daughter of a prestigious man and is bullied into letting a butler train her to be a refined lady. They were so manipulative and mean in the prologue it felt more like a butler themed horror game, but it's probably fun if you like domineering butlers? I've heard there's a lot of fat shaming, though. Yuma is apparently extra mean to start with but becomes nicer. Free for February.

Star-crossed: Dui This is a cute romance with the god of the star-sign Gemini, who has two sides to his personality. Free with ads until February 11.

Destind: Araya: the protagonist matches via a dating app with a younger friend from highschool who's been pining over her. He's rapey and manipulative. It's "Love Choice" which means the good choices, leading to the super happy end, cost money. Normally you'd also have to wait or pay to read the episodes, and that part seems to be permanently free, but unlocking the super happy ending still costs like $30 and even people who liked the route gave it a low score for the poor value for money.

I posted a bit more detail over on my dreamwidth.

Here's a series of reaction posts I wrote about the game, and some content warnings.

It's a mystery/romance/drama by Otomate, creators of Hakuoki/Code Realise/Amnesia etc.

I still haven't finished it, I couldn't figure out how to get a good ending for the most recent route I played and was put off by the worry I'd never see a good end again. But I still really enjoyed a lot about it. It's a little more gothic character drama than romance, with one very long common route and shorter romances, many of which are bittersweet, as well as non-romantic endings focussing on the main character working through her issues. Some of the guys are very messed up and even their "best" endings are pretty sad.

The structure is pretty unique, and doesn't quite work: there's a map of scenes that gets unlocked as you play the game and make different choices, and you use this to make different choices and see side scenes. But the link between what choices you make and what scenes get unlocked is sometimes very opaque, even with a walkthrough. There's also a shooting minigame (!) but you can skip that pretty easily if you're clumsy like me.

Anyway, it's a well made game with engaging characters and affecting emotional scenes, and an enjoyable gothic atmosphere. The art and voice acting is good too. I'm glad I played it but it's not for everyone.

I thought it would be fun to look at the top 10 rated otome on Steam and itchio, and see which I've played, and ask if you folk have played them yourselves.
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I just finished Kazuya's route for this. It's a phone-based dating sim, a prequel to Hakuoki set 300 years earlier, but can be played as a stand alone game. It's set during the end of the Warring States/Sengoku period of Japan in the early 17th century.

The heroine, Yukina, is a ninja bodyguard to a demon princess, and chieftan of a demon clan in her own right. The princess has gathered the leaders of Japan's demons to ask them an important question, and Yukina finds herself drawn into human politics... and also drawn to one of the other demon chieftains.

The love interests. From left to right: Senkimaru, Kazuya, Chitose, Kazutake, and Shin


The (VERY SHORT) prologue is free but each love interest's route costs $5US. Apparently the routes share some content.

I just played through to the good end for Kazuya, a kuudere. It was great, but I'd rate the proportions as like:
Japanese historical drama: 50%
Anime-esque fantasy nonsense: 20%
Yukina kicking ass: 20%
Romance: 10%

All those parts are done moderately well, but if you're just there for the romance you'll be disappointed. From reviews I've read, the other routes are similar in this respect. Kazuya and Yukina develop a very sweet relationship, but it's more of a shonen-y warrior connection than romance for most for the game.

I didn't love it quite as much as Hakuoki (WHICH I ADORE) but I still enjoyed it a lot, and it has some nice Hakuoki connections lore wise, eg the Princess the protagonist is guarding is an ancestor of Princess Sen.

Here's my reaction posts to the prologue and Kazuya's route

In short: Mystic Messenger is a well made and enjoyable phone based dating sim with some aspects I found annoying.

The protagonist stumbles into the chatroom of a group of friends who run a charity, and ends up getting to know them and helping to organise a big party. The game involves joining group chats, answering emails, messages and phonecalls in real time (not real phonecalls etc, it's simulated within the game) as well as traditional Visual Novel scenes.

Below, from left to right: Jumin, Yoosung, Jaehee, Seven, Zen.


I wrote up my reactions to most of the routes and some of the DLC as I played.

(Read the rest of my review on my journal)

For anyone else who doesn't have a decent phone and has been pining over all the cool otome games only available for phones: Blue Stacks lets you emulate an android phone on a Mac or PC for free.

It's quite easy to install and use. The only real downside is that it makes my Mac laptop run pretty hot. There's other emulators out there but I haven't tried them.

It connects to your Google Play account so it's quite easy to pay for game content. (Almost...too easy)
( And now for some game recs! )