Those of you who know me well will probably know that Mark and Lynette, the people Andie and I are staying with on our vacation in Toronto, are members of the Squadron of Shame. The Squad is, of course, a ragtag group of gamers who came together back in the heyday of 1up.com to champion the underdogs of the games industry, and we’ve been doing an admirable job of that ever since through a combination of online discussion, podcasting and playing games together.

One of the reasons I’ve been enjoying this vacation so much is because as well as getting out and about a bit to see some of the city — something we’ll be doing a lot more of in the coming week — I’ve had the chance to hang out with people who have very similar tastes in games to me; people who understand why JRPGs and visual novels are awesome, and why a middling-to-low Metacritic rating isn’t necessarily something that should put you off playing a game if you like the look of it.

In the last week or so, we’ve been repping the Squad pretty well between the games we’ve been playing. Mark has been playing a lot of Fire Emblem on 3DS, of course, since he’s been glued to it since it was released back in February, but we’ve been exploring some other interesting games together, too. As I type this, we’re enjoying the distinctly Canadian flavour of Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves, a very strange game that combines elements of tower defense, strategy games, role-playing games, action games and survival horror to create something quite unlike anything any of us have ever seen before. Meanwhile, I’ve completed three playthroughs each of Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart, two extremely interesting if somewhat unpolished “life sims” in which you build up stats in an attempt to complete various tasks and/or romance any of the in-game eligible bachelors and/or bachelorettes.

Sang-Froid (above) is an interesting game. At the outset, it looks like a rather ordinary third-person action game with a distinctive aesthetic, but as the levels progress it grows in complexity a bit at a time until — I assume, anyway; we haven’t got that far yet — the game you’re playing at the end of the story is virtually unrecognisable from the hack-and-slash it appeared to be at the very beginning. I haven’t played it myself yet, but it looks like a challenging game with a huge amount of depth. The two different playable characters allow you to enjoy the game in two distinctive styles, too — one has better combat skills, making the action sequences easier, while the other is weaker, meaning that the strategic sequence where you lay traps and build structures is considerably more important to get right before the hordes of darkness come running.

But I digress. Allow me to talk about the games I have been playing personally.

I’ve already talked about both Long Live the Queen (above) and Spirited Heart (below) in two previous posts, but they both bear mentioning again, I think. Both games are examples of the “life sim” genre — a style of game which is rarely explored outside of low-budget indie games. I guess you could count The Sims as a life sim, but it’s not quite the same thing — The Sims is a detailed simulation of social interactions and other related business, but both Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart are more like role-playing games in which you’re not travelling the world in order to save humanity, but instead trying to eke out the best possible existence for your (female) protagonist.

Both Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart differ considerably, however, despite having fundamentally similar mechanics. Long Live the Queen sees you playing a predefined character — the titular Queen — and then sending her down the path of your choice, while Spirited Heart allows you a lot more freedom to design your own character and choose what your goals are, be they romancing a specific character or attempting to accomplish a mission set for you by your race’s goddess. While neither of these games are particularly shiny or exciting to look at, I’ve found them surprisingly compelling, and they make me want to check out more games of a similar ilk.

One reason I’ve been enjoying them a lot is due to their similarity to an old favourite visual novel/dating sim known as True Love (above). I first played this back in probably 1999-2000 and still think of it very fondly today, despite the fact it is an absolute bugger to get running on modern machines. Like the life sims I’ve been playing recently, True Love saw you managing your time carefully in an attempt to build up your stats enough to attract one or more of the game’s heroines and make her your “true love”. I attribute my present-day love of games like the Persona series to my earlier experiences with True Love, and I’m getting a lot of the same feelings from titles like Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart, too, which is nice.

The other interesting thing about them is that these are games obviously designed with a primarily female audience in mind, and that in the case of Spirited Heart at least, they’re gay/bisexual positive. Long Live the Queen doesn’t have a strong romance component, whereas it’s a key focus of Spirited Heart. In Spirited Heart, you even have the option to turn the girl-boy and girl-girl romances on or off independently of one another — in fact, it’s sold as two separate “games” that bolt on to each other, so if you want to play an all-yuri life sim, simply pick up the Girl’s Love version by itself and go nuts.

And the one final reason I’m mentioning these games is that there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of discussion about them online generally. I’m a strong believer that great games should be celebrated and appreciated as much as possible, regardless of their budget or where they hail from, and thus, well, I’m doing my bit.

You can grab Long Live the Queen from Hanako Games’ website, Spirited Heart from Winter Wolves’ website, and Sang-Froid from Steam.