#oneaday Day 972: H, and Not the One from Steps

For one to become a fan of the visual novel genre, one has to be willing to deal with one of gaming’s great taboos: the sex scene. You have to be willing to play games specifically marked as “adults only” and warning of explicit sexual content on the box; you have to be willing to explain that no, you’re not actually playing a “porn game” (in most cases, anyway) — you’re playing a game that just happens to have sex scenes in it, because there’s a difference. You also have to be able to say that latter bit without coming across as defensive, which is very difficult.

A good few years back, I played several of what I then knew as “H-games” — specifically, True Love, Ring Out, Paradise Heights and Three Sisters’ Story.

Of these games, two were pretty much out-and-out porn — Ring Out centred around a young girl who had been sold into effective slavery to repay her parents’ debts and who was forced to compete in an all-lesbian sex-wrestling tournament for the entertainment of pervy, disgusting men; Paradise Heights centred around a guy who both lived and worked at the titular apartment complex and seemed to spend most of his time either spying on or having sex with the residents. Interestingly, though, despite the clear focus of these titles being the sex scenes, they still bothered to put clearly-defined characters and an actual sense of narrative in there — Ring Out in particular, despite its eminently silly premise, was clearly designed to be an uncomfortable experience as much as an arousing one.

Three Sisters’ Story, meanwhile, was a title I actually can’t remember a great deal about, save that it was a character-heavy visual novel in which you automatically attained a bad ending at the conclusion if you gave in to base desires and slept with everyone who proffered themselves to you.

True Love was perhaps the most interesting, though, being an actual dating sim rather than a straight visual novel. You had a limited number of in-game days to find your “true love” (from among the wide variety of potential lovers at school, of course) and had to choose how you spent your time each day — studying, training, doing art, going shopping, that sort of thing. How you chose to spend your time affected various statistics, and the levels of these statistics affected your relationships with the girls. It was actually a surprisingly complex game that had a surprising amount in common with Persona 3 and 4. I really enjoyed it — and my past enjoyment of True Love is perhaps a big part of the reason why I enjoy the Persona games so much now.

Here’s the thing, though — at the time, I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about the fact I’d played these games to anyone. The popularity of the Internet was still in its relative infancy at the time, thanks partly to the fact that broadband hadn’t taken hold in this country yet, and I didn’t really feel that comfortable discussing them with my real-life friends at the time. (True Love was an exception — several of us ended up playing this through concurrently while we were at university.)

The sex was the reason. There was an air of “shame” about playing these games, and not in a Squadron of Shame sense. Because there was sex in all of them to varying degrees, I felt uneasy about revealing my association with them lest I end up thought of as some sort of weird pervert. (In the case of Ring Out, I probably would be thought of as some sort of weird pervert — there was some messed-up kinky shit in that game. Except now I’ve revealed the fact I’ve played it to all of you. Yay! I’m a weird pervert! AND PROUD.)

Yet now I feel perfectly comfortable talking about these games, and even promoting them through a regular column over on Games Are Evil. So what’s changed?

Several factors, I think. First up, my own attitudes towards sex have, naturally, changed over the years. Secondly, the rise of the Internet means that it’s much easier to find like-minded people to discuss these things with, even if they’re outside of your normal friendship groups. Thirdly, societal attitudes towards sex in gaming are changing.

We’re not living in a completely sexually liberated age, of course — there’s still a fuss any time a high-profile game such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age features bonking, and said games tend to skimp on the titillation by having characters writhing around in their underwear — but we’re in a place now where people are at least a little more willing to consider the possibility that games might have some sex in them.

Part of this is the fact that the general demographic of “gamers” has grown up somewhat and is demanding more “mature” experiences for their money. Mostly, “mature” tends to be interpreted as “more violent, more swear words and more women in suggestive outfits”. Sex is still seemingly considered somewhat taboo, so we end up with the underwear-writhing just described.

In 18+, adults-only visual novels, there’s none of that. In these titles, sex scenes are explicit, sometimes quite protracted and, in the words of their manuals, “not always exhibiting the level of sensitivity required for a healthy relationship”. They’re often highly erotic and titillating, and more often than not obviously aimed at a male audience — or at least presented from the perspective of a male protagonist.

Are they necessary? Probably not. Having played through two paths of My Girlfriend is the President now, I feel that game’s stories could probably have been told just as effectively without the flurry of shagging that occurs in the game’s third act of four. Some visual novels even allow players to turn off H-scenes altogether, and console or smartphone ports remove said content altogether, thereby proving that no, it’s probably not necessary.

They may not be necessary, but they’re actually pretty effective in many cases — at least from my perspective. Staying with My Girlfriend is the President, I found the erotic scenes to be incredibly powerful — largely because the writers had taken such great pains to build up a massive amount of sexual tension between the characters before anything truly perverted started happening. As the erotic scenes unfolded, a very “private” side of these characters revealed themselves. What were their attitudes towards sex and physical intimacy in general? How did they define their relationship with each other? Did they see sex as an important part of a relationship, or just something fun to do?

There’s also the fact that visual novels tend to take place with the player “riding along” inside the protagonist’s brain. The player is privy to the protagonist’s innermost thoughts, feelings and desires, however shameful they might be, It’s a uniquely intimate relationship between player and visual novel protagonist — not the same as playing a game where you feel completely “in control” of the characters, but one where the player feels “trusted” to find out things that, in some cases, other characters in the game world don’t know. Next to that, seeing Our Hero putting his penis into someone is a relatively small matter.

And with all that, there’s the fact that being turned on by something erotic is really just another form of emotional engagement. I’ll stay with My Girlfriend is the President for now, but it applies to many other VN titles, too — if feeling happy, sad, amused, upset or angry is a valid emotional response to the things you’re seeing unfolding on screen, why not feeling aroused or excited — or even just pleased for the characters?

There’s a distinction between these incredibly explicit sex scenes and straight-up porn, I’ve found. Seeing, say, Yukino and protagonist Jun getting it on is hot, sure, and the amount of panting, groaning and screaming on the game’s voice track (coupled with some truly stunning subtitles) makes it clear that these are scenes that are supposed to be hot. But they’re not hot in the way that makes me want to, well, not to put too fine a point on it, fap.

They’re part of a story; they’re something that is happening with these characters. Sure, they’re generally not saying anything meaningful to one another (“Mmmm… tch… slurp… aaaaaah”) but they are demonstrating part of their relationship to one another. The meaning of that outweighs any desire to flop it out and go to town — and the fact that I’m not treated as an idiot or a prude is also actually quite refreshing. Let’s also not forget that many VNs feature sex scenes that are not designed to be titillating at all — Hanako and Rin’s scenes in Katawa Shoujo spring immediately to mind — and instead are there to provoke some sort of emotional reaction, or afford a deeper understanding of the characters. Sex is, after all, part of life, like it or not.

Doubtless there are people out there who fap to sex scenes, and the fact that many VNs offer the option to replay just the sex scenes would certainly back this theory up. But, y’know, you want cheap thrills, there are certainly easier ways to go about getting them.

I am, of course, coming at all this from a male perspective and I do not apologise for this in the slightest. I find these experiences engaging, compelling and, on occasion, erotic. And anyway, if we’re being practical about this, what difference is there really between someone playing an eroge and the millions of people around the world who have read the Fifty Shades of Grey series? Think about that.

I’m off for a cold shower.

#oneaday Day 960: Moe Moe Kawaii… Wait, What Are You Doing…?!

Where do you draw the line between art, entertainment, sexist nonsense and porn? It is a rather fine and difficult line to walk, particularly when the definitions of all of those terms vary enormously from person to person according to their open-mindedness, experience with various works, gender and general social attitudes. It’s a particularly pertinent question with regard to the genre of games that I seem to be spending a fair amount of time with at present — the ol’ visual novel.

The current game I’m playing is called My Girlfriend is the President. I will refrain from talking about it in too much detail as 1) I haven’t yet finished it and 2) I will be doing a READ . ME column on the subject for Games Are Evil this Sunday. Suffice to say, however, it is utterly bananas — and yet, there is a slight sense of discomfort while playing. Not enough to prevent me from enjoying it, but just enough to make me think that it might, in fact, be deliberate.

The tension stems from the game’s protagonist, whom in TV Tropes terms is probably best described as a Chivalrous Pervert. He openly admits to sexually harassing women and getting turned on by ogling his female peers in a less than honourable fashion. He takes every opportunity to make a smutty comment just to “try his luck”. And he’s a peeping tom. In short, he should be an immensely dislikeable dick whom any self-respecting player wouldn’t want to spend any time inside the head of whatsoever.

And yet he’s not. At least part of his perpetual horniness can be attributed to the fact that he is a teenage boy, and consequently subject to the same hormonal urges that all teenage boys find themselves afflicted with. His supposed sexual harassment never leads anywhere, as his female peers are all well aware of the fact that he is a wannabe pervert and thus make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity to do anything truly inappropriate — not that he actually would given the opportunity. Several of them even take every chance they get to toy with him, making him more and more wound up and frustrated while at the same time making it clear that they are the ones with the true power in their relationship.

And alongside all this perversion comes the fact that, at heart, he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to these girls. He takes every opportunity to attempt to prove his “manliness” and “protect” them, even if they don’t really need protecting. He gets embarrassed, flustered and overexcited if anything actually does happen, and when it comes to his adorable childhood friend (the titular President) he is — for the most part, anyway — respectful and sweet.

It puts the player in something of a quandary. Since the game takes place from the perspective of this horny young gentleman, we’re frequently subjected to his male gaze sizing up the bodies of the people he’s with and pondering what’s under their clothes. If he thinks there’s the chance he’ll see something naughty and the girls in question aren’t in any actual physical danger, he’ll stand by and watch rather than preventing something embarrassing happening to them. But when the chips are down and Bad Things are happening, he’s the first to spring into action in an (often misguided) attempt to keep them safe — usually with hilarious slapstick results.

So what does all this mean? Is the game itself sexist, or is it simply putting the player inside the head of a protagonist with definite sexist tendencies? Or is it somewhere in between?

I don’t know for sure. Whatever it is, My Girlfriend is the President is most certainly a gloriously guilty pleasure that I have absolutely no shame in saying that I am enjoying a great deal right now!

#oneaday Day 949: I Love You, Kotonoha… No, Wait, Sekai

You may recall back when I was rather obsessed with visual novel Katawa Shoujo that I put together a lengthy series of posts dissecting each of the characters and each narrative path it was possible to follow in the game. School Days HQ is inspiring me to do that again, and I know that there’s at least one person reading this who is finding my descriptions of this game interesting (Hi, Calin!) so… well, here we go.

I make no apologies for the length of this post.

Spoileriffic thoughts follow. If you’re going to play School Days HQ and don’t want it spoiled, stop reading. Yeah, you.

The first thing I’ll say is that I have not seen all of this game’s endings yet. Given that there are twenty of them (I think), doing so will take a while. I have, however, seen five of them, and I feel this is starting to give me a good understanding of the characters involved.

School Days is structured in an interesting manner. As opposed to Katawa Shoujo’s heavily branching first act and then five completely discrete “paths” through the game, School Days’ narrative branches all over the bloody place. There are two distinct “paths” that the story splits into at the end of the second of the game’s six “episodes”, each seeing protagonist Makoto apparently pursuing one of the two leading ladies, but whether or not he will end up with his “chosen” girl is by no means a foregone conclusion. The various paths which the story can follow give additional context to various scenes, and help provide the player with additional understanding of a variety of characters — both the three leads and the more incidental characters. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Makoto

Protagonist Makoto is, unlike a lot of visual novel/eroge protagonists, his own person rather than a “blank slate” onto which the player can project themselves. We join him as he finds himself attracted to the mysterious girl he sees on the train every day. This is Kotonoha. Shortly afterwards, his homeroom teacher rearranges the class’ seats, and Makoto ends up sitting next to Sekai, whom he has not had much occasion to speak to before.

Makoto initially isn’t sure how to respond to Sekai — she appears to be strong, pushy, loud and talkative. When she catches him apparently attempting to do a “charm” with his mobile phone — schoolyard rumour has it that if you take a photo of the person you like and keep it a secret for three weeks, they’ll fall in love with you — things get interesting.

The very fact that Makoto is attempting this charm in the first place shows us that he’s obviously quite a lonely person. He seems quite solitary at the best of times, and lacks the confidence to approach Kotonoha on the train. It takes Sekai’s assistance for him to be able to talk to Kotonoha, and even then he struggles. Conversely, he appears to have absolutely no trouble talking to Sekai, though that might just be because she doesn’t take “no” for an answer.

But why is Makoto lonely? We see that he has friends — he often hangs out with his best buddy Taisuke in class, for example, and he still has occasional contact with Katou, a girl whom he went to his previous school with. But he’s distant, cold and aloof at times. At least some of this can probably be attributed to his home life. His parents are divorced; he lives with his mother and his little sister lives with his absent father. We don’t see Makoto’s sister often (or possibly at all — I can’t speak for paths I haven’t followed yet) but it’s clear that he misses her; on a number of routes, he seems genuinely pleased that he’s going to get to spend the weekend with her when we hear that she is coming to visit.

When Makoto does eventually get into a relationship, we find out a few more things about him. We discover that he’s quite awkward in embarrassing situations, particularly when coupled with the equally-awkward Kotonoha, but like any red-blooded male, he has “needs” — specifically, a need for physical intimacy, even if it’s just holding someone’s hand. His sensitive side comes out even here, though — in one conversation with Sekai he worries about coming across as “perverted” when all he did was take Kotonoha’s hand. Granted, she did slap him around the face when he did so, however, so what is the poor chap to think?

We also learn that he’s easily swayed, particularly by women. He is weak-willed and unable to stand up for himself when another woman confesses their attraction to him, and he finds saying “no” difficult to do. Given the other facets of his character we know about, however, it’s probably fair to say that this isn’t because he’s a horny pervert — on the contrary, he’s a very considerate lover, given the evidence we see — but rather because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. This is a character trait he clings onto in most paths, though in the one where he focuses on Kotonoha to the complete exclusion of everyone else around him, he says explicitly to her that he no longer cares who he hurts, so long as he gets to be with Kotonoha always.

Despite the fact he is so easily swayed, he does have the capacity to devote himself to something (or, indeed, someone) and tune out all other distractions. While it takes quite some time in most of the paths for him to figure out whether it’s Kotonoha, Sekai or someone else he wants, once he does figure this out, he sticks to his guns. Unfortunately, whoever ends up spurned doesn’t always cooperate.

Which brings us neatly on to Kotonoha.

Kotonoha

Kotonoha initially appears to be a “Hanako” — a shy girl who is almost painfully awkward in social situations, particularly those involving members of the opposite sex. She speaks in a quiet voice and clearly thinks about the things that she is going to say before she says them, presumably in an attempt to ensure that they are the “right” things and that she doesn’t make a fool out of herself.

We discover in several paths what one of the root causes of Kotonoha’s shyness is: bullying, both in the past and the present. We learn that Sekai’s tomboyish friend Nanami went to the same school as Kotonoha in the past, and Kotonoha regards her as a bully. We also learn that the other girls in her class bully her and take advantage of her whenever possible. This becomes particularly apparent at the school festival, when they leave her to man their class’ reception desk all day while they go off hunting for boys to take back to the secret “break rooms” to have their way with them.

Kotonoha’s difficulties stem largely from her appearance. She’s cute and she has noticeably larger breasts than many of the other girls, and she tells Sekai that it has been this way since the end of primary school. She resents this fact, however, because it makes the boys look at her “in an indecent manner” and the girls assume that she is wrapping all said boys around her little finger. The truth of the matter is quite the opposite, however, as Kotonoha has never dated anyone prior to meeting Makoto, which explains her awkwardness around him.

Kotonoha is heavily hung up on the conventions of polite Japanese society. It takes her two days of effort to summon up the courage to ask Makoto if she can call him by his first name, even after they’ve already been on a date and have spent several days eating lunch together. She is terrified of being touched, worrying about being seen doing anything improper, and resists all of Makoto’s advances when they are first together.

This particular facet of Kotonoha’s personality can be attributed to her father, whom we don’t see but we do hear about. He’s very strict and doesn’t approve of her consorting with boys, and also imposes a curfew on her to ensure she doesn’t step too far out of line. Interestingly, her mother, whom we do see much more often, is the polar opposite of this, encouraging her to take more bold steps with Makoto, even going so far as to teach her the family’s “secret lemonade recipe”.

Kotonoha, like Makoto, isn’t quite sure what to do once she’s in a relationship. However, one thing is abundantly clear in every path: once she considers herself to be in a relationship, she considers that to be for keeps. She is not good at admitting when something isn’t working, and continues clinging to false hope long after the object of her affections has clearly sought solace elsewhere.

If Makoto decides that Sekai is the one he really likes, then Kotonoha will continue to doggedly pursue him, eventually assuming that the reason he doesn’t want her is because of her reticence and fear of being touched. She grows more and more bold and discovers that she can take advantage of Makoto’s easily-swayed personality, particularly if sex is involved. She appears to develop something of a taste for sex after she seduces Makoto for the first time, going so far as to do some rather indecent things to him on the way home, and in one last-ditch attempt to break him and Sekai up (if, indeed, that is the path down which the story is going) seduces him once more and surreptitiously snaps a photograph of him in a very compromising position.

Kotonoha’s stubborn, dogged determination stems from the fact that she has nothing to lose. We learn early on that she has no friends, preferring to absorb herself in a book than try and make peace with the girls who bully her in her own class. She welcomes Sekai into her life, however, believing that she is helping her altruistically. When it becomes clear that Sekai also has feelings for Makoto, however, Kotonoha becomes very jealous and clearly worries that she is going to end up alone again, so figures that she might as well throw everything she’s got into trying to rekindle whatever spark there once was. On the flip side, if Makoto devotes himself to her, she doesn’t appear to care one little bit about Sekai’s feelings, because she knows that she’ll always have Makoto and doesn’t have to worry any more.

Kotonoha is a prime example of a character who is not at all what she seems at first glance. The shy, demure-looking cute girl actually turns out to be something of a master manipulator if provoked — given that she has nothing to lose, who knows what she’s capable of if things really don’t go her way?

Sekai

Sekai is the exact opposite of Kotonoha in almost every way. While Kotonoha is always immaculately-groomed and generally in her shy, quiet and demure persona, Sekai has shaggy, scruffy hair and is loud, brash, and confident, usually saying exactly what she thinks. She has a close group of friends whom she confides in regularly, and she latches on to Makoto as soon as the pair are made to sit next to one another.

It transpires, of course, that Sekai has actually had her eye on Makoto since the school’s opening ceremony, when Our Hero helped out her childhood friend Setsuna. (Setsuna also fell for him around this time, though this only becomes apparent or an issue in one path that I’ve seen so far.) She is secretly delighted at the chance to spend more time with him, even if it is just to get him together with someone else.

It quickly becomes apparent that Sekai’s interest in Makoto is a borderline obsession, as she refuses to give up on him even if it’s clear he’s favouring Kotonoha. She allows herself to be strung along in a “friends with benefits” relationship that arises from Makoto’s frustration and Kotonoha’s unwillingness to be touched. She is frustrated by this arrangement, but sees it as better than nothing. “It’s a lie,” she says every time Makoto tells him he loves her, “but it makes me so happy.” On the rare occasions where she does get frustrated and voices these concerns to Makoto, he immediately apologises and decides that they should stop doing what they’re doing, but every time she retracts what she says out of fear of losing him.

On the occasions when she does lose him, she shows that she does not cope well with rejection. She sinks into a deep depression, often becoming so upset that she’s completely unable to function. Often her friends are able to help her out of this, but if Makoto proceeds down the path where he devotes himself entirely to Kotonoha, she becomes completely inconsolable. She loses all sense of self-respect and self-worth, submitting to Makoto’s friend Taisuke as a “second best” option, culminating in a horrifying scene where Makoto and Kotonoha walk in on the aftermath of her clearly having been raped, despite the fact that both parties involves deny this. (This is the same path where Makoto comments that he doesn’t care who he hurts any more, so his reaction to seeing one of his best friends having clearly been abused by another of his best friends is simply to be irrationally turned on by the fact he saw her in a dishevelled, half-naked state, going so far as to whack one off over the memory when he gets home. What a cock.)

Alongside the fact she is prone to depression, she also has something of a defeatist streak. In one path, her mother gets a new job in Paris and it becomes apparent that Sekai is going to have to leave with her. She does everything possible to try and avoid this but eventually concludes that it is hopeless and gives up entirely. It takes Setsuna stepping forward and mock-seducing Makoto (and secretly hoping that it can go further) for her to realise that she is willing to fight for him, and is unwilling to give up on her own happiness just because of something that may or may not be out of her own control.

Sekai does not appear to have a mean bone in her body. Even when Kotonoha is doing her best to secure Makoto as her own, Sekai never stoops to insults or manipulation, instead preferring to “win” on her own merits. The worst she gets is yelling “Coward! Idiot! Die!” down the phone at Makoto towards the start of the game when he’s getting cold feet about asking out Kotonoha — a sequence which caused me to mistakenly describe her as “dangerously unstable” when I first started playing.

And while she describes herself as “quite a perverted girl” (despite being a virgin when Makoto first meets her) she never uses sex to get what she wants, unlike Kotonoha — although it could perhaps be argued that the times when she willingly goes along with Makoto’s “friends with benefits” relationship is a form of manipulation to try and keep him around for as long as possible. She has no real power, however; she even jokes at one point that getting Makoto to say that he loves her more than Kotonoha is “more than I can get you to say, even with your dick in my hand”.

Sekai’s clearly a better fit for Makoto. The two of them both seem considerably happier when they’re together, but shaking off Kotonoha proves to be rather difficult on most of the paths through the game. When they do get it together, though, there’s much less of a feeling of “bittersweetness” than in some of Kotonoha’s endings.

____

All three characters are fascinating to study, and not one of them falls into the trope trap. All of them have a surprising degree of hidden depth, and their interactions with one another is what makes School Days such a fascinating game to play. I’m looking forward to discovering even more about them as I creep ever-closer to 100% completion — it might be a while yet, though, since after seeing five endings I’m still just at 31%.

#oneaday Day 947: Further Enthusing Regarding School Days HQ

When I picked up School Days HQ, it was largely out of a combination of curiosity at why the game (or, more specifically, its 2005 original incarnation) was such a fondly-regarded game that J-List and JAST USA were pushing so hard, and a general enthusiasm for any kind of story set in a school. Seriously, I’m loco for anything set in a school. Persona, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even crappy teen “coming of age” movies. (Fortunate, then, that Andie enjoys such works also.)

Regardless of the reasons for my fascination with school in general, I was expecting to be done with School Days relatively quickly and to be moving on to other things.

I was wrong.

After a single playthrough, the game helpfully informed me that I had seen just 12% of what it had to offer. After a second playthrough, that was largely similar throughout but had a very different ending, I was at 17%. Third time around, I’m starting the third episode of six and I’m somewhere around the 20% mark.

What’s keeping me coming back and playing this rather simple game over and over and over again?

Story. Characters. Simple as that. Each playthrough has followed a different narrative path and has taught me something new about the characters and their relationships with one another.

In my first playthrough, I played it “straight”. I always do this with visual novels or titles such as Catherine that are clearly inspired by them — all choices I make are the ones that I — or possibly the person I would like to be — would make. In School Days, you have the added pressure of having to make decisions in a relatively short space of time, with refusing to act at all also being taken as a valid choice, so I had to go with first impulses. I ended up with an ending that was somewhat bittersweet.

Spoilers follow.

School Days’ setup is that protagonist Makoto likes pretty but shy girl Kotonoha. Sekai, the confident girl he’s been forced to sit next to when his class changed seats, immediately latches on to Makoto and discovers that he likes Kotonoha thanks to the picture on his phone that he surreptitiously (and slightly creepily) snapped on the train. She agrees to help him get together with Kotonoha, and one of twenty different endings ensues.

In my first playthrough, as I say, I played it straight, or as if I was Makoto and genuinely in love with Kotonoha. I maxed out Kotonoha’s “affection bar” pretty quickly by saying the right things and being supportive of things like her phobia of being touched. Makoto dropped everything to do things with her. He let her be alone when she wanted to be alone, and was there when she needed him. This all went terribly well, culminating in her opening up to Makoto (in more ways than one, fnarr) and accepting him as her boyfriend. Eventually, the pair made plans to spend Christmas Eve together in an expensive hotel paid for by Kotonoha’s family, where they proceeded to, not to put too fine a point on it, bang each other senseless.

Unfortunately, all this happened without any consideration whatsoever for Sekai’s feelings. Early in the game, we get an indication that Sekai might, in fact, like Makoto when she steals a kiss from him as “payment” for her help with Kotonoha. She denies this, however, giving the couple space and dealing with her own issues by herself. This doesn’t stop rumours circulating that she and Makoto are together, however, which doesn’t make her feel any better. She enters a cycle of depression, ending up so wrapped up in her own sorrow that she is almost unable to function. Her friends intervene and rescue her, but whatever there once was between her and Makoto is gone forever. Makoto himself says to Kotonoha in this ending that he doesn’t care who he has to hurt, as long as he’s with Kotonoha. She seems quite happy with this situation.

My second playthrough followed an initially similar path. Despite my attempts to get Makoto and Sekai together instead, I still found myself on the “Kotonoha” plot branch — the story diverges quite wildly at the end of the second episode and proceeds down either the “Sekai” or “Kotonoha” route according to the choices made at the beginning, splitting into about a bajillion other branches along the way.

This time around, however, Makoto was clearly confused, and more than a little miserable. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be with Kotonoha, and missed Sekai, who was deliberately distancing herself from the couple in order to let them be together. Makoto tried to confess his love to Sekai, but she told him to stop being such an idiot and focus on his girlfriend. And rightly so.

But things continued to decline. Makoto’s heart really wasn’t in the time he spent with Kotonoha, and things came to a head at the school festival. In my first playthrough, Kotonoha takes the bold step of inviting Makoto to the hidden “break room” behind her class’s display to, uh, get over her phobia of being touched; this time around, however, the same situation arose and Kotonoha said nothing, largely because Makoto made his excuses and pretty much ran away before they could talk about anything.

Instead, Makoto made a choice: he went and found Sekai, who was waiting by the bonfire at the end of the festival. The school’s traditions and legends dictate that a couple who dances together by the bonfire will stay together for at least the next year, and knowing this full well, Makoto and Sekai dance together, and they both seem genuinely happy for the first time. The two enter a curious “friends with benefits” relationship, where Sekai agrees to be Makoto’s “practice girlfriend” with whom he can do all the stuff that Kotonoha won’t let him do, but it is abundantly clear that both of them actually like each other.

To cut a long story short, Kotonoha shows her latent bunny-boiler tendencies, forcing herself on Makoto and snapping a compromising picture of him in order to try and convince Sekai to give up. Sekai is understandably devastated and refuses to talk to anyone, let alone Makoto, but when he spends the entire night sitting on her doorstep looking completely and utterly defeated and is found by her mother, her heart melts and the two share the genuine couple’s embrace that they’ve been craving, while Kotonoha is left to stew and Think Very Hard About What She’s Done.

In my third playthrough, which I haven’t finished yet, I made a specific effort to woo Sekai from the beginning. It’s tough to do this — firstly because Sekai is seemingly resistant to Makoto’s advances and secondly because it genuinely makes me feel like absolute shit to treat Kotonoha like crap — but if you keep pushing enough in the right direction, the plot takes a wildly divergent path in a different direction. Rather than focusing on Makoto and Kotonoha, Sekai takes centre stage. It seems that she’s been avoiding both Makoto and her own friends — the former because she doesn’t want to get in the way of the relationship she helped build, and the latter because they believe her to already be together with Makoto and keep asking questions. It was impressive how much of a change some slight tweaks to remarks and context made to the plot, and I’ll be interested to see how this particular path develops.

End spoilers.

As that lengthy explanation probably demonstrated fairly aptly, this is a title with a considerable degree of depth — not in gameplay terms, but in a narrative sense. Both Kotonoha and Sekai (and Makoto, for that matter) are very complex characters with a variety of facets to their personality — only some of which you appear to see on any one given playthrough. Three times around and I’m still learning new and interesting things about these characters, which will hopefully help me to make the “right” choices in the end.

But that then begs the question: with 20 different endings, what is the “right” one? School Days certainly has its fair share of bad endings (though I haven’t seen any yet) but who’s to say these are “wrong”? Similarly, the first ending I got with Kotonoha was technically a “good” ending, I guess, but I was still left feeling distinctly shitty about how I’d treated Sekai in the process.

This is genuine emotional engagement right here. The Feels, if you will. And along with that comes a real sense of your choices having real consequences. This combination of factors, it turns out, is enough to keep me coming back time after time to see what happens next. I don’t need beautifully-rendered guns, I don’t need slick platforming, or creative mechanics; all I need for a game to keep me compelled is three strong characters and some increasingly fucked-up relationships between them.

Further posts on this subject will undoubtedly follow, especially if I come across any particularly noteworthy endings along the way.

#oneaday Day 943: School Days HQ First Impressions

I mentioned a while back that I’d acquired a copy of School Days HQ from JAST USA/JList, but I didn’t play it very far due to a few rather nasty bugs that unfortunately made it on to the master CDs. Two rather hastily-deployed patches later and the game now appears to be fully playable without issue, which means I can get stuck into it. I’m now two “episodes” in — I’m not sure how many there are in total — and ready to give some first impressions.

School Days HQ, for the uninitiated, is a remake of a visual novel originally released in 2005 for Windows, PS2 and PSP. It’s unusual in the visual novel genre in that instead of static backdrops with characters and text overlaid atop them, it’s fully animated. “Fully” might be a slight exaggeration, as the game has something of a tendency to cut to images of the sky or a particularly interesting piece of ceiling whenever something that might have been difficult to animate happens, but for the most part the game looks rather convincingly like an animé series you’d watch on TV and, occasional strange cuts aside, is well-directed, with good use of split-screen and other special effects. In essence, it’s an interactive movie rather than a visual novel, but it tends to be lumped in that genre due to its similarities in structure and gameplay. And, of course, the fact it has bonking in it.

Said gameplay involves a lot of watching and occasionally making decisions that will branch the story off in different directions. You can’t afford to sit back and relax in School Days HQ, however, because decision points come without warning and “expire” after a short period of time — effectively making “say nothing” a valid option in most situations. This is an unusual feature for visual novels and for narrative-based games in general — the only other recent examples I can think of are The Walking Dead from Telltale and Heavy Rain, both of which have more in common with the visual novel genre than more “conventional” game styles. (I suppose choosing not to do the Paragon or Renegade actions in Mass Effect might sort of count, too.)

School Days HQ’s narrative is all about close personal relationships, a favourite theme of mine. Protagonist Makoto finds himself sitting next to class cutie Sekai when their seats are rearranged, and through a bit of underhanded manipulation on Sekai’s part, admits that he has a bit of a crush on the very shy Kotonoha, a girl from another class. Sekai, who firmly establishes herself early on as a complete control freak, makes it her goal to get Makoto and Kotonoha together and succeeds in her machinations.

Both Makoto and Kotonoha are almost painfully awkward together, however — extremely hung up on the conventions of polite Japanese society and not quite sure how to cope with the prospect of a relationship — it takes two dates before they’ll call each other by their first names. Sekai, meanwhile, appears to have her own designs on Makoto, but so far in the story has done nothing but help the couple — with a bit of gentle teasing along the way, however. Given that she took her “payment” for getting the two together in the form of a kiss from Makoto and then spent her train journey home crying, however, it’s clear that all is not as it seems with Sekai, and I’m expecting a distinctly messy love triangle as the story proceeds — something which has already been rather strongly foreshadowed.

So far I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve seen. The animation and voice acting is decent quality, the subtitles appear to be well-translated and the timed decision points give the player a strong feeling of involvement even though, as usual for the genre, they’re relatively infrequent. The characters are interesting, and the plot, while seemingly mundane, certainly has a lot of potential to head off in a bunch of different directions — including, as I understand it, some distinctly fucked-up ones. Which is nice.

As with many visual novels, the game is specifically for adults and features explicit sexual scenes. There haven’t been any yet, but given that the game supports bona fide wanking machines for both sexes, it’s fair to expect that there will be at least a few on the game’s various paths. There’s also the usual unnecessary (but seemingly expected) “fanservice” throughout — there were two rather gratuitous shots of shimapan in the first episode alone, though the second episode seemed to restrain itself from further pervertedness — fitting, since it largely revolved around Makoto worrying whether or not him attempting to hold Kotonoha’s hand would make her see him as a “pervert”.

I’m looking forward to continuing through the story. Its episodic nature means that it can be easily digested in small chunks like a TV series — and I mean this literally, as each episode opens with a short teaser, plays an opening title sequence and ends with a credits crawl. As such, it’s an experience that can easily be fit around other things or marathoned all in one go.

Will I get a good or bad ending, though? That remains to be seen. I hope I get a good one. I kind of like these characters.

#oneaday Day 941: Scrivenings

I’ve been spending a bit more time with Scrivener, a writing tool that I picked up a while back and then didn’t do much with for a little while. Having paid actual money for it, though, I figured it was high time I delved into it and actually started using it for a project rather than it being one of those things that just gathers (virtual) dust as a symbol of past good intentions.

I decided that the project I was going to use it for was a visual novel. Regular readers will know that I find this simple but effective form of interactive storytelling to be a fascinating medium, and I have been toying with the idea of writing one for quite some time, usually falling at the first hurdle when I remember I have little-to-no graphical talent, which somewhat precludes me from incorporating the “visual” bit.

But, I figured, no sense worrying about graphics if there’s nothing for them to visualise. So I decided to actually start writing it, and to use Scrivener to plan it out in advance.

Now, when I write, I must confess that I rarely go through a formal “planning” process. This is probably fairly evident in these daily blog posts, which tend to spew forth directly from my brain and out of my fingers in some sort of hideously unorganised stream of consciousness. But it’s the way I’ve generally worked on more formal pieces over time, too. During A-Levels and university, I never “planned” an essay on a piece of paper beforehand. I never used the “outline” function of Word, I never scrawled things on Post-Its and then moved them around. I just wrote, then tweaked, fiddled and moved things around once I’d written a first draft. It worked for me.

Mostly.

That approach doesn’t work so well with long-form fiction, whether you’re attempting to create a linear narrative for a novel or a non-linear branching narrative for a game or visual novel. I have a number of stalled novel projects on the go simply because I’m not entirely sure where they’re going. In some cases, I have an idea of what the end might be, but it’s the stuff in the middle I haven’t figured out. How to get from the beginning to the end, as it were.

So, as I decided to start work on this visual novel project (which, like an irritating PR agency for a company making an iOS game you don’t give a shit about I’m “not ready to talk about yet”) I also figured that I would give this whole “planning” thing a shot. I recalled seeing the spectacularly comprehensive flowchart for Katawa Shoujo (mild spoilers within), and knew that if I was going to put together even a relatively simple VN project, I would have to figure out some sort of way to keep it organised.

Fortunately, Scrivener has delivered just that brilliantly. In order to plan out the basic sequence of events, I’ve used the “corkboard” facility and its special mode where you can drag around virtual index cards as you please. I’ve written short synopses of each scene on each index card and laid them out in a logical fashion to depict the various routes the player might be able to take through the story. Each index card then corresponds to a separate “subdocument” in the whole Scrivener project, allowing scenes to easily be split up and composed a little bit at a time rather than simply being confronted with a daunting blank page and no idea where to start.

Then there’s pleasing little touches that help with the actual writing process, too. When writing in “Script” mode (which I’m using to compose the VN), simple keyboard shortcuts allow you to easily switch from writing actions to character names to dialog and back again. You can create links to other subdocuments or your research (which you can also store within your Scrivener project). You can split the editor window so you can refer to a piece of source material as you write. And when it’s all done you can “compile” your project ready for publishing as a physical product, ebook or other format.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the features it offers, but already I can see it becoming an essential part of the writing process. Progress on the VN project is going well so far — I’ve synopsised (huh… according to spellcheck that IS a word) the whole of the first “act” of the game and am now starting on in-depth scripting for each scene. Following this, I’ll work on the various diverging paths through the narrative and hopefully end up with a suitably comprehensive document ready to plug into Ren’Py and then flutter my eyelashes at someone who can draw. Following that, who knows? Perhaps I’ll have a finished game one day.

#oneaday Day 778: Corpse Party: A (Spoiler-Free) Scoreless Review

I’m glad this game exists. It’s a pleasing piece of evidence to point to when people start talking about subject matter which would “never get greenlit by a publisher”. It exists. It was greenlit by someone. It’s freely available to download to your PSP or Vita via PSN. It’s horrific. And it’s brilliant.

Corpse Party tells the story of a hapless group of schoolkids who botch an attempt to commune with the spirit world and find themselves trapped in a long-abandoned elementary school populated with rather unfriendly ghosts. It’s then up to the player to help the group (who quickly become separated in true horror movie fashion) to understand the truth behind what’s going on and return them to safety. It all gets very Japanese horror very quickly — if you’ve seen anything like Ju-on: The Grudge or played Fatal Frame you’ll know the sort of thing to expect.

Unfolding like a cross between a visual novel and a top-down 16-bit RPG, Corpse Party manages to keep the player feeling involved in the action while keeping the story flowing at a good pace. Oftentimes the player’s only contribution between important events will be moving the current player character (for there are several) to a new location, but that simple act, along with the ability to examine items in the environment such as creepy notices on the walls and corpses of previous unwitting visitors to Heavenly Host Elementary School, makes the game feel far more interactive than many visual novel titles, which typically involve tapping the “continue” button lots of times. There’s plenty of that, too, sure, but mild exploration and puzzle elements make this feel much more like a “game” to those who care about that sort of thing.

It’s worth noting at this point that far from taking the relatively “straight line to the finish” approach that many visual novels take, Corpse Party gets increasingly easy to balls up completely as you proceed. Rather than simply immediately ending with a “Game Over” screen for making a bad choice, however, sometimes the butterfly effect of actions you take doesn’t become apparent until an hour or two later. This is a double-edged sword; it turns “making a mistake” into an “alternative ending”, even going so far as to credit the player with this ending in the menu screens, but it also means having to replay previous events, figure out what you did wrong and then do something differently. And God help you if you didn’t make full use of the five available save slots per chapter. Fortunately, though, each of the game’s five chapters is relatively short, with the final one being the longest at around three hours, meaning that replaying a whole chapter is not as much of a chore as it could be — though the game could really do with that mainstay of traditional visual novel interfaces: the “skip” button.

While it’s relatively easy to get on to a “bad ending” path, particularly later in the game, this actually isn’t something to get too frustrated about, for some of the most intense, morbidly fascinating and emotional scenes come about as a result of these “Wrong Ends”, as the game calls them. Sometimes these are subtle changes to events in the supposed “true” ending for each chapter that mean hope turns to tragedy. Sometimes these endings result in horrible deaths for one of more of the main characters. Sometimes they result in revelations about the characters that you wouldn’t find out about otherwise. Pretty much all bar a couple of “you were caught by a Bad Thing, you die” incidents are worthwhile and substantial narrative events in their own right, making discovering all of the story’s possible endings — good and bad — something of a metagame in itself.

The game’s story and the emotional power behind it is helped by a fantastic translation from the Japanese coupled with some truly excellent, emotionally charged Japanese-language voice acting. Even if you don’t speak Japanese, you’ll want to let the fully-voiced dialogue run its course, as it’s packed with convincing expressions of emotion. (Oh, and you’ll want to wear headphones while playing. The game features some of the most unsettling use of stereo effects I’ve ever encountered, along with a kickass soundtrack.) Characters laugh, cry, scream in terror and generally act in an incredibly realistic manner given the situation they find themselves in. Certain incidents which occur also show that being in a horrific, seemingly inescapable situation doesn’t make the cast immune to things like your body letting you down at the worst possible moment, or your own feelings towards another person. Despite its supernatural core, Corpse Party’s tale is a very human one, examining the relationships between all the members of its main cast and leaving the player feeling like they know most of them very well by the end of the story.

But that doesn’t mean that the horror side of things is toned down. Far from it. Despite its retro-style presentation, this is likely one of the most disturbing, unsettling games you’ll ever play. It doesn’t hold back. This game puts its characters through some of the most unimaginable suffering possible in the name of evoking an emotional response from players, and it’s all the better for it. Story is conflict, and through conflict people grow and change — sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. The fact that the characters are children drives home the fact that tragedy can happen to anyone, and the way in which we react to horrific situations can make a big difference to what happens to us next. It’s a powerful tale, for sure, and even the most strong-stomached will struggle not to wince at some of the acts described throughout the course of the game’s narrative.

Note that I say “described” and not “seen”, for Corpse Party understands that most fundamental tenet of horror — the most terrifying things are not the most spectacularly gory things presented to the viewer on a plate, but the things in their imagination. As such, many of the game’s strongest, most disturbing scenes are depicted entirely through text, colour flashes and sound effects. The understated manner in which various unpleasant incidents are coolly relayed to the player makes them all the more powerful, for it’s at these moments that the imagination comes into play, filling in the blanks about what is not described as much as picturing what is described. It’s a potent demonstration of the huge difference that having people who know what they are doing work on a game’s script makes.

Corpse Party isn’t a long game, and it won’t take you long to beat all five chapters. There’s plenty of incentive to replay, though, including discovering all the possible endings — good and bad — as well as a series of smaller “extra chapters” that fill in other events which are occurring alongside the main plot. There’s also a bunch of student ID tags to collect throughout the course of the game, providing details on previous visitors to Heavenly Host who weren’t so lucky, including how they died. It’s a diverting little side mission which is integrated nicely into the theme of the game rather than feeling like a gratuitous addition. Since the PSP doesn’t have a Trophy system, it’s clear that these tags haven’t just been added to fill out the Trophy list; they’re instead present to provide context and atmosphere to an already creepy and impactful game.

So should you play Corpse Party? If you’re a fan of story-based games and Japanese horror, then yes, you most certainly should. There’s more than enough content to get your £11.99 worth in this game, and despite a couple of niggling flaws (the lack of a “skip” button when replaying scenes being the most disappointing oversight) it’s a memorable, emotional experience that will stay with you long after it’s finished.

#oneaday Day 775: Having a Corpse Party

Looking for something terrifying? Own a PSP? Then quit whatever you’re doing and go download Corpse Party from PSN for a very reasonable £11.99.

I’ve mentioned this briefly a couple of times over the last few days but it’s worthy of some more in-depth enthusing, so here goes.

Corpse Party is a horror adventure game that uses a combination of Chrono Trigger-style top-down visuals and beautifully-drawn anime-style stills to tell its tale. And what a gruesome, horrifying tale it is.

Following a botched attempt to cast a friendship charm as one of a group of friends is set to leave her school, eight Japanese high schoolers and their teacher find themselves trapped in an unpleasant situation: a ruined, abandoned, creepy old school that is not their own, populated by malevolent ghosts and a wide variety of mutilated dead bodies — obviously previous victims of whatever curse brought them there. It’s up to the player to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and attempt to get the kids home. I haven’t finished it yet, so I don’t know if they’re successful.

Corpse Party initially puts across the impression of being just another light-hearted anime adventure. But things quickly take a turn for the dark as the corpses start piling up and the numerous mysteries surrounding the ruined school start to reveal themselves. Gameplay is limited to wandering around, exploring and making occasional choices, so the game is perhaps best compared to a visual novel rather than an adventure game or survival horror, but it manages to be one of the most affecting, evocative games I’ve ever played using the bare minimum of tricks and gimmicks.

It achieves this in a variety of ways. First up is the excellent writing and localisation. Not only is the tale told one filled with unexpected twists and turns, but it’s also one populated with believable, “human” characters who are far from being “video game heroic”. They’re kids. They talk like kids, they swear like kids, they make inappropriate comments like kids and they react like kids would in horrific situations like the ones in the game — by screaming, crying and running away.

The game doesn’t hold back in its writing, preferring instead to depict its characters’ behaviour in a realistic manner rather than the sanitised view of life we get in many other video games. For example, in one flashback scene depicting one of the characters’ lives before the events of the game, we see a big sister (one of the main cast) and her little brother in the bathroom together. Both are nude. Big sister, who is somewhat outspoken and borderline brash at times, teases her little brother for being ashamed of his nakedness and hiding his penis from her, tackles him to the ground and tickles him, behaving as siblings do. There’s no inappropriate eroticism in the scene despite the characters’ nudity, just a believable depiction of two very “human” characters enjoying a mundane moment together.

A lot of the power of Corpse Party’s writing comes from this clash between the mundane and the uncanny. Chapters will often open with a flashback of the “good old days” before the botched charm made everything go wrong for these kids, and it makes the anguish and terror they go through all the more profoundly affecting having seen what they’re like in situations that they’re comfortable with.

The writing is wonderfully descriptive without being overly explicit, either. Some of the most toe-curling, unpleasant scenes in the game come from a blank screen accompanied only by text and minimal sound effects. And yet somehow the manage to be far more horrific than anything I’ve seen on a next-gen console. The imagination is truly a powerful thing.

Imagination is all very well, but it can be helped along in a few ways. Firstly, there’s the visual side of things, which is kept relatively simple for the most part — old-school pixel art RPG-style graphics punctuated with occasional hand-drawn closeups to emphasise particular scenes.

Star of the show is the game’s sound design, though. Best experienced on headphones, Corpse Party’s soundtrack combines a variety of atmospheric, dramatic and memorable musical themes with subtle use of sound effects and some truly fantastic Japanese-language voice acting. The delivery is packed with emotion, making the kids’ screams of terror all the more harrowing as you find yourself really believing what’s going on. And the use of stereo makes for an impressively unnerving experience.

While some may object to a game which features quite so much violence against children, I for one have so far found the mature treatment of the player to be refreshing. The game doesn’t pull any punches at any point, meaning that you’re just as likely to meet an agonising and drawn-out demise when playing as a little girl as you are when playing the “tough” guy. Far from feeling “wrong”, however, the knowledge that the game’s characters are in very real danger throughout provides a strong emotional impetus for the player to get to the bottom of what’s going on and try to save them.

The only criticism of the game I have is the fact that if you find yourself down one of the “bad ending” paths and meeting a sticky end, you can sometimes lose a bit of progress if you haven’t been saving fastidiously at the game’s sparsely-scattered save points. With no means to quickly skip through scenes you’ve already seen once, this can be a little frustrating for the impatient (or those who can’t work out what they’re doing wrong — though it’s usually obvious).

This little issue far from ruins the experience, however. In fact, those who want to “100%” the game will actually need to see all of these unpleasant endings as well as the “proper” ends to each of the game’s five chapters, meaning that an unpleasant death for one of the cast isn’t necessarily wasted play time.

Above all, Corpse Party is a rewarding, affecting, remarkable experience that treats the player as an adult throughout. It’s refreshing to play through something which doesn’t feel sanitised or dumbed down in the slightest, and I’m both surprised and delighted that a game like this made it on to the Western PSN store.

I’m certainly not complaining, though. In fact, I’d like to see a lot more titles like this in the future.

#oneaday Day 760: I Love You, Kana

I’m on a bit of a “narrative-based games that challenge the conventions of what is ‘normal’ and/or ‘acceptable’ for video games to tackle” kick at the moment, if you can even have a “kick” in such a thing. So it was that I found myself playing Kana Little Sister recently.

“What is Kana Little Sister?” I hear you ask. It’s another one of them visual novel type things from Japan, meaning lots of reading, occasional decisions to make, anime-style pictures and, in many (though not all) cases, some naughty pictures. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can acquire a legal copy that works on modern machines right here. Link is pretty much NSFW, just so you know.

It will probably not surprise you to note that there are likely to be spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned. Spoileriffic stuff is below the break. All discussion here is based on a single playthrough which achieved Ending No. 6, aka “Live Now”, aka “Intellectual Ending No. 3”, so any and all spoilers will relate to that route only.

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 760: I Love You, Kana” →

#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo

This is the sixth (and definitely final… for now) of several posts regarding the notorious amateur-developed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. If you are intending to play this game and would like to avoid spoilers, this post is somewhat less spoilery than the recent character-specific ones, but might still spoil a few bits and pieces. All spoilery discussion is below the break.

If you’re still reading this, it’s highly likely you already know what Katawa Shoujo is but just in case you aren’t and/or you haven’t read the previous posts where I included this exact same paragraph, it’s a visual novel developed by 4 Leaf Studios, made up of members of the much- (and usually justifiably-) maligned 4chan community along with other itinerant creative types from around the Internet. It was developed following extended discussion over a sketch by Japanese doujinshi artist Raita, and is the very definition of a “labour of love”, having come from discussions on 4chan all the way to a full-fledged, professional-quality game between the years of 2007 and 2012. It’s been described by some as “eroge” or an erotic game, but I feel this does it an injustice; there are sexual scenes in the game, yes, but the point of the game is not to get to these scenes — rather, they are part of the plot, and not necessarily a “victory” for the player. They are also not terribly frequent compared to the rest of the game, which focuses on interpersonal interactions and psychological issues.

If you want to check out Katawa Shoujo for yourself, take a peek at the official website. My previous post regarding Emi’s path can be found here, and if you’re too lazy to scroll down, yesterday’s post on Rin can be found here, the previous day’s post on Shizune can be found here, the previous previous day’s post on Hanako can be found here, and the day before that’s post on Lilly can be found here. I’ve now finished the game 100%, so perhaps I’ll shut up about it now.

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo” →