This one caught my eye a long time ago. A VN about becoming an idol? And it's free? Sign me up!
Well… I should have known what was in store when I opened it up and there wasn't even any BGM in the main menu.
Alice is working as an intern for a broadcaster that's about to launch their new talent show. It's a tried and true trope - one of the contestants fails to show up and when the producer spots Alice, it's go time. Lucky for her, the first episode is but an introduction, so nobody gets eliminated yet.
Right after that, the producers help Alice and her new rivals - Mary, Cherry and Taylor - move into a huge mansion complex for the duration of the show. Mary is rich and seemingly stuck-up, Cherry is a cute airhead and Taylor seems like she doesn't give a shit about anything, though she's always equipped with a good comeback if anyone were to point it out to her. After moving in, you get a day (a metaphor for the whole week) to go somewhere and possibly spend time with whoever's there at the same time. After that's done, the next week's episode airs, rinse and repeat until the show ends.
The problem is in how disjointed everything feels right from the start. My very first choice was to hang out with Taylor and the narration seemed to imply that Alice did nothing for most of the day just so she could go to Taylor's room in the evening. For a second I thought that because this option is last in line, maybe I skipped out on all the other things I could have done, making most of the day go to waste. Nope! Next time, some of the choices carried over, but I couldn't explain why if I tried. There's also only four weeks until the show is over, so whatever character development could be happening between the episodes just doesn't get enough time.
As for the show, the three middle episodes are themed, with the themes being Summer, Winter and Darkness, in this exact order. (One of these things is not like the other!)
This is where I continue my observations about music (or lack thereof); I could be wrong, but it felt like for the first hour, I was just listening to the same BGM. Bland and inoffensive, sure, but this is supposed to be a story about idols!
…yet nobody cared to change it up even for the show performances.
The lame but entertaining option would be to use an instrumental to some popular idol song, 'cause then at least you'd surprise the people who know and love it; the cooler but paid option would be to get some tracks from Nash Music Library, as they've got some great idol-like bops. But alas, random stock BGM instead.
And the writing… oh boy, the writing. Everyone keeps reiterating how often "show, don't tell" spells out disaster for so many pieces of media that fail to adhere to this simple piece of advice and Alice in Stardom is no different. During every performance, without fail, you get to read paragraphs upon paragraphs about how much the characters have changed, their progress, how amazing they are, how they must feel, how they've captivated the audience… it's almost as if the writer was contracted to provide textbook examples of waffling.
Mindblowingly enough, this could hold some weight if you got to see any of that work, change or feeling for yourself… but the game absolutely lacks any kind of middle part. No matter what you choose to do to hang out, you don't get to see any CGs or hear any particular musical cues to indicate training or any kind of feelings or emotions welling up.
And to the point of CGs, there's only maybe three of them in total and they're all of Alice performing… she doesn't even look consistent between them. They're introduced to the scene with specific camera effects, which I guess were supposed to look flashy or exciting, but keeping in mind that you're listening to the same basic piece of BGM and reading about her love for her fans, they're just annoying.
After Alice wins the show (because of course she does, she's the main character!), you get a scene where she and her new lover (?!) warm up to each other. All that middle that was already missing? Now you should also know that it was meant to make the game yuri.
This is especially ridiculous, because in no interactions with any of the characters that I got to read was there anything romantic (and if it was meant to be, then sorry, it was all written so poorly I did not perceive it as such). I don't remember hanging out with Mary even once in my first playthrough, and yet I got her scene at the end? America, explain!
I tried putting in some additional time to see how much optional stuff I could see in the hangouts, and just when I got to one with Cherry that seemed like it would lead me to get her final scene, the game threw an error because it couldn't find one of her sprites. In a flash of brilliance, instead of simply rolling back and changing my choice, I closed the game and called it quits right then and there.
This game is in dire need of varied character designs (Alice, Cherry and Taylor are all blonde, with Alice and Cherry both having blue eyes), BGM (literally the most important thing in any story about idols!) and an actual story (hangouts with CGs! vocal training that sounds like what it is! any kind of respectful flirting!), but at the same time, it came out 5 years ago and the devs have long since moved on, so I don't suppose it's trying to attract any kind of attention anymore.

Alice in Stardom is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 25/11/2024. Touchscreen, A, R2, R3 to advance text, R1 to rollback, L2 or Menu to bring up save menu; B to bring up accessibility options, View to skip text. Right touchpad is also active.

At first glance, this game's presentation is reminiscent of The Witness, which made me wonder if I should play it in the first place. Now that I've completed it, I'm glad I decided to pick it up.
It's 1890 and you're Lady Arabella Greene, a botanist residing at the titular Botany Manor in England. You have just been given a chance to publish your own herbarium, so you get to work right away.
Botany Manor is a formulaic yet consistently exciting combination of a walking simulator and puzzle game; in each chapter, you'll be uncovering a set of locations in and around the manor, finding new seeds and gathering clues about how to grow them, and after you do, you'll be able to move on to the next one seamlessly. Besides the clues, just about each and every room will have some sort of environmental storytelling - notes and letters about Arabella's attempts to study botany being (mostly) ridiculed by men and (mostly) supported by women. I found the puzzling aspect delightfully simple in that even before you show your work (fill in a whole set of clues correctly), you can very clearly see it for yourself; I truly can't remember ever getting that sense of satisfaction from a puzzle game so consistently. (I only really "skipped" through one puzzle, because I couldn't connect the dots right on my own, and it felt like trying out random solutions would take too much time.)
Speaking of consistency, I remained amused by all the different things necessary for each and every plant to bloom successfully; some of those plants seem outright fantastical, but I'm too afraid to say anything more in case I sound like an idiot. The way new areas open up with the start of each new chapter makes you want to keep going, too; entering every other area for the first time triggers the background music to swell…
If I had to talk about something I didn't like, I'd choose what seems to be a universal complaint amongst players: the lack of a menu for the clues to carry over in. While countless other games that feature interactable letters, articles, notes etc. will save them to a separate menu for future use (or tracking, at least), Botany Manor doesn't do that. Instead, it only saves info about what kind of clue it is (e.g. "Article on luminescence", "Elizabeth's letter") and the place you found it in, so if you need to take another look at a certain clue, you're going to have to run back to the room it's in instead of just being able to flip open a separate notebook. Still, this experience was wonderful; that's about the only thing holding it off from having been perfect.

Imagine playing the last scene of Doki Doki Literature Club!… but that's all there is to it. No story leading up to it, no emotional attachment, no weight. That's HeartWare. All you can get out of this is having a 2D girl you don't know a single thing about talk at you about how badly she wants to be real. The implications of what she says are weird too; why has she seen Rick and Morty, but not a single anime? How come she loves the Phoenix Wright series, but hasn't played Portal? She also references DDLC and Monika, because of course she does. At a certain point, the game accesses info about what device you're playing on, and even though I used the Deck, it said I'm on a PC; can the game not recognize the Deck or is the Deck not considered anything else than a portable computer? It also returned my current time as "20 PM", so it clearly can't account for 24-hour clocks. It's been 7 years since DDLC first came out, so I wish the dev of HeartWare a Happy Read-Another-VN-Please.

HeartWare is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 21/11/2024. Touchscreen or A to advance text, Menu or B (I forgot which…) should bring up the save menu. Right touchpad is active. All standard Ren'Py options are also available at the bottom of the screen.

Lilith may be a demon, but her power level is considerably lower than those of her peers. Opening this game entails being open to the idea of selling your soul to her. There's just one problem… she's lost the memo on how much your soul is worth. To find out anew, she decides to ask you twenty questions ("like the kids' game") from the forms she found in her documents instead. After that's done, you get a certificate proving your soul's worth, which you can print out and boast about to people in real life.
For the record, my soul turned out to be worth as much as a gym membership, so about $77.
After announcing the result, Lilith does ask if you find the compensation worthy enough to exchange your soul for, and even though it's not that much money or even remotely useful to me personally, I liked Lilith enough that I couldn't say no to the transaction.
In spite of its simplicity (and perhaps because it's programmed to be played only once per device by default), this game was charming for what it was. Based on what Lilith says near the end, I hope there will be another game featuring her at some point in the future.

Lilith wants to buy your soul is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 28/11/2024. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, R1 to rollback, View to skip, L2 or Menu to quit.

Los' mom just signed them up for a course designed to help boost self-esteem and confidence. They're convinced they feel comfortable being on their own and aren't willing to let people in due to past disappointments. The course period goes by in a flash and all they've retained is their interest in one of the other attendees, Hazel. Will they find the courage to talk to her before parting for good?
Thanks to this one, I can now officially say that I've played a VN made in Godot. While it's not a long game, I can only assume that this is about as far as the functionality of the engine goes when it comes to creating VNs, making it more akin to Unity than Ren'Py. The art is adorable and the BGM, albeit sparse, doesn't feel all that repetitive. I'm unclear on whether or not it would be possible to build in a regular skip function, but if not, the devs have found a way around this limitation.

Lost Connections is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text, Menu to bring up the menu. Right touchpad is also active. A backlog is supposed to be available, but none of the inputs I tried seemed to bring it up.

Originally released in 2012 and now available on Steam, Loving Life is an autobiographical story written by Zhenghua ("Z") Yang, the founder of Serenity Forge, about his near-death experience back in 2008.
One day after class, he felt really tired and in spite of thinking about studying for the midterm next day, he went to sleep at 11 PM, which was unusual for him at the time. At 1 AM, he woke up to his nose bleeding. After taking some time to try (and fail) to stop it, Z decided to go to sleep, wake up whenever it was time to change the tissue, then go back to sleep again.
As one might imagine, that was not a good night's sleep and only around 3 PM, one of Z's friends decided to take him to the college medical center. The nosebleed had stopped only then, 14 hours after it first started (for the record, you should be worried if your nose is bleeding for more than 20 minutes, which I would not have known otherwise). His blood test results are worrying, but he's told to come in next morning. After a considerably better night, Z wakes up and records himself talking about his situation right before going in for the checkup.
At the doctor's office, he's told to go to the hospital immediately, so he does just that. Turns out his results are even worse than the college doctor thought, but Z's not even done answering all the questions before he gets another nosebleed and loses consciousness.
His condition is so bad, in fact, that a nurse comes by and gives him a will to sign. This causes him to ponder whether or not his life was good and how it contributed to the world, if it did at all, among other things.
This is where the story fades out into then-current times, with Z fully recovered and back in college, only with a different major this time around. Interestingly enough, he claims he really got better only after he stopped the experimentative treatments he was offered. At the very end, you get to watch the clip he recorded before going to his second checkup.
It's tough to judge this story, on account of it being based in reality; there's not really a place to discuss it being "better" or "more exciting". I would have really liked to read about Z's recovery from a state considered fatal by medical professionals, as I don't think it's as easy as "loving life and having it love you back". Then again, if that was too confusing or technical, I understand that it might not have made for good reading. The part that's meant to make you feel inspired to make changes in your own life is not too long or overly preachy, although the optics of Z saying that playing video games didn't make a positive impact on his life when he's since become the CEO of his own video game developing and publishing company are… hm.

Loving Life is Playable on Steam Deck, likely only because tapping the touchscreen makes a mouse cursor show up. Touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text and L2 or Menu to bring up the menu.

In a world where the human race is on the decline due to becoming prey for monsters and demons, Max and Celeste live together as roommates in a village where nobody really likes them.
During the day, Max is training himself in combat, aiming to one day measure up to all the other villagers, while Celeste is one of the few magic users in the village (and a damn good one at that), so she spends her time studying in the library. Every few days, they also have regular class together.
However, Max keeps getting bullied in combat training and Celeste feels her exceptional magic skills are being ignored in lieu of her teacher's seniority. Whenever they regroup after their individual studies, the mood is sour, with Celeste talking about her desire to destroy the whole village and not have to put up with that treatment anymore.
At night, Max starts having spicy dreams about Celeste, but they make him feel wrong since he's had feelings for Celeste for a long time now.
Will these dreams get more daring or stop entirely? And will Max and Celeste find a way to gain the villagers' respect, or will they end up bringing the whole village down?
I found this one… just mediocre. I've played a few VNs with character designs from the same artist and so far, I liked none of them, so I suppose it tracks. Their style is very clean, however, to the point that it's hard to believe these characters are what the writing claims they are. You're telling me pretty privilege doesn't exist in that village?
I did like the inclusion of more rare technical options, such as the choice of input prompts or the option to save on quit (as seen in Humanity Must Perish, from the same dev).

Max Massacre is Verified on Steam Deck, matching my experience as of 27/11/2024. Touchscreen, A, L2 (?) or R2 to advance text, B or Menu to bring up the save menu, L1 or View to rollback, R1 to undo rollback (not to be confused with advancing text), Y to hide textbox.

A seemingly simple puzzle game about putting together various flowers, which gets pretty hard as time goes on. It's absolutely beautiful and I can't believe Steam has kept it secret from me until now.

The unnamed (according to the store description, his name is supposed to be Harold, but it doesn't seem to function as the default) protagonist has never had any friends, so his parents helped him enroll at a college designed specifically for people like him. Before he can even get to the opening assembly, he meets three rather eccentric girls: Scout, Vivian and Anima. (Why does only one of them have an actual name? Your guess is as good as mine.)
At the assembly, it is explained that based on a simple questionnaire they're about to fill out and the way they behave throughout the first day of class, people are going to be paired up to share dorm rooms. The questionnaire includes a few questions that are simple yet don't seem to relate to each other at all; for example, I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that you can answer the gender question with "female" or "other" despite knowing that MC is male and it actively influences which girl's route you'll get on. If your answers don't match up with the girls and you say too much weird stuff on your first day, MC will be paired up with a guy he remembers from high school and it's assumed that they don't end up bonding at all, so you get a bad end.
Otherwise, the plot between the routes is identical; it's more the case of the girl of choice fitting into it. Comedy scene at the cafeteria here, working on a school project there and before you realize, the game is over. If you don't bond with the girl at all, you also get a bad end; those are completely unprompted and too much for what the rest of the game is like.
No shade towards Vivian and Anima; compelling as their backstories are, Scout was easily my favorite. At first, she looked like the mature one, of sorts, but soon enough, it turned out that she's actually very gullible, obsessed with ghost hunting and a comically big eater. Her ghost hunting obsession in particular feels very neurodivergent-coded and I wish I could hug her.
As for the technical side of things: the UI is mostly basic, although the text being aligned to the middle was a nice touch… whenever the dev didn't forget to do it, that is. There were a bit more grammar mistakes than I'd expect to see from someone who I can only assume is a native English speaker. The sprite art looks rather basic, but I learned afterwards it's because it was royalty-free and therefore not commissioned for this game specifically. I really liked the photographic backgrounds in this one and I don't know why. Royalty-free character art and photographic backgrounds instead of background art mean there's no CGs in the game, which is a shame.
However, one thing that School for the Friendless did right - unlike most VNs I've played this month - is the BGM variety. Despite the game taking only about 3 hours to fully complete, almost every time the scene changes, a different track comes on, so even if I've already been through the same even on another route, it made me feel like something completely new was going to happen. I wonder if the dev has a particular interest in music or simply found looking for all those tracks enjoyable.
I've seen the negative reviews for this game saying that the humor is cringy and bad, but surprisingly enough, I liked it. I'm not a fan of being a pervert for the sake of it (which made Vivian rather unlikeable in my eyes), but as long as the guy doesn't blindly go along with all the lewd jokes or advances that a girl is making, I find it much more bearable. That, and in spite of the sense of humor clearly taking inspiration from anime, this game isn't trying to pretend like it's set in Japan, which is extremely cringy if done poorly. By all accounts, it was a mediocre game that wasn't nearly as bad as people think, in my opinion. I'll forget it soon enough, but I don't feel like I wasted my time playing it.

School for the Friendless is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, R1 to rollback, L1 to undo rollback, L2 or Menu to bring up save menu, View to skip, left stick left to open accessibility options, left stick down to take screenshots. Right touchpad active; right stick also acts as a mouse.

Quite a peculiar prologue to Siren's Call: Escape Velocity, Sunflower Pie is a nightmare about Oliver's bleak family situation. Considering that the premise of Siren's Call: Escape Velocity is "escaping Florida", I'd say Sunflower Pie felt like a good enough setup that made me want to learn more. That being said, it's hard to say anything more about this… maybe except the fact that the very obviously anime-styled sprites under the object heads looked a bit funny. I don't think I find object heads all that scary unless the objects themselves are meant to appear grotesque. The moment the nightmare transforms into reality is nice, but I guess that's not a particularly grand observation. Two of the characters are said to have disabilities, so I'm definitely interested in seeing more of how they are portrayed. I think despite being able to relate at some base level, the narrative of Oliver's mom being abusive towards him getting toned down/nullified as soon as the nightmare ends seems kind of… weird? I assume it's one of those things that the full game will explain/straighten out.

Sunflower Pie is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text. Right touchpad is also active. Watch out for Menu, as it's mapped to the Esc key and the game has no save system.

In an alternate universe with a touch of sci-fi, the world is continuously tormented by superstorms. They show up every few months and destroy everything in their path, forcing people to hide in their shelters, sometimes for weeks at a time. There's never enough time to fix everything before the next storm, so repairs are an eternal money sink. It's become far too expensive to even have human children, so as a cheaper alternative, people have genetically engineered half-human, half-melon hybrids (referred to as simply "melos") to adopt as children.
Enter Y/N, a human who's ready to experience the outside world again, now that a superstorm has just ended. The first thing that comes to mind is going on a date, and sure enough, they create a profile and find a match - a melo named Melonais (call them Mel, for short).
Your job is to help Y/N navigate their first date with Mel. Every branch has two options to choose from and most (if not all of them) contribute to an overall rating; they can be either friendly or flirtatious.
Based on the ratio of friendly to flirtatious answers you have chosen throughout the date, you'll get one of the five possible endings. I did my best to stick to round values (0%/25%/50%/75%/100%), but according to the dev's comment, the requirements are a bit more relaxed.
I'm glad it was that easy to get all the endings, but not sure it was worth it in the end. All the endings have some positive note to them, but they all present the same way: one and the same image with second-person narration over it. I would have liked to see separate visuals, maybe even different BGM for the endings, so that it feels like discovering something new.
I think the worldbuilding was more interesting than the date, in the end. What is up with the superstorms? Why melons? How long has all of this been going for? I'd really like to see a bigger, more fleshed out story about the superstorm melon dystopia next.

Superstorm Melon Date is Playable, probably because it's missing half of the basic features provided by the Ren'Py engine, not to mention mapping them to controls on the Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, Y to hide textbox, Menu to bring up save menu.

A short story about an unnamed protagonist (Y/N, if you will) grieving after the loss of their online friend to an accident. They first met when Y/N decided to check out a certain VR game, but didn't mean to stick around after their trial was up. Then, Ji-min approached them and helped them with learning the basics. Eventually, they've both created a world to hang out in together… and the rest is history.
Y/N notes that Ji-min's influence on them was largely positive, save for the fact that they royally messed up their sleep schedule just so they could talk to her more. And now that she's gone, Y/N doesn't care to go back to their regular life. Their parents, real-life friends, their boss, they're all reaching out, hoping to get some sort of sign about Y/N, but they're ignoring all calls and emails, instead opting to lay on their bed, staring up at the ceiling as time passes idly by. Every once in a while, they log into the VR world they shared with Ji-min, only to encounter CH35H1R3, a seemingly brand new bot, made by VirtueTech to annoy new players… or is she?
This was originally written for NaNoRenO, so like with most other VN event submissions, expectations should be kept low. I liked the visual contrast between the dull browns and greys of the real world and the explosion of bright colors in the VR world (including, but not limited to, CH35H1R3's absolutely garish design) and the fact that, in spite of its duration, it features voice acting.
The one part I don't get is the choice at the very ending: as the last thing they do before moving on, should Y/N keep Ji-min's last voice mail or delete it? No matter what you choose, the credits pop in so quickly that there's no way to sit with the choice or even just the fact that the game is over. If you choose to keep it, it will play again after the credits, which I suppose is a nice bookend, considering the game also starts with Y/N listening to it, but it felt oddly weightless to me. I think it's only normal to keep a memento tied to someone who's passed away if they meant a lot to you, so the idea of deleting Ji-min's voicemail is just weird to me. If it were a material thing, you could at least look for something similar in the future if you find it still matters to you, but you can't retrieve immaterial things after they're gone…

this was for you. is Playable on Steam Deck because you need to bring up the keyboard to input your name at the start. If your keyboard placement of choice is at the bottom, keep in mind that it will obscure the input completely. I misspelled my name and couldn't fix it afterwards. Touchscreen, A, R1, R2 or R3 to advance text, L1 or Menu to bring up the save menu, L2 to rollback (I may have remembered L1/2 the other way around) and View to skip text.

I can only assume this dark fantasy yuri about Cassidy, the exiled princess of the Veromere family, now living alone in a forest and Elowen, the mysterious stranger who suddenly appears in her life, had been on my wishlist for years at this point, considering it first released on Steam back in 2020. What deserves continuous praise, however, is just how much care this game has been given ever since it first came to life. It had two demo versions (in 2016 and 2018), then a full, unvoiced release on Steam in 2020, and then a full voice acting update, released this April. Personally, I'm utterly in love with the UI design; everything just looks so nice and clean. From a gameplay standpoint, Cassidy and Elowen both having their own textbox design is a great touch; not to mention that the previous speaker's last words stay on screen as their textbox becomes more opaque. From a technical standpoint, despite the game never coming out on consoles as of now, it lets you choose which button style prompts you want to see if you're playing with a controller. Besides a CG gallery and a music room, there is also an unlockable short story, an achievement menu and most importantly, a completion tracker, which is something that's hardly ever seen in VNs (at least to my recollection) and to me, at least, implies a deeper degree of investment on the devs' part. I closed the game after having seen about 97.5% of all text, I believe? By that time, I had already gotten all the available endings twice over and I couldn't imagine what other combination of choices could lead to new textboxes… but to be fair, at that point, it's all just flavor text. Oh yeah, there's a whopping total of eight (!) endings you can get. I realize I'm not talking about the story at all, but I'm really just too shocked by how much care has been put into all the other aspects (not to say that the story isn't good). Girls' love stories aren't something I'd usually read, but this one was really good. If a fantasy story about girls falling in love with each other, with just a twinge of horror sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can't miss out on this one. Just know that even if you end up loving it, you're never going to love it more than the devs.

Without a Voice is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 20/11/2024. It's got to be the best mapped control scheme for a VN on the Deck I've seen yet. (You'd think it had a console release already!) Touchscreen or A to advance text, X to toggle auto mode, B to hide textbox, L1 to rollback, R1 to skip, Menu to open menu. A control guide is also available within the game.