Circus Reviews - Empty Horizons

As I'm writing this, I've just reached a certain point in Empty Horizons. A certain point that gives me strong admiration for ebi-hime as a writer, yet again. A certain point that reminds me that reading a story without having anything spoiled for you is an amazing experience. A certain point that makes me realize that this review is going to be very similar to another game by ebi-hime that I reviewed, Round the Mulberry Bush, in that I can't discuss what I want to discuss without breaking my policy of not having spoilers in my reviews.

...Well, fuck.

Let's talk a bit about stories like that. It's very difficult to recommend them, because telling people that something might seem bad but it will get better if they keep going sounds like advice from your nightmare's life coach. And yet here I am trying, because it's gotten to me and it's just that surprising.

Anyway.

Empty Horizons follows Mireille, a sheltered eighteen-year-old girl whose life is thrown into disarray after her father's death. Her uncle in France invites her to stay with him and hires Lyon, a former chauffer for the family, as her escort. Mireille is reluctant to go with him and isn't even sure if living with her uncle is what she wants, but goes along anyway, and during the journey, she struggles with how to feel about her father, about her lost former life, and about Lyon, who despite his irritating habits and womanizing ways has a certain charm to him.

I'll be honest...I was set to skip reviewing this game. At first glance, the story was predictable and boring. Mireille and Lyon's relationship develops rather predictably; while their banter is amusing at times, it's easy to see where things are going, and Lyon isn't a particularly likeable character despite sharing the narration with Mireille, who is just as abrasive but is also a lot easier to sympathize with due to the more frequent glances into her head. Also, Mireille at one point reads what is very heavily implied to be Twilight, which is incredibly offensive.

And then...a thing happens.

As much as I admire ebi-hime, I'm annoyed that she keeps writing visual novels that I can't fully discuss without spoiling the experience, which is something I never want to do. So good on you, ebi-hime; you have stifled me yet again. I'm left standing around unable to say much other than, "Please play this game; it's worth it!" And it makes me look like kind of a shitty reviewer. But if I have nothing else, I have moral standards when it comes to game reviews.

So to get back to things I actually can talk about:

SillySelly returns to do the artwork, and it stands out once again. Backgrounds are well done, and I'm particularly fond of the sprite art for Mireille; there's something about her expressions that betrays her vulnerability despite the harsh front she puts up. The soundtrack is lovely as well. I'm particularly a fan of the title screen track, but then, I've always been a sucker for a good piano track. And the story itself...the turn it takes is not one that you can predict. It blew me away when I first read it, but looking back on it now, I'm a bit sad it turned out the way it did. There's no other way it could have turned out, really, but I did end up feeling for the characters in the end.

This review is not much of a review. I feel like maybe I shouldn't have even written what I did, because again, there's little I can say about the plot here even though that's all I want to talk about. All I can say is, don't give up on this game like I thought about doing. Keep going. Give it a chance. As I've said before, it is not in any way what you expect it to be.

In conclusion, I am set to name ebi-hime the OELVN master of defying expectations. There isn't a medal or a trophy for this, but hopefully it's not too dubious of an honor all the same.

Empty Horizons is available on Steam and itch.io.

Final verdict: With Empty Horizons, ebi-hime has pulled out yet another game with a plot twist so important that I can barely properly review it without giving it away, so all I can really do is recommend it and then go and mumble in a corner.

Empty Horizons is developed by ebi-hime and published by Sekai Project. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.

Circus Reviews - Round the Mulberry Bush

I seem to have missed the release of this or something, likely due to the fact that I don't check my itch.io page as often as I should. It just sort of...appeared. Well, pleasant surprises are always nice!

Round the Mulberry Bush is set in the late 1700s and follows Matilda "Mattie" Addison, a young nobleborn lady, and Oliver, a stablehand who works for her family. They meet as children, and over the course of several years develop a friendship that eventually seems like it could blossom into something more, but it runs into the brick wall that is social class discrepancy.

The only characters we see are the aforementioned Mattie and Oliver. Mattie, while not at all intolerable, is pretty typical for a character of this type...spoiled, stubborn, and spirited as a child, she eventually ends up growing into a proper young lady, and because she's not the POV character we don't have the benefit of getting her thoughts and feelings about things. Far more interesting, though, is Oliver. He starts out seeming like he will be a perfectly normal underdog love interest, pining for the too-far-above heroine from afar...but as you continue the story, character development marches on.

The story takes place solely in the summers, and is divided into seven of them. Over time, you see Mattie grow from a wild child into the prim and perfect young lady her mother wants, while Oliver nurses his feelings for Mattie and mourns the loss of the little girl he remembers. That whole summary, coupled with the game's official description deeming Oliver and Mattie's romance "impossible" and mentioning that your role is to watch their relationship fall aaprt, doesn't seem to bode very well, but you might end up being surprised at how things go.

At this point I find myself coming up against my own brick wall, which is the spoiler-free policy I try to uphold for my game reviews. So I have to summarize my thoughts on the game's ending with this:

I'm a fan of it.

...I think I'm gonna need to make a separate post with spoilers so that I can talk about why.

So anyway...Art is very nice. Music is the standard free stuff, but being a user of that myself I can't really knock it too much.

Anti-spoiler policies are hard, guys. Expect that spoiler post pretty soon.

I can try to sell you on the characters and their development; I can tell you how great the story is. But in the end, I feel like this is the kind of game you just have to play. It's only 15,000 words and is completely free, so...You should probably go play that. And then read the spoiler-y post that I've also posted discussing the ending. I hate feeling like I'm aborting my own thoughts, but...It all ends with a positive recommendation and at least I can feel good about that, right?

Round the Mulberry Bush is available for free download on itch.io.

Final verdict: Round the Mulberry Bush is one of those games with an ending I would be loathe to spoil, carried by an extremely interesting narrator.

Round the Mulberry Bush is developed by ebi-hime and published by Sekai Project. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.

Circus Rambles - Spoiler-Filled Analysis of Round the Mulberry Bush

Since I can't in good conscience spoil the ending of Round the Mulberry Bush, I have instead decided to condense my feelings into this here spoiler-filled post, which I am posting prior to the spoiler-free review so that the review hides it and my integrity remains intact. That said...

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the visual novel "Round the Mulberry Bush." It is best not to read this article if you have not played the game.

There we go. So...

...

...

That ending.

Fun fact: I was opening up the script file to learn some things about how the fuck do I use Ren'Py transitions, and I accidentally ended up at the bottom of the script and read the last few lines. Out of context, I thought Oliver was literally strangling Mattie to death and that was how the visual novel ended. And I thought that was an awesome way to end things. Then I read through the visual novel for real and it turns out Oliver rapes Mattie, and that's how the visual novel ends. And I thought, okay, the reasons that this ending works well are exactly the same as they would be if he had strangled her. Which is cool. But before I frantically justify my statements lest people think I'm advocating horrible things happening to characters like Mattie, let's talk about Oliver.

The reason Oliver is an interesting character is because of the way his narration progresses. My first thought was "unreliable narrator", but as I examined his words I realized he doesn't ever really lie about anything. So he's not unreliable; he's just plain crazy.

The first summer of the game, Oliver's innocent enough. He's just met Mattie; he finds her intriguing. Cool.

The second summer develops their friendship. Still innocent.

But then, gradually, the rest of the summers slowly descend into Oliver becoming more and more creepily obsessed with Mattie. He knows he can never be with her; he mentions the forbidden fruit appeal specifically at one point. But his feelings only get stronger with time. It culminates in the final summer, when Mattie has just gotten engaged to a nobleman, and Oliver confronts her to know why she didn't tell him in person. Her response effectively shuts down any hope he might have had that their friendship, or anything else between them, could be rekindled. And his response to that is to rape her. The end.

The romance that can ultimately never work due to differences in class and social standing isn't a new idea, but this is a spin on it that works very well: examine the effects that has on the lower class member of the pair, who has to deal with the idea that he's not good enough for someone he loves. Examine the effects this has on the higher class person, who doesn't even seem to notice that they're putting someone who cares about them through so much anguish, albeit unintentionally. The results make it a far more compelling tale overall.

I don't think that Mattie deserved what happened to her. I don't think she ever really wanted to hurt Oliver; she was insensitive to his feelings, but she didn't seem to realize that she was actually doing him wrong.

Do I think Oliver deserved what happened to him? Well, to answer that question, I'm going to digress again into the subject of mental illness in the 18th century, so bear with me here.

Back in those days, there was no such thing as treatment for mental illness, and as a result it often didn't get acknowledged, at least until they started locking women in rooms as a "cure" for depression. I feel like a sort of side effect of this is that stories set in earlier time periods either don't feature mental illness or don't mention if a character might possibly have one, at least the ones that I've read. This story, on the other hand, it's pretty obvious as you go on that there is something very wrong with Oliver. He feels entitled to Mattie; he thinks of her as "his" Mattie. He becomes completely obsessed with her. And she doesn't even entertain the notion because it was unthought of back then. How different this story would be if it were set today.

So no, I don't necessarily think Oliver deserved to be miserable. He has a mental illness and needs some help. He does deserve to be punished for what he does to Mattie, of course, but I can see how he got to that point, at least.

All in all, I find Round the Mulberry Bush quite compelling and very well-written. It has a similar progression to a story that I want to release someday, and I would be quite proud if I could meet the standards set by this visual novel.

Thanks for listening to my sudden desire to go off on a giant rambling tangent. Appreciated!

Starlight Vega and Strawberry Vinegar - A Comparison

I've reviewed a decent number of OLEVNs on my blog since beginning. Most recently, it was Starlight Vega, what I expect to be the most popular yuri OLEVN of the year. But you may also recall that earlier in the year, I did a review of ebi-hime's Strawberry Vinegar, a yuri-ish title with a ton of sexy food pics.

Call me crazy, but as I was playing through Starlight Vega, I kept having moments that made me stop and think, "Hey, this reminds me of another game..." Now, none of this is meant to demonize either game, nor am I implying that anyone ripped anyone else off. Truth be told, it's me taking all my random whim thoughts and putting them in an essay-shaped object, just for the hell of it.

And so, I present to you today, an analysis of the similarities I found between Starlight Vega and Strawberry Vinegar.

1. SV and SP

The simplest reasons are the easiest to start with.

Starlight Vega = SV. Strawberry Vinegar = SV.

Pretty sure I recall the devs talking about this on Twitter, too.

Also, both visual novels were published by Sekai Project, which is SP.

2. Similar stories and characters

You wouldn't think at first that the two games have much in common storywise, and I agree that they deviate quite heavily in the later halves of each game. But you start out from very similar points when playing either game: a demon girl love interest has appeared unexpectedly, she's very attached to the protagonist, and she has a habit of quietly casting spells to keep everyone else in the dark. I feel like little Licia could have one day grown up into Lyria (who have similar names, even!) without too much character differentiation. Rie and Aria I don't see as having nearly as much in common, but I feel like when it comes to the finer points of romance they're both a bit...well, slow, and that plays into their respective romantic arcs a lot. Also, Licia and Lyria both have sisters that take an obvious authority role and maintain that they know best for their sibling.

3. Similar randomness of bad endings

I love both games, but one issue I did have with each was the way the bad endings tended to work. They were a bit random, a bit out of nowhere, and a bit abrupt, and a number of them on each side involve a demon removing the protagonist's memories. If I recall, in one Strawberry Vinegar ending Rie even lampshades what a stupid way this is for her story to end. It's not enough to majorly detract from either game, but it is noticeable.

4. Both have piles of sweetness hiding in the back

Okay, it's rather more apparent that Strawberry Vinegar is going to be a very sweet game just by looking at the title screen. But Starlight Vega has a similar vein of happy sweetness in its character routes, one that might not be so obvious at first. I'll just come right out and say that the harem ending is full of this (no I will not spoil it for you).

...

So what's my point here?

I acknowledge that these are two very different games. One has a singular love interest and one has multiple; Strawberry Vinegar consistently keeps the focus on Rie and Licia while Starlight Vega gives greater focus to the demon world itself; the actual substance of the good endings is pretty different. But there are similarities enough for one to take notice, and I have to wonder if there's a reason behind it. There's a pretty big following for yuri visual novels right now, and more and more OLEVN titles are coming out with female casts and female relationships. As all of us visual novel writers continue to work in this culture, picking up influences here and there, it's probably inevitable that some of us end up on similar wavelengths.

And there's nothing wrong with similarities in works! It happens in every medium. Look at the case of Repo! The Genetic Opera vs. Repo Men. Look at the year that two movies about friends with benefits falling in love came out with almost identical plots. Nothing's taken away from either party, really; sometimes, it just happens.

I personally think quite highly of both Starlight Vega and Strawberry Vinegar, and I don't mean anything weird by drawing attention to all these things the two games have in common. I feel like, in the end, I may not even have much of a point...It was all just a completely random whim.

I'm sure good at endings.

Starlight Vega is available on Steam and itch.io. Strawberry Vinegar is also available on Steam and itch.io.

........MORE SIMILARITIES.

The opinions expressed in this article are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this article. The "Wrong End" image comes from Corpse Party.

Circus Reviews - Lucky Me, Lucky You

After spending the month of March being rather busy with NaNoReNo and a big resurgence into poetry, I realized that it had been quite some time since I'd reviewed a game, and also that some devs I really like did stuff for NaNoReNo too and I wouldn't mind playing those!

Lucky Me, Lucky You centers around Nanami Okada, who is depressed following an unexpected breakup. Her best friend, Ryo, attempts to cheer her up with some questionable porn tapes stolen from a flatmate, and within them Nanami spots her first crush, idol Misae Morishita. Nanami impulsively decides to track down Misae and confess her long-ago feelings, dragging an unwilling Ryo along with her.

There are a few characters, but mostly we follow the pair of Nanami and Ryo. Nanami is exactly the kind of snarky, verbose heroine I like to read about, although I'm sure if I met her in reality I'd want to strangle her. She's shallow, self-centered, and, well...It should be obvious to the reader why her last girlfriend dumped her, even if Nanami can't quite figure it out. She is not a flat character, however, and does end up learning and growing throughout the story. Ryo is likeable enough...and male, which you probably can't tell from the photo. I couldn't either, and had no clue until I read the game description. Ryo is a guy who just likes to dress up as a girl sometimes for no real reason. This part of his character doesn't really lead to anything plot-wise; it's just kind of...there. I don't particularly mind; I'm a fan of living your life regardless of other people's opinions as long as you aren't hurting anyone.

The backgrounds are all filtered photographs, which makes the game's character sprites stand out, Nanami especially. It's not really a bad effect, but it kind of gives the impression that the game is going to be much darker than it turns out to be. These photographs all feel like pictures of a crapsack world, not quite like the actual setting.

I like the GUI and it matches well with the background art. Sometimes I would have liked to have had the character's name above the text when they're speaking; in places it gets a bit confusing as to whether it's Nanami or Ryo who's talking, although usually it's not too hard to figure out and that's more of a personal preference anyway.

The story doesn't have any surprises plot-wise, but there were a couple of things about it I found particularly refreshing. It treats Nanami's quest and the way it ends with complete realism. Also, Nanami and Ryo do not end up getting together in the end. (I don't consider that a spoiler because it's established very early on that Nanami and Ryo are both gay, and since they're not the same gender, well, them together wouldn't work.) Having two people who have been best friends forever suddenly fall in love is a common and often irritating trope, and it was so nice not to see it here.

All in all, a respectable NaNoReNo entry that I found quite enjoyable to read. Perhaps it doesn't have any big surprises, but it makes for a nice tale about friendship, facing your problems, and thinking things through.

Lucky Me, Lucky You is available on itch.io.

Final verdict: The game looks bleaker than it is and the story contains no real surprises, but Lucky Me, Lucky You is carried through by an entertaining main character and refreshingly realistic treatment of its subject matter.

Lucky Me, Lucky You is developed by ebi-hime. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.

Circus Reviews - Strawberry Vinegar

Having fixed the previously mentioned, mildly frustrating debit card issues, I immediately went to Steam and bought this game. As you may recall, I don't generally do excessively cute games, but every now and then one manages to draw me in and I make an exception, Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet being the last time this happened. I've been watching for this game's release for a little while now, and was quite excited to dive into a game that, at first glance, appears to have quite a lot of cuteness and food porn. Which is always fun.

Strawberry Vinegar stars nine-year-old Rie Sakuraba, a girl who is both more intelligent and more cynical than most others her age. She leads a relatively solitary existence, preferring not to bother herself with other people. Her world gets thrown out of balance when she walks into her kitchen one day and finds a young demon girl eating a tray of freshly baked cookies. The demon girl, Licia, threatens Rie, saying that if she isn't fed at least one delicious thing every day, Rie's soul will be forfeit.

Our protagonist, Rie, is an odd one among visual novel characters. She actively pushes people away, isn't afraid to tear down her father's occasional emotional outbursts, and looks to such works as The Communist Manifesto to explain the actions of others. She kind of grows on you, though. And she serves as a great contrast to Licia, who is silly and ditzy and loudmouthed but ultimately innocent and well-meaning. It's a far better pair than Rie's parents, Kazuki and Yukine, who have a rather disturbing relationship that, quite frankly, worries me. Kazuki cooks and cleans and takes the majority of responsibility for Rie's care, and Yukine cheerfully abuses him every chance she gets. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be cute or what, but it throws up a ton of red flags for me. Granted, it does get better; there's a scene with Yukine later wherein she elaborates on how she and Kazuki met and fell in love, and it gives Yukine some humanization that she desperately needed earlier in the story.

The writing is quite good. Perhaps sometimes a bit too wordy for a nine-year-old, but then again, it is repeatedly established that Rie is smarter than the average nine-year-old, so it's not completely out of place. The artwork really shines here, particularly in the CGs. SillySelly has done work on a few of ebi-hime's visual novels now, but I feel her best work is here. There are lots of CGs of food and few CGs of people, and more food porn abounds here than in the Game of Thrones books. And it's pretty sweet.

There are six endings, ranging from you screwing things up royally to you and Licia becoming best friends forever (or maybe something more...?). There are some light yuri elements, but it remains age appropriate for the very young main characters involved.

All in all, it's a good addition to ebi-hime's portfolio, with a sweet story and a charming lead couple. My only major issue, as mentioned before, is Yukine's character and her treatment of Kazuki, but that does end up being addressed (if only in one path). Even so, it's a strong VN, and very possibly the one with the most food porn. Which, again, is always fun.

Strawberry Vinegar is available on Steam or itch.io.

Final verdict: A troubling mother character aside, Strawberry Vinegar is just as sticky sweet as it looks, and a bunch of charming moments with the two leads combined with a genuinely heartfelt story make this worth a read.

Strawberry Vinegar is developed by ebi-hime and published by Sekai Project. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.

Circus Reviews - Asphyxia

I've been meaning to play this game for a while now, but didn't get around to buying it until very recently. I fully intended to review it Christmas day, but then the whole Steam nonsense happened, and here we are a couple days later.

Asphyxia follows Samantha "Sam" Coleridge, a seventeen-year-old boarding school attendee in London whose lifelong depression has recently worsened thanks to a falling out with her best friend/idol, Lillian Wordsworth (and also a separate falling out with her decidedly-not-best friend, Tabitha De Quincy). Despite Roberta Southey's attempts to comfort her, Sam is despondent. Will a school field trip give Sam the chance to set things right...or is there no hope left for her and Lillian?

The characters are apparently all based off British Romantic poets, and the game provides literature files about the poet each girl is based on. I personally did not play through with this information (and reading it all prior to playing may spoil some plot events), but it can give you a lot of insight into the characters' actions and why things happen the way they do. It's an interesting choice, although it seems to have caused some people confusion about why the game itself isn't actually set in the time when these poets lived. The writing is also meant to evoke the time period, and it serves its purpose well even if it's a bit flowery at times.

Samantha herself is a spot-on portrayal of a depressed teenager, and I identified with her quite strongly. Other than how Sam feels about each of them respectively, Lillian and Roberta are extremely similar: they've done their best to take care of Sam but find it overwhelming to the point of draining their patience at times, and they're flawed but ultimately want what's best for their friend. De Quincey (I don't know why her teenage schoolmates only refer to her by her last name, it's a bit odd) is a creepy and obsessive stalker, and while I won't spoil the event that caused her and Sam to stop speaking, let's just say it ends up making her look very bad, and if the game wanted me to feel sympathy for her it failed miserably on that point. Georgia and Percy are mostly background characters; although Georgia gets a bit more limelight in one of the endings, Percy feels tacked on. Miss Alexandra Pope is a concerningly sadistic teacher, and while it's commented that she looks young for her age, her sprite takes that too far; she looks roughly the same age as her students, and it's distracting.

There are four endings you can get, and while all of them are well-written, none feels complete without the others. Each path has information vital to who Sam is, information that you don't get on other paths. It feels like this was meant to be one full novel with everything presented together rather than spread out across different paths. I did like all the paths, though, and was quite eager to finish them and get the big picture.

The art is gorgeous, and the soundtrack is pleasant. I enjoyed the story despite the above-listed issues. I suspect that Samantha might be hard to relate to for a player who hasn't dealt with clinical depression, but I found her quite relatable myself. I still find myself thinking that a more concise novel focusing on Samantha, Roberta, and Lillian that included all relevant events might have been more enjoyable. Regardless, there were enough positive notes to keep me engaged throughout my entire play through, and I'm glad I finally picked this up.

Asphyxia is available on Steam and itch.io.

Final verdict: While the side characters don't feel as developed as the mains and the branching paths feel like they need connecting, Asphyxia has a wonderful main character and a bittersweet but compelling story.

Asphyxia is developed by ebi-hime and published by Sekai Project. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.