by Wilona W. | Mar 20, 2023 | Lists, Mobile Games, Video Games
Content note: this piece mentions suicide. This piece also contains minor spoilers for various Romance Club stories.
In 2019, I was scrolling through Apple’s App Store in search of an interactive story mobile game similar to Pixelberry’s Choices. I had wanted to play Choices since its conception, when I used to watch playthroughs of some of the stories on YouTube. However, my problem is that I’ve always found the diamond choices to be extremely expensive. I’m not interested in having to watch numerous ads and then wait for hours to mine for free diamonds, so I feel that I can’t fully enjoy the app’s stories. There have also been complaints from fans about how the quality of the app’s story outputs has been dwindling. In fact, I had tried playing another mobile game, Chapters: Interactive Stories, but found the stories badly written. (more…)
A graduate from Macquarie University who majored in Creative Writing for her Bachelor’s degree. She has self-published a poetry book titled Deadly Escapist Jazz.
by Elvie Mae Parian | Dec 27, 2021 | Reviews, Video Games
Carrying a lighthearted phone conversation with her boyfriend, Nevin, Maya touches upon her anxieties and expectations after having just freshly moved into a new city. Unexpectedly, a mass fire breaks out. When the telephone lines jam and power goes out, the long-distance communication limitations of the year 1990 cut Maya and Devin’s conversation short. The two soon take their own separate journeys across the city and through memory lane in order to reunite.
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Elvie somehow finds bliss in purposefully complicating the art of storytelling and undertaking the painful practice of animation. If you see her on Twitter at @lvmaeparian, she is doing neither of those things. She currently helps with managing the socials to ensure that the secret recipe will never be revealed.
by December Cuccaro | Apr 26, 2021 | Lists, Video Games
Rune Factory is probably the best farming sim you’ve never heard of… mostly because it’s been assumed dead for the almost eight years, since its original developer Neverland filed for bankruptcy. Rune Factory is a fantasy-themed spinoff of Story of Seasons (formerly known in the States as Harvest Moon, which is now a different franchise) that combines farming with dungeon crawling: you split your time between tending your crops, befriending local townsfolk, and then inviting said townsfolk to come kill monsters with you (or taming the monsters so they can tend your crops and you can get back to killing their brethren). The franchise was only recently revived by Marvelous subsidiary Hakama, inc. with the arrival of the remaster Rune Factory 4 Special and the announcement of Rune Factory 5, expected in Japan in May 2021 and sometime in later 2021 for the rest of us.
Details are coming out slowly—a trailer has been released and the love interests announced—but there is one thing I hope to see in the new RF that’s been missing from the last couple of generations: love rivals. Common to older SoS/HM games was a mechanic where each love interest available to the player also had an NPC vying for their virtual affections, known in fandom spaces as “love rivals.” So, in honor of Rune Factory 5’s upcoming release, here’s 5 reasons why love rivals should be a thing again.
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December Cuccaro (she/her) is an MFA graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno and a member of the 2021 Clarion West cohort. When not rambling about video games, she writes about sapphic werewolves and sad necromancers searching for friendship.
by Angie Wenham | May 7, 2018 | Interviews, Tabletop Games
Having spent unrepentantly large portions of my life shipping fictional characters (from Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler to Dr. Bashir and Garak), I was intrigued to learn about Star Crossed. This tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) is written and designed by Alex Roberts, who has contributed to other tabletop RPGs such as Misspent Youth, Dialect, and Damn the Man, Save the Music!. She is also the podcast host of Backstory, as well as the Project Coordinator for Bully Pulpit Games, who have teamed up with her to publish Star Crossed.
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Angie writes reviews and stories whenever she is not investigating the latest dating sim or visual novel. She is a full-time Dragon Age obsessive but also plays board games and tabletop RPGs when she can. Besides games, Angie enjoys manga, broody tattooed elves, and TV cannibals.
by Angie Wenham | May 3, 2018 | Reviews, Video Games
Pairanormal
Tess Young & Geek remix
PC
April 1, 2018
Disclosure: I back Tess Young, one of the creators of Pairanormal, on Patreon. In fact, I backed her because I heard about Pairanormal!
Developers and publishers took to April Fools Day with aplomb; there were stories about a Pokemon Go version of Final Fantasy XIV, Street Fighter digital card games, and Horizon Zero Dawn body pillows. Alongside this was a common joke: “MAINSTREAM GAME, but dating sim,” the implication being that this is a laughable idea. News articles promised dating sims for Mega Man, Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, and Let it Die, among others. War for the Overworld, an RTS, actually created a playable version called Dungeon Hearts. I, like many others, thought “Yeah, but seriously: I want these.”
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Angie writes reviews and stories whenever she is not investigating the latest dating sim or visual novel. She is a full-time Dragon Age obsessive but also plays board games and tabletop RPGs when she can. Besides games, Angie enjoys manga, broody tattooed elves, and TV cannibals.
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