The reason I had my eye on this one is simple: IROTORI’s previous game, Sakura no Saiten, was genuinely good. It kept the story fun and built a unique system on top of it. Sure, it can’t match the “proper” mystery games, but within the visual novel niche it’s in a league of its own, good enough to step outside and trade blows with other text adventures. And they did exactly that. Sakura no Saiten landed on a bunch of consoles, eventually hit Steam too, and picked up plenty of praise along the way. So when Hachikenden was announced I was already looking forward to it, hoping for something that was “really story-driven.” Never mind that I’m not especially into Japan’s take on history.

I first heard about Inverted Angel because I’m a fan of Nakamura Sanso—she sings the theme song (ED) for it. At first I figured it was just a simple little romance piece, or maybe one of those indie things with a bit of meta and philosophy tossed in, the usual slightly-deep-bait template. Then I actually played it, and I couldn’t help but say out loud: “What the hell is this?!”

Getting older, I still like looking at the pretty and the hot stuff for the eye candy, but I also like messing around with e-waste. The regular stuff just doesn’t excite me anymore. And the hottest e-waste lately is all the Linux-based “xinchuang” (信创) gear. “Xinchuang” is basically the mainland’s push for domestic everything—replacing the “Western” and “open source” stuff with fully Chinese products so nobody can strangle you with supply chain sanctions. Whether that’s realistic, whether it’s feasible, how far along it actually is—let’s set all that aside. At the very least, the xinchuang scene does enough work with and on top of Linux to satisfy a Linux guy’s urge to tinker with junk. I’d wanted a Loongson laptop for a while, but that batch of RMS-endorsed 198-yuan group-buy machines is now stupidly expensive, and the specs and pricing are just absurd. Newer Loongson laptops are also pricey, out of my league, so I just watched from the sidelines. Then a kind soul reached out a hand. With help from a certain big shot, I somehow got my hands on a “xinchuang laptop.” Carrying that person’s earnest warnings, I started my own xinchuang journey.

The Playdate is a handheld made and sold by Panic, the studio behind the well-known game Firewatch — or rather, that game is exactly what gave the team the starting capital to build this thing. As a handheld, the Playdate has a grayscale reflective display that’s supposedly on par with e-ink (no backlight), a small enough size, a yellow shell, and a button layout reminiscent of retro handhelds. It looks very refined at first glance, but the real standout is the “crank” on the side that tucks in and pulls out. This kind of control device is probably the first I’ve seen in the “handheld” category.

I bought this game ages ago but never had time to actually play it. Finally got around to finishing it recently. Same familiar flavor as when I played Zanghua: Anhei Taohuayuan (葬花·暗黑桃花源), but improved in a lot of places. Overall it left me genuinely pleased, and even surprised me a few times. Let me state my stance up front: Efu: Mingmo Qianlixing (饿殍：明末千里行) is a very good game. Building on its predecessor Zanghua: Anhei Taohuayuan, it fixes a lot of the weak points, and honestly it’s the most “correct” game I’ve seen this year in terms of production choices. The studio has found the right approach, and sticking with it will definitely lead to bigger success.

This game is a real pain to talk about. If you think Nanakamai’s work on Frontwing titles is “insane” and figured this one at least reaches ATRI or GINKA levels, you’re dreaming. It’s not even half of Corona Blossom. And yeah, the problems aren’t just the art and story… though those are problems too.

Recently I played a game called Qingyu, and its theme turned out to be the rare Dota 2 esports backdrop. At first I figured it was a shitpost, but after actually playing it, I was kind of surprised. First off, the author clearly plays Dota — it’s packed with memes only old-school 刀斯林 would get. Shame the game came out too early; if it were made now there’d be way more material — 组织语言, 闹麻了, 可以啊, 不Ban猛犸, 唯有责任, 要不你来, lowlowlowlowlow, 香槟, the greatest runner-up…

Last year SMEE put out a game with a seriously baffling title. I mean the title itself is baffling. Hajilove -making*lovers- See, the actual title is Hajilove—first love—while the subtitle is borrowed from another well-known SMEE work, Making Lovers. Making lovers… as in making girlfriends, I guess. Why call it baffling? Because at a glance it looks like a Making Lovers sequel when it isn’t one at all. The reason for the naming is simple: riding the coattails. They want you to think this new title—which shares neither artist nor writer nor production team with Making Lovers—is the spiritual successor to the Making Lovers series. Buy it, and the sales go up. So why not just make an actual Making Lovers sequel? Here’s the kicker: Hajilove -makinglovers-* is really SMEE’s first attempt at the nukige space. SMEE has always stuck to a vaguely societal “pure love” lane, mostly matchmaking games, and nobody ever expected to fap to a SMEE title. So their “practicality” push this time is shy and embarrassed—still insisting over and over that it’s “pure love,” even after hiring several nukige artists… The reception to Hajilove turned out better than expected. A lot of old fans said they weren’t comfortable with the sudden nukige pivot, but the body doesn’t lie, and sales don’t either. With SMEE’s successful borrowing, its sister brand HOOK naturally had to take the same step, and so we got Secret Love (Kari).

Everyone goes through a chuuni phase. When I was young I loved collecting “really deep, philosophical” lines, treated them as gospel, and quoted them constantly to look like I had some kind of inner depth. Stuff like “humans are all selfish,” “humans are just animals driven by primal urges,” “society is dark,” “the world is one big conspiracy”… and so on. Guess everyone’s got their own personal Black Myth going on. Say that stuff now and it just feels embarrassing. It’s not that those lines are wrong—a lot of them are straight-up facts—but they’re all “correct nonsense.” “Humans are ugly, selfish, profit-driven…” (sounds even better in Japanese, some 人類とは…… type shit) Yeah, and? No shit. Does repeating it let you exploit these “human weaknesses” to make money? Or do you have some way to free humans from those “weaknesses”? If anything, the guy who keeps chanting about them is himself living inside them 24/7. Once you’re an adult and you’ve seen enough, most of this stops surprising you. What you care about is how to make yourself feel good, in a more practical sense. If something pisses you off, either change it, accept it, or put up with it. Anything else is just noise. That’s reality, sure, but in games and films this kind of material still sells. In reality we’re powerless, but in a virtual world we can fantasize about saving the world. So even in the visual novel space, the “become a creator god” premise is popular—parallel worlds popping up everywhere, giving you that high-tier-being experience of watching the seas turn to mulberry fields, a thousand years in a glance. Which brings us to Uzumaki-sha’s Hajimeru Sekai no Risouron (はじめるセカイの理想論).

I actually played this game a while ago — I even wrote a commercial piece on it — but I never got around to blogging about it, mostly because I forgot. I’ve forgotten almost the entire plot too. If I hadn’t been sorting through files today, I’d have pretty much erased the fact that I ever played it. So what kind of game is this? According to SMEE, it’s not just any game — it’s a commemorative game. Commemorating what, exactly? First, it’s SMEE’s 15th anniversary title. Second, it commemorates SMEE’s cumulative sales hitting 150,000 across all its games. The first time I saw those two “commemorations,” I nearly lost it. What kind of commemoration is this? Since when does 15 years even warrant one? And it’s not even a real “15th anniversary” — look closer and it turns out the project was conceived during the 15th anniversary… holy shit, that counts too. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen “cumulative sales” used as a reason to commemorate something. It reads like someone forcing out content when they’ve got nothing left.