Yubisaki Connection (ゆびさきコネクション) Review

Seeing this title, let’s first define what counts as a “failure” according to the usual forum argument rules.

Everyone knows a visual novel goes through a process from “planning” to “production.” You could say the “planning” is the game’s goal and determines its direction.

Following that logic, if the game’s production completely runs counter to the “planning,” or if the game itself never even fulfills the planning’s original goal, then the game can be considered a “failure.”

So today, let’s talk about one such “failed” game.

HOOKSOFT recently put out a game called Yubisaki Connection (ゆびさきコネクション). The Chinese name is “Fingertip Milk Tea”… no wait, “Fingertip Connection.” The game’s formula looks exactly like SMEE’s “matchmaking game” template: our protagonist has been a corporate drone for years, still a virgin with no partner, so his boss takes him to a brothel. But our hero is all talk and no follow-through, so he settles for a bar instead. One thing leads to another, and suddenly he’s swimming in romantic prospects—a high school girl, a college girl, the OL next door, and a bar hostess… He has to pick one butterfly out of the swarm.

There’s not much story, really—just pure romance tropes plus a few gags. But the game’s quality is solid. I’d say it’s among SMEE’s better output. Especially the college girl who’s pushed as the game’s centerpiece: great CV, great art, and her romance route is genuinely fun. It’s completely unrealistic, but hey, it’s an eroge—happy masturbation material by definition.

It was after I finished the college girl’s route, watched the protagonist screw her brains out and have a second kid, that I looked at the game’s title and remembered something serious:

Where the hell did the big map they advertised go?

I remember the early promo said they were building “romance on a smartphone,” with communication through social apps on your phone. At first glance it sounded like hookup apps, but really it was just sexting via WeChat. The game also claimed you could arrange meetups with girls on your phone and navigate using a big map…

But I never saw that “big map” once. Even weirder, the in-game “phone” system got pared down to almost nothing. That “smartphone romance” they hyped? All you get in actual gameplay is an ugly-as-sin smartphone frame. Exchanging flirty texts with heroines? Doesn’t exist. All you can do is go home every day, pull out your phone, and see who you can send a message to. That’s it.

But come on, it’s 2021—what visual novel doesn’t have a phone chat UI these days? And they all do it better than you. Especially since you’re a game that advertised “phone chat” as its selling point, and you can’t even make it look as good as games that threw it in as an afterthought. Isn’t that just pathetic?

Yeah, if the original “planning” was “romance unfolding on a smartphone,” then this game’s planning was a total, utter failure. By our earlier definition, this is a bona fide failed game.

What’s bizarre is that the game scored surprisingly well on ErogameScape, even hitting HOOKSOFT’s best record and breaking into the 80-point range. But the funny part is, reading the reviews, almost no player cares about the original “phone romance” concept. They just say the dialogue is funny, the heroines are cute, etc.

Sure, I also think the college girl is great, but the game going off-topic is still going off-topic. It’s like writing your college entrance exam essay: they ask for an argumentative essay, you hand in a smut fic. Even if the grader gets hard, jerks off, and then gives you a low score—that’s how it should be.

Of course, the game is still worth playing. Just don’t think of it as a HOOK game—see it as an SMEE game and it’s much better. I even suspect this was some discarded SMEE project, given to HOOK to recycle. After all, SMEE’s new game is also just reheated leftovers. 2021, pandemic raging, everyone’s struggling. It’s an eroge—if it looks decent enough, just jerk off to it to show respect.

With all due respect, the game still went off-topic. Overall, it’s a failure.

Seeing HOOKSOFT quickly announce their next game not long after only reinforced my thinking: this game isn’t just a failure—it’s a pitiful experiment.

The full version of this article will appear in 2D Mania issue 145. If interested, follow the Weibo for purchase.