First off, thanks to the people who cracked the PSV. Yeah, it’s not exactly ethical, but I’m genuinely broke. I’ve bought a pile of PSV games by now, so let’s call it even on the guilt front. Next, thanks to the person who dumped this game. Without that legend sharing it, a cracked PSV would mean basically nothing. And last, thanks to the driver who posted the link: Eric Sitounel. Without his tip I would’ve assumed nobody had dumped this thing at all… The game I’d been wanting to play was this one, because it has an additional route and a new character voiced by Ari Ozawa: Ichinoe Kingyo. I got it downloaded and the PSV cracked in a hurry, and since I’d already played the original Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai and the FD too, I went straight for the new heroine. How do I put it — way better than I expected. Quick impressions.

Lately I’ve been really into pure-love confession games. Probably because pure me is just too pure. Watashi ga Suki nara “Suki” tte Itte! (私が好きなら「好き」って言って!) is exactly that kind of confession-raising game. To borrow the words of the well-known bishoujo game voice actress Kyoka, this one’s a “恋愛シュミレーションゲーム” — a love simulation game, basically. I’ve played a few of those before. The deal is that it isn’t structured like a novel; the heroines’ affection shifts dynamically based on what the protagonist does, and at the end whether you end up dating depends on how much affection she has for you… That’s the formula from Purely X Cation, Pure X Connect, and the older Fureraba. No real story, just pure romance — and school life, of course. But If You Like Me, Say “I Like You” has a couple of things that set it apart: the story and the system.

Tearjerker stories, everyone thinks they’re so moving. So the moment you say tearjerker, naturally someone’s gotta die. There are a thousand ways to kill someone off, but the handiest is terminal illness. Blaming it on terminal illness is super convenient—everyone can just curse how unfair the heavens are. So of course visual novels use terminal illness too. One fairly well-known one was Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu.. What did I think of that game… one word: trash. So the same staff went and made a new one, still about terminal illness: Inochi no Spare I was born for you. What did I think of this one… still trash. Actually, it’s even worse than the last one…

HanaHime * Absolute! was announced back in 2014, then delayed, delayed, and delayed until now. Nobody’s heard of the developer Mira, but if you look at the intro and OP, you’ll get a strong sense of déjà vu. Where have I seen this before? That’s right—Twinkle Crusaders (ティンクル☆くるせいだ). Same artist, same system, same coloring style, same OP animation director, same OP music… basically this is the spiritual successor to Twinkle Crusaders (I’m using “spiritual successor” correctly, right?). And since it’s a spiritual successor, you know Twinkle Crusaders was a game built around its combat system, so HanaHime * Absolute! is also combat-focused. As for the story? Who the hell cares…

I’m tired of saying whether LASS should just die already… I’m a bit conflicted. On one hand I want it to croak pronto, on the other I still think it should at least finish Liber 7 before kicking the bucket. Anyway, for now it’s better if it doesn’t die. So this “won’t-die-when-you-want-it-to” LASS has a new game out, and it’s a sequel to that old nukige series. Turbulent Snow, Moon, and Flower Moonlit Lewd Dance, Oath of Madness

I was feeling pretty empty yesterday, then I saw an imouto game got a fan translation… and after looking it up, it seemed like the playtime was only an hour, so I figured I’d play it to relax. The Chinese name is 《妹妹的朋友与我的日常》, but that translation is already off. The original is 《妹とその友人がエロすぎて俺の股間がヤバイ》, which should really be “My Sister and Her Friend Are So Fucking Horny That My Dick Is in Trouble.” Of course, a name that dirty probably got sanitized—daily life it is, I guess… But as a fan-translated game that’s only an hour long, playing it was more exhausting than the fucking Japanese version. The whole thing felt like taking an exam… I guess that’s where the “educational value” comes in…

Every so often on some SNS or other, I run into people who claim to know me. I don’t know them, of course. No idea how they found me. “Oh, Mr. Li, I’m a fan of yours.” That’s what some stranger who messaged me on Telegram recently said. “I really love reading your blog, especially the eroge impressions.” Well, that brightened my day a little. Most of the idiots who claim to like my blog all say they enjoy watching me self-deprecate, and the moment they see eroge impressions they announce they skipped it—some even act like my constantly writing about eroge is an eyesore. It’s my own damn turf, I write whatever I want, and these guys strut around like they own the place demanding I serve dishes to their taste. Give me a break. “Is that so?” Usually I don’t bother with people who harass me, but this one said something I didn’t expect, so I decided to reply. “Yeah! Though the recent eroge impressions aren’t as good as the old ones.” Honestly, I had to agree. Lately I just roughly retell the plot, say “good” and “bad,” and call it a day. I can’t even be bothered to think up titles anymore. “The old eroge impressions were really great, especially the little intros you wrote at the front.” “Intros?” “Yeah, the ones before the boring game plot summaries. Your memories of the past, and those little skits about getting dumped in arranged marriages lately—those were fantastic! You don’t do them anymore, it’s just boring game introductions now…” I don’t know what he said after that, because after I blocked him I couldn’t see the chat log anymore… Everyone’s time is precious. It’s not worth wasting on boring idiots. In this day and age, when the prologue of a single visual novel can take at least 4 hours, having a super-fast-paced visual novel should feel like a breath of fresh air…

Back in school I took a course called Software Engineering, taught by an old lady who could not stop singing the praises of the Indian and Japanese software industries. She’d go off on long tangents in the middle of lectures, and you can probably guess the gist: strict adherence to “standards” in the development process, “modularization” with “high cohesion and low coupling,” that sort of thing. Some of it was honestly overblown, borderline bullshit. “India’s software industry is very advanced. Their professional programmers write code so standardized that a hundred people all produce the exact same thing—even the comments look identical.” “The more standardized and regulated things are, the faster you can throw together solutions when requirements come in, like stacking building blocks…” “Once everything is standardized, every person is like a cog in the machine, running efficiently and fast…” She kept escalating into more and more mystical territory, piling on the bullshit, and since I was always late to that class I ended up sitting in the front row. The old lady kept fucking asking me questions, and sometimes I’d push back… “But wouldn’t programming be super boring like that? Everyone turns into a robot.” “That’s called efficiency. The efficiency of a big company delivering solutions fast. You want to be an individual, go work solo…” Back then I only had a vague grasp of this stuff. I figured “standardization” and “assembly line” were indeed probably very efficient… But after starting work and dealing with some small and mid-sized domestic software companies (not internet companies), I found that my contrarian comment actually had some truth to it… The people there really are boring… the stuff they make is boring too… but it does “work.” The assembly line can solve problems, but it always feels like it’s missing passion and fun, like it lacks color… Of course, work doesn’t need color, right… It’s just that games can’t be like that, can they… Yuzusoft’s game from last year, Sanoba Witch, I thought was pretty good—just missing that certain something. The main issue was that Nene’s route wasn’t particularly fleshed out; otherwise there wasn’t much to complain about. So when they announced this year’s new title, Senren * Banka, my first reaction was still disappointment…

Tegokami Nurete no Tenshi (手垢塗れの天使) is probably pretty well known by now. Before release it was marketed as an eroge about a supposedly pure idol who sells her body behind the scenes via casting couch deals, so the “手垢塗れ” in the title is really an abbreviation. The full phrase is “手垢に塗れる” (teaka ni mamireru), which Japanese dictionaries define as: 多くの人に使用されて汚れる. What does that mean… getting dirty because a lot of people have used it. Some people in China translated the game as “The Scarred Angel,” and at first I thought wow, that’s actually got some mood to it, but looking at the actual plot, it really doesn’t fit… Better to call it “The Soiled Angel” or “The Bus Angel”… considering the heroine does have her pitiful moments, let’s skip the latter.

I once came up with a concept. It was about dreams, and there were people with a job kind of like “private detective” who specialized in entering people’s dreams. They’d go on adventures inside someone else’s dream, and ultimately change that person’s view of something. And of course, they get paid for it. Sounds a lot like Inception, I know. But I had a slightly different idea. I figured that since you’re entering “someone else’s dream” as a kind of “detective” or “hunter,” the setting and environment of the dream would all be tied to the dreamer. As the “intruder,” you’d need to adapt to the environment fast and exploit “the dreamer’s own internal logic” to get the advantages you need to finish the job. Say the dreamer is a hopeless MMO addict. You enter his dream and you’ll probably get dropped into some game-like world. You’d have to quickly adapt to the role the dreamer assigned you in that world, and also disguise yourself so you don’t stick out. That means you need to know the dreamer—their tastes, their personality, even their innermost thoughts. Walk blindly into someone else’s turf and you’ll definitely fail, maybe even lose your chance to ever wake up again… I thought this setup was cool as hell, and I even wrote a crappy short story based on it. If you’re willing to dig, you can find it on this blog. Though if I went back and read it now I’d spot a million problems—too embarrassing to even look at. Still, I’m thinking about dusting off that concept and rewriting it into a proper piece. Depends on whether I get the time and inspiration.