If there’s one English line that stuck with me more than any other, it’s the Oracle’s from Matrix: “Everything that has a beginning has an end.” I love that line. It states a truism in the coolest possible way—and honestly, a lot of philosophy is just truisms. The difference is that most real-world truisms go unnoticed until someone with a special aura says them in a mystifying tone, and then suddenly everyone treats them as gospel. I bring it up because I still remember 2013, when I laid my cards on the table with a fujoshi I’d been pursuing and she shot me down for good. What I felt wasn’t so much heartbreak as relief. Looking back, she probably knew I was into her the whole time and just never gave me a clear no—kept me on the hook, had me tag along, paid for her meals. Not exactly malicious, but there was definitely some calculation in there. After that day I decided I needed something to do. I’d just bought a Windows tablet—a Dell V8p—and figured, well, I’ve never had a successful romance, so maybe I’ll find solace in games. I fired up Hatsuyuki Sakura (初雪桜), a newly translated release that had just dropped, and that kicked off my Galgame bulldozer mode. Windows, PSP, PSV, even iPad, and later Switch—my assault on visual novels has never stopped, and it hasn’t stopped now.

Dear readers, good afternoon, good morning, good evening — somehow it’s already April and I still haven’t posted my 2023 Galgame wrap-up. I originally wanted to finish writing up last year’s backlog of impressions before posting, but looking at my pace, I probably won’t finish. Whatever — the games I didn’t write about aren’t worth recommending anyway, so I’ll just post the annual summary. For the ones I played but didn’t write about, I’ll leave links here to hold the spot and update them slowly in the future. I went through last year’s screenshots and found that in 2023 I played, all told, only 19 games related to “dating simulation.” I even fully cleared a 2024 game and wrote a commercial article for it, and I still couldn’t be bothered to write a blog post…… You can find the list of commercial articles here. There are many reasons for this. On one hand, I’m busy with life and need to take care of kids, so I have less time; on the other hand, in 2023 I’d basically switched over to playing all kinds of console games, and my Steam playtime has been rising day by day. These increasingly dumb Galgames I look down on more and more, and I can’t bring myself to play them anymore; and another reason is that the Galgame market in 2023 was just this sluggish. In some months mid-year, you couldn’t even find a so-called “proper release” released that month — nukige and nothing but nukige. Even the “proper releases” were half re-releases, half garbage…… So this isn’t my fault. The responsibility lies entirely with Japan. The games are made so assembly-line and so abstract — how the hell am I supposed to keep playing? So let’s just get to the games I recommend this year. I’ll probably struggle to even scrape together 10……

2023 was a fairly significant year for me, and a busier one. The price of being busy is that I messed around with a lot of stuff but couldn’t be bothered to write up impressions. Half the time I’d tinker with something, list it on eBay, and then feel even less like writing. You can call me busy, you can call me lazy, or I can just say the thing had no highlights and wasn’t worth writing about. But it’s the end of the year, and I don’t want this year’s business spilling into the next. So here’s a summary looking back at what I messed with this year that’s worth mentioning, with some blunt takes and a recommendation ranking thrown in. These are all short notes, no screenshots. Anything that deserves a deeper writeup I’ll do separately.

Early 2022 was a mess, so I never found the time to write anything. The biggest problem I have now is that there’s a ton of stuff in my head but no time to get it out — and we’re already almost a third of the way through 2022 and I still haven’t written up last year’s games. I originally felt kind of guilty about it, but then I realized it doesn’t really matter whether I write it or not. Most people don’t play these games anyway; they just like watching the drama. Still, I figure I owe myself some kind of accounting, so here it is. If it turns out useful to anyone, even better. I played 31 games in 2021, a full 10 fewer than in 2020. Honestly, I don’t think it’s because I had less time — it’s that 2021’s games were just that bad, and quite a few were bad in a “very unique” way. With that in mind, after I cover the ones worth recommending, I’ll also roast some of the year’s hotter titles, so people stop asking me “why isn’t XXX on the list?”

2020 was a rough year for everyone, eroge makers included, so there were way fewer games to play this year and way fewer that actually landed. And I played about as many as always… meaning not fewer. I went through 41 eroge in 2020, which somehow matches 2019 exactly. So I genuinely got worse this year. I’m supposed to be phasing this out gradually… That said, there seemed to be more games worth recommending this year. Though I clearly felt one thing — Galgame music just doesn’t hit anymore. Honestly, I tried to put together a list of “OPs and EDs that sounded good this year” and came up nearly empty. The lesbian game’s OP was decent, but frankly I didn’t even want to collect OSTs this year, so I’m skipping music entirely. Let’s just talk about the games. Here’s what “I personally” thought was good in 2020.

A lot happened to me in 2019. The most important thing was that I gave my Surface Pro 4 to my wife, which left me with basically no device to keep playing galge on. And the second half of the year was genuinely busy—I abandoned a lot of games, and for some I finished but can’t find the screenshots anymore. But with some recent effort, I’ve slowly written up all my 2019 game impressions, and with yesterday’s final post done, I can finally start this belated game of the year write-up. So without further ado, here are the works I think are worth recommending.

I played 40 visual novels in 2018 — even fewer than 2017. On one hand that means my real life got more fulfilling; on the other, it means the industry really is done for these days. Looking back, most of what I played was in the first half of the year. The second half was thin — barely anything out there, and nothing that made me want to pick it up. Which is fine. Probably even fewer next year. And honestly I hope the industry croaks soon, so more kids can be freed from it and face reality properly. Still, I did play some. So, as usual, here’s what I think is worth recommending.

I counted it up: I played 64 galge this year. For comparison, 2016 was 77 and 2015 was 80, so it’s trending exactly the way I figured it would. Fewer games every year, which is solid proof my life is getting fuller. Not many, sure, but I did get through most of the big releases, and honestly the year as a whole left me disappointed. For one thing, a bunch of the big studios put out nothing. Even the old moege factories were quiet. Yuzusoft had no new game, SAGA PLANETS is releasing at the end of the month—I’m enjoying what I’ve played of it so far, but I haven’t finished, so it misses the cut. Most of what I did play was fan discs. Fan discs, more fan discs, and “fake fan discs” wearing a “second installment” label. Strip out those sequel cash-grabs and what’s left is moege and landmines. I thought about it for a whole day and barely scraped together a list. It’s a pretty personal one. Use it as a reference if you want. (Ranked in order)

Never thought I’d ever have bragging rights, though honestly it just makes me look like a hopeless case. So at the end of the year I thought I’d check how many galge I played this year. Big mistake… 80. Yeah. Bundling the split-up releases together would lower that number a bit. Honestly, I don’t even like galge. I’ve said this more than once: I play them because I hate half-finished anime productions, hate the dumbass plots of light novels, hate the endless circular storytelling of light novel and manga serializations. The only place I can get my Japanese-style fix and a clean, fast story conclusion is a galge—rarely do you see a galge end with “wait for the next volume,” and, bluntly, in a game the protagonist always ends up banging a girl instead of waffling between an ever-growing harem. I hate being called a “landmine checker” and I hate it when people read my impressions and go “I like big dicks and big tits, if you’re playing adult games don’t act all high and mighty”—but somehow I ended up playing this many anyway. So people say: you’ve played so many, you should recommend a few. Thinking back over the year, there really aren’t many that deserve the word “面白い.” Most have janky art and nonsensical stories. Recommending the better ones spreads the gospel and saves people some detours—that’s worthwhile. I’ve already eaten shit; sure, part of me enjoys watching others fall into the same pit, but I’d rather watch the ugly bastards who read my warning and dive in anyway. So let’s go. No particular order, just as they come to mind.