Tsukikage no Simulacre was last year’s supposedly “free” “visual light novel”—and oddly enough, it’s rare for Japanese developers to label their own work that way. They usually just call it an eroge. And just like that “free” game said at the end, it only told an incomplete story. There were a ton of loose ends, and the devs themselves said the free version wasn’t the point—the real deal was the project coming after it. So what was that project? Well, look, the January eroge release schedule has a new entry called Tsukikage no Simulacre -Kaihou no Hane-, doesn’t it? Right—that free version was literally just a “trial edition.” A demo, basically. The final version is this game. Honestly, when you think about it, they just released a demo early, then put out the full game later. Dressing it up as “first we give you the free part, then the follow-up project” is the same old playbook.

Tsukikage no Simulacre is a free game. I was pretty surprised when it got announced. My first thought: when a Japanese company suddenly announces a free game, 99% of the time it’s a card game. Turns out nope, not a card game — it’s basically galge-style content. Then I figured, if you’ve got the balls to make it a galge, are you gonna charge me for every choice? And then the bastards went and slapped “完全無料（ゲーム内課金無し）” on it in giant letters. So now I’m even more confused. Everyone says the eroge industry in Japan is dying — since when did they start doing charity? And isn’t the standard playbook for disruptive low-price launches to hold a press conference like Meizu used to? Whatever. Just download it and see. It’s free anyway. Gotta hand it to those dumbasses in Japan and their bargain-bin servers — the official site went down almost immediately, the Dropbox links blew through their traffic cap right after, and only the Google Drive one still worked. As expected of the almighty Google. Is it really that hard for you Japanese to rent a VPS??