Last year Lump of Sugar put out two games… And each was worse than the last. The first, Renai Relation, had a baffling system and not a single interesting thing in the plot. The second, Kodomo no Asobi, maybe had slightly better writing, but the art was absolutely terrible! Funny thing, I looked back at the studio’s older stuff—back in 2014 and even earlier they were still doing two titles a year, and the premises were just as dumb as ever, but at least the art was decent. I played Unmei Senjou no Phi too; the system was actually pretty flashy, but for a game billed as a mystery, the story was a total joke… So I’ve always figured Lump of Sugar pumps these out assembly-line style: someone grabs a premise, holds a meeting, rounds up a few writers (they don’t even have a fixed writing team), the artist is at least consistent with Moekibara Fumitake, the music is whatever, and the only real muscle in the company is the programming side—they’ll cobble together any weird gimmick you can think of. Keyword hunting, fruit slicing, timed hidden third options. Going by that Japanese expose on the eroge industry, Lump of Sugar probably just leans on Moekibara to push the first wave of limited-edition sales and then calls it a day. The stories aren’t really that interesting; it’s mostly carried by the voice acting, art, and programming. So honestly, I don’t play their games all that seriously (same as how I play crap from that shit-tier studio), I just skim through and move on… This year’s Lump of Sugar feels different though. Maybe they finally got their act together, maybe it’s because it’s their tenth anniversary and they figured holding yet another press conference to announce a new title would be stupid—better to sit down and make a proper commemorative game. So they took their biggest hit from ten years ago, Tayutama -kiss on my deity-, and made a sequel using the same setting. Plenty of people probably remember Tayutama—there was an anime, called Yuu On (Tayutama), and back in the day the studio even did a crossover between the anime and Yuzusoft’s Tenshin Ranman. Pretty nuts, right? They really went all-in. So bringing back the old setting for a sequel has a bit of that Alcot-doing-Clover Day’s vibe—look back at history, look forward to the future, carry on the legacy, march steadily forward. The sequel is called Tayutama 2 -you’re the only one-, and it continues from the first game. The first game was about the conflict between humans and Tayutai; the second takes place in a town where the heroes of the first game have established a place where humans and Tayutai can coexist peacefully. The protagonist, Kusakabe Sora, runs into Kohaku, a Tayutai adopted daughter raised by the first game’s heroine, Izumo Mashiro. He helps her out, the girl decides he’s a good guy, and drags him home to tell her mother she’s going to marry him.

Let’s talk about Lump of Sugar for a second. Back when I didn’t know any Japanese (still don’t, for the record), I figured this studio was hot shit. Mostly because the name sounded nice and because everyone and their dog kept holding forth about it. And whenever someone says “Lump of Sugar,” I picture an elegant girl sitting on a street corner in the afternoon, watching the crowd drift past under the awning, dropping a sugar cube into her coffee with pale fingers. Very atmospheric, very mood. But mood is mood, and in reality Lump of Sugar is just a company that makes porn games. Yeah — the kind that otaku love to gab about, big tits bracketed by mosaic, flesh-colored straws spraying white gunk. The feeling is like that elegant girl I just described taking a sip of her coffee, then suddenly shuddering, cheeks flushing, all because the black uncle running the shop next door has a remote-controlled vibrator stuffed inside her. The whole thing changes in an instant…