I started building websites back in middle school. I remember it clearly — the summer of eighth grade. I applied for a free forum and domain and threw together an extremely crude “class website.” I figured it was just for fun, but it somehow took off across the whole class, then the whole grade. It wasn’t just my own class. Kids from the neighboring classes signed up and started posting too, and all kinds of conversations got going. That chatter later moved to the school’s official forum, and after that to the class Discord group. I think I was the one who created and ran that Discord group, for the simple reason that I was one of the few users who had permission to create Discord groups at the time. So I made the group for the class, and I’m still listed as admin to this day, even though nobody’s said a word in it for years. Later I went to college and started making all kinds of websites and forums again, but honestly nothing ever took off the way it did, and I could never recapture that middle-school glory. In one of the forums I’d rebuilt God knows how many times, I once wrote this line: “Some dreams you only dream at eighteen, and some dreams you only understand once you’ve grown up…” There were a few more lines after that, I don’t remember them now — something with that whole “forcing yourself to feel sad for the sake of a poem” vibe. I didn’t really know what I was trying to say. I just thought it sounded cool, so I went with it. Sure enough, a classmate came along and criticized it right away, saying I’d taken the wrong medicine and that it was so pretentious it gave him goosebumps. I thought he had a point, so I made that line my Discord signature so he’d have to see it every day. Years later I thought of that line again, and I have to say, I now think it actually makes sense. Because there really are things you only do when you’re young, and dreams you only understand when you’re young at heart.

More and more Japanese studios have figured out just how much money the overseas otaku crowd is sitting on, so we keep seeing visual novels pop up on Steam—including a whole crop of “Steam exclusives” planned specifically for the overseas market, with the domestic audience written off entirely, all in the name of moving units and making a buck. Most of these games sell like crap. Maybe it’s that Japanese “don’t cause trouble for others” instinct, but they always try to read overseas players’ minds using their own assumptions. They figure anything “too Japanese” or “too hardcore” won’t land with foreigners, and they unilaterally decide that what overseas weebs want out of Japan is ninjas, cherry blossoms, JK, school festivals, and so on. This kind of presumptuous pandering reliably produces results that are deeply, painfully cringe. If you need a reference point, look at how Japan “localizes” for overseas markets: they assume Chinese users want to hear Japanese anime girls speak Chinese, so they record exclusive Chinese theme songs, and some games even rewrite the scenario for overseas players. Nobody buys any of it. Back then the Japanese side genuinely couldn’t understand why so many Chinese users who don’t speak a word of Japanese insist on the Japanese voice track—like, does not understanding it not bother you?

Maybe you like KFC. Maybe you’ve seen the commercial success of that smiling old man with the white beard, Colonel Sanders. But I can guarantee you don’t know about his past, or the things he got up to in his younger days at culinary school. And that’s exactly what I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator on Steam is here to tell you: that mysterious, dreamlike, enigmatic, untold story. Young Colonel Sanders is a student at a mysterious culinary school. It’s a weird school—there are monsters, ghosts, and a gay guy named Van Van. After he transfers in, he becomes the center of attention. Every day he rides a beautiful little pony to class, wins the praise of Teacher Dog (yes, literally a dog teacher), and at lunchtime, Sanders busts out his homemade fried chicken, which earns unanimous praise from his classmates. Why is his fried chicken so good? “Because I carefully selected 11 secret spices, and together they create this irresistible flavor.”

You wake up in darkness. You’re in a dark mansion, and a maid is standing in front of you. She calls you “the master of this mansion” and gives you a warm welcome back. You can’t remember who you are. The maid understands this, but as your servant she decides to help you recover your memories. She’ll tell you a few stories — stories about this mansion’s past. Once you’ve heard them all, you’ll naturally remember who you really are. The maid leads you to one of the mansion’s doors, opens it, and tells you what happened behind it.

As the Japanese galgame industry keeps sliding downhill, more and more people have set their sights on Steam, looking to break into overseas markets. The first to take the plunge was probably WillPlus, with If My Heart Had Wings, but that game caught a ton of criticism, because to satisfy Steam’s review requirements and appeal to Western players, it got heavily cut and altered—lots of the porn was removed, and the story itself even ended up different from the original. That move got a ton of pushback and criticism from weeaboos; some people even made “restore the original” patches to make the game look less “sanitized.” Oh, right—maybe some of you don’t know what a weeaboo is. According to the internet: “Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture.” In Chinese it’s even simpler: weeaboo = the otaku of the Western races.

A while back I saw a story that caught my eye: a Taiwanese game called Shi Yong Xi Shao Nü got rejected from Steam for having too much porn and other objectionable content. Not exactly breaking news, really. Everyone and their dog wants to get on Steam these days, including a whole lot of straight-up porn games and stuff that’s just skirting the line. Steam is a US platform run by white dudes, so that kind of child-endangerment material was always going to get the hammer. So I looked into this Shi Yong Xi Shao Nü thing, and it turned out to be nothing like what I expected… It looks like softcore, but the game itself isn’t a visual novel… or at least not that kind of eroge-style text game. There’s actual stuff to do. To put it bluntly… it’s primarily a management sim. Which actually made me interested in it. The dev is Taiwanese, though, and their official site banned all mainland IPs, and since Steam won’t take it, the game’s only sold on physical disc. I had no idea how I’d even play it… But with a buddy’s help, I got my hands on a copy, so I started playing.

Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语), also known as Pure Hearts in the Catfight Music Scene (juan), tells the story of an artsy but uncultured vagrant of unclear sexuality who successfully infiltrates a music school in a seaside city — a city that has Chinese chengguan and American gay bars, yet everyone speaks Japanese, so who the hell knows which country it’s in; probably some no-name island in the middle of the East China Sea. There he proceeds to chase girls and act unhinged.

A few days ago I saw someone on Reddit (r/visualnovels) recommending this game. It’s a galgame on Steam called Doki Doki Literature Club!. Of course, when it was recommended I noticed the tag: Psychological Horror. I could sort of guess what that meant. This game, made by non-Japanese gaijin imitating a Japanese-style galgame, looks all harmonious and beautiful on the Steam page, but inside it’s probably a scam. There might be some “depressing” elements in there. “Depressing” — how depressing can you get? The heroine suddenly dies, suddenly loses her head, suddenly goes yandere, suddenly chops you up. That’s about the limit. At most it’s blood splattering all over the screen. What haven’t I seen? So curiosity made me download this free game and click “Start.” After a thrilling adventure, I repeatedly confirmed that the game had really, truly “End"ed, and only then did my heart settle back down. I let out a long sigh… Let me shamelessly brag for a moment. As a forever-alone otaku who’s been single since 2013, who’s too old to find a partner and keeps failing at arranged dates, I’ve played nearly several hundred galgames over these four years and written over a hundred impression posts. For a while I was playing galgames almost indiscriminately. Among them were plenty with crazy plot twists and horror content, but I was immune to almost all of them. Even that Sakura no Mori † Dreamers with evil spirits all over the screen, Honoakari no Toki no Hate Yori with blood-spraying zombies everywhere, the sudden hanging in Midori no Umi, the dismembered limbs in Hakoniwa Logic — all small stuff. Games like Clockup’s are even more whatever. I just smirk, completely unfazed. Out of all the games I’ve played, only two actually scared me. One was the sudden decapitated-head CG that pops up in 3days. The other… is this game. Doki Doki Literature Club!. There’s only one reason it scared me: it was sudden, way too sudden, no preparation whatsoever. Looking back after finishing it, I can say clearly: overall, Doki Doki Literature Club! is not a romance sim. It’s more like a horror game. Yeah, don’t be fooled by all the promotional material or the people in the comments saying how interesting it is. This really is a horror game. At the start it repeatedly emphasizes: if you have a weak mental constitution, don’t play; if you’re a kid, don’t play; if you’re a scaredy-cat, don’t play. That sentence is serious, not a joke! I know a lot of young folks can’t handle even a little “cruelty” in a galgame. I’ve seen people get spooked by the music in Hatsuyuki Sakura, people devastated because the little sister dies in Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai, people who can’t take how tragic the mermaid princess is in Suisou Ginka no Istoria, and people who want to mail razor blades to Niijima Yuu because the heroine in a story-within-a-story doesn’t get a happy ending in Majo Koi Nikki. For those people, stay the hell away from this game. It is not a romance game. It’s a horror game, a horror metagame in the same style as Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

Years ago, The Fruit of Grisaia blew up as Frontwing’s anniversary title, and it’s not hard to see why. The game itself is rock solid, and it nails the mix of “daily-life comedy” and “plot-driven drama” — the 30-hour common route is all slice-of-life gags, while the other 30 hours of heroine routes lean hard into wild plot twists. A game that goes “grab both handles and grip them both tight” like that was never going to escape glowing reviews. The Fruit of Grisaia: possibly a masterpiece After that, Frontwing struck while the iron was hot and put out sequels in the series, including The Labyrinth of Grisaia and The Eden of Grisaia, plus several DLCs for the game. By the time the last DLC, The Melody of Grisaia, came out, the whole Grisaia series was complete, and the game series even got an anime adaptation. Looks like Frontwing put a period at the end of the Grisaia saga and moved on to making new anti-American propaganda spectacles…

Not long after Corona Blossom wrapped up, Vol.2 got announced. Not really a surprise — the series was billed as three volumes from the start. The funny part is that Corona Blossom launched in Japan a month after Steam, meaning Steam got it first. Same for Vol.2: a galgame with a Japanese release slated for November, and it hits Steam ahead of schedule. Gotta hand it to them. Vol.1 didn’t score well on ErogameScape. Most of the complaints were that the story doesn’t go anywhere, the slice-of-life is boring, splitting it into volumes is shameless, etc. And honestly? Fair. These days if your eroge doesn’t have a shrine maiden with a deep grudge, or an idol restoring a fallen nation, or a cursed katana you can bang, or a train module you can bang, who the hell cares? Standard developments are played out. A lump of metal falls from the sky, goes duang, and turns into a cat-eared girl — light novels were doing that ten years ago. All tropes, bruh.