2022 Year in Review

I haven't been blogging as much these past few months. Part of it is because I'm still trying to find my writing groove again post-cancer. Even though I completed NaNoWriMo it wasn't easy and I haven't been as happy with my draft as I've been in previous years. It feels like I either need to relearn or figure out new writing habits. But in any case, difficulty writing has led to less writing-related content.

As for gaming, I oddly didn't play many games after June of this year, leading a drought of things to post about after my Variable Barricade blog series wrapped up. I did manage to squeeze in a few very short indies, but they're not the longer games I prefer. It's not that there's anything wrong with being short. I think Pre-Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope and her Ducks is one of the sweetest (and funniest) games I've played all year and it's only a few hours long. But generally speaking I like something long enough to have both a main plot and a sub plot. It's like the difference between reading a novel and a short story.

Next year I'll probably play more, at least on the visual novel side. Since I didn't play as much this year as I expected I'm fairly backlogged on my VNs, which is really strange for me as I generally only keep a handful in reserve for a rainy day. Part of this is due to the otome boom we experienced this year, as more Japanese publishers are entering the English language market and more indies are starting to come into their own, but there are also some mystery games that I just haven't gotten around too, with more on the horizon. I'm cautiously optimistic for next year's Process of Elimination and Master Detective Archives: Rain Code for mystery titles, and definitely looking forward to Radiant Tale on the otome front.

If there's one thing I'm particularly happy about with this blog though is that I finally updated the layout, which has allowed me to use larger screenshots and the blog no longer looks like it's twelve years old. I suppose one of these days I should move to Wordpress, but that's an effort for another time.

This is my last post of the year, so I wish you all a Happy New Year.

My blog will pick up again in January with at least three weeks of definite content as I go through my favorite books, games, and anime of 2022. See you then!

NaNoWriMo 2022

I had to flip a ways back through my blog (do you "flip" through a blog given that it's not made of paper?) to find my last NaNoWriMo post, and it was back in 2019, because... well... cancer arrived in 2020 and preparing for treatment understandably killed my inclination to do NaNoWriMo.

The month felt a bit odd, not doing it, and in retrospect I probably could have done it anyway given that my chemotherapy didn't start under December and it might have been a good way to keep my mind off things, but in any case, that's water under the bridge at this point.

Last year was 2021. I had a feeding tube in my gut, but I was feeling better, so I decided I would do stealth NaNoWriMo without telling anyone, so if I failed, it would be okay. No one would need to know. (Sometimes my ego can be a little fragile.) I was not happy with the 50k words I put out, as it was the first time my story had morphed so drastically from the start of the novel to the midway point (because 50k is not really a standard novel length anymore) that I realized the beginning of the book no longer supported the ending.

In fact I ended up changing the title, which referred to the two main characters, because one of the pair ended up being a side character who I struggled to work into scenes. It was a mess!

Though I like some scenes and some elements of the story, that draft has been entirely dumpstered (not deleted, but I won't be using any of it) and I'm rewriting it from scratch for this year's NaNoWriMo. There's just too much I'm changing to lift the same scenes without taking in the new context, and I like drafting far more than revision, so this is the best way given my writing style.

I'm actually a little behind as of this writing, but this time I'm okay with saying that I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. It's been challenging for me to get back into writing post-cancer and just finding a regular system that works while also trying to figure out a new rhythm to my life, but I'm hoping I'll get there.

VN Talk: Your Dry Delight

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac, Linux, and Android)
Release: 2018

I stumbled on Your Dry Delight while doing a search on The Visual Novel Database for visual novels set during the 1920s. Given that most visual novels come out of Japan I was mostly expecting stuff set during Japan's Taisho era, but was pleasantly surprised to see The Blind Griffon (an English language favorite of mine) and then I found Your Dry Delight, which looked to be up my alley with one exception.

It was boys' love, or M/M as it's often referred to by western romance readers. I'm acutely aware of the fact that a lot of BL media is aimed at heterosexual women. There's not much in the way of own voices and I do not know if either one of the duo that forms Argent Games is a gay man. But Your Dry Delight was well reviewed and rated in Itch.io, and the game can also be found on Steam where it is rated Overwhelmingly Positive so I figured I'd give it a chance.

It's not that I dislike having a gay romance in a story, but BL (though it's getting better) still has a lot of protagonists who "aren't really gay" but "gay for their particular love interest." Being from a western developer, I figured this was going to be less likely with Your Dry Delight. And in any case it had a short playthrough time, so I knew whatever happened, would happen quickly.

So that's the mindset I went in to enjoy a story set in Prohibition America.

Betrayal Legacy Board Game

I feel like my fiction blog has mostly transformed into my gaming blog rather than using gaming content to fill in between my writing posts, and even then, I haven't been good about putting up posts every week. Part of this was due to my second round of cancer last year and the shingles kicker earlier this year, but ever since my shingles episode my energy has been low so there have been more times than I've liked where I just decided it was easier not to post. (I need to run through another big otome game, lol. Those give me content for weeks.)

Don't worry, I'm still seeing all my doctors regularly, so I hope to have more energy again soon.

So this week, I'm going to talk about Betrayal Legacy, which is one of a growing number of board games that play out over an extended number of gaming sessions. Each group of players will have the story play out differently for them based on who wins and who loses.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is the original base game featuring a bunch of premade characters who will explore an old house. It's been around since 2004, and the players take turns moving from room to room, uncovering spooky things, until eventually enough ill omens have been unturned that the "haunt" is revealed.

The fun thing about the original Betrayal is that you have no idea what's going to happen when you start. Based on the omen drawn and the room the player is standing in, you flip through a book to the appropriate entry and it tells you what happens. One player is usually turned traitor (it's usually but not always the haunt revealer) and sent from the room to read one set of instructions while the rest of the players read another. When both parties are done, the game resumes with the main party and the traitor each trying to fulfill their objectives. A few scenarios might not have a traitor at all.

Since you never know what you're going to get, there's a lot of replayability, and I've played this version of the game with several different groups of people without ever getting a repeat.

Betrayal Legacy is the campaign version of Betrayal at House on the Hill. You still start out with a house, but it's not creepy yet. Each player picks one of five families to play, and my group had four fairly static players who were there for most sessions, and the fifth family was shared by a fifth and sixth player who were never there at the same time.

We started this game as something to do in between our D&D sessions if we didn't have our full group present for important story points or the DM needed a break, and while I don't remember the exact date we started, I would hazard a guess that we began in 2018, because we had already been playing for a while before we wrapped up our D&D campaign in 2019. (And I know that date, because when Covid forced us into isolation in March 2020 we all were like "Thank, God we finished that campaign!" Which sounds kinda funny, but it'd been running longer than any of us thought it would and our last few sessions had already been hard to schedule.)

So Betrayal Legacy didn't start up again until late 2021, after people started getting vaccinated and I could be reasonably safe coming out of the house (because, you know, immunocompromised).

Still, it's a fun game. Each session at its most basic level plays out like Betrayal at House on the Hill, except that sometimes you might start somewhere other than the ground floor hallway. You then explore the house until enough omens have been triggered for the haunt to start and someone (usually) ends up being designated the traitor and presumed to be working for nefarious purposes. In one scenario my group had though, they were pretty sure the traitor was actually the good guy and everyone else was doing something bad. This was more or less confirmed by the scenario immediately after it, which was a nice twist.

However, unlike the base game, things that happen can affect the house. There are ghosts haunting certain rooms, and open spaces for new ghosts to be added if someone dies there. Though dying sucks a bit since it leaves you out of play and passively witnessing the rest of the conflict (unless you're the traitor, in which case you may have minions to move), it is fun adding a sticker to permanently mark on the gameboard where your character ate it.

Different conclusions to the scenario are read depending on the result, whether the traitor wins/loses, or if the party wins/loses in the traitorless scenarios, and in turn, those results affect future iterations of the game. We physically destroyed room tiles because something happened in them that according to the story rendered them forever unusable, and replaced them with other rooms according to the story. Some event cards, random things that could happen throughout the game, could be destroyed before ever being put into play because they were simply "not part of our story."

And yet, the final scenario felt rather pre-ordained. I won't spoil the particulars, but despite all the this is/isn't part of your story, I don't think the final scenario would have been all that different if we had done drastically different things. I haven't read how other people's games turned out, but it felt like who won/lost all our previous sessions didn't really matter, and being a writer I had hoped for a more personalized narrative build up.

In retrospect this may not have been possible, or difficult to implement, but it still felt like a missed opportunity. I was not the game owner for our sessions so I don't have the box to reference, but there was essentially a story deck we'd go through to start off each scenario, and things would occasionally be taken out of it as directed by the game. Since the story deck is pretty static, the final scenario is likely the same for everyone. It's just the set dressing might be different.

Though it took us about four years to finish, we're pretty happy that we did, and we only really had one complaint about the final scenario and it involved a particular game mechanic we collectively didn't like. Since we didn't like it, we avoided engaging with it unless we absolutely had to. In the final session it turned out that if we'd regularly been using it, we would have gotten a massive bonus towards the final showdown. Instead the final session turned into a weird slog where four of us were dead (including the traitor) and our last player spent several turns engaging with this mechanic solo while everyone else watched. And then he died in an anti-climatic fashion unique to this mechanic and that was it. The traitor won.

Still, it was overall a good experience, and even though the campaign is over, my friend the game owner started going through the rules and apparently the fun can continue. We jointly decided to permanantly transform a particular room tile into a different version of itself by placing a massive sticker on it, and apparently we can still heirloom items (a nifty way to mark something as having been in your family for generations).

One last thing I want to mention is the helm. In Betrayal Legacy you're given this disc called the helm and once per game session you're allowed to fill up a crest slot on the helm with your family crest in order to get a free reroll of the die. Obviously this is very nice when you're in a tight spot and about to die, but at the same time... you're pretty sure you shouldn't be doing this. Nothing comes for free, especially in a game like this one.

Despite that, the game encourages you to worship the helm and find your own way of revering it as it's lifted out of the game box each session. The helm is only ever to be handled by two hands, never one. That kind of stuff.

Well, I'm quite happy that I disrespected the helm. And while it likely will never come into play again, I'm tickled that there is now a physical reminder of my disrepect that will remain forevermore.

VN Talk: Yrsa Major: An Elchemia Story

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac, Linux, and Browser)
Release: 2021

Yrsa Major has been in my indie gaming backlog since it came out last year, largely because of its protagonist, Yrsa. She's a tall, broad-shouldered woman, who we're introduced to when she kills a daimon with a shovel in front of a bunch of quaking guards with actual weapons. On top of that, she's the "unimaginable" age of thirty, which is quite old for a female romantic lead, especially in otome.

Though we've had female protagonists before who are capable of handling themselves in the midst of combat, Yrsa is a bit unusual in that despite her size, she's not defined as a warrior. She's a carpenter who just happens to be good at killing monsters if push comes to shove. And not being defined by her strength and her appearance is very much what Yrsa Major is about, even though Yrsa herself is initially unaware of it.

Shortly after Yrsa's daimon slaying introduction, we get to see her in a tavern in the nearby town where people seem to be celebrating her victory, but she's spending most of her time arm-wrestling the men who want to challenge her. We quickly realize something is off when a drunkard challenges her and begins to tell her of all the sweet things he'll do for her when he wins, only for her to quickly defeat him without breaking a sweat. She then leaves as a bard begins to strike up an old song about a man who married a bear in a time when women were literally bears.

Yrsa doesn't complain or show that she's upset in any way, which tells us a lot about her.

Anime Talk: Phantom of the Idol

My favorite new anime for the summer season is pretty random. I have a taste for the dramatic, stories set in other worlds or other times, but even though Phantom of the Idol is not entirely grounded in reality (it has a literal ghost in it!), it's definitely a show more interested pop culture than my usual fare.

Our feckless protagonist is Yuuya Niyodo, a young man who became one half of an idol duo because he thought it would be an easy way for him to make money without really doing anything. However, an idol isn't just singing and dancing on stage. Idols are also about being available to one's fans. (Agency-managed meet and greets with fans is something you don't really have for performers in the west.) It's a lot of work, but if you manage to buy into the fact that Niyodo somehow stumbled into this gig and was able to survive it for a year before being threatened with getting fired, you're set.

Because Niyodo is like... the worst idol. He doesn't smile, he looks half dead most of the time, and usually talks as though he was bored as soon as he stepped in the room. And yet, he has some fans. Not a lot, mind, but there are a few who are drawn to the fact he is such a weird guy who sometimes forgets the lines to the song he's singing.

In fact, every episode so far (I've seen up to 6) ends with a few of his hardcore fans drinking at the local izakaya as they talk over the latest about him. I've never followed any performer with any level of ferver, but their enthusiasm and belief in their idol is highly relateable for anyone who has ever been a fan of a niche subject matter.

While faced with his impending firing, Niyodo coincidentally meets the ghost of Asahi Mogami, a hugely popular idol who tragically died a year ago. She's been lingering around, unable to pass on, wanting to perform, but unable to be seen, until she meets Niyodo. For some reason, he's the only person who can see her, and when she accidentally falls into him, she ends up taking over his body. (Niyodo is still there, along for the ride, and can experience everything along with her.)

Thus begins their partnership. Though Mogami knows the fans are not there for her, she loves performing regardless and agrees to take on some of Niyodo's performing work, which is a great bargain for him since he no longer needs to do it. They butt heads over how best to improve his career though, since Asahi thinks he could do a lot better than he does, while Niyodo remains firmly in the mindset that he does not want to expend the effort.

But the funny thing is, Mogami is not good at being Niyodo, and part of it is that she doesn't entirely want to try. She wants to perform! A lot of which means being herself. Niyodo's fans definitely notice, and it drives them into a frenzy when they can't tell whether he's going to be his usual flat self or "God Mode." Nobody really questions why Niyodo occasionally goes through these drastic personality shifts, other than to surmise that he's probably gotten more serious about his job, and why would they? He's clearly sane no matter which personality is currently in the driver's seat, and nobody would guess that he's voluntarily letting the ghost of a dead idol perform for him!

This is my first anime hearing Fumiya Imai, the voice of Niyodo, and he does a fantastic job jumping between Niyodo's tired baritone and the tenor he uses when possessed by Mogami. He and the voice actor for Yoshino perform the opening credits as their in-universe duo ZINGS. While it's very common for voice actors to be able to sing in Japan, it's significantly less common for them to perform the opening (or ending) credits to their own shows, so I like the extra level of immersion of having them sing.

The only thing that really bothers me about the show is the use of CG in the dance segments. Most of the show has the look we typically expect from hand drawn anime, but when the show shifts to a ZINGS performance, suddenly Niyodo and Yoshino look like two plastic dolls as they step around the stage. It looks more like robots dancing than people, which is strange when you consider that these sequences are probably mo-capped, and can probably be attributed to the fact their clothing just doesn't sway the way we expect it would.

But aside from that, I find myself looking forward to the next episode every week.

VN Talk: Pre-Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope, and her Ducks

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac and Android)
Release: 2022

When I saw this lovely gem I knew I needed to play it. I was a huge Greek mythology buff when I was in school and Pre-Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope, and her Ducks is a light-hearted take on how Odysseus and Penelope met, with one significant alteration to the story: Penelope can communicate with ducks. In fact she's surrounded by enough of them everyday that she's a little ostracized by other people for being "the duck girl."

Penelope is the protagonist of Pre-Odyssey, and despite being a Spartan princess, she's highly relatable, especially through the expressive portraits the game uses. She's socially awkward, gets easily flustered, but isn't above "looking respectfully" at the nearly naked Odysseus when he's about to race her father for the right to marry her. (Seriously, the camera in that scene does such a good job conveying her gaze. Rather than the usual pan up, it also goes side to side and zooms in and out. I about died.)

This is a new game that just came out of this year's NaNoRenO 2022 game jam, so just so you know, spoilers ahead. I mean, this is based on mythology, so what happens in terms of broad strokes isn't really a spoiler, but if you want to know how the ducks fit into all this, maybe that's a spoiler to you?

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 6: True Route

I'd like to preface this with a comment that the true route is not supposed to be the canon route for a game. It is supposed to be a route where the overall truth behind the story is revealed.

Sometimes a separate true route is necessary in order to tie up story details that did not get a satisfactory ending in the traditional romance routes. Maybe some characters had pieces of the overall story, but no one person knew everything. Maybe the romance derailed the political or action-oriented parts of the plot. But the thing is, I didn't feel like there were any lingering, unanswered questions in Variable Barricade. We know what prompted the suitors being thrown at Hibari at such a young age (Kazuya's marriage proposal, and Takamune's limited ability to block it due to extended family problems), and Hibari eventually falls in love with one of the men her grandfather has chosen. What else is there?

Well, that's obviously spoilers so follow along after the break!

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 5: Ichiya

I know what I expected from Ichiya from Variable Barricade's promotional art, and it's not what I got. Given that he's the poster boy and poses with a suave, debonair air, I expected him to be a flirty ladykiller. While I got the flirty part right, a ladykiller he is not. He's always one bad line away from Hibari wanting to be sick.

That isn't to say that Ichiya has no dating experience, he's good looking and women are attracted to him, but all his previous girlfriends both initiated the relationship and ended it. So when it comes to courting Hibari, he actually doesn't know how to attract her. As a result he flirts like crazy, but all his lines are so over the top cheesy that, to paraphrase Tsumugi, it sounds like he was flipping through some shoujo manga to find all his material.

As with all of Hibari's suitors though, there is more to Ichiya than we initially see, and since this title is still fairly new, be aware there will be major spoilers after the break.

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 4: Taiga

This week's love interest is Taiga, who seems to be fairly popular among English speakers. He's loud and abrasive, but Hibari can be too, which means that she's not one to lay down and take it. As always for these types of posts, this is a recent game and there are spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid them you'll want to stop reading now.

That said, I found Taiga very strange and off-putting in the common route. He's blunt and likes to tease Hibari (and not in a romantic fashion) to get a rise out of her. Though insightful like Shion, he lacks Shion's sense of discretion. And this is weird, because he's supposed to be one of Hibari's suitors, but in the common route he doesn't really do anything to try to court her. Ichiya's always cooking and showering her with cheesy romance lines. Shion tries to cuddle with her and take her to spas or fashion boutiques. Even Nayuta tries to get her attention in order for her to pick him.

Taiga doesn't try to be nice. So he was the last of the suitors whose barricade board I did in the common route, but when I did it, I saw that beneath the crass exterior was a guy with a big heart. I mean, I figured something of the sort was coming as a character detail because this is a rom-com and not the kind of otome where you expect to find assholes (though, hello Shion), but it was nice to see how the game would soften him.

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 3: Shion

This week, I'm continuing with the second love interest I played from Variable Barriacade. Spoilers will be coming further down after the break.

Shion was surprisingly close to being my first pick of the game over Nayuta, if not for the fact I went through that rationalization process on who made the most sense from Hibari's point of view, and that's a funny thing because going into the game, he was the guy I was least interested in. Ichiya was the flirt, Taiga was the foul-mouthed rough around the edges guy, and Nayuta was the happy-go-lucky bundle of energy. Though they aren't flat characters, most of the cast falls into certain archetypes.

Except for Shion. Even the opening movie tags him as "The Daydreamer," which doesn't really fit him at all, since that's implying he's always thinking about what doesn't exist.

My first impression of Shion as a character (outside of the fact that he's supposed to be an extremely beautiful man) was that he was surprisingly insightful. He ordered Nayuta to get him a drink, which Nayuta did, complaining all the way, and while Nayuta was gone, Shion spoke to the other guys about stuff that Nayuta should not hear. When Nayuta came back before the conversation could finish, Shion told him he didn't get the right drink and sent him out again (which Nayuta did, because he's a nice guy).

Shion might be the prettiest pretty boy in the game, but that doesn't mean he lacks a brain, and it was Shion's ability to read people that caught my interest. His flaw (aside from being unemployed like all the rest of the guys) is that he has always been a kept man and never worked a day in his adult life. Instead a string of patrons kept him housed and fed until he eventually ended up in the suitor competition for Hibari's hand.

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 2: Nayuta

I played Nayuta's route first for Variable Barricade, and since I was predisposed towards liking all the men after clearing their first barricade boards, he wasn't the shoe-in that I thought he'd be. Nayuta interested me when I read my first import review of the game (back when I thought it would never be translated), but the specific reason is a bit of a spoiler so I won't mention it just yet so you can't accidentally glance down at it.

However, if spoilers bother you, now would be a good time to check out, as I will eventually cover all of his route.

Nayuta is often likened to a large dog, but he is definitely not an alpha dog. He's happy to please, all the other guys get him to run errands and do things for them, but he has tons of energy and is genuinely happy to help. Not getting to help, when he can possibly be of assistance, drives him crazy, and what he wants to do more than anything else is please Hibari.

He's also... not the brightest bulb in the room. At one point Shion texts Hibari to say that they have no need of a pet, because they have Nayuta. When Hibari points out that Nayuta is a human being, Shion replies with a protest that Nayuta was eating dog food.

Seriously.

VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 1: Overview

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Switch
Release: 2022

Variable Barricade is one of those games I learned about prior to its Japanese release and despaired of it ever being translated into English. It came out on the PS Vita at the end of its life cycle, and it wasn't the sort of romance game that Aksys usually chose for localization. Aksys was (and still is) the primary purveyor of console otome games in the west, and in those early days, the focus was more on romance games with a crossover appeal.

And I get that. I gravitate toward games that are in a fantasy, science fiction, or historical setting, just because I want that extra zing of escapism. Sticking exclusively to romance in a mundane real world setting could have been limiting at a time when otome needed to find as many fans as possible. The more checkboxes a game offered beyond being a romance, the wider a net it could cast, so the early titles tended to be more action-based with a sense of adventure.

But the otome market has matured since then, and Variable Barricade was ported to the Switch, giving it another shot at localization at a time when it's no longer a risk to release a straight-up romantic comedy.

So, you might wonder why I wanted to play this game so much when I just said I seldom play games that aren't fantasy, science fiction, or historical, and the reason has to do with Variable Barricade's premise. Hibari Tojo is a wealthy heiress who gets coerced by her grandfather, the family patriarch, into choosing one of four suitors to be her fiancé, but she isn't down for this type of manipulation and resolves not to fall in love with any of them!

It was Hibari's defiance that sold me on the game. This being a romance game, she obviously falls in love eventually, but she has to be encouraged to do so. She's dumped into a pretty weird situation where she's forced to cohabitate with her suitors (though her butler is there to chaperone and make sure nothing untoward happens) and she has all the rage one might expect a seventeen-year-old girl to have about this.

New Site Layout

Embarrassingly enough, I've had the same blog design, more or less, for about twelve years and it was looking pretty dated. I kept telling myself I was going to fix it, and like many things, it got pushed off. (And all those bouts of illness didn't help.)

Finally, I decided that it was time. I was going to look for a new layout!

And this is the one I chose. I think it looks pretty clean. I like that it's not stark white, but it's still dark text on a light background, and I'm able to make a wider main column for the blog writing itself. I did have to cut a column to do so, but I wasn't updating my published works column regularly since I had to add cover art manually each time, and many times online magazines don't even have cover art, so they didn't get included. The end result was that it ended up looking outdated.

Now I hope to simply have one image of the latest publication, so it'll be less work to keep current, and I figure most online magazines at least have a logo of some kind I can use going forward.

I'm still tinkering with things so some of the widgets might move around, and I'm not sure I like the red link color, but for the most part this template should be here for a while.

Thoughts on the Game Writing Nebula Award

A little over a week ago, I joined some friends in watching the Nebula Awards online. We talked about who we hoped would win, or who we thought would win, and when it came to the Game Writing Nebula, a couple people confessed they really had no idea since they don't play games.

If you read my blog at all, I'm a huge gamer, so I've always followed the Game Writing Nebula, and it's a relatively new category, so it's interesting seeing it evolve. The very first award in 2019 was dominated by what we might call Choose Your Own Adventure after the children's book series (with the odd God of War thrown in).

While interactive fiction is a game in the sense that you do interact with it, I have trouble calling it a game. Since I grew up reading a lot of CYOA books, even those with stat blocks and combat like the Lone Wolf series, I tend to consider them "books" and not "games." Where was Lone Wolf shelved? In the middle grade/YA section of the bookstore, and not with the Dungeons & Dragons game material. But I can see a case for interactive fiction being a game, even if it's not what commonly comes to mind when you think of one.

The Game Writing Nebula has expanded since then though. In 2020, half the nominees were from video games, and the first instance of tabletop gaming cropped up with the Fate Accessibility Toolkit from Evil Hat Productions, bringing us to the three types of game writing honored by the Nebulas: interactive fiction, tabletop game writing, and video game writing.

And it just seems weird to me that all of them are honored in the same game category when they require different skill sets, just as novels and short stories do. A tabletop game writer is also part game designer. Even if they're not laying down stat blocks, they're working to instruct either a player or a game master in how to tell the story, how to play a character, what the game world does or could look like, etc. It's definitely game writing, and it's creative, but parts of any given game book are going to be written as non-fiction. Possibly most of it. A few game books might hint at a story here or there for flavor, but it's not most of the content.

Interactive fiction and video game writing on the other hand are trying to tell a story, but interactive fiction is heavily based on conventional prose and video game writing usually comes out in the from of dialogue with animated characters acting out the story. Because of this, the latter is typically more collaborative with the artists and animators, and key moments of the story could be just a line in the script but a beautifully rendered cutscene for the player. It's kind of like the difference between writing prose and writing a screenplay. Two related, but different skillsets.

I realize there probably aren't enough game writers or enough will to split up the game writing category into three separate awards, but when Thirsty Sword Lesbians, a tabletop game, won this year, I couldn't help wondering: how can you really compare it against Wildermyth, a video game where you follow a group of characters over time? You might like one more than the other, but in no other award would you pit a tabletop game versus a video game. Their audiences might overlap, but they're very different mediums.

Anime Talk: Ya Boy Kongming!

I wrote a short story a while back called "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang" for the Swords v Cthulhu anthology, which takes place during the Three Kingdoms period of imperial China. Specifically, it follows the death of Zhuge Liang after the Battle of the Wuzhong Plains. He didn't die from battle, but passed away from illness, after which the army of Shu Han retreated, unable to defeat Cao Wei has they had hoped.

My short story follows Jiang Wei, who was left as Zhuge Liang's successor and in charge of the retreat, and because I hadn't written anything in this time period before, I gave myself a crash course in Three Kingdoms history while outlining it. It's fairly popular in Asian media, from comics to video games, but growing up in the US it's hard to absorb the details by osmosis.

But what I do know, has given me an appreciation for one of the anime airing this spring season called Ya Boy Kongming!. Kongming is Zhuge Liang's courtesy name (basically what his friends called him), and from the irreverent "Ya Boy" you would be right in thinking this is not the usual Three Kingdoms story.

Ya Boy Kongming! follows the death of Zhuge Liang on the Wuzhong Plains to finding himself inexplicably reborn as a younger man in modern day Tokyo. Since it's Halloween, no one initially thinks anything of his weird clothes and he amusingly thinks that he's arrived in hell for judgment. The series doesn't really dwell on why he's been transported into the future or why/how he's now able to speak fluent Japanese (which is fully acknowledged by the show) and quickly gets to the central premise of the story:

What if Zhuge Liang decided to apply his tactical mind to building the career of an aspiring pop star?

It's so weird and yet, it works! I really don't know who the fanbase for this series for this series is intended to be, as it blends tidbits about how music works in clubs (like arranging the songs played by bpms to provide the appropriate cues to the audience) to Three Kingdoms stragems that Zhuge Liang is famous for. I can't help but imagine that the number of people whose interests fully intersect both topics is rare, but even as someone who's only coming in from the Three Kingdoms side, I'm finding it quite enthralling. Eiko is a sympathetic singer, and unlike a lot of anime, her singing voice is performed by a separate singer rather than an actor pulling double duty. Not a knock on other voice actors who also sing, but 96Neko's performance just sounds more polished, especially when it comes to belting out the English lyrics of Eiko's "Be Crazy For Me."

Zhuge Liang knows that he's lost in this new world, but is quick to catch up on the 1800 years he's missed. He's thrilled to discover he has his own wiki entry, but saddened to learn that Shu ultimately lost the war. During all this, he is taken by Eiko's underappreciated singing (she sings at the bar she works at when there's a free spot) and thus she comes to occupies the position of "liege" in his mind, where if she gives the order, then he will carry it out to be the best of his ability.

Eiko is reluctant to believe that he can really do anything at first, though she is grateful to have her first real fan. She certainly doesn't believe he is the real Zhuge Liang and not some dedicated cosplayer, but naturally she begins to have more trust in him as she goes from singing at her boss's bar to performing at her first festival.

At the point the anime is in now (five episodes in) we're in the first story arc rather than stand alone episodes, so I'm not sure where it's going, but I really enjoyed the first three episodes so I'm willing to stick it out for the ride.

VN Talk: Billionaire Lovers

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Windows (also on Mac and Linux)
Release: 2022

I admit I cringed a little at Billionaire Lovers' title, which suggests you will be romancing a string of fabulously wealthy men whose most defining trait is their money. But the game is oddly not very romantic at all, even though it initially looks like it will be.

The nameable main character (whose pronouns can be "he" or "she" depending on the player's choosing) receives $100 million dollars at the start of the game from their largely absentee uncle and is allowed to live at his estate, though he is not there himself because he's always traveling. Their uncle calls it an early taste of their inheritance as his sole heir. For a broke college graduate without a job, it's a nice deal.

Their uncle does leave them with a warning though, to stay inside their swanky community because people might be out for their wealth, and though the MC is good about that, that doesn't mean they aren't in danger.

The game offers a warning at the start that it may contain sensitive content, and that's fair because if there's any game I'd compare Billionaire Lovers to, it's Doki Doki Literature Club and not any romance game. It's not as straight up intense as DDLC, but it starts out the same way in that you think you're in a romance game only to reveal a different kind of story.

Spoilers after the break. Seriously! I really like this game and think more people should check it out, but play it first. It's only $3 and 2-4 hours long depending on whether you chase all the endings.

April Odds and Ends

This is going to be a more upbeat post than my March 2022 Health Update so I wanted to title it something else.

But for those wondering about the health stuff. I'm on nerve pain medication to manage the remaining damage the shingles left me with. It may take months for it to heal, which I figured since I'd already gone through nerve damage due to both my chemotherapy and my surgery. So the medication I'm taking isn't new to me. It's just... well... I wish it wasn't necesssary.

The rash is still visible on my face, and while I itch a bit, I think it's more from the nerve damage than the rash itself, since the medication also makes the itching go down (though it doesn't entirely go away). My scalp sentitivity has even made me part my hair differently because I can't stand having my bangs falling down on the nerve-damaged skin.

But on the bright side, shingles fatigue is gone. I'm eating more. I don't always manage it, but sometimes I can squeeze in more than 1600 calories in a day, so I'm hoping to gain more weight (since I'm still under what I was).

Though nothing I've played in 2022 has appeared on my blog yet (Rose in the Embers really got stretched out with my illness), I'm still playing games when I get the chance. I'm not going to do a blog post on it since it's not an RPG or visual novel, but Hungry Hearts Diner is a lovely free to play mobile game about running a neighborhood diner that ends up having a tearjerker of a story, and you never have to watch an ad if you don't want to.

I'm woefully behind on others forms of entertainment. Usually I watch some anime or read some books, but I haven't finished a single one of any of those this year. Some of it is likely time lost due to shingles and remaining medical issues from my cancer, but also I think my attention span just hasn't been where it needs to be for them. Maybe I'll pick them up again as the year passes.

And finally, I've started writing a new short story. It's been a long time in coming, and it's not like I never had ideas while sick, but finally putting new words down on the keyboard has been something I haven't started until recently. I hope it all turns out all right. Writing is supposed to be like any muscle where if you do it regularly, it becomes easier, but I've definitely been out of practice. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 6: Atsuro

Atsuro's route is unique in that he's not one of the four men present when Kyosuke buys the MC's freedom. He shows up on all the routes, so he's a familiar face regardless, but he's rarely presented as a member of the in-group with the exception of Tsukumo's route (where he's allowed to hear about Tsukumo's heritage at the same time as the rest of the guys). He's also clearly the least accomplished of the men. Though he runs an upscale restaurant, he appears to be a man of limited means himself, living in a small space above his business rather than a stand alone home.

Because of this, his route starts off a little differently, mirroring Kyosuke's. Kyosuke takes the MC to his house, drops her off with the other maids where she doesn't have a good time of it, and eventually he sends her to work for Atsuro, who has privately inquired if he might borrow one of Kyosuke's maids to help out with his restaurant.

This sets up the MC's new situation where she lives at Kyosuke's, but works at Atsuro's, and Kyosuke gets a month's worth of free curry rice out of the deal.

Atsuro's route is a bit of a slow burn. He's an older guy, which unfortunately leads to him calling himself "old man" even though he's in his thirties, and he's not worried about formalities, leading to incidents such as him appearing in his undershirt in front of the MC like it's no big deal. The age gap is likely part of the slow burn, though it never comes up aside from his "old man" comments.

Mostly it feels like he and the MC are two people just trying to get by, who happen to have found a happy companionship in each other, which for the MC turns to love before she knows it. Aside from the fact he's probably ten to fifteen years older than her, I can see why he's appealing to the MC. He's considerate, he works hard, and he's not a lofty part of society so he's relatable. Their "date" at the festival is sweet, as are their evening trips to the baths on his bicycle (back when riding on the back of a guy's bike was still romantic rather than a safety hazard).

But, of course, that's not all there is to him or this would be a very boring route.

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 5: Tsukumo

It's been about two months, but I think I'm ready to resume! I'm still not over my shingles nerve damage, but with medication it's manageable, and the acne from last week has cleared up (so grateful). So now that that's out of the way, on to the next and possibly best route of Rose in the Embers!

I didn't have any particular expectations of Tsukumo's route, not because I disliked him, but because he was so hard to get a read on in the prologue. Though he's the one who helps the MC find the inn with her job, and he warns her about the potentially false nature of the people who live in the capital, he doesn't quite come off as someone you can immediately trust. Part of it is due to the cryptic way he chooses to warn her, telling her about fiends wearing masks, instead of a more straightforward "Don't take things at face value around here," but also in that he just seems rather distant instead of welcoming.

But the reviews for his route were good, so I gave him a shot, and I have to agree, his route is good. I had no reason to believe the story would go where it did and as well as it did. It's not without flaws (just a couple things I'd want to nitpick about), but for a three hour experience, it was a memorable ride and will stick with me long after the game is over.

So what is it about Tsukumo's route that makes it so unusual?

After All This Time, Amnesia: Later x Crowd is Being Translated

I'm going to get back to my Rose in the Embers series soon, probably next week, but because I'm still under the weather I figured I'd take this week to talk about something else. Not that I'm entirely well yet. I'm taking medicine for some nerve damage the shingles left me with, and I'm dealing with the worst acne of my life (not even teenage years were this bad) which might be a side effect of the medication, even though nothing of the sort is listed. But in any case, there was some interesting otome news this week!

Amnesia: Memories came out in English in 2015 for PS Vita and Steam. I bought it fairly blindly as a supportive otome fan who wanted something other than the myriad of Hakuoki rereleases we were getting at the time. Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ and Norn9: Var Commons would not come out until later that year so when Amnesia landed in summer of 2015, the slate was clear and I was ready, buying the game on the very first day of release.

It... was not quite what I expected given that my only previous experience with otome was Hakuoki and Sweet Fuse. The game was unusual in some ways in that the game director even said they wanted to try a game where the player starts out already in a relationship, but what got me was that my first route was Toma's and my previous games would not prepare me for what his route would be like. (I won't spoil it in this post, but if you want to read my thoughts at the time, they're here.)

I've since come to terms with the fact that some people find characters like Toma entertaining in the same way that some people bring out the popcorn at the sight of internet drama, so I can understand why they have a fanbase, but I doubt characters like him will ever be to my tastes.

But the thing is, even though I bounced between loving, hating, and being irritated with the various routes of Amnesia: Memories, those feelings were so strong that it led to me starting the current format I use for discussing multi-route visual novels on my blog, because I just had to have a outlet for this crazy game. One blog entry wouldn't be enough. I had to dedicate one post to an overview and then one to each love interest so I could really focus on what I wanted to say.

It's not my favorite otome, and might barely make my Top 10 should I put one together at this very moment, but when I played the trailer for the Switch ports of Amnesia: Memories and Amnesia: Later x Crowd, damn was I taken back by about seven years. It was the music (and Kent's sweet half-month anniversary cake). I hadn't heard it in years, but it just brought back all the warm fuzzies from the routes I did like.

Older games get new console ports all the time, but the thing is Amnesia: Later x Crowd was never translated and visual novels are among the most laborious games to localize since they're 90% text. Most otome fans assumed that Amnesia: Memories just didn't sell enough at the time it released so Idea Factory never brought over the fandisks (Later x Crowd is a combination of Amnesia: Later and Amnesia: Crowd), and it didn't seem like that guess was far off the mark since Idea Factory stopped translated otome entirely until just last year when they released Cupid Parasite.

Most of the localization focus has been on new titles, the ones that just came out in Japan within the past year or so. This is the first otome license to reach back to an older title that has simply been ported.

There is a part of me that is quite gleeful about this. After all, that trailer did take me back and I do have positive memories about the first game. But on the other hand, I'm not quite the same player that I was back then. Because it's not one of my favorite games and I'm backlogged, I'm not likely to shell out Day 1 like I did seven years ago, since I don't love it enough to pay for a pricey limited edition and I know I won't play it right away.

But the nice thing is, the otome market has been growing steadily and there are plenty of fans who are thrilled to have a chance at both Amnesia games the very moment they're available. We've come a long way since nobody knew what otome was and it was just a handful of English speakers trying to make their purchasing power known. I can wait on this one out without worry, because there are already a half dozen other otome games that have already been announced for translation.

March 2022 Health Update

I don't really like writing these kinds of posts, but after letting my blog idle for almost a month when usually, even in bad times, I have some posts queued up, I felt I needed to say something.

In January, as some of you know, I finally had my feeding tube removed. It was supposed to be a great moment. I was finally able to maintain my own body weight without relying on supplemental calories being fed directly into my gut. And though it was a little rockier than I liked, it was mostly working. In fact, the former hole into my gut has headled up pretty nicely. There's definitely evidence that something used to be there, but overall, it looks pretty good.

The important thing was, maintaining my weight. Because I can only eat so much in a day with my now reduced digestive track I have to be really diligent about eating. Gaining weight is hard, and I'd "fattened" myself a bit before having the tube removed so I'd have a buffer for future disasters. ... Which unfortunately did not take long to hit me.

In late February, I was hit with an incredible headache that turned out to be a precursor to shingles... on my head. I've heard it's pretty awful no matter where it is, but the head was pretty bad. I had splitting headaches, even with prescription painkillers, and I'd be awake at 2am counting down to 4am just because I had to wait 6 hours between doses of pain meds. It was so bad I couldn't stand to see any light or computer screens, and I told my family that if they wanted to communicate with me they needed to call instead of text.

Worse, I was in so much pain I really didn't feel like eating, even though I knew I couldn't afford to lose weight. I tried to eat at least a little bit everyday, but still, it wasn't the 1600 calories I needed to maintain my weight. I lost all my safe buffer weight and then some.

As I'm writing this, it's been almost three weeks, my headache is mostly gone, but not entirely. My right eye is no longer swollen shut, but it's still a bit swollen and ends up closing on its own if I'm resting my eyes and not looking at anything in particular. My rash is fading, but still itches. And I'm still under weight.

Which is all to say, I'm a little slow right now. I'll get back to blogging soonish, but that's why I've been gone the past few weeks.

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 4: Misao

I didn't expect to like Misao when I first started looking at Rose in the Embers. He's still not my preferred type of love interest, but he's not as bad as I thought and his route was entertaining. If anything, his route is a nice example of why it's worth seeing people for who they are rather than who they appear to be.

Misao is known as an ukiyo-e artist who does erotic paintings of partially clothed women, and given his line of work, the assumption is that he's a wanton hedonist. After all, he lives at a lavish inn with dubious moral standards and has various women going in and out of his room in the later hours of the day. The main character's first impression upon accidentally catching a glimpse of a half-naked woman inside is that she stumbled upon a couple in the middle of a private moment, and Misao does nothing to disabuse her of this notion.

I probably would not have bought his route if not for the fact that there was a special running that let players view half of it for free. Since he was the one Rose in the Embers love interest I thought I might skip, I took advantage of it, and was pleasantly surprised.

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 3: Takahisa

Takahisa gave me a really bad first impression by being flat out rude to the MC in the prologue (basically inviting her to die in front of his carriage), so even though it was seeing artwork of him that originally attracted me to Rose in the Embers, I didn't pick him for my first route. (It was that military uniform. It screamed Taisho, and I love early 20th century stuff, if you couldn't tell from the World War I short stories I've written.) But he was a total bro in Kyosuke's route, helping out the MC and sharing information to help her better understand Kyosuke, so I ended up picking him second.

In his route, the MC is dumped on him by Kyosuke and he reluctantly takes her home as a maid. Takahisa is a captain in the army and is very strict about what he expects of her. His sister is as well.

Due to their parents dying when they were children, the two live alone in a large traditional Japanese home. Suzuko is in finishing school so she's away at class most days, and prior to the MC's arrival, the two of them handled most of the chores themselves. Takahisa makes it clear that the MC is only going to stay until Suzuko is ready to leave home (i.e. get married). They've had maids before, but none have lasted, supposedly due to Takahisa's demanding requirements. If you've ever heard the phrase "Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable," then you know what Takahisa is like. (Actually, with him, five minutes early is still late.)

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 2: Kyosuke

I picked Kyosuke for my first route of Rose in the Embers since he seemed like the nicest guy out of the four in the prologue. When the MC is being made fun of by some geisha at her new job, Kyosuke stops to offer her a handkerchief to clean herself up. It's clear he's a very important customer and far above her station, so the fact he took the time to look after an otherwise unremarkable maid, made an impression. Not to mention, he's the one who buys the protagonist's freedom at the start of the game.

The early chapters of his route are a bit rough though, as he has a rather capricious personality (which allows for him to buy her freedom but also dump her on one of his friends on other routes) and the game really wants the player to know just how big the social gap is between him and the MC.

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 1: Overview

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: iOS (also on Android)
Release: 2017

Rose in the Embers is a Love 365 title, which means that it's a part of Voltage's otome mobile app, which acts as a sort of game library for titles using the same engine and in some cases even sharing background art and musical assets. Though it's a romance visual novel like those I usually cover, it's pay-per-route, rather than getting all routes in a single package as you would in a console game.

I happen to like this one enough to have bought all the routes, so I figure it's worth a VN talk series. I'll only be covering the first of what Love 365 calls the "Main Story" for each route, which is the falling in love part of the romance. There is fandisc-ish material that follows the relationship as it progresses, but it's unequally distributed among the guys due to the modular way mobile content tends to get updated and sadly Rose in the Embers seems to have been retired so what there is, is all we're gonna get.

Rose in the Embers takes place during Taisho Japan (1912-1926), a period of transition in Japanese history when the country was adopting a lot of western culture, but it was still common to see people walking around in traditional clothing. Our nameable protagonist (who has no default name) is the daughter of a farmer who has gone into the city for a job that paid a lot of money upfront for her service; money that her family badly needs.

Of course, being a country bumpkin, she's unprepared for the ways of the capital, and soon learns that the money places her into indentured servitude for the proprietor of an extravagant inn; the kind that has rich and powerful customers who may want any number of things and "no" is never an answer. Our luckless protagonist (who I'll refer to as the MC for "main character" from now on) is horrified at the thought of prostituting herself and runs away from the customer she's supposed to entertain, causing a scene. Her boss gives her a choice, do what she's told or pay the money back along with the contracted penalty she cannot afford.

RPG Talk: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: 3DS
Release: 2016

I wanted to play Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse on release day (or very close to it) back in September 2016, but there was a slight complication in that Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice had come out out two weeks before and well, we know who won that battle, since my blog post for Spirit of Justice went up in Feb 2017. Since then, it remained in my backlog, occasionally resurfacing as something I should get back to, but not to the point where I was ready to commit to it, until this past fall when I wanted a shorter RPG and foolishly thought that SMTIV:A was going to be a medium length game.

It might be for some people. But I am a micromanager/compulsive demon collector, so folks, this was not a medium length game for me. It wasn't as bad as Persona 5 or Persona Q2, which I've previously complained about, but it was definitely in the "long" category.

Still, I was glad I finally got to it, because it's really different from the more abstract themes of the mainline games, and yet (or perhaps because of it), it really gets into the weeds on how this whole gods and demons and humanity interaction works. Why do gods want human worshipers? How do humans in turn affect the gods around them? I didn't expect this, especially given that its predecessor, the Shin Megami Tensei IV without a subtitle, focused primarily on the angels versus Lucifer conflict.

Seeing the local Japanese deities angered and dismayed by the interloping foreigners make it clear how absurd it is that the angels and Lucifer are battling for control over humanity in the remains of a country that was never Christian to begin with.

My Favorite Anime of 2021

One would think that being laid up for most of the year I would have been an anime watching fiend, and I was for the spring season (which aired right after my surgery, so I had plenty of time), but after that my interest waned, and overall this has been a year where I tried a lot of series and just didn't finish them.

Also two series that I enjoyed I'm not putting on the list because they didn't finish so I don't know what my final impression of them will be, but assuming they don't faceplant the ending, Attack on Titan and 86 may be here next year.

The series below are the seven I liked enough to finish, presented in the order I watched them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Wakakozake

I don't normally get into bite-sized anime that only lasts a few minutes per episode, but Wakakozake was so easy to slip into. Literally the only thing that happens each episode is that Wakako tries something different to eat and drinks a little alcohol, but there's something attractive about a single woman willing to eat by herself and just soak up the taste of her dinner.

Vivy -Fluorite's Eye Song- *

If there is one anime I loved more than anything else I saw this year, it's Vivy -Fluorite's Eye Song-. It tells the story of the world's first sentient android who has been tasked by a time traveling robot to stop the robot apocalypse happening in the distant future, but the catch is that the driving mission in her life is to make people happy with her music. She's not built for espionage. The only way she can justify even embarking on this scenario is to stretch her reasoning to accommodate the fact that the robot apocalypse would prevent her from making people happy with music. Throughout the series Vivy grows and learns to become more than just her programming while never deviating from what she was created to do. The ending stumbles a little bit, but this is still head and shoulders over anything else I watched and the kind of series I'd recommend even to non-anime fans.

So I'm a Spider, So What?

Class outcast Wakaba is reborn as a spider monster in another world that behaves suspiciously like an MMORPG. This show is a bit uneven with Wakaba (also called Kumoko, literally "Spider Child") stealing the show as she nerds her way to survival in a dog-eat-dog realm of monsters. She's a ton of fun to watch, but her classmates who are also reborn, as humans for the most part, unfortunately feel very generic to anyone who's ever watched any sort of medieval fantasy media. The show suffered production issues towards the end, making for a bumpy conclusion, especially since the novel series hasn't ended yet.

The Saint's Magical Power is Omnipotent *

I'll probably pick up the books for this one. Office lady Sei is summoned to another world, which is a popular anime trope these days, but a high school girl arrives along with her, and the prince who summoned the titular saint from another world immediately dubs the younger girl the saint, leaving poor Sei to deal with being transplanted to another reality and not being the special summoned person. Though understandably upset, Sei is an older protagonist, so she doesn't spend much time sulking before carving a new life in this world. I really like it for having an adult protagonist and the slow burn romance between Sei and Albert is cute.

Moriarty the Patriot

Alternate telling of James Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories, where there are three brothers, Albert, William, and Louis, who together form the Lord of Crime. I loved the first half of the show, which shows how William and Louis came from poverty and were adopted into Albert's family, which gave them the legitimacy they need to complete their plan to revolutionize the class system in Victorian London. We see how the Moriarty brothers step up to help people the system won't, even though it often involves breaking the law. Unfortunately the second half stumbles and the final plan of William James Moriarty, the mastermind of the trio, feels poorly thought out.

Shadows House *

In a vast manor live the shadowy progeny of Shadows House and their attendant dolls. The shadows and their dolls look identical save that the shadows are completely black with no face. Their dolls serve as faces for them, providing the expressive context that might otherwise be missing when they wish to communicate. Ideally shadow and doll are in complete sync with each other, but Emilico is a free-spirited doll and Kate does not wish to mold her into a lifeless servant. Being based on an ongoing manga, the season concludes after a story arc rather than a series ending, but I quite liked the mystery and the shadow/doll interactions.

Backflip!!

I did not know men's rhythmic gymnastics was a thing until I stumbled across this show. It's a sleeper, but if you think you're even vaguely interested in a show about male gymnasts, it's worth a shot. It's funny, the gymnastics are extremely well animated, and the cast is highly likable.

My Favorite Games of 2021

In 2021 I played a lot more visual novels than I normally would due to so much of my time being spent either in cancer treatment or recovering from cancer treatment. I had neuropathy issues following surgery that largely prevented me from using my left hand for gaming (even typing was hard!), which was a definite factor in what I could play. Fortunately visual novels are easy to play one-handed.

These are the 12 games I liked the most out of the ones I finished in 2021, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch) *

I rushed to finish this one before surgery because I didn't want to lose interest or forget too much while hospitalized, and it turned out to be a good thing given my post-surgery neuropathy. Three Houses manages to refresh the franchise after Fates tried to retread too much of what made Awakening popular. The focus this time is on houses representing the continent's three countries at a military academy, and how they end up careening towards war. I think the first part of the game where everyone is playing school is overly long (if I want Persona I'll go play Persona), but the story is compelling and I like all the shades of morally gray.

Gnosia (Switch) *

Can you build a visual novel out of the Werewolf/Mafia party games? Why yes, you can! Gnosia's premise is that you're on a starship and one or more of the crew has been infected with Gnosia, which causes them to eliminate one other member of the crew every time they enter warp. You play every round of "Werewolf" in an attempt to cold sleep the Gnosia before they equal the number of the crew, in which case they win! But sometimes, you might be Gnosia. There's a time loop component where your protagonist is trying to put together the reason behind their looping and why Gnosia is on board to begin with.

Raging Loop (Switch, PS4, Windows, Android)

The other Werewolf/Mafia-inspired visual novel with a time loop. This is the one to play if you want a modern day horror bent, foul language, and a crass protagonist. Or, if you don't want to get into the weeds of playing an actual game of Werewolf and prefer the narrative work it into the story with the protagonist making most plays without the player's input. I enjoyed this one a lot too, and the story is stronger, since it's not reliant on rng or the player figuring out a particular mechanic. If you want a more traditional visual novel, this is the one to pick.

Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk (PSVita, Windows)

Partner game to Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. There are a few easter eggs, but nothing that requires playing the first game. Though I like Jed a lot more as a protagonist than Beniyuri, I didn't like Ashen Hawk as much since the gothic mystery setting was swapped for a low fantasy Renaissance town. There are still mystery elements, like why nobody comes to or leaves town anymore, but they're side details that most characters don't worry about. Most of the game is taken up by the ongoing rivalry between the Hawk and the Wolf clans.

My Vow to My Liege (Windows)

Otome visual novel set in the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history by an indie Chinese developer. Tengyu takes on the persona of her deceased brother Fuchai in order to provide her country with a king and break the Sacred Vow her ancestors made with the deceitful Dragon God. Though this is a romance game, there is a lot of war and military action that will occasionally take primary focus, making this the most gritty otome I've played, above Hakuoki, which also took place during a war. Tengyu/Fuchai herself is quite proactive and fully capable of throwing her weight around as king, making her a refreshing change from most commercial otome heroines I've played.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch) *

Remake of an old NES adventure game! A teen detective is hired by the butler of the wealthy Ayashiro family to investigate the death of the family matriarch. The artwork is now modern day visual novel gorgeous with minor animations for some scenes. All dialogue is voice acted, including the protagonist and his inner thoughts. However, the gameplay has not been updated so if you remember those times in 80s adventure games when you had to do nonsensical things or talk to someone multiple times to progress the game, that's all still there. The story itself has aged gracefully though, and remains compelling throughout.

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (Switch)

Remake of The Missing Heir's prequel. Though this is probably better put together from a gameplay perspective, having been developed later, I'm not sure I liked it as much. Notably there's a very suspicious area that you're oddly never allowed to investigate that bothered me the entire game. The ending was a surprise I didn't see coming, though it felt karmically appropriate. Given the urban legend that's part of the story, this is definitely the creepier of the two Famicom Detective Club games.

Steam Prison (Switch, Windows)

Romance game following Cyrus, a young woman from the Heights, who is framed for the murder of her parents and sent down to the penal colony in the Depths as a convicted prisoner. I feel like this is a case of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as there's a lot about this game that doesn't feel fully thought out (despite the fact the writer clearly loves worldbuilding), and yet I had a good time with it. Most of the issue stems from fact that Cyrus's parents got murdered, yet we're trying to have a love story at the same time, and the game is usually not good about resolving both the romance and the murder plotlines.

The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles (Switch, PS4, Windows)

This is actually a combination of Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, which I covered separately on my blog since they originally released as two individual games, but they're really a two-parter and the only way to buy them in English is as a bundle. Series creator Shu Takumi returns to write and direct the world-spanning story of Ryunosuke Naruhodo as he tackles cases in both Japan and Britain. Not as laugh-out-loud funny as the mainline Ace Attorney games, but if you want a little more drama in the usual formula, these games got you covered. Ryunosuke does all right as the new protagonist and Susato is now my favorite of the series' assistants.

Animal Restaurant (iOS, Android)

I'm not big on mobile games, but the simply named Animal Restaurant scratches my itch for building things while also being ideal for short play periods. You basically manage a restaurant run by cats for various forest animals (and as you progress, for city animals and even a few non-animals). While you can and are encouraged to participate in a variety of activities, the bulk of your earnings for upgrades, new recipes, etc. happen while you're away. You can't permanently buy your way out of ads unfortunately, but they're fairly unobtrusive and the game is set up in a way that you can choose whether or not you want to view any video ones. It's just you progress a lot slower if you don't.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (3DS)

Pseudo-sequel to Shin Megami Tensei IV initially following the neutral route and then branching off to its own thing. Features a new protagonist, though the old one is still a part of the story. Apocalypse has a number of quality of life improvements, though gameplay is otherwise very close to its predecessor. The story makes it pretty clear what it's like living in a crapsack world where various deities and demons fight to decide the fate of humanity and expect humanity to simply obey them. The cast skews unusually young even by JRPG standards (half the party is fifteen or younger), but they talk a lot, making this one of the livelier mainline games.

Rose in the Embers (iOS, Android)

Period romance in Taisho Japan. Part of the Love 365 library app. Each route in this otome can be purchased separately, though I played all the main ones. (Side stories and sequel stories cost extra. It's mobile. Everything is piecemeal.) I'm not usually a fan of cross-class romance, especially the maid and master thing RitE has going on in a couple of its routes, but I love early 20th century stuff and this turned out better than expected. It helps that only one of the men is the super rich guy flinging around more money than he could ever spend. The others are decently off, but feel more middle or upper middle class.