[Title Image]

This game actually impressed me a bit, as most OELVNs tend be be cliche recycled crap. (See (P)lanets, Halloween Otome, etc.)
This one looks like it values story over trying to be “just like those other VNs” out there. Honestly it’s worth a play.

Story:
The story itself is one of oppression and “last of their race” scenario. Overall it’s done well, BUT, what really killed some of my enjoyment was this “God” bit. Almost as if the game was trying to shove Christianity into it. For one why would the Dragon people ever follow a human god..ever. People make their gods in their image, so having the human god be the “one true god” didn’t feel all that believable in the end. I know I expected there to be a dragon god that was discovered or that “god” didn’t exist or was some outside alienish force. That never happens so the narrative feels broken that in the end the dragon people still believe in the human “God”.
The story is one you need to replay to get it all, which I didn’t mind since it’s short enough
Characters:
The characters are solid and they are all given backstory. None of them felt out of place.
Music & Sound:
The music was appropriate, nothing to write home about though.
Overall:
Overall this is a decent game that actually explores some of the social justice issues around different races, however it’s marred by having the “God” story bits in them. It’s worth a play through or two.
[Screenshots]

I’ll make this one short and sweet as I couldn’t put up with the blatant misogyny in this “otome game”.
First off the MC (Main Character) and her friend both look like they were referenced from a “bishoujo game” basically a for male audience game, thus the skimpy outfits, broken uncomfortable arm anatomy to show off breasts etc. This is supposed to be an otome game, I am playing this to get away from bishoujoge bullshit. Yet.. there it is!!

These next ones speak for themselves. Let’s to say Mr. Misogyny was sure that I was hitting the kill switch on this game fast.

Firstly the “FEEEEMALES!!” one… He refers to old men as MEN.. not “Old males”, but women are clearly FEMALES. A dehumanizing term.

Next is the “Excuse me this is NO JOB FOR A LADY” bullshit. Yeah seriously, GTFO of otome games Mr. Misogyny.

Lest to say I hit the exit button and didn’t look back. It MIGHT have been a better game except for this bullshit. I am NOT going to sit through this crap.

Rei is a short Visual Novel made by Sonnet009 in three days for the Pulse Pounding Heart Stopping Dating Sim Jam 2013.  It’s about Aya, who is forced to go ghost hunting with her friend and finds Rei, a ghost that can’t move on thanks to his fuzzy memory. Of course you get to help him and in that you can find romance.

There are I supposed technically two guys you can romance, however they are the same person, just past and present. I’ve only gotten two out of four endings so I don’t know how all of them end up.

The Story:

Overall the story is unique, it’s got a few moments in it that are sexist, like when you say you don’t believe in love you get told “How can you even call yourself a girl” and your going to be an old cat lady, but overall the experience was nice. The story is solid and short and didn’t leave a lot of loose ends to tie up. For a game made in three days, that’s saying a lot that it has a beginning, middle, end and no dangling story.

I can see the story being expanded to include more ghost histories and trying to save them all or only a special one, and a possible harem ending. :D

Characters:

There are only three major character and one minor character.
Risa, Aya and Rei and the minor Taka.
Risa is mostly there as a catalyst to drag you to school and act as a check when your character completes some routes.
Rei is of course the main target in the game. Both the present and past Rei. He’s the jerk type, but if you pick the right options he’s not that much of one. Not like the typical verbal abusing assholes of other otome games.
Taka, well, his character is more of a spoiler than anything, but he’s involved with Rei somehow.
Aya is a nice character and not a doormat. So that is awesome, and most of her choices are given to you so you can basically guide her character how you want. Which is another nice thing.

Art:

This is going to be short because all the art of the game comes from 3rd parties.
Tokudaya and +cube+ specifically. Which means it super nice art, but you might recognize some of the characters or backgrounds.

Music/Sound:

This is where I felt it needed major improvement. There is only ONE sound, and that’s the school bell. Either some more spooky ambient sounds to set the mood or some music or something would have been nice. Maybe have added those at the end and again from a free materials source.

Overall:

Overall Rei is a nice quick game to kill some time and offers 4 routes to play for some replay value. The story can certainly branch out into a fuller game if the author wanted and it could use some more sounds.

If the title art isn’t any indication of what this novel is about, Dusk is another kinetic novel that I was drawn to because it seemed to be a good Twilight parody. While Twilight has been parodied to death, this one was in the form of a kinetic novel. The author of this is also the same one that did Lucky Rabbit Reflex, which is a visual novel with all the proper dialogue trees and the like.

The good: Overall I found the novel to be funny. I’m not familiar with the books having only seen the movie, but this does a good job of pointing out the blatant contradictions, such as Ephraim (Edward) going up to Angelica (Bella) just to tell her that she shouldn’t hang around him or that he shouldn’t hang around her before zipping off into the crowd and such. Other parts are about how smart she is, that there are only ten kids that go to the school and sometimes Angelica has friends show up. Even Jared (Jacob), with his russet cheeks, is succinctly both blatantly stereotyped and troped to point out the problems with Twilight. Passion and constipation await you!

The bad: There’s only one music track, which repeats throughout the whole novel. Having a variety more would have broken up the repetition. The character only have a few expressions too, then again in the movie they didn’t have a lot of expressions either. I guess in part two of this novel he will get a chance to sparkle.

The extra: NASA level string theory!

The nitpick: The novel cuts off in the middle of the “book”, at least compared to Twilight. It would have been nice to have a bit more story. Also we don’t get to see Ephraim’s hot and younger father.

That Cheap and Sacred Thing is a kinetic visual novel, meaning if you bang on the enter key long enough, you’ll get to the ending. There are no branching paths, it’s like an electronic storybook.

What attracted me to this was the description of androids, male androids. I loves me some androids as they are uncommon compared to the gynoids that seem to populate everything. I can name very few pieces of art that have androids as a central character, but can name tons and tons of things with gynoids as a central character.

This novel didn’t disappoint me. Jude is the android in question and he’s a sex worker (or sex slave considering his status to serve humans) which is a double rarity. That’s what got me to download this as I don’t usually like kinetics.
The story is a simple one about robot love between Autumn and Elly, her MyPal that had to be destroyed. Jude comes in when her well meaning friends decide to buy her a sex toy (which is Jude’s function basically) for her seventeenth birthday.

The Good: The story was very emotional and the characters were well realized. The only one I felt that didn’t get too much of the spotlight was Rick. I liked his design the best :3 I also like the fact that nobody said anything disparaging against Nadiya and her love of AmorBots. The ending was satisfying and even the stinger wasn’t disappointing and added to the wrapping up of the story versus setting up a part two. The ending it should be noted, is quite emotional and might leave you crying or at least tearing up. So, don’t go into this novel if you want to feel happy/spunky afterwards.

The Bad: The world is very… sad. It seems even in the future men haven’t been taught to not rape people, thus women are assigned the MyPals and GuardBots. Even worse is that the male AmorBots are basically taught to rape women by coercing them into sex despite the fact they’ve already said no. Jude does this to Autumn even go so far as to whining about it. If robots are to serve humans I would like to think that they’d program in the “No means no” and start to execute some other program. Maybe romantic cuddling, back massage or something else. It also seems the only reason Jude stops is because of the “error” that Autumn triggers in robots. This is stated in the “bonus” section of the novel.
It’s something that seems to plague Sci-Fi novels and games, that humans can’t get over socially constructed behaviors such as that. (David Weber does it too and oh boy is it worse >.<)

The Extra: I’m wondering if the author knows about Phantasy Star Online and the CAst character :3 As CAsts are androids and TCAST and yes, my mind went there. Just an observation as I played a few CAsts in my day. (*sniff* Dannie ;^;)

The Nitpick: The music I felt wasn’t that good. At least one in particular I wanted to mute (Happy Mood). The rest were too short and the looping was a bit repetitive. Which some scenes can get a bit long. Having longer and more varied pieces would probably have been better. However the ending song was most appropriate. Another nitpick is that the sprites jump a couple pixels when they emote. I don’t know if that was intentional, but from other visual novels it seems that staying in place is the norm.