Analogue: A Hate Story is an indie game from developer Christine Love. And while I am stating everything in a boring way, this game is the absolute best thing I have played so far this year.
Analogue is a Visual Novel with dark undertones and a seemingly cheerful veneer. There are two characters to pursue and five possible endings. You go to find the ghost spaceship the Mugunghwa and read through the logs to find out what happened to her (ships are traditionally referred to as female.)
Digital: A Love Story is a visual novel type game made by one single person. Impressive enough, at first glance. But given the travesty that was the last indie game I encountered in the course of these reviews, I understandably went into this one with a bit of caution. Nicely enough, it wasn’t needed at all.
Today, I am celebrating having a working monitor and a still mostly non-functional computer that I can at least attempt to use by posting a press release, since I not only said I would post press releases, but I hadn’t prepared anything for this review. Therefore, it won’t be a review.
Without further ado:
Press Release: JAST USA Announces School Days HQ Collector’s Edition
JAST USA, the top publisher of Japanese PC games in English, today unveiled the collector’s edition of School Days HQ, a fully-animated bishoujo game (also known as a dating sim or eroge) that is famous for its violent bad ends. School Days has attracted mainstream attention since the anime adaptation shocked audiences with its unexpected and gory conclusion.
This collector’s edition is the first such release in JAST USA’s history, and includes two items that are not available from any other source.
The first item is an “oppai” mousepad, which is an illustrated mousepad with a breast-shaped wrist rest. The mousepad included with the School Days HQ collector’s edition features original artwork of heroine Katsura Kotonoha in a wedding dress. This illustration was drawn for the mousepad by School Days character designer Goto Junji.
The second item is an illustrated rubber keychain. The illustration, designed with fans of the School Days anime in mind, is super-deformed art of protagonist Itou Makoto’s head.
JAST USA president Peter Payne said, “Without a doubt, School Days is a very important game for the English eroge industry. We really wanted to make it special, so we worked with Goto Junji and School Days developer 0verflow to create an amazing collector’s edition that fans are going to drool over.”
These two items will be packaged together with the game in a distinct collector’s box. The full set can be viewed and ordered on its product page athttp://www.jastusa.com/schooldays.html.
School Days HQ is currently in the final stages of testing, and is expected to go Golden Master in May, with release following shortly thereafter.
Some of you may be wondering why I do not have a photo on this post. Well, for one I am not doing a review. Number two, I will be discussing adult games, and images would be too NSFW. So instead, bear with me and enjoy what will likely be a wall of text.
Today I intend to cop out on reviews so I have time to finish up Deus Machina Demonbane; Digital: A Love Story; don’t take it personally babe, it just ain’t your story; Analogue: A Hate Story; narcissu 2; Aselia The Eternal; and Aion.
So instead today I will talk about some adult games from Japan that introduce new ideas that are actually quite innovative, due to the fact that I like to see innovation, as it moves the industry forward as a whole.
Time of Eve, aka Eve no Jikan. Honestly, this review this week was almost the newest Final Fantasy game, but with all the time spent on the demo and still not managing to achieve everything, as well as some other events that ended up with me reading through the archives of another blog and stunbmling across a mention of Eve no Jikan, this reiew ended up being Eve no Jikan. If that confused you, you understand how my entire week has been. Consider yourself welcome.
Eve no Jikan is a show released by a rather small animation studio, hence the two month and above release times between episodes. If yu don’t recall having seen the show on tv, that would be because it was apparently netcast. I can better explain that by saying it was shown for free online instead of broadcast, which gives you an idea how big the budget of the show was.
The main story revolves at first around a boy and what seems to be his robot. To be more accurate, as it has a human form it would be an android. To be pedantic, as it has a female form, it would by a gynoid. It is never really clear if the robot is his directly, or a possession of his family.
