Roommates Review

Hey everyone! Winter Wolves is back!

2014 is going to be a busy year for the group. Recently they announced C-14 Dating: a romance game set in the exciting world of archeology…it was exciting for Indiana Jones anyway. This will cap four other planned releases for the year. So, it is vital for the group to get off on the right foot and give its fandom something they can have fun with after a rather bland 2013.

So how does Roommates fare? Well, that’s for us to discover! Come with me, will you?

Nicole Review

As an outsider looking it, I would define Winter Wolves’ 2013 as a resounding ‘Meh’.

If the EVN community had a ‘legacy’ brand, it would most likely be Winter Wolves. They were one of the first into the fray of the public market and won Studio/EVN Circle of the Year in the 2011 Best Ofs on this very site for the consistent quality of their work. Moreso, Loren the Amazon Princess helped lead to the creation of the Best Hybrid EVN category that recognizes those that integrate other gaming elements with visual novels.

With that sort of pedigree, 2013 looked to be very promising. However, while I don’t receive regular financial reports from Celso Riva, critically the chain of sequels we got from the group hasn’t exactly been memorable. While I am still deciding whether or not to review Heileen 3 on this website, I did take on Bionic Heart 2. Now the group is looking forward to 2014 with a new slate of releases being led by the sequel to Loren, but before they do we have one more Winter Wolves project to dig through.

Nicole has a good amount of ambition behind it. An original IP, it looks to marry otome and mystery story-telling. A DLC pack, featuring lesbian romances, was announced before release to be written by none other than Hope Chapman AKA JesuOtaku. So with that said, how is the game itself?

Well, there’s only one way to find out! And for those absolutely dead set on getting this game, there are mild spoilers below so consider yourself warned.

First Impressions: Backstage Pass, Pt. 2

Well we were going to get into this at some point. So before I get into why I like the boys of Backstage Pass, let me get into way I mock most romance targets: male or female.

Certain stereotypes and clichés are going to be a part of every fictional genre; it just comes with the territory. But in romance breaking out of those clichés is like climbing K2 without an oxygen mask, Sherpas and in your underwear. The roads of romantic attraction are well-worn and deviating from that path is dark and uncertain: which leaves many writers with one option – stay the course. This leads to the same bland, underdeveloped cast regardless of their target audience. Like I joked about in the teaser for the AMG Reviews, when you cut down to the marrow, there really isn’t a lot of difference between Exhibit A and Exhibit B: it all comes to your POV.So what does this have to do with Backstage Pass?

First Impressions: Backstage Pass, Pt. 1

For the better part of this year, I have been arguing that the EVN community needed to begin discussing the concept of ‘Mario’. If you haven’t read anything on that, allow me to suggest you do so or be branded a traitor. But, for the benefit of time, the short version is that I believe that within the next year or so the genre of visual novels, at least in the West, will begin a sort of ‘golden age’. Why? Because it costs nearly nothing (in corporate terms) to create a high-end visual novel, which means there really isn’t a reason not to exploit the medium by creating the highest quality on the cheap and marketing them to fans of the Telltale line of games.

SO, my argument is that the medium needs to define itself before said exploitation happens. This is done through a game that unites the hardcore and casual fans, as well as be a standard for what the genre is capable of. In other words Mario. Again, to keep a long story short, some thought I was insane. The regulars of this site know any question of my sanity is old news, but it was actually a debate for a while with me still ringing the bell on it until recently.Why? Because after talking about it all year, I think the launch of the EVN Mario is upon us…and of course it would be spawned from otome.