Nerdy Bloggers | Y0uC4n7kn0w | Star & Luna

Hello everyone welcome back to Otaku Thursday, our final Otakutober edition. If you were around yesterday, your heard my rant about monster love stories in anime. You know how vampires were just the go to? Well, today I’m going to be talking about something else in the same vein: “horror” and/or supernatural otome games. Where y’know, you can date the vampire if you want. Or any of the other creatures. Anyway, let’s get into it.

So let’s start off with some cellphone otome games that I downloaded in honor of Spooktober. The first is called WickedWolves. So this game is pretty obviously about werewolves. I must admit that I haven’t played a ton of it because of it’s actual gameplay is pretty annoying. The reason being is you only have a certain amount of points a day which you use to proceed the story. Which like, makes sense because obviously the app wants to make you spend money but it makes it sooooo annoying since you barely get any content. I ended up giving up on it super fast. But also on the plus side—all the werewolves are super friggin fine. Like they are all great suitors, but I’m kind of annoyed that you don’t really get to learn a lot about them before you choose which route to be on. But also, despite all the sexy werewolves, I chose to pick the one vampire. I KNOW. I just complained about vampire love interests the other day but here I go picking the vamp in a sea of werewolves. I guess it didn’t really matter though because it was just like meh. Not the best game but lots of sexy werewolves. We love it.

On cellphone otome games, I also played a bit of Haunted Heartbreak. I liked this one because I could just keep playing it without paying and it was definitely spookier than Wicked Wolves. I will say that even though the love interests were fairly likeable, they were just normal guys (well, I assume so but I still didn’t play super far into it). It was a lot of text though and not a ton of fun choices. But like, decent storytelling. I appreciate the horror elements to it and quite honestly if it were just a little more engaging I would’ve played more of it. Even without the sexy supernatural creatures…

Moving along to desktop games…I managed to play through only two of them (there were some games that looked interested but hadn’t been released yet). But one game I did play through multiple times so I could play with multiple suitors, and that game was Ephemeral -Fantasy on Dark-. In this game you’re a zombie (the lowest class creature) and you go to like a creature school where you meet a ton of different suitors of all different creature background. So the guy that I immediately went with for my first playthrough was the one that looked the most edgy–the werewolf. Unfortunately for me Shiba was the WRONG choice. Like he was okay–he was cute. But SO not edgy and deep. In fact, his storyline was rather humorous and then it got kinda weird and just….no. Honestly for a game split into two parts–the suitor phase and then the dating phase–I felt like the game could’ve gone way deeper into story. But it just didn’t. So like, it was a really fun game with lots of good choices to make, but I wasn’t into Shiba’s storyline. I kept trying to troll him and he actually liked that. My second playthrough I went for the invisible man Nagi and I really wish I’d played his storyline first. It was much better in my opinion and super good. Also lowkey, the best friend in it was SO GOOD. I LOVED HER. I almost wish you could’ve dated her cause she was so sweet. I honestly think out of all the games, this was the most enjoyable for characters and actual gameplay. Plus the fact that the suitors were like a bunch of different monsters–THIS is the kind of variety I want. A werewolf, a vampire, an invisible man, and a mummy. Plus they are all super attractive. Loved it.

I also played a free horror otome game that was probably the best horror out of the bunch. This was called Lake of Voices. In terms of gameplay it was pretty straightforward and had pretty straightforward branches. But the branches and choices didn’t just effect your love interest–it affected who lived and who died. Honestly, this was a haunting game with truly horrific moments and deaths. I felt it was hella appropriate for otakutober. However, the romance left a lot to be desired. I felt like the game, being so melancholy with so many deaths, meant that all the endings felt bittersweet (or at least the ones I played through). But of course the first route I chose was probably the worst frigging route in the way that somehow even the happy ending for me was HORRIBLE. Like no matter what, the dude I chose died…so awful. So sad. Essentially this game was great because it was actually suspenseful and scary, a lot could go wrong (yes you could die yourself), and the romance was pretty okay. It was just…so bittersweet no matter what…sadge.

There were a lot of horror/supernatural otome games I didn’t get the chance to play due to price point, time, or release date…but my overall experience is that cellphone games are just not great but that the desktop otome games are all pretty good in different ways. I do like games where you have lots of choices and possible suitor routes, which is something the cellphone novel lacks in substance. Overall, all these otome games were fun, but none of them are the perfect combination of horror and romance. Instead they always err on one side or the other. I truly hope that one day I find the perfect combination. If you have any recommendations, let me know! I wanna play whatever it is.

Anyway, I hope you all join us for tomorrow and day 12 of Otakutober! Can you believe it’s almost Halloweeb? I can’t! Anyway, til next time!

Stay weebtastic

xoxo

Luna