Hello and welcome to day five of 13 Days of Otakutober! Last year I had a date with a vampire–well, actually many vampires. And some werewolves. Because last year I played some Spooky Otome games! Most of which had vampires and werewolves in them. But last year, I never got to play all the games I had planned to. So I thought, why not go for round two this year? What’s the worst that can happen? Thus, here I am. Once again. Delivering to you some first impressions and reviews of some horror themed otome games! I played three cell phone games and two desktop, and I’ll answer the question for you all: is the game worth it? Let’s get spooky!
Nocturne of Nightmares
First off–no. This game is not worth it. Nocturne of Nightmares seems like a good cellphone game at first. The art is gorgeous, there’s a decent amount of love interests, and the premise is interesting. You wake up in a dream (nightmare) with people you don’t know but you all realize you are missing gaps in your childhood memory. When in the nightmare, there are demons and you have to get out. If you die in the dream, you die IRL. Sounds good right? It is. I really enjoyed this game and the characters. Until it introduced a mechanic called “premium choice”. This made you pay in-game currency just to make one of two choices (usually the one that would yield results with a character). And the amount of currency the choices cost was high and you only get a few free gems per day. Meaning to make these choices, you had to pay real cash for in-game currency. The story was also divided into chapters and each chapter cost a ticket to play–since you only get 3 tickets a day, that’s all you can access without paying. It’s a shame to be honest, this game was the perfect amount of creepy intrigue for me. I was so excited to see where the story went, but the pay walls totally killed the vibe.
DangerousFellows
The answer is YES. Yes you should play DangerousFellows. This cellphone game features students who band together during the zombie apocalypse. It gives you plenty of choices, and you can see which love interest you got points for from your choices. Each chapter is a decent length–not long and not short, and you don’t need tickets to play them. There are choices or actions that ask for in-game currency, HOWEVER they also give you options to watch an ad to complete said action instead. Meaning I can progress without spending money after watching a measly ad. I love it. Plus the characters are actually great! I love how they each feel distinct and you get time with most of them from the get-go, so you can test the waters. The only two things I’m not crazy about is the outfit and call functions–both that require money. The calls I could live without, but the game actually prompted me about my wardrobe and I thought my character was going to die (thank kami she didn’t)! I will say that I don’t really know where the story is going…but the horror elements of zombies prowling around and be giving occasionally sketch choices makes it feel a little anxiety inducing. All and all, this was my favorite cellphone game for sure!
Twilight Fangs
Much like NoN, Twilight Fangs is a cellphone game that features the same pay walls–gems to unlock premium choices and tickets to play chapters. The biggest difference is the story–obviously. I thought I’d like this one more, after all, it promises werewolves and vampires. But it begins less interesting than NoN. Vampires and humans get along–werewolves are evil monsters. You run into a werewolf vampire hybrid. Within two minutes of playing this game I was already at my first premium choice without even meeting all the love interests. I quickly lost interest. No amount of pretty boy monsters can make me pay IRL money just to have options and get to know them. Admittedly, I should have given this more of a chance, but I was so done after NoN.
7scarlet
AHHHH. I AM SO CONFLICTED. So like, 7scarlet is a PC game I meant to play last year. I never got around to it and finally did this year. I will tell you, Star and I have spent over 20 hours playing it. Now, that’s not because it’s amazing or anything. It’s because we NEED TO KNOW THE ROUTES. Plus, we died like twice at first and got the bad end. It turns out that while 7scarlet has an interesting plot and lots of romance options, you need to pretty much get every single choice correct for your route. We learned this the hard way. Which meant we spent hours replaying it to get a good ending for the chef character. However, the more routes you play, the more you learn about the plot–and apparently there’s a ‘true route’ you can get by successfully completing all fie routes. So, Star and I are playing them all damn it. As for the plot, it’s about a girl and her best friend going to a supernatural club meeting in the town of Okunezato where homegirl’s brother went missing a year ago. There’s uneasiness in the town the entire game–strange and ominous things going on–murders. It definitely makes you stay on your toes. The horror isn’t super bad, at least in the routes we’ve played so far, but it’s definitely a bit creepy and also thriller-esque. The artwork is pretty, the characters decent. But…we have two big problems. The first is that there is so much useless information that gets repeated, so we’re just not big fans of the actual script. Descriptions make a visual novel sure, but sometimes it just seems in excess to make the game last longer without providing anything for the plot. Then…there’s also the fact that this PC game is EXTREMELY glitchy. We had to get in the habit of saving every few minutes because it will pop up with one of several bugs. Sometimes it freezes, other time it completely crashes. We’ve had the backgrounds not load, character images glitch a little before crashing the game, and on one occassion–only load a characters head and not his body (we’ll post this image on our instagram). So in my opinion the most horrific part about this game are the endless bugs that make your playthrough all the longer. Still, we’ve been enjoying it enough to want to keep playing all the routes, so if you can get used to glitches, I’d definitely recommend it.
Witches x Warlocks
This was cute and free. I can’t really tell you not to play it. This PC game that I got off of steam makes you a witch that’s trying to pass her Halloween exams. You get to study, make potions, or work each day and each day has three phases–morning, afternoon, and night. You can learn spells from one of your four love interests and you get plenty of cut scenes depending on who you choose to spend the most time with. There aren’t a ton of choices in this game though–and none that I think really affect the story–at least, I couldn’t tell. So in that aspect, it’s not necessarily engaging (though the exams were fun). I do like that the love interest are varied in both monster and gender. There’s a ghost, a franken monster, a vampire, and a werewolf. The ghost and werewolf are dudes, the vampire a girl, and the franken monster nonbinary. To see such representation in a free and family-friendly game was super encouraging (and I obviously picked that romance because honestly they were like the BEST). I think it was really worth the short playthrough for the free-ninety-nine price, but I do think it lacked in some areas, still–it’s a cute Halloween otome.
Well, I’ve done it. I’ve played all the otome games that I never got to play last year. Finally…Dobby is free! No, but seriously, I’m really glad that I was able to finish these up this year. I hope they’ve given you some good games to play if you want to stay in the spooky mood while dating sexy packages of pixels. I…am honestly just glad they are over. Sure they are fun to play but you can only take so many tropes at once… Anyway I hope you enjoyed day five of 13 Days of Otakutober! We’ll see you tomorrow for day six! Let me know if you’ve played any of these games or if you’ve played other horror/spooky otome game in the comments below!
Stay weebtastic!
xoxo
Luna
We be bloggin' 
3 thoughts on “Day 5: You Make My Heart Stop – More Spooky Otome Game Reviews!”