Call me a jack-o’-lantern, because something inside me lights up when I see you.
Welcome back to 13 Days of Otakutober. Can you all believe that we’re so close to Halloween? I hope you’ve all thought of your costumes, but if not I highly recommend Star’s annual post on some of the ‘best’ anime Halloween costumes you can buy. For today, I bring another installment of one of my favorite (and most tedious) Otakutober posts: our Spooky Otome Game Reviews. Because on Halloween, who doesn’t want to date a sexy supernatural being? Today, we’re reviewing an Otome Game I just happened upon in the steam store and that really caught both Star and I’s attention: When the Night Comes.
When the Night Comes is a game on steam made by Lunaris Games. Priced at $12.99, it’s extremely worth it for the fact it provides hours upon hours of gameplay. One route alone took us over 10 hours to complete. In past years we’ve spent a crazy amount of money on otome games of quality, so were pleasantly surprised here. PLUS the game was voiced–well–for the most part. One of the most annoying parts of it was that it only chose to voice some lines, and not even whole scenes were voiced. There seemed to be no method to what was or wasn’t voiced. But the voice cast was excellent.
Anyway, what initially drew us to this game was that it was a totally inclusive game. Not only do you get to pick the pronouns of your character, but there are all kinds of representation in the game. You can romance a girl, a boy, a nonbinary character, hell–you can even be polyamorous. We were so intrigued by the various romances you can pursue so we were drawn to it. In terms of a supernatural cast, I was slightly disappointed. We only had the option of dating a wolf, a vampire, a witch, a demon, or one of two human-like ‘hunters’ who had powers. Very typical supernatural creatures but definitely good characters. The story itself was a pretty typical, find the villain who has been terrorizing the town and killed a famous hunter, mystery/thriller. There’s the ghost of the hunter that provides most of our clues in the story and, of course, monsters created beyond the other supernatural beings. There’s also a subplot that’s important that humans don’t like the supernatural beings in their town and some hunters believe the supernatural beings shouldn’t live there. All of these things fold into the eventual climax of the game. In terms of storytelling for this plot–well, the game both does well and leaves room for improvement. While yes, you get a lot of gameplay in this storyline, I did feel at times that the game was unnecessarily long because a decent amount of the game didn’t feel like any real progress towards the story. Which, I guess makes sense for a dating sim, but when the main character’s whole purpose of being in town is to solve a mystery–well, I would’ve hoped that we had more actual plot points dropped early on. Instead, it felt like everything came at the very end in flurry that made it a little hard to follow.
In terms of the characters–well, they were very well done. I felt like we got a very good grasp on all of them early on, and the game gave you many chances to get to know all your possible romances: Piper, August, Alkar, Ezra, Finn, and Omen. The early game makes sure to hop between them all frequently so you can figure out who you’re interested in. It also hints at some of the poly and pre-existing relationships between the characters as well. The one thing I will say is that I don’t think any of these choices to get to know the characters mean very much in the game. And I say that because when we started, we gave our friends the opportunity to pick our choices in the early game — and a lot of them were interested in Alkar or Omen. However, when we got to choose out of all five romances, I chose Ezra since nobody could agree on whose route to be on (so I chose one that made nobody win). If any of our choices in early game had any impact, then by all means we shouldn’t have gotten Ezra as an option as we didn’t interact with him much. We also never really interacted with Finn so we were hella surprised when we had the choice to date only Ezra or date Ezra and Finn (obviously we chose both). So it did feel very linear in terms of story. Like, yes we were making choices but we weren’t sure how much impact they actually had on us.
In terms of spice, this game was SPICY. The minute you get with Ezra and Finn, it is on. It features full descriptions of intimate scenes. Partially voiced lines in such spicy scenes. It was all very good. They were also very gracious with romance scene options. Meaning, choices that would get you more romantic time with your chosen route. Spoiler alert, but literally right after sleeping with Finn and Ezra for the first time, the next choice the game presents is to sleep with them again or get on with the plot. There’s actually a few times where you can choose to stay to romance them or continue with the plot (obviously we always spent the time with our lovers). There’s also moments to see some hints of spice with other characters (like Omen and Alkar–which I am assuming that we can romance them both as well in another route). Overall, while not as graphic as other otome games we’ve played, it was certainly spicier than most of our spooky otome games which always seem to put romance in the passenger’s seat.
The one thing I really have to gripe about this game was that I felt like the game never had any real sense of danger. In many of the spooky otome games, there’s definitely tension that every choice you make could be the wrong choice. These games are often nervewracking, knowing that you could die, one of the romances could die or get hurt in a bad ending. However, When the Night Comes never really gave us a sense of danger. There was maybe one sequence where Star was afraid we’d die, but I felt perfectly at ease in all the choices and scenarios presented. It just never felt like we’d die. In fact, throughout the whole game, I never felt danger for our character nor any other character. It felt like a very safe game. Of course, maybe that’s just due to the route we were on–I am curious if any other stories would have felt more dire.
Anyway, my overall impression of the game? Definitely a you-should-play out of ten! While not the perfect spooky otome game, it did give plenty of hours of gameplay and the colorful cast of characters was so enjoyable! We had a great time playing it, and I think our friends had a great time watching us play (and throwing in their two cents on which actions we chose). If you’re interested in seeing some of the gameplay (not all) you can check it out on Luna’s twitch (because the YouCan’tKnow twitch wasn’t loading). So if you need a date this Halloween night, look no further than When the Night Comes.
xoxo
Luna
We be bloggin' 