Unfortunately, I've had to request a refund for this game. I was really excited to play it! It's a super adorable game, and it's a love letter to fangirls and fandom culture as a whole.
As a fanfic author myself, this game made me feel seen! But also...as a fanfic author myself, I really really really love words and grammar and syntax and all that cool language stuff, and the poor English translation really took me out of it. I tried to ignore it at first, but it quickly got to a point where it really started breaking my immersion. I get it, English isn't my first language either, but I can't deny that it makes the game feel a lot less polished, especially in a visual novel like this with lots of text and a huge focus on the story.
Now, the game is in Early Access right now, so I do have high hopes for its future! I don't hate the game despite my negative review. I love the concept, and I really want to see it improve! Who knows? Maybe I'll come back to this game one day and enjoy it a lot more. I hope that I can, honestly :)
On paper this game is definitely for me, fanfic and shipping are what I'm all about.
The reality is: it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can suffer through terrible localization, weird grammar, and all that jazz. The cookie cutter fanfic bothers me a little, but hey, I have a word processor and writing skills for a reason, right?
I was expecting something similar to Sticky Business, all about the fanfic/blorbos, interaction mainly through comments/email/IM/DM/whatever. You know, something pretty similar to the actual fanfic writer experience. That wasn't what I got.
After the first scene, I skipped through all the visual novel parts because I honestly could not care less about it. The focus on monetization (commissions, fanzines, merch, etc) really turns me off. I'm still not sure what's going on with the house or why I should care.
I will admit that the character customization is fun and art style is really cute. What I read of the IRL story reminded me a lot of my early days as a fan writer (I was totally the girl who wrote a *lot*, posted almost daily and didn't spellcheck/proofread my work).
TL;DR: Came for the fanfic, was underwhelmed by fanfic and overwhelmed by features. Now leaving game in favor of writing fanfic.
Thank you for the inspiration.
Honestly, it's a bit of a disappointment ... the character designing is very difficult to do, you (unfortunately) play as a girl despite being able to choose your name and the pronouns for the mini characters.
The character edits are very wonky, and not to the mention the issues with misgendering if you choose a pronoun; the character I have clearly chosen to be nonbinary (and use they pronouns) constantly gets called she/he, despite me closing the game as it was instructed.
I did have high hopes for it, but it just didn't really come out to be as good as I hoped for.
Finally some REAL representation for degenerate fangirls whose entire lives revolves around fictional characters. I now get to play an entire game about my favorite blorbos without even having to finish the third chapter of my fic that's collecting dust in my Google Docs files. This game is about as accurate as it gets, from daydreaming about A/B/O noncon AUs in the lecture halls to having your friends read your smutfics out loud as a humiliation ritual. Truly, undoubtedly, peak.
(I've heard a few people complain about the about the translation being wonky, but honestly, nothing about it seemed too egregious to me. Or maybe I'm just too used to machine translating Chinese USUK fanfiction on AO3)
This game honestly looks like so much fun, but when I got it i found it was completely unplayable. whenever I boot it up, i get a white screen and then it crashes. might like it more when I'm actually able to play it. until then, sorry.
pros:
- a really fun simulation game! it scratches an itch i didnt even know i had and i know i will be spending hours with this game despite the issues i have with it.
- you can make your favorite characters kiss. 10/10.
- there is an online gallery so if you dont want to bother with the character creation, you can just borrow somebody elses character.
- demonstrates a really good understanding of fan culture!
- SO MANY FEATURES.
cons:
- tbh, the translation is not as bad as people say it is. however, there is a fair amount of usage of chinese fandom slang, most notable of which being “cp” (which, after a google search that i was TERRIFIED to make, revealed that it’s basically the same as otp). this specific slang was very jarring and led to me frantically going through reviews to make sure i didnt accidentally buy something very very odd.
- as others have mentioned, the filtering system is not great and the nsfw content really hits you out of nowhere (ex: a fanfic idea titled “walking outside” is actually smut but you dont learn that until you have committed to the fic. realistic to irl fandom? yes! but not great for a videogame)
- the character customization is very expansive…for characters who do not have textured hair. there are no textured hair options and due to the fact that you cannot change the lineart color, any colors darker than grey will heavily contrast with the blue lineart.
tldr: the game is not properly tagged for explicit content on steam, a lack of proper cultural translation can feel jarring to those unfamiliar with certain terms, and the character customization is only expansive when you want to make pale characters with straight hair. but it did just release and it shows a lot of promise.
though i will continue to play this game, i would not recommend anybody buy it until these issues are ironed out.
Great game but while playing it i was unaware there were "Non-con" stories i mean i knew there would be some type of nsfw stories cuz it said that in a warning but i was jump scared when the first modern Au comic i made was apparently a non-con and stepmother plot and i understand that non-con is fairly normalized in fan-fiction communities but still it grossed me out. its also a bit glitchy, you can only make white characters as far as i know, and the English translation is horrible. I will say its not as glitchy/unbearable as people are making it seem but its not great (although i'm not very far into the story so idk). This game is honestly fun and if you decide you'll force yourself to get through the lack of representation, bad localization, and non-con and other problematic plots because you want to make your characters or characters popular in media than absolutely go for it. (also i do wanna make it clear, the nsfw content is censored by replacing words obviously meant to be inappropriate content with names of animes. also i do believe you can change the amount of nsfw in the settings/beginning of the story but i accidentally skipped it with the default setting and just kept playing.)
I don't understand how this game is allowed on steam not marked as adult. Yes, there are content filters in the game, something I wasn't expecting but whatever right? Turns out turning off content filters enables the option to write non-consensual stories and even CP... what are we doing? That's my biggest issue obviously, but it isn't my only one. The game is very janky and the gameplay loop is completely uninteresting.
Please flag this game as adult only.
Unfortunately, I've had to request a refund for this game. I was really excited to play it! It's a super adorable game, and it's a love letter to fangirls and fandom culture as a whole.
As a fanfic author myself, this game made me feel seen! But also...as a fanfic author myself, I really really really love words and grammar and syntax and all that cool language stuff, and the poor English translation really took me out of it. I tried to ignore it at first, but it quickly got to a point where it really started breaking my immersion. I get it, English isn't my first language either, but I can't deny that it makes the game feel a lot less polished, especially in a visual novel like this with lots of text and a huge focus on the story.
Now, the game is in Early Access right now, so I do have high hopes for its future! I don't hate the game despite my negative review. I love the concept, and I really want to see it improve! Who knows? Maybe I'll come back to this game one day and enjoy it a lot more. I hope that I can, honestly :)
On paper this game is definitely for me, fanfic and shipping are what I'm all about.
The reality is: it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can suffer through terrible localization, weird grammar, and all that jazz. The cookie cutter fanfic bothers me a little, but hey, I have a word processor and writing skills for a reason, right?
I was expecting something similar to Sticky Business, all about the fanfic/blorbos, interaction mainly through comments/email/IM/DM/whatever. You know, something pretty similar to the actual fanfic writer experience. That wasn't what I got.
After the first scene, I skipped through all the visual novel parts because I honestly could not care less about it. The focus on monetization (commissions, fanzines, merch, etc) really turns me off. I'm still not sure what's going on with the house or why I should care.
I will admit that the character customization is fun and art style is really cute. What I read of the IRL story reminded me a lot of my early days as a fan writer (I was totally the girl who wrote a *lot*, posted almost daily and didn't spellcheck/proofread my work).
TL;DR: Came for the fanfic, was underwhelmed by fanfic and overwhelmed by features. Now leaving game in favor of writing fanfic.
Thank you for the inspiration.
Honestly, it's a bit of a disappointment ... the character designing is very difficult to do, you (unfortunately) play as a girl despite being able to choose your name and the pronouns for the mini characters.
The character edits are very wonky, and not to the mention the issues with misgendering if you choose a pronoun; the character I have clearly chosen to be nonbinary (and use they pronouns) constantly gets called she/he, despite me closing the game as it was instructed.
I did have high hopes for it, but it just didn't really come out to be as good as I hoped for.
Finally some REAL representation for degenerate fangirls whose entire lives revolves around fictional characters. I now get to play an entire game about my favorite blorbos without even having to finish the third chapter of my fic that's collecting dust in my Google Docs files. This game is about as accurate as it gets, from daydreaming about A/B/O noncon AUs in the lecture halls to having your friends read your smutfics out loud as a humiliation ritual. Truly, undoubtedly, peak.
(I've heard a few people complain about the about the translation being wonky, but honestly, nothing about it seemed too egregious to me. Or maybe I'm just too used to machine translating Chinese USUK fanfiction on AO3)
This game honestly looks like so much fun, but when I got it i found it was completely unplayable. whenever I boot it up, i get a white screen and then it crashes. might like it more when I'm actually able to play it. until then, sorry.
pros:
- a really fun simulation game! it scratches an itch i didnt even know i had and i know i will be spending hours with this game despite the issues i have with it.
- you can make your favorite characters kiss. 10/10.
- there is an online gallery so if you dont want to bother with the character creation, you can just borrow somebody elses character.
- demonstrates a really good understanding of fan culture!
- SO MANY FEATURES.
cons:
- tbh, the translation is not as bad as people say it is. however, there is a fair amount of usage of chinese fandom slang, most notable of which being “cp” (which, after a google search that i was TERRIFIED to make, revealed that it’s basically the same as otp). this specific slang was very jarring and led to me frantically going through reviews to make sure i didnt accidentally buy something very very odd.
- as others have mentioned, the filtering system is not great and the nsfw content really hits you out of nowhere (ex: a fanfic idea titled “walking outside” is actually smut but you dont learn that until you have committed to the fic. realistic to irl fandom? yes! but not great for a videogame)
- the character customization is very expansive…for characters who do not have textured hair. there are no textured hair options and due to the fact that you cannot change the lineart color, any colors darker than grey will heavily contrast with the blue lineart.
tldr: the game is not properly tagged for explicit content on steam, a lack of proper cultural translation can feel jarring to those unfamiliar with certain terms, and the character customization is only expansive when you want to make pale characters with straight hair. but it did just release and it shows a lot of promise.
though i will continue to play this game, i would not recommend anybody buy it until these issues are ironed out.
Great game but while playing it i was unaware there were "Non-con" stories i mean i knew there would be some type of nsfw stories cuz it said that in a warning but i was jump scared when the first modern Au comic i made was apparently a non-con and stepmother plot and i understand that non-con is fairly normalized in fan-fiction communities but still it grossed me out. its also a bit glitchy, you can only make white characters as far as i know, and the English translation is horrible. I will say its not as glitchy/unbearable as people are making it seem but its not great (although i'm not very far into the story so idk). This game is honestly fun and if you decide you'll force yourself to get through the lack of representation, bad localization, and non-con and other problematic plots because you want to make your characters or characters popular in media than absolutely go for it. (also i do wanna make it clear, the nsfw content is censored by replacing words obviously meant to be inappropriate content with names of animes. also i do believe you can change the amount of nsfw in the settings/beginning of the story but i accidentally skipped it with the default setting and just kept playing.)
I don't understand how this game is allowed on steam not marked as adult. Yes, there are content filters in the game, something I wasn't expecting but whatever right? Turns out turning off content filters enables the option to write non-consensual stories and even CP... what are we doing? That's my biggest issue obviously, but it isn't my only one. The game is very janky and the gameplay loop is completely uninteresting.
Please flag this game as adult only.
