Heartache 101

Heartache 101 is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative and downright amazing Dating-Sim/Visual-Novel that I have ever seen! This game was created on the RPGmaker website as, what i assume to be american made, amature works. Now don't get me wrong, when I say amature I don't mean that it is bad, or that he couldn't rival a professional company, I mean that it was made with free software, made by a small band of people who aren't part of an official company (as far as I know). My only complaint would have to be the characters mouths and facial expressions, when you make a character blush, whether they are happy or not, they smile while blushing, and when a character smiles, it is a paper thin line at an angle that could scare the joker, but other than that, this is a beautiful game! So this game really doesn't have much of a basic story, but here goes a shot! Your a high school student who hasn't really dated anyone in his whole life! And your childhood friend, Miki, proposes a challenge! Whoever can get a boyfriend or girlfriend first wins! That's when the game takes an odd twist, instead of just walking through the story and making choices every now and then, you play on a game board - kinda like monopoly - and roll your die, your goal is to land on a girl, so you can speak to her! When you actually land on a girl, or of two things will happen, either you will get the options to tell her to leave, talk to her, ask her zodiac sign, her phone number, or even what kind of guy she likes! Or if you are close enough to the person you land on, it will start a small part of their story line!

The creator of this Visual-Novel/ Dating-Sim has really outdone himself when it comes to creating dynamic characters! There are 7 basic characters, one hidden character, and on beta character. The types of characters include, the quiet depressed girl, the bubbly lazy girl, the nerdy cop girl, the creepy stalker girl, the VERY bubbly hyper girl, the sleazy popular girl, and the sister of the sleazy popular girl who is school obsessed! Their story lines are very long and have many hidden stories in them, if I'm not mistaken, I have done every single girls path, but I have not even come close to getting 100% completion on any of them!

But what makes this particular Visual-Novel so special, is the ability to import your own custom characters into the game! So those of you who want someone like say, Hatsune Miku imported into the game, well that is very well possible, so long as you can draw her! In the image above you see three custom characters from a very popular anime ecchi known as "Negima", but the only one i can name off the top of my tongue is the one on the left; Nodoka. The only download to this custom character addition, is that the game does not support CG, which is one of the most important parts of any Visual-Novel (Especially H-Games)!
The only other complaint i could possibly have, is that all the endings are pretty much just the same thing, you broke up after high school, two years later she calls you and asks for you back! The only character who didn't have that ending was the hidden character, but that's just because she was an 8th grader!
So all things considered, I really liked this game, their were a few things that needed work, a few typos here and there, but I highly recommend this game to anyone who has some free time on their hands!

The game itself can be found here, along with some player made content!:Heartache 101

~Atsushi

Narcissu

By far one of the saddest stories i have ever read! About 5-7 hour long and chock full of perfect! You are a twenty year old highschool student who just earned his drivers license, you go home and do what people do late at night; sleep. When you try to get up, you find that you are unable to move your legs, and the pain, the unbearable pain in your chest becomes so bad, that you eventually have to go to the hospital. Once there, you are forced to stay there for a few weeks, then are released back to your home, a few days later, you are forced to return to hospital for a check up. They proscribe you with a medicine that is untested; it of course didn't work, so you return to hospital multiple different time to try different medicines. A few visits later, you have completely given up, its as if you are watching this happen to someone else on a T.V. show, that's about when you and your father must meet a doctor who tells you that you are going to die; the fucked up thing is, that your character is so careless about his life now that his only response is "....oh......" and then the doctor writes down the response and then you are sent to the Seventh floor, according to the doctor its "a place where you go to recuperate your heart and soul while you are waiting for a cure". So you of course being a man who no longer values his life, just sits around for about three days before you go into the seventh floor lounge and meet a girl; a girl who has the same problem you do, but only much worse, if you thought that your character was depressing, then she is down right suicide inducing! So you chat, but she never ever even looks at you, all she ever does is stare blankly at a T.V. or look out the window into the far off distance; but she isn't really looking at anything, rather than doubting her own 22 years of life. Life on the seventh floor pretty much goes like this, you get released home for a while and them you return, but you will never return a fourth time, the third time is just about the limit, and the girl is about to return home for the third time. One day your father happens to stop by to speak to the doctor, and you, being someone with nothing to lose, steal your fathers car keys, pack all your medicine ask the girl if she wants to come, she packs all of hers, and the the two of you set off, to where? Well if you want to find out, then i guess that you are going to just have to read this story yourself aren't you?

The download can be found here: http://narcissu.insani.org/

Note: This does require Utorrent to download but the payoff is very much worth it! Enjoy!

~Atsushi