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