Reviews by NMCannon

As someone completely new to Werewolf: the Apocalypse, this was a great intro! The art and music create a beautiful, haunting atmosphere alive with possibility. The writing is blazing, dripping, and sensual. I love all the queer sapphic characters. My first playthrough had a very happy ending, which rarely happens for me without a walkthrough. A beautiful gem of a game, and a must play for World of Darkness fans.

I’m here because of BlerdyOtome! She featured Speakeasy and its Kickstarter, I became a Backer, and damn, I wish Open Late Games a very pleasant All The Money Forever. Speakeasy knocked me out like a good drink.

What drew me to Speakeasy initially was how it resembled my beloved Lovestruck’s Speakeasy Tonight and how the developers wanted to celebrate female sexuality. Daring to give women what they want is quite the brave thing to do during our current times. Diving into the game, I was not disappointed. The Art Deco art influences are everywhere from the UI to the photographed backgrounds. I’m listening to the music as I type this review. Cameo photographs of celebrities of yore are portraits for minor characters. I tremble to think what Open Late Games could do with a bigger budget because they used their Kickstarter haul so well.

Let’s get down to brass tax: the characters and their stories. I played the Happy and Speakeasy Ends and had an amazing time. Every route the spoiled, selfish Cora West grows up, but depending on who she’s with, it’s via different method. Even when I was frustrated with her self-centeredness, I applauded that she continued to choose to improve, to be independent, to find a place in the world that suited her. I felt refreshed by a character who wanted to change, instead of change being forced on them by narrative structure and dictates. Very well-done coming-of-age stories here.

As the stories unfold, Harlowe’s Speakeasy becomes a quixotic character too—a cage can transform to a shelter from patriarchal norms; a monied legacy becomes an obligation tied around the neck. Or vice versa, depending on your choices! The Speakeasy Ends foreground characters giving into excess. No societal dictates can stop these people from giving into their worst impulses. When there are no rules within the walls of the club, what limits will the individual set for themselves? Will they keep to their rules? The mind spins.

Speaking of worst impulses, the routes get dark, and I appreciated so much that Open Late Games did not pull punches. I cannot count the number of games, books, and gamebooks I’ve read that advertise “dark romance” but at the last second let characters off the hook. Here, characters rage, bleed, and make love in full color. Literally, the CGs are gorgeous. The sex scenes are divine, and I adored that characters had other partners besides Cora. They are fully realized people outside of her! Stuff goes on with them when she’s not on their route! Another reviewer noted queerness is baked into the narrative on a cellular level. Both “queerness” as in same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity and “queerness” as the intentional bucking of societal norms. Very cool!

Open Late Games must be one of the most professional, punctual, and polite game developers. They’ve dealt with multiple crises. Unity threw indies under the bus, and they switched to Ren’py engine post-launch. AI slop invaded stock photo sites, and they did their best to establish human provenance on over 100+ photographs. The MC customization stretch goal wasn’t reached on Kickstarter, but they really wanted racial diversity for Cora. They did a hard stare at their budget and squeezed out some minimal skin tone re-coloring. These are no small struggles, and each time Open Late Games made sure to communicate to Backers and act as logically and quickly as possible. There were no long radio silences, blame games, and fraught Internet fights. The cherry on top is Speakeasy came out faster than any other Kickstarter VN I’ve encountered. These people are insanely good at both the art and the administrative aspects of visual novels.

If you like female-centric dating sims with a real guts, put a record on and take a swing at Speakeasy!

It gets so lonely here was so good that it got me into ebi-hime's games in general, fast making her one of my favorite indie solo-developers. When The end of obsession was announced, I eagerly added it to my To Play list. While I didn't enjoy this sequel as much as the original, ebi-hime's second foray into yandere witches and princesses is worth playing.

The end of obsession has a much more straightforward take of the yandere archetype, and is a lot more dismal and depressing for it. Chains, cages, torture, mental deterioration, knives: it runs the gamut. As an epilogue for It gets so lonely here, it seems to ask: what if the yandere's victim didn't get better? What if, after going through all the cycles of trauma, the victim calcified the hurt, sloughing off all human compassion until a brittle construction remained? What if they just got worse. There's no cathartic triumph and reclaiming at the end of this game. Like Rapunzel in her tower, everyone's simply stuck.

Speaking of Rapunzel, the game borrows from that fairy tale with its setting and towering premise. Maybe because I was raised on feminist fairy tales and studied the Grimm's, I kept thinking that the POV character would (Spoiler - click to show)cut or make a rope of her hair, jump, find out everything was an illusion, or discover some inner magic. Something besides the tedium of sitting in the tower and yet another cryptic visit from the witch. As is, the point-of-view character is so passive that I felt myself scrabbling at the walls—though these feelings might have been relieved if I'd realized sooner that the Skip button automatically stopped at any new narration. What is advertised as a 20-60 minute game took me a full three hours. What I think is supposed to keep the player going is the overall mystery of the witch's identity. This mystery didn't work out in my favor, because I'd guessed the solution so early.

In the Notes section, ebi-hime says the first kernel of inspiration for The end of obsession is what if the yandere got tired of their victim. This question is sort of answered. Loneliness and boredom will eat a person alive and change her reactions in a desperate hope that something else will change. The music matches perfectly with the mechanics and themes of the game. The art is cutesy and fantastical—the witch's outfit is an especially remarkable work. Between the music and the vivid narration, the atmosphere tenses the stomach, despite the lack of plot. I think The end of obsession achieves the minimum of what it set out to do, but my frustration with the POV character and the lack of catharsis caused me to enjoy it less than its predecessor.

Wow! What an amazing game! This is my first game by ebi-hime, and I'm absolutely enthralled.

Scuttling away from the more bloody aspects of the yandere archetype, It gets so lonely here buries itself alive in the trope's psychological horror. The love interests are deeply traumatized by grief, guilt, death, and, yes, the loneliness of survival at all costs. The heroine isn't immune either, as her insecurities and jealousies stick to her like barnacles, making me think she would lock these women up, if given the power. Murder isn't the most healthy of love languages, but the twilit dreamy atmosphere, artful melancholy, and eerie soundtrack can lull you into thinking about it. I definitely recommend playing twice so you can sink your teeth into the True Ending!