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Free Yuri EVNs – non-Yuri Game Jam edition


Plk_Lesiak

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Welcome back to EVN Chronicles, your prime source of romantic fluff reviews and recommendations! Today, I present you a post that will either capitalize on the post-Valentine's Day atmosphere by providing you even more positive feels, or help mend your lonely heart with quality love stories! Romance, as we all know, is one of the driving elements of visual novels in general, and maybe especially within the niche that is particularly close to my heart – and that is, of course, yuri. Recently, I've spent quite a lot of time going through and writing about Yuri Game Jam VNs and with that coverage finished, for the time being, it's an excellent day to look beyond this particular event to satisfy our freeware yuri needs.

          The Western visual novel scene is, if you take a closer look, surprisingly full of f/f romantic stories and freeware titles containing such themes show up pretty regularly, both thanks to other game jams, such as NaNoRen0 and various “random” releases, mostly by hobbyist developers. Today, I’ll go through some of the most notable, free EVNs with yuri elements – both those purely focused on girls’ love and those that include it as a significant part of the experience, but not its primary theme. As usual with this kind of lists, I’ll focus on short, casual VNs most fitting the mini-review format – some games that would fit the theme, like Christine Love’s Don’t Take it Personally, Babe, it Just ain’t Your Story, deserve a more detailed review and they will receive just that… SoonTM.

 

Butterfly Soup

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Brianna Lei's story about a group of lesbian teenagers has gathered a significant amount of mainstream attention thank to its unique subject matter (focusing on minority queer women and their experience), but it’s definitely more than just a piece of social commentary. It offers a well-written, charming story that tackles its main themes with a lot of subtlety and attention to detail. It also doesn't overstate the sexuality of its characters, saying more about the universal challenges of growing up than just minority issues. And while it definitely attempts to create a more realistic representation of homosexual relationships, straying away from the typical, idealized yuri romance, it's a fun and light-hearted read that should be appropriate for anyone not allergic to close-to-reality LGBT stories.

Final Score: Highly Recommended

Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogpost.com

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Whoa I played some of these.

Myra's magical mishap:
Shallow, choice heavy EVN; this is p much the epitome of why I don't like the typical EVN. I think I got 1 or 2 endings then dropped it. Not worth your time. Or at least that's what I remember, I do know I dropped it early but not much else.

Taarradhin:
It could have been p decent, but the structural planning was utterly terrible. First of all, it invests you in a character (though not that well, especially with all the "time passes" that are obvious sacrifices to the nanoreno deadline), then decides to play a card that requires you to care about the character it HASN'T invested you in to matter. Then you have to get the same thing but opposite so you don't get the surprise effect and it's again a chore. I really like true ends and I guess I'll forgive the hashtag woke section in it despite it being very obvious, but idk it can't really fix the rest of the VN. I recommend this for EVN devs to study due to its wasted potential and terrible structure, and to nobody else.

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18 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

Shallow, choice heavy EVN

It's what I'd call "typical game jam fodder", and I particularly don't hate this one because most of the choices matter in some subtle ways. Would probably be way more critical if the dev asked for money, but as a freebie, it's acceptable. :P

18 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

It could have been p decent, but the structural planning was utterly terrible. First of all, it invests you in a character (though not that well, especially with all the "time passes" that are obvious sacrifices to the nanoreno deadline), then decides to play a card that requires you to care about the character it HASN'T invested you in to matter. Then you have to get the same thing but opposite so you don't get the surprise effect and it's again a chore. I really like true ends and I guess I'll forgive the hashtag woke section in it despite it being very obvious, but idk it can't really fix the rest of the VN. I recommend this for EVN devs to study due to its wasted potential and terrible structure, and to nobody else.

Can a second playthrough really be a chore considering the length? It wasn't that badly written at any point. I think the characters were decent, their backstories and different reactions to the threat of *spoiler* adding enough to justify the multiple playthroughs. There were cool touches, like the romance ending suggested how the relationship will forever be tainted by what happened. I'd much more likely complain about the true route and the overly-happy resolution of the plot. :>

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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Things need to be significantly better than that to be worth reading imo. I really think there wasn't close to enough time to get attached to the characters; like an extremely obvious point is where we get a three-box or something description of going to the market rather than an actual scene. Moege might have their excesses but SoL exists for a reason; ultimately i did not give a shit about the characters in Taarradhin, and everything kind of falls flat at that point... not to mention that, as I said, the wrong character is developed for the developments to make any sense in a story crafting sense.

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