Doujin Games

[Mephisto]

I've been playing a lot of doujin games recently and I figured I should post/review about them to give them some coverage. I don't know how that fuwa reviews or whatever crap works so I'm just going to post them in visual novel discussion. 

Doujin games are games made by small publishers and are typically pretty low quality and made to satisfy a niche (especially in terms of eroge). They are all basically nukige. Despite this, doujin games can be quite fun and a nice breather compared to long visual novels as doujin games are typically quite short, and some games are more than just nukige. There's a lot more that could be added on to this, but I'm too lazy so someone else can do that if they feel inclined to do so. 

Every Doujin game I play contains gameplay elements, as that is what I like. 

The first I will review will be Miniature Garden, as it is the game that has finally convinced me to do something like this. I was informed by the esteemed gentlemen over at that thing they call teamspeak that the game looked like hentai. While there is erotic content because it is a doujin eroge, the game has much more redeeming qualities than porn. Honestly, the images they chose to show on dlsite are quite poor representations of the game in my opinion, but hey maybe they thought it would boost their sales. They also are kinda spoilerly, because I didn't get to the darker parts of the game before I saw those images. 

Link to game >> http://www.dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ141831.html

Link to circle >> http://circlesekilala.blog.fc2.com/

>> Some teasers of some stuff in the review. Full review will be posted when I actually finish the game (here's hoping it doesn't dissapoint)

Atmosphere:

I’m not entirely sure if many people actually care about this, however this is extremely important for me. It greatly affects how well I can enjoy a game, and thus I will talk about what I liked about the atmosphere in the game.

To sum up the atmosphere of the story, is that it is governed by a strong contrast between the light and dark forces within the game. (this ain’t no moege!)

The real world is a dark place, filled with irrational and the unreasonable. However, in order to maintain our sanity we turn our eyes away from such things and live to the best of our abilities. Miniature garden is a dark world, and the darkness is just around the corner, but we as a player for the most part turn our eyes away from this darkness and instead indulge in the relatively cheerful and hopeful environment that surrounds the main character and the story(at least at first!) 

Gameplay:

The gameplay is scenario based with a two-stage combat mechanic. The first stage is the standard dungeon-crawling set up, with monsters you can see on the map. Monsters have a detection circle, and if you engage with them while undetected by their detection circle, you gain an advantage going in to combat. The character also has a certain number of ranged attacks (type changes based on character) as well as SP for skills. If a monster engages in combat with you from behind, you gain a disadvantage going in to combat.

The second stage is real-time combat. You press the left/right arrow keys to switch between enemies targeted, z to shoot with your weapon, a s d to switch stances, and x to activate skills. When your ammo goes to 0, you need to reload, during which you need to wait for the gauge under your health to fill up. Some guns refill one bullet at the time, while the submachinegun needs to wait till it can refill all the way to full before you get any bullets back. (You don’t need to empty the canister before reloading). Each character combat mechanics are a bit different, but essentially you want to stay alive, and bring the enemy’s HP to 0. Enemies also have a “break” gauge, which if you max out by launching repeated attacks stuns the enemy. This resets the gauge to 0, and makes it harder to max out based on each successive stun. (Gauge cannot be built while stunned) A degree of skill is required to actually beat the bosses/harder monsters in the game, as you need to manage your skills/ammo and enemy break gauges well.

では、お楽しみを！

Edited December 15, 2015 by Mephisto