Manako

When I was in highschool I frequently played games on NewGrounds, and at the time they had a series of dating simulators that were up there. While it may not be the most appropriate type of game for my age I enjoyed the narratives and how I was able to build the character’s skills throughout the game. So learning that there was a more appropriate game in the same vein, created in Ren’Py no less – I couldn’t pass up giving it a shot.

The game has the player guiding the queen along a week at a time, during the main portion of the week she has classes which build skills and on the weekends she can perform square actions which effect her mood. There are 4 different mood sliders which affect her personality and how she performs the various studies, and some studies unlock new activities on the board for her to perform.

The player builds these skills so that when the story encounters occur the player is able to apply those stats to affect the outcome of the interaction. At first it is challenging to figure out which skills are meaningful, and when the mood boosts to skills were worth using over a skill that would be more pressing during the plot. Once the game has been played enough it feels good to be able to hit certain perks, and if the character fails seeing what options are available.



The end wraps up the game nicely, properly recording enough choices so that the path felt meaningful, the text is well written and gives a feeling of accomplishment. The player’s choice is limited because the storyline doesn’t vary, but some choices lock out due to how the skills are trained. The end of game embellishes the choice it makes it better, for example there is a choice to invest in a printing press, which has limited impact during gameplay but provides a strong accomplishment for the queen once the game completes.



The game is similar to Reus in that it encourages replay, and offers varying goals for the different play-throughs. What is interesting is the gameplay mechanics in these cases are the same, regardless of the type of path the young queen takes. The game is tuned to be fairly difficult but the imagery used when the player fails is humorous and the player is able to plan for the event on following playthroughs.

This post was reblogged from my personal blog, I hope you enjoyed the review. I hope to do more reviews in a similar vein in the future, thanks for reading!