[h1]Overview[/h1]
In [i]Comfort & Warmth[/i], we follow a day in the life of the nameable-female-lead, an overworked and underappreciated staff writer also in the early days of a romantic relationship.
Playing as (insert your chosen name here, I went with “Bethany”, because, why not? I'll be referring to her by this name from hereon) we're taken straight into the latter stages of another stressful working day with more demand than time, and the inevitability of working over for no additional returns. If this sounds like everything you don't want in your free-time-fiction, then you'll be pleased to know that this start is merely setting up the reason for what follows.
As mentioned, Bethany is in the early stages of a relationship, and her boyfriend Leon happens to live closer to her workplace than she does, and conveniently, works from home, and is therefore prepared for her arrival; which gives her the opportunity to go straight to his place after work for the chance to de-stress. As a girl with a damned good eye for talent, it has to be said that Leon is seriously top-drawer merchandise. Not only is he a quality cook, but he's extremely caring, and takes “buff” to new levels. You just [i]would[/i]. Trust me on this!
Once there, the game takes us through scenes of the couple's quality time together, offering up a few response options along the way, which reward us with some variation to the narrative, all of which proves to be an entertaining read. As the overall play time of the game is less than a couple of hours, I'm not going to spoiler the scenes which take place, only to say that they revolve around gentle, heartwarming romantic moments.
[h1]Graphics and sound[/h1]
I found the soundtrack to be very appealing and well matched, and unusually for me, kept it high enough to let it remain to the fore throughout. There is an option for volume of effects too, though I have to concede that I didn't notice an awful lot of them. Perhaps that was due to my immersion in the text.
Visually, the game is lovely. Characters mentioned in the text appear as standard in situ within the backdrops as opposed to mere fixed poses placed in front of them; effectively making every scene into a CG. These also update as the story progresses, pay attention to the dinner scene for a good example of this. Here's the sort of thing you can look forward to:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428104309
[h1]Functionality[/h1]
Those who read many of my reviews will possibly think “not again!” when I mention that the in-story player functions are accessed via the Ren'py standard tiny text word list at the bottom of the screen. At least you [i]can[/i] see them here, and they change colour when the pointer is over them, but they remain less than ideal, not the friendliest of controls if your sight isn't great. I do wish visual novel developers would pay more attention to this, especially when the rest of their game is so well polished.
That said, the UI does facilitate all of the usual controls that you want to see here, including a history log, skip and backstep, along with save and quick save. It's worth noting that if you want to load a previous save from within the story, you'll need to click save and then change to load from the menu screen, so care is required to avoid accidentally overwriting the position you want to recover.
Further settings include text speed, skip options, full screen or windowed (though you have to double-click the game toolbar for full-screen-windowed), screenshot ability, assistive self-voicing and the accessibility menu for things like text size, font style and line spacing. All of which add up to everything you could wish from a game of this size and price.
Once you have played the story through to conclusion, there is a “bonus gallery” with several development pictures, showing how the visuals initially took shape, along with (following an additional click on each) a brief description about them. This is well worth looking at. It's a bit of a shame that a regular gallery wasn't also added, allowing the player to review all of the “CG backdrops” experienced during gameplay.
[h1]Intimacy[/h1]
As you have probably seen on the game's store page, there are intimate scenes in this story, and they can be completely bypassed or limited dependent upon your choice from in-story options. It should be borne in mind that if you take the initial decision to skip out on the sex scenes, then the story will advance directly beyond them – there is no alternative activity narrative, and this will reduce the run through time of the game to somewhere around only 30 minutes.
Of course, if you're on this page, then you're probably interested in the full content, and the story doesn't skip out on detail, yet manages to dance carefully between enough information to be, erm, [i]exciting[/i], and providing too much detail. It's a nicely crafted balance with the use of some well thought out analogies in order to avoid the pitfall of [i]cringe[/i].
Visually, during these scenes, Bethany is displayed fully naked as Leon gets to work starting her motor and getting her all revved up. We do not, however, get to see his “driver” in “pole position”, which I'm sure some of you will take as a blessing. The text does the job for you, with the accompanying visuals providing plenty of support as they are.
[h1]Experience and verdict[/h1]
Comfort & Warmth offers the best part of two hours pleasurable reading time, with enough options to have you playing through more than once. With an aspirationally pretty, but not unrealistic, MC, I found it very easy to immerse myself as the lead and just let the story wash over me. It helps, of course, that this game's [i]husbando[/i] leaves the likes of merely “dreamy” in the shade, but the true star of the show is the writing.
Being realistic about the price of the game and the playing time provided, I feel that the content quality offsets the limited duration sufficiently to make this a very fair deal at full price. If you have no concerns about graphically and narratively explicit intercourse content and just want a feel-good story to carry you through the evening, you've found your answer in this one.
Otome Lovers wishes to thank [i]CubiGames[/i] for providing a free review copy for this game.
[quote]Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]
[b]To the devs:[/b] I look forward to a possible sequel, “The vacation & proposal”! Bethany would say YES! I guarantee it 😍
