Heartspell: Horizon Academy

Absolutely wonderful game, I’m completely obsessed! I like the story: every moment pulls me deeper in, and somehow it manages to be both exciting and comforting at the same time. It’s the kind of experience that stays on your mind long after you stop playing, making you want to come back again and again!

Match 3 meets visual novel with a well-executed story. Each character feels unique and your decisions truly impact your relationships with them. My only complaint is that once you beat the story, the home screen shows around 50% completion and all remaining content is just story, turning the core game into an optional element for achievements.

Love this game so much! Would love to see more visual novels like this from the company!

A friendly & uncomplicated dating game, fully voiced by good voice actors, set at a dream magical academy. At least, if you dream of a magical academy where everyone is a polyamorous bisexual who is also very careful about consent. Oh, and it has 3-match puzzles. One thing, though: when I bought this, Steam's user-tags said it was a "choices matter" game with multiple endings. It's not really that. There are some choices that have a minor impact on the ending, but the overall plot remains the same. It's the good writing and the voice acting that sell this, not the complexity of the story. Oh, and the 3-match puzzles.

There's a lot to like about this game. The art is really nice, the music is pretty chill (if basic, but basic is good!), and it's awesome that it's fully voiced. I may not like all the choices made with/by the VAs, but that's a personal preference. The dev is really responsive, which is awesome. I put the game down for awhile because I didn't want the narration voice and there was no option to turn off just that part. But someone made a request for that and the dev had the option to disable narration while keeping character voices shortly after that. So good on them for being so responsive and listening to their players. The match three is pretty fun. If you're an achievement hound like me then it's going to get really tired by the time you are trying to reach level 50 in the practice arena. I was very ready to be done with them. And also, for the achievement hunters, you will have to play the game at least 3 times for all the achievements which is a bit frustrating because the diversity of what you can do is very low. Not a whole lot of branching pathways or differences in stories, just slightly different dialogue. Not necessarily a bad thing, the game is long enough that it doesn't need massive replay value, just something for those cheevo people like me to be aware of. Luckily, putting the game on Story mode, where you don't have to play the match 3s, doesn't prevent you from earning achievements that are story based. (Obviously if you play on Story you can't earn the match 3 achievements.) I'm still working on the last two achievements I need to be 100%. Either way, if you're a fan of dating sims, then I think this is a very solid option. It's not spicy, but there is spicy adjacent content that always fades to black. This is easily avoidable if you don't want that, though. But if you're looking for a spicy dating sim, then this one probably won't satisfy you. It's certainly not a gooner game lol. And notably, if you're like me, you don't really play dating sims as yourself. I love a character creator and building a character while I play. This game lacks a character creator - which is not a flaw, just something of note. Still fun and with fun characters to friend or kiss, whichever you want. One note for the dev if they happen to see this, under spoilers: [spoiler]I saw that you updated Miko's visions to be true to player sexual identity. I think that's great. However, you only included he/him and she/her pronouns. What does this do for characters and players that use they/them pronouns? And for Morgan, who is exclusively they/them. Is Morgan excluded from this particular vision or can they be found in either? I understand why you updated it to include this based on player feedback, but I do think it overlooks nonbinary players and characters that also use they/them pronouns. I'm sure it's hard to cater to each player in a game like this, but you only have one character that uses they/them exclusively and it feels like that character is excluded here. If it's possible, I think adding a "Kiss them" option that includes both Morgan and your other characters that use them/them would solve this. I'm no game maker or coder, so I don't know how difficult it is to do. Just wanted to throw my two cents in, that's all![/spoiler]

i love da bao

I really like this game, it's such a cute dating sim and all the characters are great. The match-3 gameplay can get surprisingly complex, it's a lot of fun.