NIGHT/SHADE: You're The Drug

This is my first-ever visual novel, and I'm afraid it might have ruined me for life. I literally downloaded Steam and created an account after reading about Night/Shade, and I have no regrets. If you like BL, do yourself a favor and get this game! My favorite thing about Night/Shade is just how queer it is. Sexuality (and, to a more subtle extent, gender) is something the characters "do" and not who they "are." Being gay doesn't define the characters in Night/Shade; in fact, the characters are never identified by any specific sexuality, despite engaging in queer romantic relationships. I know this is Queer Theory 101, but it's such a rarity in gaming in general (and, I imagine, other BL VNs) that sexuality is just one of many facets of a character's identity. And the characters of Night/Shade are rich in dimension. Which brings me to my second favorite thing in the game: the characters. As far as I'm concerned, there are no "side characters" because every character is so fleshed out, you end up getting invested in the "community," rather than just the protagonist and his love interests. Pavel is by far my favorite character, and Indigo and Natali are badass women. Sasha, the MC, is very likable but flawed. He's pretty easy to relate to, in my opinion, and his decisions and thought patterns make sense to me. He gets two romantic partners to pursue, Mishka and Dima. Honestly, this, in my opinion, is what makes the game so good. A significant portion of the exposition is spent building the relationship between Sasha and Mishka, making the player organically get invested in their relationship. Even as the tension of the "inciting incident" is building, we get to experience these two do pretty mundane things: watch a movie, play video games, get something to eat. I ended up pursuing the Dima route on my first play-through, and honestly, I was a little worried that the storytelling would decline because the game seemed to be setting up the Sasha x Mishka relationship as the "good" end. But the game does a brilliant job of slowly building Sasha and Dima's chemistry with really beautiful moments of vulnerability between the two, so the choice doesn't seem out of nowhere. Furthermore, even though Mishka and Sasha are best friends with history, and Mishka has charisma to burn, the game is smart to also give him flaws: he's very jealous and codependent with Sasha. When the player finally makes the choice between Mishka and Dima, it actually feels like a choice. Mishka is Sasha's best friend; they have history, but their relationship is unhealthy. Dima has been there for Sasha, protected him, but he's unknown and has walls pretty firmly built. It makes for a very compelling decision. All in all, I don't know if my review will convince anyone to buy this game, but I hope it does. At the very least, I hope one more positive review helps the devs put out more content. Devs, if you're reading this: you have a customer for life. Be it DLC, a sequel, or a new game entirely, I'm in. I went to the website to buy merch, but it looks like the shop was under construction. But hopefully, merch comes back too! If I had to give ONE minor area for improvement, based solely on my personal preference (others might have a different opinion): I wish there was a bit more 18+ content. I understand why there wasn't because every time the characters did sleep together, it was motivated by the story, and not just: "Now we're being nasty!" So I get it. But I saw on Twitter that there's a possibility of a DLC with 18+ content for Ada x Roman. I signed up for the mailing list, so fingers crossed. Night/Shade: You're the Drug...thank you for such a riveting story. I will now begin my third play-through. <3

I've only had Mishka for 7.7 hours, but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself. ಠ_ಠ

this game gave me exactly what i want to see in this type of visual novel. GREAT story, beautiful writing, amazing characters, BEAUTIFUL illustrations...i just wish there was at least one more route with one more love interest, but i'm too demanding so i'll just call this PERFECTION. totally underrated. people should know about this. edit: ACTUALLY theres another thing: i love to see my games at 100% cause i'm sick on the head so i'd really like for it to have at least one achievement like...finished the game! or... got all endings! or something like that....it just feels empty without any achievement.

honestly one of the best written BL games I've ever played! the drama and the pacing are SO good, the characters are messy and complex and so easy to empathize with, and all the side characters are really great as well!!!

Just finished a run, honestly i recommend the game. It's not a long story, but it's works in their case. There's very, very few downtime moments, which means there's things happening all the time. The dialogue is fun, quirky, and pretty enjoyable. The narration bits were good too. Personally I liked the art style a lot too, there's a lot of fully drawn scenes and character expressions and clothes. The cast is diverse, interesting and unique. There's a lot of dark themes going on, but it doesn't get TOO dark about it (like some OTHER popular visual novel about drugs and such c: ). There's plenty of action (in all senses of the word, winkwink), and I felt like it had good pacing and balance between action or angst, and fluff scenes. There's only 2 romance options, which is fine IMO. I personally only did one route (AND LOVED IT). Had me giggling and kicking my feet. There is a sort of epilogue scene to close things up (sadly no extra spicy scene, guess I'll have to draw it myself :P ), and it left me satisfied with the story. Like, enough holes in it to be left to speculate, but not too many that it feels incomplete. I'd say it's def a good buy if you're looking for a fun and interesting visual novel! And def worth supporting the people behind it, as you can tell the amount of care they put behind it!

I totally didn't play 8 hrs overnight. Yo but seriously this game is phenomenal. I was already a massive fan of the artist (I follow their socials) so when I heard they made a game I knew I had to buy it! The story is unique and I kept getting swept off my feet! There's two noteworthy love interests with a total of 4 saucy scenes, but before the game starts you have the option to remove them for SFW game play. I think that's a great option for those who need it.

I loved the music and the art! However, the writing just didn't really grab me. There's head-hopping which gets confusing, and the romances felt too "all of a sudden they're together" for me.

So I'll be honest, and 100% transparent with my review. When I fist saw this game I snubbed it. The art style isn't my normal speed and the concept came off as a bit edgy or try hard. I eventually bought it after finishing a large chunk of my current VN's and was desperate for more MA stuff. After putting over 30+ hours into this game I can say I was pleasantly surprised. It certainly has edgy moments in the story, but the characters and world building make all of it seem believable. All things considered they are REALLY well fleshed out. Every single character in the game has compelling character beats and flaws to them. The "villian" comes off slightly more one dimensional when you first meet him, but learning about his ambitions and seeing his backstory and development with Dima, really helps you visualize the whole dimension of his character traits as well. I was completely engrossed in this game when I first started playing it, and have been driven to complete both the good and bad endings of both routes. I also give it high marks for the music. It's simple but really fits the vibe of every scene. I legit let it play in the background while I work sometimes. I also have to compliment Roman's and Mishka's VAs. Almost all of their lines are delivered so well and the acting feels really natural. Unfortunately Sasha's voice lines don't always suit the scene properly, and Dima's lines are poorly read in a fair number of scenes. So I can't praise all of the VA work, but overall most lines are enjoyable. I also do wish we had more than two romance routes. Hopefully we'll get DLC for the side romances! (Roman and Ada, Indigo and Natali, and Pav and Vadim!) That would help it feel a bit more complete than it feels now. As it stands now though it genuinely gets a 8/10 from me. considering my original interest was a 2/10 that's some HIGH praise. Good job to the writers! I earnestly hope we get more from this team in future! ♥♥♥

I think it's a good game. I wish there was more though.

leave my boy ada alone he did nothing wrong Actual review; CONTAINS SPOILERS !! I bought this game on a complete impulse and finished it in two or three sessions. Now that I got all CGs and presumably all endings I'd like to put my thoughts into a review because I realized I have a lot to say. First of all, I enjoyed my time with this game! I will definitely keep an eye out for DLC and future projects. Pretty cool that the explicit scenes are optional regardless of choices, and I feel like the story will still hold up without them despite the very heavy focus on relationships. I was also really happy to see a game that explores toxic and unhealthy dynamics without them being outright non consensual. As for the characters - most of the characters introduced later on did not intrigue me that much until after i finished the game and had time to really think about them. Some characters unexpectedly grew on me, like Pav and Vadim who became my favorites! I ended up having mixed feelings about Sasha and Mishka. Starting out, I liked their friendship and this sort of maybe-one-sided, maybe-not thing they have going on, and their sense of familiarity and casual intimacy despite only being friends at that point. However, their story feels like it hinges on reuniting them for a long while (long enough that i thought mishka was the only LI) but once it happens, it fell flat for me. Maybe it's the point, but by that time many other things are in motion and I couldn't care about it as much as I could everything else that was about to go down. Finding out Dima was the other LI kind of surprised me. I thought it was super weird considering hes Mishka's boss! It probably still is weird, but after going down his route I kind of prefer it. Telling Mishka about it felt horrible though D: Dima's route seemed to reveal more about the story and the big picture, so maybe it's a good thing I played it second. the parallels between Dima and Roman's past relationship and Ada and Roman's current relationship are really really good, something I only thought about after stewing on it a little bit. The story/plot itself had me a little confused and I had a hard time fully immersing myself in it, but maybe it's just me. I'm glad the game didnt overstay its welcome but I also wish everyone and everything got more development, because i did want to care about everything, it just feels like something is missing. I'm glad there weren't any huge exposition dumps, but it left me wanting more. Also I love Ada and his funny nonsensical outfit. Ada i love you. I'd love to know more about him and how his relationship with Roman came to be, because his dogged loyalty to him despite being shaken quite easily by Mishka's words does intrigue me. EDIT: Transgender characters are so rare in this genre, so a million more points for Ada being trans. Now I'm even more excited for his DLC!