Volleyball Heaven

A somewhat unexpected tone, but it's handled well and th titties are fat.

“Volleyball Heaven” is a queer visual novel that deserves more than the three word review I originally gave it. This is a story about the intersection of competitive sports and blossoming romance, specifically focusing on the relationship between women. What makes the game work, and likely why I wrote “I liked it. (7/10)” in my original review (yes, that was the entire review), is the sincerity of its character writing. It captures the specific, heightened tension of high school sports and uses that as a backdrop for a tender, slow burn WLW narrative. The art style is clean and charming without shying away from showing all sorts of romance, even the erotic kind. Apart from that, the game’s relatively straightforward, featuring a fairly linear experience that hits the expected genre beats. It’s a comfort read. Solid, sweet, and satisfying, even if I can recall the tone more clearly than the plot. If you're looking for a low-stress, sincere lesbian romance with beautiful artwork, this is a very safe bet. (7/10)

This game has a lot of issues with choices not being recognised (I don't even mean the choices end up meaningless, though that happens too - I mean you will make a choice and then in the next scene the game will act like you chose something different). The flag checking isn't accurate. Also, for a game that makes a point of telling you when you move between weeks, it sure does start to just skip multiple weeks a lot as the game goes on. There may have been more contact planned that wasn't added in the end, but it looks not great as is. I'm guessing, considering the unremarkable story, that the main draw is the sex scene slides. Not sure why, since the camera jumping around during those slides really kills any potential vibe. It's just a badly made game trying to ride mediocre horniness, and failing.

5 Euro sind noch zuviel.

10/10 Rika best girl.

Really good game and Jade is the best girl.

The characters are realistic in the fact that they basically all have some amount of trauma. Fundamentally, though, I didn't expect to feel this emotionally exhausted from a dating sim. Was the game fundamentally _fun_? No. No, it wasn't. The first ending I got turned out to be the least problematic for me. I wasn't totally happy with it, and I was worried there might be self-harm if my relationship with that character dropped too low on other play-throughs. I had no idea that was actually the best ending possible. This is messy high-trauma lesbian drama where even the good endings can make you feel uncomfortable. (And there is 100% guarantee of new trauma that requires trigger warnings during some of the routes. Not just old trauma that shaped their character before the game started.) I'm sure that some folks will love it. That said... Looking at the achievements tells a lot about the game. 20-25% get through at least one ending, but this is a dating sim which is purely choice-driven (no random or RPG elements) where 70-80% of players do not feel compelled to get all of the achievements. In no way is it physically difficult to get them, but it is emotionally difficult to keep going from one to the next.