funny enough, you must be reading my mind, because i was literally about to buy virche evermore this weekend and try it out! hearing the recommendation here makes me even more excited! i'll also look into slow damage too! i don't have a preference between GxB and BL otomes; anywhere where good story and characters can be found!
i'll drop my thoughts to your email then! there aren't many. thanks so much for your reply!
i made an itch.io account just to leave a comment on this LMAO. honestly, i went into this demo figuring that based on the game premise it'd be a pretty low-expectations, sit back and enjoy sort of self-aware-ly trashy sort of work, in the same way that like watching intentionally bad horror movies or reading trashy romance novels can be enjoyable. not that there's anything wrong with those or enjoying those, but just personally, i tend to enjoy complex and nuanced story and characterization, depth, critical thought, and ideological challenge in my game writing as a whole — which, i'll be the first to admit, may be my issue with coming to the wrong genre for that!
anyway, after playing the demo though, i found myself really really pleasantly surprised! i think you have something really interesting here! and i'm very picky about my narratives, so that's not something i always say haha.
i found myself really enjoying what you've set up in the characters, in particular one of the things i've always disliked about the otome genre is how mary sue the MCs often are, and largely unrelatable to me. i found myself Sitting Up in my chair during the scene in icardi's demo route where melrose ends up being manipulative, even arguably abusive, towards him—and this isn't something you often find from the MC in an otome! i was like "okay, okay..." up until that point, but that's the moment when this game got my attention! i also overall enjoy the setup of icardi's route as a whole because, again, you don't often have an MC who's willing to have selfish and ulterior motives in a genre where I've found that most MCs are written to be as morally un-reprehensible as the player would like to imagine themselves as being. icardi is the opposite of my type in LIs, but i'm interested in continuing his route just for the writing.
i also was pleasantly surprised by how icardi and dr. love both feel like more than just their tropes—again, in a genre where writing a trope alone is often enough to satisfy people who will like a character regardless of their depth just for fitting into their preferred type. once again, i'm unfortunately a bit of a hater of the himbo archetype—it's just not my cup of tea!—but by the end of icardi's demo, i found myself being willing to see more of him for the moments where he showed signs of being more than just the bounds of his archetype. i hope you keep this up if it was intentional!
of course, i do have some points that took away from my experience a little bit, if you're interested in feedback! (i don't want to just leave it here tbh because i don't think i saw you solicit feedback anywhere or mention that it's welcome, so i don't really like coming at someone with constructive criticism unless it's invited.) more than happy to if you are interested though.
all in all, a game i had low expectations for that really ended up surpassing my expectations in ways that i don't see in many otomes that i DO have expectations for! really happy to say that even as-is with nothing changed, i'm looking forward to the full piece and am definitely going to be getting and playing through as much of it as possible. keep up the really fantastic work!
