Yeah, the title is lame….

Anyway, it looks like otome games are charging forward recently. Not only is a lot of BxG companies in Japan creating new otome game branches (making stuff like Circus’ new Da Capo for girls), but a lot of visual novel-style games for girls are popping up in english as well.

There was the indie game Fatal Hearts by Hanako Games, then Idea factory began a survey with interest in localising their otome games, I just read about a german “dating game” with a female lead yesterday, and then right afterwards I heard that “Dragon Academy” was finally released on Go! Comi‘s website…..

Dragon Academy looks like it could be interesting. So far there is a free prologue and the first episode up for download on their site. The episode costs $7.99, but I heard that it’s very short.
The art looks pretty good so far (I only tried the free, very short prologue), although I do feel like they didn’t make as much of an effort on the drawing the main character as they did on the male characters.
One of the features in the VN is that when you get to make choices, you have to choose the feelings that she responds with (Sad, angry, and so on). But when you hover your mouse over the expressions, you can read the corresponding sentences that she will say, so in general it’s not very different from how you usually play these kind of games.
I can’t say much about the story yet, though I do hope that there will be more to this game than just an excuse to hunt after hawt boys. We didn’t really get to see any of these boys in the prologue either, except for in the short movie clip in the end. On my computer that flash movie was very much out of synch, which kind of ruined it, by the way.
Looking on the Team page, you can see the three girls working on the game. Hmm, I wonder how they got into that business…..

As for the german game, Dating Day…. I heard about that about a year or so ago, but then forgot again. Looking at the website, it’s not something that appeals to me very much. Generally seems like a plain dating sim with minigames, and the art really puts me off. I’m not a very big fan of that kind of cartoon style.

On the other hand, if you’re not into otome games, there’s not much else than hentai games to go for on the visual novel front…..

And now, I’ll get back to the drawing board…. working on my BxG game…. 😉