Today’s deck is the Silent Desolate Tarot.
Really cool deck… no idea what the specific theme they’re going for is, though…
The general trend of invitation to introspection contiinues as this one invites me to make a mental note of the dissapointments I thought I’d be hit by but didn’t.
Been a while since my last review of anything, so let’s get to one.
Apriko Kobou is a small circle that made one of my favorite games from 2021, Noel Ganbarimasu!, one of the quintessential “hot girl with big tits whores herself around town” games. Its biggest hook to me was not just the amazing pixel art but how much content it had.
The premise of the game was simple, Lulu must repay her debt by killing monsters and working odd jobs. The gameplay had you entering fields and fighting by sqinging your sword instead of any turn-based combat.
Honestly, a big recommend still to this day.
Apriko Kobou started production of the next game not too long after and I should clarify that unlike with Dorokei last year, Apriko Kobou has been active posting progress logs and whatnot so it’s not like they went silent.
They always gave the impression that this was something they made on the side, and the final result betrays a lot of care.
The story of this new game is that a tower suddenly appeared in the outskirts and everyone left the town bit by bit. When Lulu was left alone and her town started falling into ruin, she met the fairy Mimimi, who tells her how to enter the tower for riches and restore the town’s fortunes.
Gameplay-wise, this game is the exact same but with a very important twist: Traps.
Lulu has to fight monsters and also avoid traps everywhere which made the whole experience a lot more engaging from the outset. You also have a counter on each floor for every floor’s treasure including a yellow chest with a unique treasure used for a sidequest that requires extra steps in some puzzles.
The puzzles aren’t anything too wild but they feel designed with care and even if they’re not complex, the fact you gotta weave through them while avoiding enemies adds to the whole experience.
And that’s just ONE bit of content.
On top of this, your unique items advance the storyline of another girl called Kohaku. After a certain point Mimimi decides she too wants to have sex which leads to a “sexual development” minigame. Progress in the town’s rebuilding long enough and you’ll open an escort service where Lulu can serve the player AKA you, which you can name.
And that’s not even counting the main story which had me really invested for how basic it was.
I do have… three key complaints. Two I’d say are more on the objective side, and one entirely on the subjective side.
The first is that RPG Maker was CHUGGING near the end and the last level was borderline unplayable at points. Also kinda tangential to that, the control scheme wants you to use WASD and Enter and it’s not CLUNKY but muscle memory from other RPG Maker games kept kicking in.
The second one is kinda tied to my usual complaint with femdom games where going through the dialog might be a chore. In this case there’s thankfully a skip button and there’s no screen-stopping transition for every change of expression, but the biggest reason you wanna avoid traps in the dungeon is that the animations get lengthy and the bad ends get LONG.
The subjective one is that Apriko Kobou’s main fetish is all things cum from bukkake to cum drinking to overflowing with so much cum it slips through your panties and I’m not a fan of that sort of bodily fluid drinking thing in any shape or form… which might be aggravating when the scenes get long.
Now, I’m used to this, I just keep the skip button pressed while looking at my phone or something, but there’s enough of them that it kinda felt like a chore at one point to try and progress the story… but again, I need to emphazise that’s a me thing.
On the whole not only do I not regret my time with the game, not only is it going to my end-of-year list, but through it all I could feel the sort of care that comes from working on something bit by bit consistently over five years.
I’m not even left with that “I want more” feeling, by the end there’s been so much and everything’s wrapped so thoroughly that I’m left extremely satisfied.
Also no spoilers here but the last ending does a titledrop and it RULES.