Today’s deck is the Sacred Rose Tarot.
The author of this one is apparently a Coney Island personality which is really cool.
Today’s reading advises to think long term in order for things to flow and to provide for others.
I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t do much today.
My original intent was to continue sorting what I was sorting yesterday before getting sidetracked playing Medieval Blacksmith… only to get distracted today playing 鏡の淫魔と悪魔のタネ which is Muni Kobou’s latest game.
Muni Kobou is one of those circles I follow religiously. Ever since 2017’s Lust Grimm they’ve developed a loosely connected but evolving series roughly called “Succubus in Wonderland” which combines Fairy Tales and Succubi with the main character レート (I’ll call him Leto for convenience’s sake) through them.
This game would’ve easily been in my 2024 GOTY list if not for the fact that it released quite literally on New Year’s Eve after I had written about it.
I might sneak it into this year’s via timezone technicalities.
Muni Kobou’s games have enough connective tissue to keep returning players interested. There’s always an Alice, there’s always a Lesser Imp and a Cow Girl, it’s always in a succubus world and so on.
Some elements have evolved with entries. For example their 2023 game We Are HOP introduced HOP, a succubus… Team Rocket basically who do make a reappearance in this one. Likewise Leto’s relationship with main Succubus princess Louise has evolved from something more tenuous to something more openly affectionate. Which continues in this game as you can also develop Leto’s relationship with Louise’s sister Carol who debuted earlier.
Louise… Carol…
Louise Carol…
Lewis Ca- SON OF A BITCH.
The gameplay in these also changes with time. In this one there’s a negotiation and a town restoration. You can befriend girls (with some requiring extra stuff like Lesser Imp only accepting if you’re lower level) via a conversation mechanic with everything from praising their boobs to telling jokes (Sea Slug, for example, replies to every joke with “I don’t get it” so you can’t do that with her).
The main thing to me is that while this is a Masochist Male game in nature, it’s not one that ties your hands and wastes your time. The main problem I have with those types of games is that by nature of the fetish they’re always designed to incentivize losing so of course when you actually want to advance you have to go through the same long winded paragraphs of onomatopoeias and sweet nothings with a bunch of flashes and effects.
I’d get it if I was say… playing a novel game and that’s the scene, but here’s it’s more like if after losing a fight in the Elite four in Pokemon they made you go through the fillibuster of Atlas Shrugged but not in “the full text on the screen” form but the “formatted as dialog and also there’s way too many flashes and screenshakes that aren’t accelerated by the skip button” form.
…anyways, the point is that I’ve never felt like Muni Kobou’s games waste my time that way. I COULD run into Lesser Imp 20 times if I wanted, but if I don’t I can still enjoy the damn thing.
Also, it’s funny that a wonderland-themed game like this one is oneeshota in nature considering the the infamous details about Lewis Caroll’s tendencies towards underaged girls.
Tendencies that (for the sake of too much due dilligence for a stream of consciousness blog) HAVE come under scrutiny but if I remember right it’s less “Yes he fiddled Alice Lidell” and more “He was sus as hell but we can’t say anything too definitive like that”.
There’s nothing else to really talk about, though. It just feels nice to be able to get lost in a game for as long as I did every so often.