Nutaku asked us to take a look at some of their games, and here’s our opinion.
I’m back. It’s review day. That’s wack. Today I was hunting for a cheaper title on Nutaku and found a game that matched that criteria. Listen, after the holidays money is looking pretty tight around here. I don’t have extra cash to spare on some high-end $45 sex game. It’s time to save up, warm up, and bundle down.
Rune Girl is a visual novel hybrid mixed with casual gameplay that only requires one click or tap. It was developed and published by ADOG. It was added to the Nutaku store on November 13, 2019 and holds a size of around 280MB. And when I say cheap, I mean cheap. $2 cheap.
Production
Live2D could make a snail look good in my opinion. I love how much it adds to a character, and it does a good job of bringing the seven girls found in the game to life here. It looks clean as fuck and the art itself isn’t anything to be upset about either. I could have used a few more buttons for the user interface during the visual novel segments. I hit just about every button on my keyboard trying to find a skip or save button. Luckily the visual novel parts are so sectioned out that it doesn’t really matter if those buttons are missing, but I still would have preferred to have access to them in case I needed it. Speaking of UI, this game was in Japanese when I launched it. The button at the top right corner changes it back to English so keep that in mind if you play. It’s been a few days since I played the game and I can’t remember the music tracks at all, which means they weren’t shit enough or amazing enough to be memorable.
Bitch is your name Melanie or Mahoney? Did I miss something?
Gameplay/Writing
Thank god that there was gameplay this time around, because I honestly don’t think I could make a section out of the writing. I tried to pay attention. I really did. But when the main character is called “Demon13”, there’s only so much I can force myself to read. In truth I have no idea what the fuck the plot was besides you go around collecting girls for your mission of uh… I don’t know, doing demon things. Anyway, the gameplay wasn’t much of a step up either. A circle spins around a magic ring (pictured below). The center of the rings spits out black balls that hurt your circle and you can click to speed up the circle and dodge them. You have three lives and you keep dodging until you live long enough to meet a certain goal and win. That’s it. It was fun for the first few times, however it quickly lost my interest as you literally are watching a blue ball go in circles.
Around and around it goes, where it stops, is when I get bored.
The Sex
Man now this is where I started to lose my cool. First of all, the game has Japanese voice acting in the form of one-liners. You know, how the line may be “Fuck you Jared, I always hated your limp dick for never being enough” but you hear the character say “Screw off!” instead. I was fine with this because I thought they were saving money for the sex scenes. I was fucking wrong. The one-liner style is still present in the sex and it isn’t fully voiced. That shit made me mad. But you know what else? The Live 2D wasn’t incorporated into the sex either. I would of much rather had the Live2D used at that point than when the characters are standing there doing fucking nothing while they watch you play the stupid ball game. I can’t even focus on the animation at those times because I’m trying to make sure the blue ball doesn’t get eviscerated by black balls. This seems like a complete mismanagement of funds. I would much rather have a game with three girls to fuck with animations and voice acting than a game with seven girls to fuck but no polished features. Oh, and the scenes themselves are pretty short and generic to top it all off.
Bitch is your name Aio or Aoi? Wait...Déjà vu.
TL;DR The nice art and appropriate price point are the only thing keeping this title from a 1/5, despite that fact it left me in ruins so 2/5.
I’m especially harder on misfunding than a lack of funding. As someone who has worked on a visual novel, I get it. Sometimes you want to do cool shit but the funding isn’t there. But in those times you need to realize “oh fuck I’m making a sex game” and devote everything you got into that core aspect. When you have enough funding for Live2D and one-liners for seven female characters, you need to spend that shit on the sex. Nobody’s handing out game innovation awards for spinning a ball in a circle.
Will you be checking out Rune Girl? Have a game on Nutaku you want me to review? Hunt for runes in the comments below.
