Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale Review
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance” (Jane Austen) appears to be the theme of the visual novel/rpg/sim game Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale where the decisions you make will consequently reveal an ending. This dating game is based on 3 of Jane Austen’s classic books: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. This conglomerating of separate novels works seamlessly into a romantic game where you are in control of the endings and plays even in this time and age.
As in any novel it is separated into chapters. At the beginning of each chapter you as the second daughter (Elizabeth) of Mr. Bennet can change her name to whatever you like. 
You and your sisters are at the age of marrying and your mother is desperate for suitable suitors. You begin your week by selecting activities to pursue each day from Monday to Friday. Each activity will then either increase your attributes such as willpower, wit, talent, kindness, propriety, sensibility and energy or decrease them. If you choose to paint one day, your talent and sensibility will increase but your energy will decrease. In order to control which gentleman you end up with, you must develop the right character. Making sure your energy is sufficient is important for special weekend activities at the end of each chapter like a ball, dinner party or parlor discussion so be sure to factor in some rest every 4 to 5 days.
Be sure you save the game as you go along because it will come in handy if you should change your mind about a decision you made prior and wish to go back. The game will save after each chapter in case you forget to do so. This game also makes it easy for you to skip through parts of the novel you already have read.
Some of the eligible bachelors in this game are Mr. Bingley (your older sister likes him), Colonel Brandon (15 years older), and Mr. Darcy (dark and aloof but in the book he’s the 
one Elizabeth marries). Each character has different attributes you need to develop for a happy ending with him. If you know the novels, it may be easier to find the ending you want. There are 6 suitors to choose from and 9 different endings. You can go back and play all 9 endings for a long game.
The scenic backgrounds are static and the characters all well done and stylistic. When a person is speaking, they will be on the screen with one expression until the next scene. Somehow the muted colors represent an era long past and seems appropriate for the game. The music is repetitive but fits the theme of the story. Overall the game is different and entertaining if you are into dating sim games like Date Warp, Always Remember Me, The Flower Shop and Love and Order. Also if you are a Jane Austen fan, you may enjoy this game since it is based partially on her novels. However the developers of this game did take some liberties and changed a few of the characters so if you are a diehard Jane Austen fan, you may be offended but the game does capture a lot of the author’s charm and wit. The free download will give you ample time to decide whether you are into this type of genre. Find happiness in this game.
Features of Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale:
-Game based on Jane Austen’s Novels
-6 Eligible Bachelors
-9 Different Endings
Rating: 
Always Remember Me Review
Always Remember Me is a melodramatic visual novel about Aaron Cowen who loses his short term memory from a horrendous motorcycle accident. Amarantha Fitch or Amy is his girlfriend who didn’t get hurt in the unfortunate incident. The big question is will Aaron remember Amy? Can you somehow make him remember her? Will Amy find someone else or can she move on in her life without Aaron? This game is a life simulation with dating sim elements. The outcome of the story depends solely on your choices.
This game will have you going to different locations on the map to do different tasks like going to the ice cream parlor where Amy has a part time job. If you go there, you must work and on different days, you will have a good day or bad day. Good days will get you more tips and money. The money you earn can be used for going out to a restaurant to 
eat, have a drink at a bar or join a gym. Other places like the library and hospital to visit Aaron will not cost you anything. The game will open locations as you advance in the game giving you more options to choose from.
The stats are important to keep up like any other RPG/sim game. There is the money, culture, creativity, discipline, romance, energy and morale to keep increasing through different activities. The relationship gauge is also important for the future of each outcome. Each decision you make dealing with another person will either increase or decrease the relationship between the two of you. This is especially important with Amy and other male characters. She meets Eddy a young doctor at the hospital, Lawrence someone 
who works full time at the ice cream parlor, Hugh an immature boy who hangs around her friends. Cut scenes will bring you into a dialog with another character and what you choose to say to him or her will determine your relationship.
Some actions are determined at specific times of the day or week. Your job is in the morning and you have to go to work Monday through Friday. At night you are automatically placed at home to sleep and rest for the next day. An upsetting sleep may cause you to have low energy the next day. With enough energy and morale, overtime is available to you. Other actions are opened to you when you go to various sites on the map. Once you are at a place you get several things you can do.
At the left of the screen you will get the time of day and bars to move down when the day passes to afternoon and night. These bars help you decide what to do next and strategize your next move. Other similar games do not show this and can get you into trouble because the day passes quickly and ends abruptly because you may not have paid attention to the time.
There are multiple endings to this beautifully drawn visual novel. With 4 dateable guys, Amy could have 8 different romantic endings. Each guy has 2 different endings, one 
normal and other special. Anything could happen. Maybe Aaron will come to his senses and remember he is in love with Amy and not the other female. Maybe Amy finds love with someone else. There are a lot of answers needing conclusions and only you can discover the endings. There’s even a mysterious secret admirer. I cautiously played this game thinking romantic novels are not for me, but further in the game I found it addictive and interested in what happens to Amy, Aaron and the other characters in this game. Play the game and find your perfect ending. Then do it all over again for another outcome. There’s a lot to do and only you can decide whether you like this type of rpg/sim/visual novel game.
Features of Always Remember Me:
-8 Different Romantic Endings
-Great Anime Drawings
-Original Soundtrack by Cristina Vee and Matthew Myers
Rating:
Date Warp Review
Mac visual novel Date Warp has many surprises in this fantasy, romantic story. You are in control of the direction of the tale but must connect the wires to illuminate the light bulb to make your decision. Which path will you take?
The story begins with Janet Bhaskar as the main character. She is a naïve freshman at Brooke College in Memphis. She is a vegetarian and a bookworm. She agrees to a blind date her friend Vanessa has set up for her. The date with Bradley Dalton goes from bad to worse when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere in the throes of a drenching rain storm. The couple comes upon a mansion with all the lights on in the place. Lucky for them someone is home and willing to help, but unlucky for them the telephone is dead.
That begins your journey into the unknown when in the morning Janet and Bradley are blocked from leaving the house. I won’t give out more information since it will spoil the novel for you. However, I will say there are 4 other guys in the mansion that will be interacting with Janet. Each character has a different type of 
personality from friendly to suspicious. When there is a decision to be made, you will have to play a wire connecting game. You click on each box to turn the wires around. When you have made an electrical connection to the light bulb, it will light up and let you click on the response. Each response will take you on a certain direction in the story’s ending. A relationship gauge will pop up showing you how a person feels about Janet from hate to love and 5 feelings in between. These feelings will determine which ending you will steer towards. There are 11 endings to this tale and you can play all of them to see what happens.
The good thing about replaying the story is that you can fast forward many areas by clicking on the FF to the side of the screen. You can also skip the wire connecting game if you already made your decision.
Interactive stories are not really my thing but this one has great anime artwork even though I think the guys should get updated hairdos, even Justin Bieber cut his hair. More than one person looked like a woman in this story. If you weren’t told the approximate ages of everyone, they all looked the same age except for
Janet. She looked like a 10 year old. The story and music are melodramatic as it should be for a tale like this. It’s interesting but the wire connecting game got very tiring after a while. Personally I rather be shooting aliens like in Planet Stronghold than connecting wires, but that’s a matter of preference. This game may not be for everyone due to its harsh language and some sexual undertones. I give this novel a 3.5 for a strong story and awesome anime artwork.
Features of Date Warp:
-Interactive Story
-Mini Game
-11 Different Endings
Rating:
Planet Stronghold Review
Winter Wolves has developed another exciting fantasy sci-fi visual novel with a role-playing, turn based combat system. The story is original and the battles are high charged. There’s a balance of mystery, romance and fighting to keep everyone on their toes. Every detail is revealed in their statistics and conversations.
You take on the role of a young attractive new recruit. You have a choice to make right away with the gender (either Lisa or Joshua Nelson). There are 4 character classes to choose from: Soldier, Guardian, Scout, and Psionic. If you played any rpgs, you know each characteristic can dramatically change the outcome of the story. In addition there are 3 modes of difficulties. If you are new to this type of game or a casual gamer, start with the Easy and work yourself up to Medium and Hard. You can change your modes any time in the preference screen. The game will guide you through the main moves and descriptions as you go along. Also your android will go over things with you. Conversations can be as quickly paced as you want, and you can review any text by paging down, up or using the mouse wheel. Quests are added throughout the game and can be viewed anytime with the middle icon pictured to the lower right of the screen.
Before each battle you will get an enemy screen where you can view the type of alien and their strengths and weaknesses. The battles are between you and up to 4 other people against the enemy. The turn based combat has you initiating the first move. The battle screen will display in the center the enemy and their stats at
the top of the screen, and you and your team’s data at the bottom. When it is your turn to attack, your screen will be highlighted in orange with 6 options to use. All are different in the effectiveness of each weapon. If you should win then the experience points are divided among your people. There are many different types of weapons and armors but also there are other non-combat skills you can use like mind influence, explosives, science and sneak.
The other play in this game is your relationships with the other people. I chose Lisa as my hero and she has Michelle Lafleur as a roommate. Michelle is a little touchy and your relationship gauge will pop up and lower whenever she is upset with you. 0 is when she hates you and 100 is love. I’m always trying to please her but it is not easy. The conversation choices you make will affect your relationships. This gauge will affect your romance sub-plots but will not do anything when it comes to your fighting skills. Your relationships get more and more complex as you meet other recruits, the king and different people.
The map will help you move around easily from your dorm room to the training center and beyond. There are unknown sites you must get access through either dialogue or by solving a quest. Quests can be as small as finding information about your heritage to investigating the rumors about trouble on the planet. 
Competition comes in when you find out there are only 8 openings for the Royal Guard and 320 recruits. Plus your immediate sergeant does not like you, but the commanding officer is very friendly. You must prove yourself in tests and actual battles. There are 6 romantic endings to this game; 3 for the female character and 3 for the male person.
There are so many options from choosing your gender, class, dialogues and your destiny, the battles against enemies and the fights with other people that will determine how the game will be played. It’s all up to you. If you don’t like an outcome, play it again differently by choosing the other gender and another class. Each story will offer up surprises depending upon your choices.
The battles are a challenge but are also fun and exciting at the same time. Keeping your relationships happy is also hard. The story line gets more and more 
intense as you go on to higher chapters in this suspenseful drama. The anime artwork is exquisite as always with great alien drawings. The instructions are clear and stats detailed. My only complaint is with the females standing with their hands on their hips in front of a commanding officer. Rebecca Fox the mean sergeant is strong and dynamic. Planet Stronghold is a great game with balanced story line and battling. Try their extensive demo and see for yourself.
Features of Planet Stronghold:
-40 Different Enemies with Bosses
-Quests and side quests
-Over 50 hours of Gameplay
-Different Stories Based on Your Choices
-6 Romantic Endings
Rating:
The Flower Shop Review
The Flower Shop, not to be mistaken with the sim time management game Flower Shop, is a visual novel with some simulation play on the side. Made by the same developer of Bionic Heart, the story about love, friendship and flowers is progressed with reading the dialogue among the anime characters. You are also in control of some of the conversation when given a choice. In addition to the “talk” in this 
game, you can direct the mood of each character with your decisions.
In this novel you are Steve, a young, spoiled college boy, finishing his finals after his first year of school and not doing well in his classes, but he is ecstatic about having the whole summer to laze around and see his girlfriend. This type of behavior is quite common among college boys. Not surprisingly his father is extremely angry and decides to send him to his brother’s farm to acquire some discipline. Once removed from the city and delivered to the farm in Fairbrook, California, Steve meets and engages with his Uncle Sam and the town girls.
In the midst of this visual novel, you play a dating and farming sim game. While developing relationships, Steve must weed, water, and 
keep the land free of insects. During this play you must work as fast as possible because the time is very short. You click on the plot of land you want to weed and then click on the clear button to remove the weeds. With growing the flowers on this patch of ground, you can earn money by selling the flowers. This will lead to an interaction with Susana the town florist and holistic expert on good health. There is a scheduler to plan weeks of activities for Steve. You must balance your schedule to raise your stats and spend time with the girls keeping their relationship gauges in the good rather than bad portions of the scales.
Having lived in California most of my life, I am pleased the game is based in that state. However, the scenery is very generic and I can’t pinpoint what big city Steve lived in or which university he attends. In addition, the small town in the demo is deserted until Steve enters 
an establishment inhabited only with girls. Also the buildings are all very tidy with nothing scattered casually around the room. For example, Uncle Sam’s kitchen is very modern and neat for an old farmhouse with only a man living there with his cat. I guess I’m being a little nitpicky but I think it would have drawn the reader into the story more with a few more details in the background.
The characters are all done well in the anime fashion, but like the Japanese soap operas have happy, sad (neutral) and angry looks to them. 
Even the beautiful girls get nasty facial features when they are unhappy with Steve. Perhaps later in the story there is a comedic relief and other young male individuals. It’s hard to say how the story develops because the demo is long and drawn out, setting the game up for future outcomes.
The Flower Shop is different from Bionic Heart where the action and drama opens immediately at the beginning. Since there is less action involved in this novel, I tend to focus in on the background more. I’m 
hoping the later chapters will bring around some vitality with action and comedy. There is a great scene with Steve driving down a dirt road and comes across a jogger. They should have had mud puddles and Steve splashes her with his truck then there would be conflict instead she is angry about his ogling.
The Flower Shop is more a melodrama than a suspense story and should be accepted as such. It appears this game is aimed towards young girls, but I think you should try it even if you do not fall in that category. The music is muted and appropriate, and the anime characters well done. The dialogue sometimes is funny with words like bummer interspersed. I do not remember the last time a college student used that word. With 9 different endings, depending upon your choices, it will bring about surprising stories in this dating and farming sim play in a visual novel. Will Steve go with his politically aspiring girlfriend Jill, Susana the florist, Clara the opportunist jogger or the voluptuous librarian Marian?
Features of The Flower Shop:
-Visual Novel
-Dating and Farming Sim
-9 Different Endings in Your Control
Rating:
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