A Dash of Black Girl Magic in Every Review
Hey Hey Everyone! Happy Holidays! Hope you all are doing well! I’ll keep this short—I’ve been kind of quiet and there’s a good reason for that… I’m home for the holidays and I quite like spending my days doing nothing. Which I have been and it’s been glorious! That said,…
The end of 2019 marks the end of a decade, and everyone seems to be reflecting on the past 10 years, with their various lists and videos. So I decided to jump on the bandwagon too and reflect on the past 10 years in otome games. Since I didn’t keep up with my Japanese language studies, I’m limited to English localizations (and fan patches), so I can’t speak for the JP only releases. But, I can honestly say that these last few years have been pretty good to Western otome fans, with tons of game releases and announcements coming out (fairly) regularly.
So, I wanted to go back and look at the otome games released between 2010 and 2019 and pick out my favorites. Some years were more fruitful than others for the western otome fandom, but I still stand by my picks for each year and it’s kind of fun to see how my tastes have changed in the past 10 or so years of playing otome games.
HoverGirls is a webcomic series by artist Geneva B. (GDBee) that combines the kickass crime fighting of superhero comics with the girl power of the Japanese magical girl genre and a heaping handful of #BlackGirlMagic! HoverGirls follows cousins Jalissa and Kim Vasquez as they navigate the ups and downs of their life…
Since last month I’ve finished Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk and that’s about it… I’ve been trying to find a good fit for my next big game, so there’s been quite a bit of shuffling going on behind the scenes. But, lucky for me, my backlog is a treasure trove of…
Hey guy’s I’ve been thinking about the direction I want to take this blog moving into 2020 and I’ve been playing around with some ideas. But, since I want to include you guys more in the stuff I do here, I figured why not run a poll! I’m just putting some feelers out to see what you guys want to see on Blerdy Otome
So, this is totally going to be a regular thing… I suppose these posts are a complement to my Beginners Guide to Otome Games posts, particularly the one on Common Character Archetypes in Otome Games. There I give a very general rundown of the most common character archetypes that appear in otome…
I just finished my first playthrough of Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk and I’d like to get my initial thoughts about the game down before I get any deeper into the story, because my God was this game intense. I played Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly awhile ago and I didn’t really like it…
I was first introduced to indie developer Mikomi Kisomi through her urban fantasy visual novel, That Which Binds Us. Its been a little over a year since that release and Mikomi Games, now re-branded as Crystal Game Works just released their newest title, Memories on the Shoreline—a supernatural romance. I’m…
I’ve been on a real boys love kick lately, so I decided to finally read through Yuki Fumino’s I Hear the Sunspot. The series focuses on the relationship between a hearing impaired college student and his cheerful and outspoken classmate. Originally released in 2014 as a stand alone volume, the…
Hey there Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs!! It’s Thrifty Thursday and that means another Thrifty Gaming post, the weekly post series where I spotlight three games/visual novels for gamers on a budget. Whatever your financial situation, I’m here to bring you affordable games that won’t break the bank!! All of the games on…
Hitorijime My Hero is based on the ongoing manga series of the same name by Memeco Arii. The series follows, Masahiro Setagawa a high school student who has stopped believing in heroes, especially since the world seems to be hellbent on showing him the worst it has to offer. His…
A few months back I wrote a Beginners Guide to Otome Games post on character archetypes (here’s a link to the thing: A Beginners Guide to Otome Games: Part 3 – Common Character Archetypes), where I broke down some of the most common character archetypes in otome games. I gave…
Voltage Inc. games make up about 45% of my gaming backlog. The company was my first introduction to the world of otome games and over the years I have amassed quite a few stories from each of the many, many Otome Romance titles they produce. Because I have so many stories I…
Hey there Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs!! It’s Thrifty Thursday and that means another Thrifty Gaming post, the weekly post series where I spotlight three games/visual novels for gamers on a budget. Whatever your financial situation, I’m here to bring you affordable games that won’t break the bank!! All of the games on…
Most of you probably already heard the news, but Taisho x Alice is getting a NEW Steam realease!! We all remember the E2 Gaming Tragedy of 2017 that produced the delightfully terrible English language release of Primula’s Taisho x Alice. There were a lot of signs that the initial E2 Gaming English release was going…
Otome games offer women (and men) a fantasy romance experience of their dreams, but sometimes they stretch the limits of “fantasy” and delve into some questionable territory. These games play around with your suspension of disbelief, dropping you head first into scenarios that most of us would find downright frustrating…
Uta no Prince Sama or UtaPri as it’s called by fans is a multi media phenomenon, that has been enjoying over 9 years of popularity from its beginnings as an otome game back in 2010 to the newest film, Uta no Prince Sama Maji Love Kingdom. The series has been…
With the prospect of a three day weekend ahead of me, I decided to pick up a new BL webcomic and it was so good, I just had to share my thoughts! I originally planned on reading a few chapters and then moving on to something else, but wound up…
It’s time for another OWLS Blog Tour, most of you were probably directed here after reading Megan’s personal post about Welcome to the NHK and if you haven’t read her post I definitely recommend giving it a read!! If you stumbled upon this post by chance, welcome to Blerdy Otome! The end…
Hey there Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs!! It’s Thrifty Thursday and that means another Thrifty Gaming post, the weekly post series where I spotlight three games/visual novels for gamers on a budget. Whatever your financial situation, I’m here to bring you affordable games that won’t break the bank!! All of the games on…
Otome games are all about exploring your fantasies, doing things you can’t do in your everyday life. Whether that’s getting sucked into a virtual reality game or fighting alongside the legendary Shinsengumi, in otome games you can be or do whatever you want. The biggest draw of otome games are…
This is yet another late review (I’m slowly working my way through all my game requests), but I’ve been following GB Patch for awhile and I LOVE their games so I was going to get around to playing the demo for their upcoming slice-of-life visual novel, Our Life: Beginnings and…
I’m super late with this review, but I wanted to make sure I gave Wind Chimes Games’s demo for their debut visual novel, Reanimation Scheme, my full and undivided attention. I wanted to have this out before the end of the Kickstarter campaign, and I just managed to make it with a…
Happy Halloween!! It’s still October 31st here on the east coast and even though it’s not the ideal weather for Trick or Treating, this gloomy weather is perfect for staying at home and immersing yourself in a spooky game! There are tons of great horror games out there to keep…
It’s time for another OWLS Blog Tour, most of you were directed here after reading Takuto’s lovely post about Sword Art Online Alicization and if you haven’t read his post I definitely recommend giving it a read!! If you stumbled upon this post by chance, welcome to Blerdy Otome! The…
I’ve seen a few bloggers do this for the new anime seasons, and I figured why not do the same things for the games I’m playing. Nothing fancy, just a rundown of all the games I’ve been working on this past month. During September and October I picked up quite a…
I’ve kind of been dancing around this topic for awhile now, since like many gamers my backlog is a point of pride and shame. I’m not alone in this, just about every gamer I know has a backlog, that despite our best efforts never seems to get any smaller. In…
Earlier this month Crunchyroll announced that they’d be partnering up with digital comic publisher Webtoon to develop exclusive animated content based on Webtoon’s extensive collection of webcomics. This is huge! There are a tone of webcomic producers out there, but Webtoon offers a wide range of titles from a ton…
Hey there Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs!! It’s Thrifty Thursday and that means another Thrifty Gaming post, the weekly post series where I spotlight three games/visual novels for gamers on a budget. Whatever your financial situation, I’m here to bring you affordable games that won’t break the bank!! All of the games on…
Indie developer Argent Games is known for their inventive BL visual novels. Where most games from the genre focus on getting their characters into the bedroom, Dovah and Gamma, the dynamic duo behind Argent Games, tend to focus on creating games with stories and characters that subvert the usual cliché…
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