Voice Love on Air BL Game Review – Finding Your Own Voice

Voice Love on Air is a studio management boys love game developed by SOFTSTAR Entertainment and Noisy Fish for Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. Follow Aki, a newbie voice director who has to complete the recordings for several BL dramas, and interact with the charming voice actors. Come give voice to the language of love!

Game Details

• Genre: Stats Raising | Boys Love | Slice-of-Life
• System: Steam | Switch
• Rating: Safe for Work with non explicit spicy scenes
• Developer & Publisher: SOFTSTAR Entertainment and Noisy Fish

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About Voice Love on Air

Follow Aki, a newbie voice director who is finally striking out and starting his own recording studio. But, Aki has accrued a massive debt and his new studio is on the verge of shutting down. Just when things seem dire, Aki’s friend and producer, Mone offers to help him out by throwing him a few audio drama projects—there’s just one catch, they’re all Boys’ Love.

Along the way Aki meets a group of aspiring voice actors, and works to recruit them to work at his studio. Befriend each of them, learn about their pasts and maybe discover a little romance along the way~

Juggle these budding relationships while managing your own recording studio. Study to improve your voice directing skills, take on new voice acting jobs, select the right actor for each role, and record! And in between recordings deepen your bond with each of the actors by going on dates, giving them, gifts, and more.

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Characters and Route in Voice: Love on Air

In Voice Love on Air you can foster relationships with four voice actors: veteran VA Wesley; rough construction worker, Ryousei; energetic aspiring idol, Junichi; and Aki’s childhood friend, Yuki.

Aki (VA. Manaka Sawa) is a sound engineer and while his career of choice deals with dynamic vocal talents. Aki, himself is soft spoken and finds being around a lot of people overwhelming. Due to a trauma from his past he harbors feelings of guilt and self doubt. Unbeknownst to most, Aki has a unique ability that lets him hear the true feelings of others through their voice. While his ability does help him pull out the true potential of his VAs, he is often overwhelmed by it in his day to day life. So he wears headphones to block out unwanted sounds.

• Wesley (VA. Santa Hiiragi) is a veteran voice actor, whose sophisticated voice performances and years of experience have earned him a reputation as one of the top VAs in the industry. However, he is extremely stubborn and his inability to grow as a performer has led to his recent work being labeled as bland and uninspired.
• Ryousei (VA. Yukke Aoume) is a rough around the edges construction worker who takes up voice acting to help pay for his sister’s hospital bills. While he may look intimidating, he’s really a sweetheart who cares deeply for those around him.
• Junichi (VA. Naoto Sanctuary) is an aspiring idol and secret fudanshi who becomes a voice actor at Aki’s agency after he is dropped by his label. He is immature and has a bit of an ego, but he is hard working and determined to succeed in voice acting. He also LOVES food.
• Yuki (VA. Hajime Rokudou) is Aki’s childhood friend and former voice actor who left the industry to become a candy maker. He takes up voice acting again to help Aki in his time of need. He is friendly and kind to everyone and may harbor a (not so) secret one-sided crush on Aki. His route is only available on your second run.

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Voice Love on Air Review

Voice Love on Air is a stats raiser and management sim, so it requires a bit more work than your usual visual novel. It can get a bit technical explaining everything, but the bulk of the stats raising revolves around the BL drama recordings. Throughout the game you will be tasked with taking on BL radio drama projects that require certain skill thresholds to even pick them up. There are three main stats, Communication, Performance, and Profession, with Recognition being the fourth stealth stat that you will need to take on more advanced roles. Since Recognition can only be raised by successfully completing new BL dramas, for now, I’ll only focus on the first three.

Those can be raised by doing online courses throughout the week. At the start of the week choose a course that corresponds with the stats that you want to raise. But, note that once you pick a course you are locked into it for that week and can’t change it until the following Monday. You can buy items to raise a specific stat from the store, but honestly you can raise the main 3 stats without having to waste money on items (save your cash for gifts).

Once you have the required stats to take on the radio drama, you then need to select voice actor(s) for the role. Some roles are solo recordings and others require two actors (a seme and an uke). Each project specifies what type of vocal skills each of the role(s) require and these correspond to the skills the VAs have. There are eight in total (Gentle, Cool, Mature, Charming, Weak, Healthy, Innocent, and Dominant).

Most roles usually give you two skill types to choose from per character. Each voice actor starts the game with two base skills and as you spend more time with them they will earn new skills for a max of five. No one VA will have all the stats available so you’ll have to mix and match them to fulfill the requested talents for each recording.

Some dramas have a specific VA in mind for the role, with you only having control over the voice direction. But, with most of the radio dramas you are free to assign VAs as you see fit, so long as you fulfill the required vocal skills. After you assign the VAs to the roles, you then have to assist Aki in guiding the VAs through the recording process by giving them instructions to improve their overall performance in their respective roles.

The actual voice recording sessions range from pretty chill to downright frustrating—especially when you’re trying to get an S ranking. Like I mentioned earlier, in the game you can take on solo and two person voice acting projects. The solo projects are simple enough, direct the voice actor that meets the requirements for the project through recording their role. Solo recordings have three rounds to get through and are pretty straight forward. Get S-rank and move on.

But, the two person voice acting projects can be hell! You have to manage two different VAs through five rounds of absolute rage inducing nightmares, as you navigate the particularities of each actor AND attempt to get them both to S-rank. Because that’s not hard enough, the game actually ups the difficulty by giving the actors the ability to sabotage the recordings.

Things like one VA forgetting to turn off his phone, which throws off the rhythm of the other VA lowering everyone’s mood. Or the other deciding to take their performance in a “different direction” from what’s required, lowering the vocal skill level you worked so hard to raise to S-rank down to B-rank. Or worse, they’ll randomly decide to critique their partner, lowering their moral and leading to a failed recording. Trust me when I say it is FRUSTRATING AS HELL managing two voice actors!

I can’t tell you how many times I had to step away from a recording because one or BOTH of the VAs decided to sabotage the recording leading to a C-rank for the radio drama. But what’s worse is it’s completely random, so if the game chooses to punish you, there is nothing you can do about it other than restart the recording and hope for the best later. Aki does have traits that can be use to alleviate stress and improve the moods of the VAs but, it’s a lot of trial and error (and prayer).

I know it sounds like a lot, and it is!

I will be the first to admit that I am not the biggest fan of stats raising games. They take forever to get through and constantly grinding stats becomes tedious and distracting rather than innovative and fun. Especially after several runs of a game. Even JACK JEANNE which I love to bits, became a bit redundant after the second run, so something like Voice Love on Air seemed daunting to say the least. And while the game is more forgiving than most stats raisers, it’s still a lot to juggle, but once you get a good rhythm going it’s not too bad (just tedious).

You do get to hear the recordings afterwards and they are one of the highlights of Voice Love on Air. The game features full Japanese voice acting and these guys give it their all both in the studio and out of it. The BL recordings cover a wide range of genres and storylines, from sci-fi to historical fantasy to slice-of-life and more. They are usually 18+ and trust me when I say they get plenty spicy~ more so than the actual romance routes in the game. I found myself wishing that some of the recordings were longer, because I needed to know how they ended! They’re that good! You can listen to the clips again from the menu, so you never really lose them, but they’re just too short!

Voice Love on Air is a game about balance, not only do you have to help Aki run his studio, but you have to foster relationships with an eccentric cast of voice actors—each with their own unique motivations and storylines. All of the characters have a “hidden” side that you gradually uncover as you spend more time getting to know them. This “hidden” side isn’t a bad thing, more a vulnerability that the characters don’t readily reveal to others and it’s fun peeling back the layers to discover their true selves. And all of the backstories are equally heartwarming and satisfying. Compared to most BL games (the localizations anyway) Voice Love on Air is pretty wholesome and uplifting. While there is a bit of drama in each route, it never goes too far with it, keeping everything pretty grounded.

One thing that I love about Voice Love on Air is how LGBTQ+ friendly the story is, each of the characters develop feelings for one another. Usually there is the trope where characters deny their feelings causing unnecessary drama and strain on the budding relationships. But, in Voice Love on Air the characters are pretty accepting of their budding romantic feelings for one another. That doesn’t erase outside sentiments about same sex relationships and personal self doubt and struggles for acceptance. A large part of Aki’s journey is overcoming his past trauma surrounding his sexuality and becoming more confident in his identity. But, there is such an overwhelming sense of acceptance and respect with how this storyline is handled.

Voice Love on Air is not as explicit as some of the other boys’ love games I’ve played, staying pretty firmly in shounen-ai territory. Kisses, hand holding, cuddles, and dates are the norm, so if you are looking for a lighter BL romance this is definitely the game for you. In the game you can meet up with characters around town, give them gifts, and even take them on dates around town to raise their affection.

Where most games encourage you to focus solely on the object of your affection, Voice Love on Air takes a different approach. You actually have to befriend (read: raise affection) with all of the characters to be successful. There are several non-romanceable characters that you can befriend and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to date one or two of them… Will not being dateable is CRIMINAL! Fine, long haired megane man like that is too good lookin’ to just be a side character.

While you can unlock romantic endings with each of the game’s four love interests, there is also an Aki specific ending that you can get if you don’t achieve the romantic checkpoints for any one LI.

But, if you’re looking for spice, there are some steamy scenes towards the ends of each route. They aren’t explicit, but they do come with some gorgeous post sexy time CGs. In fact, all of the art in the game is gorgeous, though I will note that Voice Love on Air does use of AI art for some of their assets like the BL radio drama images and the art for the items/gifts. The devs have been very transparent about its use in the game. They also purchased the rights to the AI generated images, so I’m slightly more comfortable with the use given all the context. Note, the CGs and character sprites ARE NOT AI generated.

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Is Voice Love On Air Worth Playing?

Overall, I really enjoyed Voice Love on Air, as a stats raiser, the gameplay can be a bit repetitive especially after two or three runs. Running stats is the same throughout and the game doesn’t give you any completion bonuses for finishing each route like Meyaoi’s Seiyuu Danshi. So you start each new playthrough with the same base stats you started with. The radio dramas are fun and I LOVE the VA work in each one, though outside of mixing and matching the different VAs for roles, they’re pretty much the same dramas.

The romance is light compared to other BL games, but that’s actually pretty refreshing. It’s nice to play a BL game that isn’t angsty and sexual every now and again. There is a wholesome, feel good vibe to Voice Love on Air that comes through in the strong bonds Aki and the voice actors share with one another.

But, the repetitive gameplay is best enjoyed at your leisure to avoid stats raiser burnout. So, Voice Love on Air is a game I recommend, for its great characters, beautiful visuals, fantastic voice work, and heartwarming story, but with the caveat that it is a stats raiser, so you will have to do plenty of grinding to get your happily ever after.

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