A thriller point and click esque puzzle game about time looping and getting killed. Pretty short. Strong shoujo ai elements. Made by qureate.

Yes, that pose does look really silly. I have no idea how she started moving that would end up like that. Track sprint is my best guess.

Story- 4

So it’s our main characters birthday, and she is going to a friend’s house for a party with what was suppose to be just the two of them. We get this shot of all four main girls and their motivations for the day. Player girl is just happy go lucky to hang out with a friend, sporty girl is friendship over studies, serious girl is worried over something, and moe frill girl is cutting herself with plans to cut up our main girl. Guess who’s house we are going to.

Arriving, things seem normal. Noa, our lead, is given this old diary as a gift and then basically forced to look around frilly girl(Nemu’s) room. Finding a picture of herself with someone scratched out, the frilly girl goes mad, ranting about betrayal, and stabs our main heroine to death. Some blood lands on the weird diary and poof, back to just before looking at the picture.

So it’s a time loop murder story. The core is our heroine avoiding getting killed by Nemu while trying to figure out why she’s a target for her best friend. Eventually the other two show up and also get killed a few times, but thanks to magic time looping there is a happy end to this tale. It just requires seeing basically every story bit to piece together how broken Nemu actually is.

Gameplay- 3

Most of the game is about interacting with the environment to find stuff. Using this stuff to solve a small number puzzles and advance the story. Each big advancement is given a checkpoint in your notebook for you to jump to as you please. There are ten of these.

Nemu is the only real threat that happens at any point. As you look around, the screen will shift and then after a few more interacts Nemu will spawn and chase you to kill you. At this point you have four options. 1-Let yourself die, as being killed is a minor setback most of the time. 2- Use a trap that stuns Nemu and leave the room. 3- Place or have bait placed and then hide, she’ll pick the thing up and leave. 4- Use a timer device to do the same thing a 3.

Honestly, Nemu is kind of a joke. If you are playing blind she’ll likely be annoying more then scary, and if you are using a guide then you’ll see her like 3 times. Unless you are going for the true end, then the only real side content needs to be dealt with. Most checkpoints have conversations between Noa and the current party member as the other two girls show up at the house. These trigger as you interact with things and escape Nemu, so you have to actually last a while to get them all. Like I mentioned earlier, dying isn’t really a big issue, and often checkpoints happen right after a new story mandated death happened. Deaths reset your inventory entirely, though any items behind puzzles are solved when interacted with once solved once. Since deaths reset your inventory, and you have to die to progress, having things to deal with Nemu when you need to spam interacts for these side conversations isn’t hard or require much managing of resources. I used the same 2 bait and 1 trap you can get at the beginning of the game for the entire game and only once needed a single other tool to dodge Nemu again. There’s a decent number of tools to deal with her, and you get more as you advance that you don’t need. In fact, the one the guides and people who actually talk about this game recommend I never used.

There’s kind of a metroidvania thing going on with the team mates as you progress. The first teammate points out a few things, but doesn’t do much. Once you get the serious girl you can combine items(all traps, 9 combo’s total) and also search a few more places like the fridge in depth. Once you switch to the other girl again she notices more new things and that’s how the new puzzles get solved as you go.

I do want to note that once the serious girl joins you enter the most awkwardly designed part of the game. It wants you to do exactly what the game tells you, but if you do you will get stuck. There’s a laptop you need to read to solve a later puzzle, but the laptop will not be usable if you don’t have a key you lose if you do what the game told you to do. It’s the only point in the game where you ignore what the game sets up as progress. There’s also no obvious sign the laptop is connected to the key. It’s just an odd part of the game design wise.

Lewdness-3

Lots of panty shots in this thriller game. Of 20 cgs, 11 of them show the panties of all girls in the shots. 1 of the non pantry shot cgs instead shows the main heroine’s bra, since her dress is pulled down on one side for some reason. The rest of the cgs are actually mostly the clean normal ones. True end, intro and such. Basically like 8 or so of the panty shot cgs are also bloody death cgs. I have a hard time getting the tone with this…

The art is more moe styled then Livestream or Love on Leave, but all girls are in college. So really, it’s a panty shot game, which is rare. Front shots to be specific, like two cgs are of a girls backside in panties. The other is the one at top, where it looks like she took a track spring off so we can see her butt. And her bare foot.

Just saying, I don’t find this kind of panty shot thing erotic really. Situation plays a big role, but also just seeing panties doesn’t do anything for me. I’ve seen way to much of that kind of stuff.

Final Thoughts

If I had to replay either this or Livestream, I’d probably pick Livestream due to better environmental ambience, and I prefer the girls from there. Neither game is particularly fun and the stories feel lacking in the darkness needed to make them actually dark or compelling. Like my brain didn’t engage with anything here.

Nemu’s reason for murder in this just isn’t compelling, she just turns murder happy for spoiler reason. It makes her more of a yandere then a tragic girl, which would work if the game’s ending didn’t treat her as a tragic girl instead of the ticking time bomb yandere she is.

Save for Sentimental Death Loop

Gameplay: 3/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 4/10

Completion:

A few cgs are not required due to easy sequence breaking, but those take like a minute or two to get. Spamming interacts for the “side stories” takes a few minutes to get the true end.

Honestly the hardest thing to do was figure out how to get all the items to get all the item combos, since I wanted to do that. For whatever reason, one object can only be moved at a specific time, with a specific partner, who you lose in less then a minute if you follow what the game tells you to do. This moved thing blocks 2 of the items needed for 3 recipes out of 9. Not that you need to do this, I just wanted to and found it weird how little time the game gives to get these.