In A Murmur in the Trees, you're a news reporter in prohibition-era America. Your boss sends you out into the woods to find a woman who claims to have info on the recent Moonshine Murders, and so you go.
There's really nothing to bite into here; by the time the action picks up, it's basically over. And, if you're an achievement hunter like I am, the whole game gets bogged down by having to search for flowers around the forest.
For a F2P game, A Murmur in the Trees is also rather big (over 1 GB) and poorly optimized (it was sluggish on my laptop, even on what's supposed to be the lowest settings)… I'm just glad it's free, I guess.

This summer, hoping to experience something new in life, you find yourself in the fictional Japanese town of Mizuchi. Not too long after arriving, you meet a couple of girls: your new boss, the quiet and reserved Akemi and Sayuri, her energetic friend. Depending on how much time you're willing to spend with either of them, your summer break can end with a relationship blossoming or you going back home alone.
For such a short, free-to-play VN, the presentation is fantastic. Akemi and Sayuri are voiced, and their sprites are animated. I love an aesthetically-pleasing UI, and A Summer in Our Hearts delivers on that front, too. Even the background art feels consistent, despite the fact that it's stock graphics. (Well, maybe besides the fact that Akemi's book store looks like a school library… but the characters point it out, so it's all good.)
Another thing I noticed I like is characters with unique hair (or even just stylized hair accessories); it makes them instantly memorable and Sayuri definitely fits that bill. I hope that attracts more people to checking this VN out, because I enjoyed my time with it.
I found the protagonist's inner monologue and struggle to get out of their comfort zone relatable and their kindness and gentle approach towards the heroines refreshing. Still, the "lonely" ending is realistic and not overly dramatic.
If I had to find something I didn't like, I felt like the writing occasionally utilized some awkward wording, to the point that certain lines looked like they'd be more grammatically correct in Japanese despite no Japanese version existing. Just because the setting is fictional modern day Japan doesn't mean the script should sound like it was translated by someone who subtitles anime for fun.
That being said, A Summer in Our Hearts avoids most typical anime tropes and comes out on top as a fitting seasonal read.

Two years into college, you decide to spend your summer in the aptly-named town of Summerset, where your deceased grandfather's farm hasn't seen use in years. Upon arrival, you meet your childhood friends, Eli and Lyra. This summer should be a great opportunity to catch up, no?
Well… no. Right after arriving, you learn that your grandfather had incurred a massive debt, which got passed down to you and your parents after his death, so now your house is in danger of getting taken over by the bank if the debt isn't paid back by the end of the summer.
This leads you and Eli to hatch a plan to bring in some profits by growing watermelons, just like your grandpa did before he passed. After some wild animal or other picks out all the seeds you planted the day prior, you abandon that idea.
In desperation, you combine the vague awareness that Eli has dealt in substances before and your knowledge of chemistry… and arrive at cooking crystal meth. I wish I was joking about this. This isn't even so much as alluded to anywhere on the store page.
I like to check out negative reviews before diving in, so I was already prepared, but still… what the hell?
And even if you're down with this tone shift, there's no satisfying conclusion to this story. All the money just gets sent to the main character's parents, so you don't get to watch the debt be paid off. And the only ending that could be called "good" (because nobody dies) is just handwaved away by the game because It Was All A Dream™.
There is one thing I am willing to praise, though, and it's that the dev commissioned all the art they presumably were unable to produce themselves from sellers on Fiverr instead of using generative AI. Sure, the "farm" looks hilariously dissimilar to how the script describes it, but if nothing else, you can tell the dev is satisfied with the end product.

I still don't know much about Touhou, only checked this one out because it's got "summer" in the title. Apparently, this attempt at a story doesn't have much to do with Touhou lore.
Cirno goes berserk after growing powerful in Gensokyo and teleports to New York, which is where all the other characters are, for some reason. A few others, like Reimu, only appear after Cirno has frozen over New York to defeat her. After defrosting New York, they enjoy some quality ice cream.
Basic BGM, default UI, inconsistent sprite art, no event CGs… at this point, I'd have more fun playing the actual Touhou games despite not caring for bullet hell stuff at all.

In a world where a new AR game, Dragon Connection (or DraCo, for short) is taking the world by storm…
…our main character, Dulce, is a few weeks late to the trend, because she had to save up some money to get a new phone that could run DraCo.
By now, the friend who first told her to check it out has moved on already, so she's kinda bummed about that. Not for long though, as it turns out that there are a lot of other players in the area.
On her very first day of playing DraCo, Dulce meets Brin, the fire-type player who wants to be the best, Honorée, the wind-type whale player (and cheater), and Rayen, the water-type player who only cares about collecting and nurturing dragons, as opposed to fighting.
Over the next few days, you can choose where Dulce should hang out to spend time with the girls and get to know them a little better. When she reaches level 5 in DraCo, she can pick her element and unlock the battling mechanics.
Shortly after, the girls learn that there'll be a competitive event taking place in the city, and this is where the story branches off into 13 (!) different endings. You can choose to participate in the singles' competition and get a nice new hockey stick with the prize money, or you can choose to team up with one of the girls and have a go at any of the other endings.
DoraKone was obviously inspired by the Pokemon GO craze, which, almost a decade later, is but a faint memory. The devs have succeeded in coming up with an interesting take on the concept, but… when a story is about being hooked on a game and we, as the player, don't get to see even a screenshot of it, the end result seems empty. The only phone you get to interact with is the menu, which is stylized to look like one.
Also, it's fine that the "common route", as it were, is as short as it is, but even though the competition is said to be happening ten days from when we first learn of it, character routes end up being even shorter… I definitely feel like this is where the meat of the story should have been (again, complete with visual representations of characters playing the game). Because of this, the endings seem somewhat rushed; even Brin, who's not out of town or cooped away at home for those ten days, doesn't seem to spend much time training with Dulce for the competition.
Every girl has four endings, depending on whether she liked Dulce as a friend or enough to want to date her, and if they won or lost the competition. Those are mostly same-y, but each of them comes with a different CG.
I liked Dulce as a protagonist; I enjoy cheerful and energetic characters like her and I thought her design was especially cute.
I was also intrigued to learn that the story is set in a fictional city in South America (and not North America, as I would have naturally assumed); it seems this is only the second VN I've ever played set in South America, so I'd be interested to find more games with a similar setting.
The character art is adorable and a stylized UI is present. I also loved the soundtrack; shame it's not up on YouTube by now, or at least available to purchase on Steam.

These cats are truly terrible at hiding.

Once again, Kate finds herself involved with the House of 1000 Doors as she's saved from an attack unleashed on the human world by multiple giant serpents.
The opening cinematic brought me back to the opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for some reason. (I had to look up which movie that scene was from… I've officially become a fake fan.)
The graphical updates jumped out at me right away: this game's available at a higher resolution, and, uh… characters have 3D models in cutscenes. I'm not so hot about the latter, 'cause those always manage to look uncanny. (I was lowkey looking respectfully at Tiberius, though.)
Similarly to The Palm of Zoroaster, you have to visit a few different parts of the world across various eras to stop bad people from summoning serpents pertaining to each of the four elements and in turn stop the disaster happening in present time.
In the bonus chapter, you get to play as Rafael, the stranger who saved Kate, and defeat a serpent of your own.
A couple minigames here and there were more annoying than fun, but I've still had fun. Can't believe I'm already near the end of this series.

Another VN taken down by its dev, Osozaki follows a nameable university (?) student who decides to spend his summer in a small village called Thais, where he used to live as a kid. After arriving, he meets three girls: Alannah, the cheerful yet somewhat dense high schooler who works for his aunt and cares for his cousin, Velvet, the mysterious blonde who seems obsessed with Alannah despite not knowing her personally and Yekaterina, his eleven-year-old cousin.
After a few choices (which are mostly gimmes when it comes to which girl you want to pursue) and slice-of-life-type events (most of which are the same no matter the route you're on), you'll get one of the endings pertaining to the girl of choice.
I can't even get myself to try and advertise this one, because it's just such a slog to read through. Instead of going line by line, with speaker names attached, like most VNs would, this one instead uses colored text to highlight dialogue and does its best to fit as much text as possible within a single textbox at once. This might not sound like such a bad idea on paper, but whenever the main character starts describing what's happening around him or pondering about something, the descriptions are overlong and exhaustive to the point I couldn't help but want to skim the text.
There are more than five endings in total (I'm not sure how many exactly, as forum discussion implies the dev was never really clear enough about it), but following the guide, I was more than content with only seeing four of them. The story very much embodies anime tropes from the last decade, but there's something there that didn't make it as immediately bothersome as a Winged Cloud game.
That being said, as mentioned previously, the dev clearly liked to write a lot. It's obvious to me that when the main character loses himself in thought, in reality that's the dev's time to get on his soapbox to talk about existentialism. I'm not 13 and you're not "deep" for telling me that more people are getting diagnosed with mental disorders in modern times; this is not the time or the place.
Visually, this one's okay, although there is a noticeable gap between the stock graphics and original art. The limited backlog and lack of a CG gallery are definitely a shame. But worst of all, there's no skip option available.
I've spotted a comment from the dev saying it's not been implemented because they couldn't get it to work properly, but one player figured out that all you have to do is paste a "[skipstart]" command into the script files pertaining to the chapters you want to skip through. I wouldn't be surprised if the dev thought it was buggy when they tried it out though, it does take time to skip through all their rambling!
Lastly, I can't help but take issue with the tonal shifts between routes.
In Yekaterina's route, there's a dramatic turn when she tries to start a romance with the main character, which he rejects because they're cousins and she's a child. She manages to convince him by telling him that they're not blood related, in fact; she's not his aunt's daughter. (you might have learned this already if you played Alannah's route earlier) Nothing untoward happens on screen, but because Yekaterina has been shown to be constantly mistreated by her adoptive mother, this air of a lack of agency looms over her.
Overall I do find it a bit funny that the aunt is not really a character in the story just 'cause the dev didn't want to bother, but when the plot gets serious, writing her off as "someone who won't listen no matter what" without letting the main character try talking to her is just stupid.
Much worse, however, is what happens in Velvet's route. When our main character first meets her, Velvet establishes herself as obsessed with Alannah, which on its own is an uncomfortable trope… but then it goes further.
If you choose to help her get as much info about Alannah as possible, you'll enter her route. She rewards MC by cockteasing him (because she's not into guys), then sets her sights on Alannah. (I like to think that the scary story she tells during the group sleepover being about two girls falling in love despite one of them being a vampire is kind of a foreshadowing.) She tricks Alannah's overprotective father to get out of the house on a Saturday night, then goes over to console Alannah when she's upset about the fact that her dad had to rush out of the house instead of having a family dinner with her… and then she drugs her and starts molesting her.
What the actual fuck? The dev can't coherently explain what Velvet's deal is, even when she's the one narrating the story, yet this is… what, supposed to be satisfying? Titillating? I'm dead inside so I didn't react too strongly to that, but I think the average person would have a harder time parsing that "plot twist".
I didn't care to try and play around with the choices to get as many endings as I possibly could, because from a technical standpoint, this is one of those games that feel like they could break at any moment. That, and I feel like 6 hours is already more than enough of my time spent on this… piece.
For the second time this year, I've encountered a game made by someone who later decided that game development is not a viable way to make money and pulled their games from Steam. The only other game this dev made is a VN adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which I've played years ago (and probably liked, because of course, it's Alice in Wonderland), so all I can say is… maybe to make a living from making games, you should try and make better games. There was supposedly a sequel to this one in the making, but considering the dev's decision to pull out from the biz entirely, it's safe to say it won't be coming out.

Set in an alternate universe where European culture was shaped by ancient Egypt instead of ancient Greece, Panzer Hearts opens with its hero, Bastien, getting severely injured during his first time out on the battlefield. This leaves him unable to return to the front, but a different opportunity falls into his lap: he can still serve his country by building tanks. Although he's disappointed about failing to follow in his father's footsteps, Bastian joins the factory crew. From that point on, you can shape his personality and outlook on the war, and get closer to one of the girls he meets along the way - his coworker, Astrid, or his superior's daughter, Nefer.
It's clear that the makers of Panzer Hearts were passionate about the subject matter and wanted to deliver a good product. There are maybe four scenes in which a character falls over, and each of them comes with its own CG. Characters sit at a dining table twice and both times, their sprites are set behind a table - kind of a dorky way to do things, considering these could have been CGs as well, but it works. Multiple locations will have hotspots you can mouse over to get some flavor text, sometimes with a matching sound effect. There's even an unlockable "lore" section, where one of the devs makes an appearance to discuss why the idea of ancient Egypt influencing European culture isn't as far-fetched as one might think.
But apart from that, Panzer Hearts doesn't say anything new. The tank building minigame is always the exact same thing and you can't even fail it to have your coworkers get mad at you. Only one choice truly matters, and it's a freebie, at that - just choose Astrid or Nefer and there you go. Their "routes" are both very short and end in an abrupt and unsatisfying way. And lastly… I mean… I'm Polish, so it's hard to look kindly upon a story about a German soldier. I got this game a few years back, probably from some bundle, but I think making it free might have been the right call.

Once again, I brought the AI slop upon myself. I blasted through a bunch of levels without much trouble, thinking there's no mechanism in place to make things harder, but there actually is. Depending on the size of the level, you get a certain amount of moves before the board resets. Thank god for the fact that the placement is briefly shown before the start of each level.
And oh, yeah, I guess all the dogs you match correctly get sucked up into black holes? (lol)

A VN adaptation of a short story by the same title, written by Robert Franklin Young and originally published in 1961, The Dandelion Girl is the story of Mark, a middle-aged lawyer who can only get away from his work twice a year. Although he always spends these breaks with his wife, Anne, this time is different, as she has to stay in town to do jury duty. Lonely and bored, Mark decides to go on a hike and when he climbs a hill overlooking the nearby town, he notices a girl standing in the field. They meet and connect quickly, but Mark has yet to learn why he finds her presence so fulfilling.
This was… a fine story, I guess. I've not heard about the original prior to this, so I had no notions about it one way or the other. The art is rudimentary and the BGM serviceable. It seems like a missed opportunity on the devs' part that the Steam release only barely updated the resolution and seemingly nothing else. I suppose it exists more for the sake of convenience, as the original release seems to have been near impossible to find at some point.

In a village hidden deep within the Japanese countryside, lives a people enslaved by a particular curse; one which makes greenery sprout from within the body when the season comes. They call it "The Great Mistletoe" and cope with it as best they can. One such person is our heroine, Aoi, whose affliction comes back far earlier and with greater strength than anyone else's. Her childhood friend, Nazuna, made her promise to fight it until he comes back from the city, where he's gone to study medicine, but can she manage? Or will she give her body up to The Great Mistletoe?
Yeahhh… this sounded really promising while it was on my wishlist these past few years, but now that I've played it… it's so incomprehensible and devoid of any satisfactory conclusion, I hesitate to recommend it in any way. It is technically an otome game, but romance is basically nonexistent here. There are three different endings, but none of them reveal the truth about the mystery of The Great Mistletoe, opting instead to stick to the same flowery yet vague vocabulary used throughout the story (which I'm sure was true for the original Japanese script, as well). It's a shame, as the premise is interesting and could have turned into a great story.
The art also has potential, but most of the CGs look blurry on purpose… if that makes any sense.
Lastly, I want to share this blog post about the game. (Notice how different their translation of the disease's name is.)