November 2022 Progress Report

1+ hours to complete, 10 levels, and 611 various cats to find in randomized locations, Ever Seen A Cat was honestly a huge and pleasant surprise to me; as once you complete 9 levels, you have an option to go back and find special cat variants. The background color and vibrancy is completely adjustable in the setting with a color bar, and the music was honestly pretty fantastic, the guitar strumming is my favorite!
Compared to other Hidden Object Games I came into this not expecting much, click the cats and within 10 minutes the game is done; but that definitely wasn’t the case here and Ever Seen A Cat is easily one of the best HOG games I’ve ever played.

1+ hours to complete, 9 levels, and 736 unique cats that are randomized throughout these cozy scenes, such as comfortable cafes, sunny beaches, a cushy cottage, and a greenhouse. The background color and vividness is completely adjustable and the music fits well to the theme. For a HOG, I didn’t expect to like this series as much as I did and playing was rather pleasant surprise.

1+ hours to complete, 9 levels, and over 600 cats that are randomized throughout this fairytale themed Hidden Object Game; unlike the series previous games, Ever Seen A Cat? 3’s gameplay is based around tales such as Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Golidlocks, and Jack and the Beanstalk to name a few. Notably, there is a color adjustable background and vibrancy slider; the music fits well with the themes.

Nayu shows up to participate in the Doki Doki Adventure Tour; run by the fairy Lugh; to become an adventurer and explore the nearby forest with totally-not set up situations! Unfortunately, or fortunately, an actual situation – specifically a bear, shows up and derails the whole tour! Completely lost and wandering the forest, they stumble upon and rescue Suzu, a cheesemonger, and start a real adventure!

1+ hours to beat, I honestly had a pretty great time playing The Adventure of Nayu. The art is incredibly cute, I love the music, and the main storyline is pretty enjoyable although I tried to keep it a bit vague in the paragraph above. It sells itself as a clicker game but even that’s optional, there is an auto attack and playing this game requires no actual effort on your part. There are 7 costumes you can purchase with Star Shards, a currency you collect by defeating monsters, which you can also use to buy information to increase your strength, speed, and luck; completing the main game unlocks an endless mode which I whole-heartedly recommend and the minigame, The Path to Cheese!

Following their dreams to go to America and learn in one of their universities, Hinata learns that their apartment and identity was stolen by an evil doppelganger. With no housing but determined to get to the bottom of this mess, three cute and handsome guys offer their assistance! You learn a bit too late that none of these men are people you should be hanging out with; and that your stolen identity is part of a significantly bigger plan.

2-6+ hours to complete, 3 routes and 6 endings. Mostly voice acted and with pretty graphics, I had a fairly enjoyable time playing My Dangerous Life. There are a couple things that could be improved such as more character expressions, a longer VN length, as a lot of the story felt cut down as you sort of teleported from one scene to the next, and the music selection. The background music was honestly a bit jarring and I ended up muting it and listening to something else, and if you play and don’t like the title screen music, I highly suggest doing the same. Despite having the tags for “Nudity, Mature, and Horror” there wasn’t much of that and the story really doesn’t take itself seriously. (Deflecting a gun with a playing card, etc.) Yet despite the negative aspects, it’s still a fairly enjoyable game to play and most of the CG’s were pretty nice! The story felt like it was supposed to be longer but overall, My Dangerous Life is still worth checking out if you like the LGBTQ+ genre.

Cila is depressed, tired, and absolutely alone in her tiny apartment despite having an android housekeeper, and life feels like it’s on pause indefinitely until Cila’s android breaks down. Stressed at the thought of a further solitary life, Cila speaks to her friend Yoko who runs a higher-end shop specializing in different companion models, but Yoko offers something… different. A high-end 5th generation android named Mara, for free, with a request to not look too deep into its history and not ask her any questions.
Cila never could keep her nose out of things.

3-5+ hours to complete with two endings, Synergia is a yuri thriller cyberpunk visual novel set in a dystopian world. Translated into three languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese with accessibility features such as text-to-speech and Opendyslexic font designed to mitigate common reading errors caused by Dyslexia. (Hitting “A” on the keyboard opens this setting option.)
With that out of the way, Synergia is a pretty enjoyable game with a lot of backgrounds, CG’s, and an interesting storyline. I particularly loved the art style and how there were multiple re-occurring characters with actual backstory, the world-building is pretty well done! My only real fault is that it’s very government conspiracy-y at the end and there are a couple holes you can poke in the story, but Synergia was still worth playing and if you want a short Yuri cyberpunk story; I think you will like this too!