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Hello and welcome to the second part of my NaNoRenO 2020 coverage, where I’ll be going through the most noteworthy games submitted to the most recent edition of the biggest EVN game jam. While in the first part I focused on otome and other GxB romantic VNs, this time I’ll tackle the niche that, in my opinion, contained some of the best projects in the whole event – horror. Once more, I’ll be focusing on complete projects, rather than many demos and prototypes that get submitted to NaNoRenO – and thanks to the extended deadline devs worked with this year, that’s still a lot of interesting content. One game from the previous post, Dream Dilemma, also fits into this week’s theme besides featuring GxB romance – however, it was a rather unremarkable, simplistic game and most of those I’ll be writing about today are anything but that. So, please join me in this quick overview of NaNoRenO 2020 horror VNs – and as always, whenever one of them catches your attention, clicking its title in the list will get you straight to its Itch.io games. Of course, all the titles I’m covering are completely free to play. Let’s have some scary (and slightly messed up) fun! Divilethion Divilethion is far from your typical scary VN, tilting more to the side of grotesque horror-comedy, with visuals and writing style that contrast heavily with the grim essence of its story – and do so in a brilliant, at times hilarious way. The game follows Lynn, a young high priest in an isolated village “protected” by a monstrous god named Divilethion. While the entity is the only guarantee of survival for the community surrounded by monster-infested swamps and regularly plagues by disasters, the price for its “miracles” is steep – every time, a villager has to be sacrificed and his heart fed to Devilethion. Lynn, cynical and disturbingly diligent about his duties, is soon put to the greatest test yet by the apparently bored deity, asked to sacrifice one thing he might not be willing to give up… As serious as this story setup might sound, what sets its tone as primarily a dark comedy is Lynn’s warped perception of the reality around him and the grotesque enthusiasm Divilethion requires from his worshippers. This combined with an unrelenting writing style, never shying away from harsh language and disturbing story developments, creates a striking experience that will likely keep you engaged all the way through, to either a relatively-positive or deeply unsettling conclusion. While overall the game is relatively short, it’s just so full of personality and meaningful story developments it’s hard to not be satisfied with it. I deeply recommend checking it out – very few hour-long VNs left me with such a strong impression. Final Rating: Highly Recommended Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Normally, considering how far I got into this game, I would have just kept going (I got halfway through, literally). However, it needs to be said that I only kept going in hopes the game would get more interesting as things went on. The answer was no. This game uses a system that draws partially from the early Fire Emblem games, partially from the Disgaea series by NIS, and partly is drawn from other Eushully games. The Fire Emblem elements include the basic 'flow' of strategy rpg battles, leveling up where stats randomly appear (it is purely random, I know from some deliberate testing with saves), and an intermission where preparation for battle occurs. The Disgaea elements primarily reside in the 'Ritual' system, where you can use various rituals to strengthen your allies, level them up (by expending Ritual Points) and sacrifice or contract captured monsters (the former giving you Ritual Points, the latter giving you a new unit). A few negative aspects, first. No battle is repeatable in a single playthrough, there are no 'free battles', and battles take a ridiculous amount of time to finish. The reason for the last part is simply economical. If you don't take the time to capture as many enemies as possible, you'll be unable to maintain a capable army. As such, capturing a good portion of each map's enemies is not a convenience... it is a necessity. This is not to mention the other Disgaea-like element, which is putting a bunch of sub-missions into each battle, which you fulfill for ritual points and items. Treasure chests have to be opened by an ally unit with the unlocking skill. The positives next. If you aren't trying to capture enemies, the battles are actually quite interesting. The ritual system has an immense amount of potential (if they'd taken the time to make it deeper with a wider variety of potential paths for unit evolution), and capturing monsters only to use them as sacrifices later is totally fitting with the game's aesthetic. Now let's get to the story... never mind, there isn't one. I'm not kidding. For beating a battle that took you thirty minutes, most often you'll get a very, very short scene (think thirty seconds for a fast reader) and get sent back to the intermission. There are technically scenes in the intermission (called interaction scenes), but these are generally equally short... and halfway through the game, I've only found ten total, for all the characters I have combined (most of them just excuses for h-scenes and new skill acquisition). Technically, I guess you could count the ubiquitous contract h-scenes (one for each female unit type and one for a small minority of the males), but I don't. All in all, this game wasn't providing me with any joy for the amount of time I put in (think thirty minutes of story for twenty hours of play), I so just dropped it. Edit: As a side-note, the potential ways to improve this game are so blatantly obvious a five-year-old could figure it out. They needed to create a large number of interaction scenes and extend the story scenes to make it actually worth digging into it. As it was, the tiny number of interaction scenes I'd experienced halfway through the game (despite having leveled the named characters thoroughly) only taught me what the heroines were like when they were naked.