One Night Stand Review

Waking up in an unfamiliar bed with no memories of how you got there can be awkward. Good thing you will be playing a game to simulate this!

Story

You wake up with a huge headache, which soon becomes clear it is a hangover, in an unknown bedroom. What’s worse? Waking up by a naked woman and having no idea who she is. Navigate through the situation to find out what happened the night before. Or to see where this one night stand can go for you. Will you run? Get kicked out? Or will something spark between the two of you?

Gameplay

One Night Stand plays like a classic visual novel game. Clicking to continue text, choose between a set of prompts you will say, and what you will investigate. You can change this in the options for it to go automatically or in later playthroughs skip over text you already saw. There is a base of text that will always happen, but as you choose different items or what to say new things will appear.

The set up is basic, talk to the stranger and look around the room to examine items. Each time she leaves the less items you have time to look at. The items serve as a way to give the stranger depth to her, bringing it up might have her go in depth but some things are too personal. While the other side is involved with piecing together what happened last night. Your actions determine the ending. Will you stay, be kicked out, or leave? Will you find out what happened? What is up with this stranger? The writing is very well written and realistic, not falling into the well common cringey or overly dramatic dialogue that is easy

Visuals

The visuals separate One Night Stand from most other visual novels. Bathed in a rich, soft colors and hand drawn visuals. Even adding in short animations to the stranger to give her more life. It is quite interesting, as it shows subtle movements the stranger does or give them movement by the moving outlines. Which also accompanies the objects as you hover over them to show you can look at them.

Sound

The background music is simple featuring a guitar. Areas having a certain rhythm depending where you are with it silencing at the right moments. There are also other sound effects mostly going with the certain item, such as the shuffling of clothes, while the others are for talking and choosing the prompt. This can be a hit and miss depending on how you see the music and sound effects.

Replayability

The first playthrough usually can take 10-30 minutes depending on how fast you read or decide on your prompts. Showing what how you will deal with it first before going into “what could of happened”. Going for all of the endings can easily go on for over an hour. And even than you might want to do things you haven’t done to see all the possibilities that could of happened.

Overall

+ Animation
+ Visuals
+ Writing
+ Story

+/- Music/sound effects
+/- Skip can be annoying at times (either being too slow or stopping sometimes)

One Night Stand is a delightful visual novel that stands out from the rest. The one thing I see being a problem with players is that nothing is really revealed about the stranger even though all these clues telling otherwise. I do believe this goes with the theme, as you don’t really get to know the person. You’re not involved with the stranger other than the one night stand so she doesn’t want to go into her past. She doesn’t want to have a stranger find out everything about her to tell others. It’s just an awkward mess that they are trying to survive from. Even though I personally haven’t experienced a one night stand, it was interesting playing a game about it.

With the price of the game and the well rounded gameplay, it is hard not to recommend One Night Stand.