Demo Impressions Part 17

Featuring: Hidden in My Paradise, Miside, Pocket Waifu Rekindled, Start a Startup with a Legendary Japanese Warlord, and This Magical Girl is a B☆tch

As long as there are demos, I’ll have demo impressions! Any games with (*) means the demo is still available at time of posting.

Hidden in My Paradise

Out Now

This is a hidden object game and while I don’t play these much, I did end up liking this one. The levels are bite sized and the art is pretty cute and vibrant. Anyway, the demo only has two levels available and both do have a handful of things for you to find. You can get some help if you need to, which will zoom in on the general area they’re in, but the only ones you may only trip on are the ones hidden behind trees, in buildings, looking for a specific state of an item, or ones where you have to open a storage container for before you know you can open it. Hidden in My Paradise does have a feature to set itself apart from others in the genre: the ability to move the items. This is used for the special missions, or hidden snaps, where you get a set piece to recreate and snap a picture to complete it. There’s also hidden secrets, but they weren’t available for this demo.

In addition, you can create your own levels, share them, and download other people’s levels to complete.

Miside*

Out Now

I actually watched a gameplay video of this one, but I didn’t put two and two together until I was in the game. This one starts out pretty harmless as it’s your character playing a mobile game in his spare time. It’s one of those sim-type games where you take care of a girl. The one your character takes care of is named Mita and we get a montage of him playing the game over the course of a month. Mita strangely gets attached to you and one day she expresses her desire to meet you and to thank you in person for taking care of her. Even stranger, the game zooms in a bit and she tells you to look up. Seems strange, but the reality of the situation sets in when you look up and find not your apartment, but the very layout of Mika’s living room. However, you get sent to the wrong version of the game and need to do a bit of a item hunt to be able to be sent to the recent version. Right as the creepy vibes settle in and you start questioning what’s happening, you get sent to where Mita is as she finally gets to be able to interact with you and see you. However, the more time you spend here and get used to living in a world inside a game, the more you realize that there’s something Mita isn’t telling you. That there’s something going on that she doesn’t want you to know.

I liked Miside. It does well giving you vibes that there’s something creepy going on underneath the cute frosting that’s trying to cover it up. Mita is likable and the story so far is interesting. The demo also stopped at a good place and certainly makes me interested in seeing what is going to happen next. I also did like how dialogue is shown and how the letters just fall to the floor. I also appreciate how there’s a backlog as it can be easy to miss a line of dialogue (though I do hope you can fast forward through dialogue in the full game especially since it seems this will focus on replaying to go down different paths).

Pocket Waifu Rekindled*

Out Now

Heads up, this is an 18+ visual novel dating sim. I don’t dive much into the 18+ visual novel scene, but when I saw this one it did intrigue me. I did also notice that this seems to be a remake of the original, freemium version. Aside from updated visuals which looks so great, it does seem like all the freemium stuff was taken out.

Pocket Waifu puts you in the shoes of a man who sold his soul to a succubus so he could get some action (if you know what I mean). Though, it does look like the succubus, named Andrea by the way, had a motive in making this deal as she mentions she needs Lust Dust and lots of it. Just getting it from the usual methods isn’t cutting it and it does seem like Andrea needs it ASAP with how much she’s rushing you. Anyway, the demo takes place over what I assume is the prologue where you meet Andrea, make the deal, and you meet three of the women that you’ll be pursuing. With Andrea here to help you shake off the rust, she brings in the first three ladies one by one. It’s pretty weird how they’ll just walk into someone’s home, but after getting in some small talk and hanging out, Andrea either cranks up their horniness or cause a scenario to get them to do something they normally wouldn’t do on the first interaction. We also get to learn that Andrea has made your house into a pocket dimension, where it’ll always be where the ladies are, but you can’t leave. The demo ends as you see that the ladies are strangely appearing around your home and Andrea doesn’t believe you. That is, until she walks in on one and she strangely freaks out. Hmmm. Despite this, you can go back in where you can try out the dress-up feature and talk to them more with the topics you unlocked and get some activity CGs.

Pocket Waifus Rekindled was pretty good. The writing was decent, the story was interesting, and I do like the three ladies that you get introduced to. The models and art style also looks great and I love the dress-up feature. To be honest, the dress-up feature was mainly the reason why I picked this demo to play haha. Despite this being 18+, it looks like I’ll add this to the list of games to look forward to.

Start a Startup with a Legendary Japanese Warlord*

Out Now

This one was pretty weird, but I like it. I think I mainly picked this one up because I liked the art and the title was intriguing. This has you play as a university student who suddenly finds himself being haunted by the ghost of the legendary feudal lord Oda Nobunaga. As you can easily guess, it’s to start a startup with you! Nobunaga is particularly interested in the new fangled startup and he chose you to partner with. When you run into one of your acquaintances, you also learn what the creepy shadow is that’s behind out character in his sprite. It turns out that it’s a manifestation of a deep grudge and those that can’t withstand it are met with slight misfortunes like being tired or stubbing your toe. Your grudge actually made Nobunaga partner with you and he reveals that the power of making your own startup, or more accurately the knowledge, will get that nasty old grudge off of you. It seems like this game aims to teach you about the various aspects of startups and you’ll be quizzed on what you just learned so you can exorcise your grudge as well as other’s. There’s even a minigame to weaken grudges where you click on a flying grudge before it goes off the screen. The demo ends as you jump at the opportunity at a startup seminar and Nobunaga reveals that he wants to make the business world a better place.

This visual novel was pretty weird, but it was charming. I liked the main character, Oda Nobunaga (I like how he talks slightly differently, showing how he’s from another time but he’s been roaming the Earth since), the art is really nice, and the story is interesting. I’m not sure how much this will actually help those that want to start a startup, but you can’t go wrong with teaching the terms and such. Looking forward to this one, even as someone not looking to start a startup.

This Magical Girl is a B☆tch

Out Now

Oh my gosh! I put this on my “Demos to Play” list due to the art style and the title grabbing me. My love for magical girls and wanting more games where you become a magical girl made me have to try out this demo.

This game takes place in middle school and it’s the first day of the week. But, it’s not just any week as it’s, drumroll please, HALLOWEEN SPIRIT WEEK! Every day has its own theme and the first day is decorating their homeroom. There’s even a prize as first place will get their homeroom a pumpkin pie and ice cream party, which pretty much motivates everyone to do their best. As we go to the protagonist, we meet Tabitha Bones or Tabbie for short. She’s…having a bad day and we get to learn that she thinks everyone hates her and she has her own bully. However, we see the truth as everyone seems to love her and think she’s cool. Her “bully” Eden even seems to like her and a lot of things seem to be a misunderstanding. It doesn’t help that their teacher, Mr. Teacher, does seem to favor Eden over Tabbie which…does not help Tabbie’s perception. Like, I’m with Tabbie here with her raising her hand to answer the question that would put her in charge of the decorations she wants to be the leader of, but Eden just yelling his answer and getting it instead right before Mr. Teacher called her name. That’s definitely unfair.

Anyway, as class ends Calem, a mysterious popular student, comes up to Tabbie. He wants to team up with her to knock Eden down a peg. Calem hates Eden too and seems to be bullying him too. However, their plan fails as Tabbie ends up being alone with Mr. Teacher as he turns into Mr. Monster and gets attacked. As she’s cornered, a jester looking pixie pops out named Strength, gives her a wand and tells her to eat the candy from it. Tabbie eats it, and if you go back and don’t she dies, and she turns into a jester magical girl (which is so funny). With her newfound strength, she subdues Mr. Monster, but everything turns back to normal and it puts her in a really incriminating situation. Calem comes up to Tabbie again, revealing he has his own pixie and his actual plan was to cause Mr. Teacher to transform with Eden in there but well that didn’t happen. Oops. Well, either way, they team up to get revenge on Eden. Strength is the only one not on board, but he can’t get through to Tabbie as she twists or just selectively hears what she wants to say. This demo is over the first day and part of the second and leaves us on a cliffhanger.

I loved This Magical Girl is a B☆tch. I was not expecting it to be fully voiced and everyone does a good job here. The writing is great and really does well in balancing on the line of various aspects. Like the two PAs play well off of each other rather than being annoying (cough like some other game I won’t name) and Eden’s lines being able to be interpreted as both him joking around or just wording things wrong and as bullying without it conflicting. Also, I love how Tabbie is kinda like Goob (from Meet the Robinsons) where she thinks everyone hates her but in reality everyone is saying hi and thinks she’s so cool. Though, it doesn’t help Tabbie’s perception when Mr. Teacher does kind of favor Eden and Tabbie’s actions does put herself in a bad light. I can’t wait to see the rest of this game.