Aozora Meikyuu

Developer: Yume Creations | Publisher: Yume Creations | Release Date: 2016 | Genre: Visual Novel / Adventure / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Aoi Takamatsu is a man who has given up on the opposite sex and instead shuts himself up in his parent’s house to play eroge titles. This lifestyle change occurred after Aoi confessed his love to a fellow high school student and got shot down. Unable to cope with this rejection, Aoi spends the next few years avoiding “3D” women and focusing on the 2D characters in his games instead. This all changes one day when Aoi makes a rare trip outside to pick up the latest eroge game and literally has a naked girl falling out of the sky on top of him. Against his better judgment, he invites her inside to get dressed, but she immediately makes herself at home, which obviously interferes with his shut-in lifestyle. Initially, Aoi wants nothing to do with this strange girl, named Sora, even though she seems to be instantly smitten with him. However, depending on the choices made by players, these two could end up becoming a couple.

Aozora Meikyuu features multiple endings, but only a few of them are “good.” Things can also end up rather badly for Aoi and the game can end rather abruptly depending on how things play out. For example, choosing to call the police when Sora refuses to leave the house will be the end of the story before it even really began. Unfortunately, despite the different endings available Aozora Mikyuu is still a very short game and it doesn’t take long for the credits to roll. It also suffers from the fact that up until the final part of the game, the story is very cliched and predictable. Sora is not the first character with zero social skills and, the day to day interactions between her and Aoi aren’t that interesting. As for Aoi, it’s nice that he’s not a typical main character with a harem of admirers, but his personality is not exactly likable either. Also, because the story is so short, there isn’t really time for much character development either. Instead, Aoi can basically end up with a completely new personality after sleeping with Sora.

The h-scenes, or rather lack of thereof, is also something that will limit the appeal of the game to many players. There is certainly not a lack of sex scenes in the game, but none of them are ever shown, even with the “uncensor patch” installed. Instead, the game simply fades to black when things heat up between Aoi and Sora. Speaking of the uncensor patch, it’s available for free on the developers’ website, but doesn’t really change much in the game. As a matter of fact, apart from the light beams covering Sora’s chest at the start of the game, there is virtually no other nudity. Using the uncensor patch just makes it obvious how unnecessary some of the light beams were in these scenes.

Yume Creations, the developers of the game, is a German indie studio, so the visuals are not exactly AAA quality. The game does feature several different backgrounds and the visuals are detailed. Sora also looks decent and has a few different expressions as well as outfits. Apart from her, the only other character with a sprite is Misaki, the girl who rejected Aoi in high-school. Unfortunately, Misaki does not have any CGs and even the ones with Sora are a bit thin on the ground. Nevertheless, the game has a CG viewer as well as a background viewer.

The audio for Aozora Meikyuu is somewhat sparse with little in the way of sound effects and no voice acting for any of the characters. The soundtrack is decent, but there is no music player in the game. Finally, the user interface is standard Ren’Py fare, so everything works as it should but nothing really stands out as being special or unique.

If Aozora Meikyuu was a bit longer and gave the characters more room for development it could have been a much better game. We liked the fact that there is a timer when it comes to making choices, which means that not picking something is an option too. The endings are also unique, but not tying them to Steam Achievements is a bit of a missed opportunity. Instead, the game simply awards players with its sole Steam Achievement for starting it up.

The bottom line is that there are far worse visual novels than Aozora Meikyuu available, but also far better ones. This makes it hard to recommend as there is nothing about it that really sets it apart from the competition. It could offer an hour or two of entertainment if bought on sale for cheap, but don’t expect anything memorable from it.