Dating Sim

Just another dating sim designed by refugees from 4chan as a result of an anonymous post on /a/. Also, all the girls are disabled in some way -- Katawa is roughly translatable as "retard" or "cripple;" it's not a nice word. Heartwarming, right?

But, shockingly, it's the best portrayal of people with disabilities I've ever seen, far outstripping those you see in the mainstream media, mostly because those are limited to Professor X.

In Aching Dreams, you're a sword-and-sorcery hero type going off and fighting monsters and such -- but this is no RPG, and increasing your stats is only a tool to an end. The end is using your tool, as it were. It's a hentai-style "date sim," and "winning" means winning the heart (and, you know, body) of one of two girls.

Though there's a minor bit of resource management -- you have only 32 days, some of which you will need to spend working on skills and taking jobs to earn money for needed equipment -- much of the game involves clicking "Next" to read the next bit of text and see the next set of images. Occasionally you have a choice to make. Some of the images, if you're doing well, are explicit, that is, show you merrily rogering one of the game's female characters, in your choice of positions.

Hand-drawn manga-style pictures of naked chicks do not strike me as all that erotic, really, but there they are. The game draws you in, however, because there's a puzzle-solving aspect to achieving your ends, and because the text is well-written and moderately amusing. There are also several different endings and eight possible "achievements" -- some of which can only be accomplished on a second or subsequent playthrough -- and you may find yourself playing through several times to unlock them all.

This repeat playability is nice, but comes at a cost; since all the missions are invariant, you're not likely to want to read the associated text more than once, so on subsequent playthroughs you're basically hammering on the mouse to "next" through stuff you've seen before.

The game did suck me in (no pun intended). Most games that deal with sex are either incredibly dumb or repulsively exploitative; Aching Dreams is neither. Indeed, it's actually kind of fun.

Notes from the designer here.

Summer Session is from "Tycoon Games," but Hanako's logo is on it too, and it sure looks (and plays) like Georgina Okerson's work -- so, since there aren't any in-game credits, I'm going to assume it's hers. (Okerson also created Summer Schoolgirls, Cute Knight and Fatal Hearts.) In fact, Summer Session plays a lot like Summer Schoolgirls, redeveloped for boys. The objective here isn't to make friends, however, but to get a girl friend -- perhaps a minor difference, but one that adds a mild sexual frisson.