im actually speechless rn, or: a personal nitroplus retrospective

Discussion of 18+ games.

So. I am like. Reeling right now. While I was finishing up my reviews of Saya no Uta (right here if you're curious), I happened to scroll down Nitroplus's Wikipedia page, and I see... this.

I... what? Hello? Sorry, could you repeat that?????? Nitro+Chiral made a new game????????? A new game, and it's out? A new game that came out this year, eight months ago, and this is the first I'm hearing of it?

I guess I should preface first that it's not like I'm a BL game expert, and I don't follow any social media at all, let alone anybody that would be talking about this. But what I am is somebody who played Dramatical Murder eight years ago and was completely obsessed with it. I still have a huge soft spot for it in my heart.

I played DMMD when I was in my first year of high school, having found out about it randomly from a blog on tumblr that I followed. SHOULD I have played it when I was 13? No, absolutely not, lmfao. But I actually had no idea that it was a porn game until I was halfway through it and suddenly there was a sex scene. (Based on the name and the characters, I thought it was a murder mystery...) By that point I was like.... well, I'm already here, sooo. I liked all of the characters and I was invested, so I played the whole thing, and played the majority of re:connect later.

I was still sort of in that phase where I was like, wow omg teh yaois ^w^, though I was on my way out of it and was starting to, you know, be normal lmao. But I was so into DMMD that I really wanted to check out the company's other games. This was before JASTBlue released any of the English versions on Steam, so there were cracked fan translations available if you hunted them down.

I tried Togainu no Chi, but the grittier atmosphere and higher prevalence of assault turned me away from it. Lamento I would have absolutely loved - I really enjoyed the setting and the prose - but the translation hadn't been put into the game engine itself yet, so I downloaded a huge word file of the script and tried reading that instead. I never finished, but I got through probably 60% of it haha. And sweet pool....? It scared the hell out of me, though I was kind of obsessed with it in a hands-off way, knowing that I would never play it.

Funnily enough, it's sweet pool that led me to find out about N+C's new game. About a week and a half ago, a sudden urge to hunt down sweet pool and play it came over me. Whereas the heavy themes were way too much for me back then, when I was just looking for a cute game with boys kissing each other, I found myself thinking a lot about some very in-depth and poignant reviews I'd read about the game more recently and I wanted to give it a shot (now that I'm actually in the intended age range for it LMAOOO).

Anyway; that led me find out about Saya no Uta instead, another game by the parent company with a longer history and more accolades that, honestly, may have served as sweet pool's inspiration. I played that a few days ago, and, as I stated, I scrolled down the company's Wikipedia page. Lo and behold:

Slow Damage? Who's she? I don't know her!!

It's been seven years since Nitro+Chiral's last release, and even that was just a port of DMMD for the PSVita, right after a DMMD sequel!! It's not like I followed their work closely, but I just kinda assumed they were done, y'know?? And then, suddenly, this new release, that actually looks kind of fascinating...??

(Content warning for video: explicit self-harm with blades, some implied sexual content)

Apparently I'm WAY late, because they've been teasing this game since 2017... but like I said, it hasn't crossed my radar. I don't know if it's just because I recently finished one of their other games and really enjoyed it, or if it's the nostalgia of fawning over Dramatical Murder back in the day, but this trailer really drew me in.

Even when I was really into DMMD, I maintained that I was into it more for the story than the sex scenes (although looking at cute boys certainly didn't hurt lol). The atmosphere in this reminds me a lot of DMMD, strangely, but with the dark grittiness of their earlier works. The protagonist also just seems so unlike their others so far. He seems listless, but also as if he has his own agenda, and a lot more agency? I don't know, something about him just feels really interesting to me, like they might be turning some BL tropes on their heads in this game. I could also just be talking bullshit though lol. I don't know much about the game.

JASTBlue has already announced that they're doing an English release! I guess they've got a good partnership with Nitro+ now. I tossed it around in my head for a little while but ultimately decided that, hey, if the English version is 40 bucks or less when it releases, I'm just gonna go for it and get it. It would be the least I could do, you know? I enjoyed their games back in 2013 and I still do now. There's also a demo - Japanese only, of course. I might just try it out and see if I like the vibes it gives out.

Well, that's it, I guess? Either this is just a strange, one-off post, or I might end up buying this game down the line and actually talking more about it, haha. I'd like to talk about DMMD sometime, too. I'd like to replay it and see if it still holds up in regards to how much I liked it.

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