![]() ![]() …for me this kinda helped to make up for the disappointment of Beastmaster & Prince not getting funded (╥﹏╥) And I had a lot of fun playing this – more people should play this (ノ´з`)ノ And before anyone asks – yes it’s in English and yes it’s free, yes it’s worth your time and it’s pretty short. ![]() This makes a lot of choices, many of which don’t lead to any interesting scenes or pieces of dialogue, very much meaningless, apart from being part of the cryptic, frustrating puzzle of finding that “one true path”.I don’t even remember how I came across this game, but I decided to give it a go because I’m biased towards stories based off faery tales and the likes. In effect, there’s pretty much nothing you can do wrong – literally every path will lead you to a positive, romantic conclusion. After a tiny common route, which decides (in a somewhat unpredictable way) with whom of the three teddy bears/bachelors you’ll be locked in a romance route, the choices only matter by occasionally unlocking hidden CGs or, if you find the “perfect” combination, leading you to the alternative “best ending” with that specific character. That’s actually one of the tropes in Western otome games that I very much enjoy – protagonists in them are usually much more than just empty silhouettes that the player can insert him/herself into.What I might complain about a bit is the structure of the story. The protagonist, Aura, might be slightly less fleshed-out, but still presents enough of girlish silliness and stubbornness, combined with life experience derived from her tragic childhood, to be a compelling character. The routes also complement each other well, showing the story of the d'Lockes family from different perspectives and constantly adding new details about all the characters involved in it. Still, this is a kind of complain I would be happy to give more often. Other assets, such as sprites, backgrounds and CGs are of similar quality – the one paradox might be that because of how solid the general aesthetic is, the quite numerous CGs don’t stand out from what you’re normally seeing on the screen, making them a slightly less impactful than you would normally expect. While I often prefer simplicity over flashy, ornamental designs in VNs, here I couldn’t find any disharmony or exaggeration in the artstyle – it has an elaborate, feminine feel to it, but should be attractive to pretty much any reader that sees it. What’s clear from the first moments after launching the game is its great aesthetic – the main menu screen, the UI and opening cutscene are all full of colour and gorgeously designed. Of course, standing out positively on a marketplace full of horrible shovelware and shameless cash-grabs might not be a huge achievement by itself – in the case of this small otome however, this enthusiastic response from the readers seems to indicate a bit more than just contrast from the absolute trash that dominates mobile platforms. Developed by Dicesuki, a small studio from Philipines which later created the highly-regarded Cinderella Phenomenon, and published for Android in July 2016, Locked Heart quickly became one of the highest-rated mobile VNs out there, gathering an impressive 4.9/5 score among Google Play users and a decent VNDB rating. ![]()
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