A Kiss for the Petals: Maidens of Michael is an action Visual Novel game based on a budding romance between two high school girls. It’s a stand alone game in a series of games all dealing with the same topic but with different couples. This game is based on the coupling of Risa and Miya, about how their romance started and the problems they had along the way. The characters in this series of games, are all fairly unique granted a couple of them are by the book standard character archetypes. Not only are they unique but the couples all balance each other out really well in some way. That balance makes everyone that much more endearing for reasons I can’t quite explain. Risa and Miya are no different in this aspect and that really brings a super cute quality to the game.
Risa is always trying her best, she works as hard as she can at everything she does even if she’s not very good. She’s also the class president and is constantly looking to do whatever she can to stand out more so she can get into better universities later in life. Miya on the other hand… she’s a super genius who’s good at literally everything from sports to all forms of studies. She’s however, considered a trouble child because constantly skips class, much to Risa’s annoyance as she has to fetch Miya constantly. Miya has a photographic memory as such upon reading a book once; teachers have nothing left to teach her. She’s always spent her time reading since she was young so she knows generally, everything really. Most of the game you play as Risa, occasionally moving into Miya or side characters’ points of view but those are very short and very rare.
The game is fairly basic, you have a handful of choices throughout the whole game, maybe a dozen or so, and this game is HUGE, it’ll take around ten hours to complete your first time, and there’s three or four endings for their relationship. However, as a nice little bonus, you also get the stories of all the other couples on what they did during parts of the game as well. Each of these stories are a bit smaller but still sizable, and I believe they all have multiple endings as well. This lets you feel even more connected to the side cast that have a lot of importance with the main story.
Risa and Miya, aren’t they cute?
This game isn’t going to promote any deep thoughts, it’s a nice light-heated adventure about a naive girl falling in love for the first time and all the trials and trepidation’s that come with it. Not just that but falling in love with a girl, which she never expected would happen in the first place, and to top that off falling in love with a girl she always thought she hated. So basically this is a Rom-Com. You will laugh, a lot. Risa regularly blushes and stutters because, again, she’s new to all this. She all but freaks out because of the other girls and their openness when it comes to their own relationships and perversions. Risa is far too prim and proper and it’s really funny to see her freak out at even the smallest suggestive things being said let alone the larger ones half of which start off going over her head before it slowly dawns on her what they’re talking about.
The entire game is voice acted, every single character. All of the voice actors did really good in this as all the characters are voice magnificently. The voices are in Japanese with English subtitles, hopefully that doesn’t bother you because it is done really well.
The frisky girls… ooh la la
Now the thing you have to remember about this game, is perversions are aplenty, this is not a children’s game. There’s two versions of the game, an 18+ which is the original localization and then there’s an ‘all ages’ version but… honestly… I don’t think it’s really all that all ages even then. The ‘all ages’ version is heavily toned down, there’s next to no nudity in it, there’s no sex scenes, only two bits of nudity I remember both are breasts, one is when Miya is sick and Risa wipes off her sweat so you see Miya chest, this is a common thing in Japanese media. The other time Risa nearly walks in on two classmates… hmmm… getting a little frisky in a classroom and she looks for a bit cause she’s trying to figure out if she’s is okay with going that far with Miya, in that you see a bit of one of those girls’ breasts as well. Beyond that, I don’t remember any nudity in the main game. I don’t remember any nudity in the side parts, but I didn’t finish them all before writing this and I can’t really remember them very well. However, honestly I would think those bits either straight up don’t have any nudity or it would be in a similar vein as the sweat washing part in the above. I think they’re fixing the frisky bit to be censored as I’m pretty sure it was suppose to be censored.
A girl and her perver… I mean girlfriend
Regardless, I say I don’t think it’s ‘all ages’ period not so much because of the couple of tits you see cause I’m not a prude but because they talk about sexual things in the game. Sex is a part of romance, asexual people aside anyways. The girls in this, like me and many girls I’ve known growing up, are very open about sex, granted I think sometimes some of these girls go a bit overboard sometimes, but so did I when I was younger so… yeah. I consider it fairly realistic, however these girls are seemingly obsessed with sex related things. In anime and Japanese video games, the portrayal of girls’ and their thoughts on sex tend to go in one of two ways. Either they never think about anything related to sex which is crazy talk, or that’s ALL they think about which is just as laughable. This game pushes that towards being all they think about. To be honest I don’t really see an issue with talking about sex in front of kids, that’s just not an issue with me, but there’s a limit to what about it you talk about or how much detail you go into and this game pushes it beyond where I think it’s acceptable for kids to read about. As such I really don’t think it’s appropriate for younger audiences. Maybe older teens but 18+ fits that bill so I mean… yeah.
I think this is great for anyone who’s an adult, the all ages version, tones it down and removes the sex scenes and such for those of you not into that stuff, because I know some people want the VN but don’t want naked people shoved in their face. The game is really funny, especially if you like perverse humor and people being oblivious to it. However, on the other side if you don’t like perverse humor, I don’t know if this game would sit well for you honestly. I thought it was hilarious but I’m a big ol’ perv, most of the dirty jokes and Risa’s reactions to them were hilarious for me. For those of you who want the full experience of the game there’s the 18+ version which has all the extra sex stuff in it, including the creepiest fucking sounding kisses I think I’ve damn near ever heard. But then again Japan is really bad with kissing sounds in my opinion in damn near all media, it always ends up sounding like they’re making out with like squid tentacles or some shit, it’s just… wrong sounding. So. Fucking. Wrong.
A cute school valentines event
For me, I loved the game, other than the kissing sounds, which you only get if you play the 18+ version. And thank fuck for that, cause that would scar people for life. It’s $35 on MangaGamer’s website, I don’t know if it was the same on Steam or not, but it’s currently unavailable on Steam. My speculation is it’s not on Steam currently because of that above mentioned frisky scene not being censored, MangaGamer is working on getting it back up on Steam, hopefully they do soon, because it is a pretty funny game. If pervy humor amuses you, this will make you piss yourself. If you want a kindhearted story about the start of a romance and how a naive girl navigates it from first kisses, to Valentines and Christmas to trying to figure out if she’s comfortable enough to have sex or not and how it would even work, to helping each other deal with life problems, this is also for you. It has a great heartfelt story if you can ignore the prevy stuff, providing you don’t like the pervy stuff anyways. I’m all for it, I totally suggest it, but I know because of its content, it won’t be for everyone because it is really open about perversions and not everyone is comfortable about that. If you’re not sure if you’re into it, maybe get the other A Kiss of the Petals game that’s on steam, it’s a lot shorter, and it’s much cheaper. If you like you that, then give this a go, I think it’s worth your money. That being said, when it’s back on Steam, if it gets back on there, we’ll update the below Point of Sale area to the Steam page instead of the game’s landing page. I’m really hoping you guys will give it a chance I think it’s a really good game.
A Kiss for the Petals: Maidens of Michael was developed by: Yurin Yurin and Sei Mikaeru Joshi Gakuen
Point of Sale: MangaGamer
$35.00: The best thing about 18 year old high school girls is no matter how old I get they’re always 18… or something. I feel a bit dirty after saying that…
A review copy was provided by the publisher.
darkmikasonfire has awarded A Kiss for the Petals: Maidens of Michael The Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval
The Mind’s Eclipse is a science fiction Visual Novel game with a basic point and click mechanic. It was developed and self-published by: Mind’s Eclipse Interactive, LLC. The point and click mechanic is simple in that you can interact with parts of the environment which allow you to learn more about the world, and individuals that live in it. This occasionally provokes conversation pieces as well. You also pick up items that are used later to unlock doors and the like. There’s no puzzling about any of the game, if you pick up an item and you can use it you’ll lose it, if you don’t have an item to get into an area, then you can’t get into it. It’s very basic, which is fine since at its core this is a visual novel.
The game had a lot of sci-fi talk as the game involved nanotechnology, AIs, cybernetics, and genetic modifications. It dealt with them as, oh these things exist, not everyone likes it, some people go a bit overboard, etc. It’s treated like it’s just part of life which is nice. There’s not a big deal made of it or a lot of information poured into the mechanics behind it as though it matters. Instead it’s just an everyday thing and I really like how that played out.
The Mind’s Eclipse was developed by: 
A review copy was provided by the publisher.
SeaBed is a bittersweet lesbian Kinetic Visual Novel game. It was developed by: Paleontology and published by Fruitbat Factory. For those of you unfamiliar with VNs, a Kinetic VNs doesn’t have choices in it; there are no routes to take in it. It’s all pure reading while basking in the game’s auditory environment all while watching cutely characters pop up on the screen. SeaBed focuses on the intertwined stories of 3 women Sachiko, her lover Takako, & their friend Hibiki. Each chapter switches whose eyes you see the game’s world from.
The game deals with love & mental illness by showing it in a straightforward way, not as something fantastical like you see in games such as Hellblade. Sachiko is having hallucinations & doesn’t know why. We see the way she reacts to them and how they affect her private life, all while Hibiki, a psychologist, tries to help her. Just like in real life, the Hallucinations come & go without warning. This leaves the reader having some trouble telling what’s supposed to be real & what’s fake because of how fluidly the hallucinations fit with the Sachiko’s waking world & even more so with how well they mix in with flashbacks. But dealing with illness isn’t just from Sachiko; Takako has some sort of memory issues & is working on trying to fix them with a different psychologist in another area.
As you get further into the game, it throws you through some serious loops as reality, flashbacks, & delusion becomes hard to separate. Some parts of chapters spend a good chunk of their time switching between various views with nothing seemingly being real, but unknown as whether it’s just fragments of dreams, flashbacks, or the ravings of someone who’s completely lost their shit. These chapters become confusing and disorientating for the reader. This is done on purpose, after all the best way of seeing someone’s delusions and memories mix together and seeing how hard it is to tell what’s real, is by doing exactly that; put it all together in a big mess. There are tiny tidbits here and there about completely unrelated days, conversations, & times. This happens some in the start but happens more & more as you continue the game.
