The Red String of Fate

That's Luke on the left and Valerie in the middle.
And Aaron, who reminds me of some anime dude
that I never liked that probably waves a
sword around randomly and goes charging off
in random directions for no reason.

I tried a free otome visual novel game thing on Steam called The Red String of Fate. I didn't go in with super high expectations so I was pleasantly surprised. There are only two romantic interests (Luke and Aaron) and I personally found Aaron completely lacklustre in both personality (he's a puppy) and looks (weird spiky blonde hair) and Luke is a lit major (so sue me, I was one too)...so I went the Byronic tortured poet route.

Basically, Valerie (and Luke, you soon discover) can see the red strings of fate that bind soul mates together. However, they've never had their own strings (and Aaron, weirdly, has a frayed string, which usually seems to mean your soul mate is dead? I dunno, since I didn't play through his route). Valerie is working herself to the bone at university and working four jobs because she wants to save up enough money to travel the world. She believes that the fact she's got a mostly non-existent red string is because her soul mate must be on the other side of the world.

Luke, on the other hand, has some past issues and he professes to not really believe in romantic love. Oh, famous last words, O Otome Hero.

At any rate, they hang out together and grow closer and closer (even with some meddling from Aaron). It's pretty straightforward and I didn't at all use a walkthrough for once but I got the romantic ending with Luke pretty easily (though, hey, I guess I could have missed some things, I dunno). I liked that the choices made sense for the characters and that the relationship seemed to develop naturally. I liked their banter. I liked that they had intelligent conversations (about Auden! And Austen! And Shakespeare!). So, yeah, actually, this one was really quite lovely.

That said, I don't think I'll be playing it through again as I still have no interest in Aaron at all and I don't really want to go back and try and be friends with Luke nor do I want to try for any bad ends. There's only four possible ends based on the Steam Achievements anyway.

That's more me than the game, though.

The art was fairly good and possibly there is someone out there that just lurves blonde puppy boys, but that someone isn't me. I would recommend it, though. It was quick as well, just a couple of hours to get all the way through. They have another game out now that I might check out as well, though it sounds a bit more involved and not quite so satisfyingly romantic.

This is one where the story would actually make a pretty good book. I like the idea of the red strings of fate. It's pretty predictable though, which makes me want to turn it on its head. Which is how most of my books start.