Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome & being tracked...

So, I bought myself a game as a reward for passing my driver's test. Also because it was on sale on Steam...because I'm cheap. I'm my mother's daughter. Anyway. I picked up Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome. I'd been wanting to try it for a while because I've heard it's really funny and that the MC isn't a total pushover. But mostly because it's funny. It's also got a patch you can download that makes it an 18+ game which I originally wasn't going to do right away but then I read a review that explained that a lot of the plot development/romance doesn't actually make sense unless you have it. Like, in the non-patched version they go from one spot to boom shmexytimes without much explanation. That didn't sound good, so I went ahead and installed the patch. We'll see how that goes...

The whole premise is pretty absurd -- Ema is this super tall loner girl that no one talks to. Not that she makes an effort either. They all think she's scary and she personally prefers that to the bullying she got when she was younger. Then, one fateful day, she runs into Miki (the blonde masochist, though he's not obviously a masochist from the get go), who is a budding fashion designer. He's been living in America until recently and has been searching for his muse -- Ema. He saw her once (dunno when, but I've only just started the game) and has been looking for her since then.

She thinks he's a total freak and doesn't understand what he's talking about. Later that day, when she's gone to throw away his contact info, Saito (the dark haired sadist, who's pretty obviously a sadist from the get go) appears. It seems he's actually a childhood friend of Miki and he drags Ema to Miki's house and the rest, as they say, is history.

So far, I'd have to say it is pretty funny. The very first choice in the game is to stay in bed and sleep or force yourself to get up. If you stay in bed, that's it. Game over. Time passes and you die a lonely old woman never having met the guys who will change your life... LOL...yeah. I died right away.

I'd have to say I'm not altogether sure Ema is really all that strong at this point. I mean, she does talk back, but she's also a lot more scared than I thought she'd be. She's got this weird idea that Saito is, like, a yakuza or something. And she's been kind of going along with what the guys are having her do (try on clothes, exercise, etc.) because she doesn't want to appear mean or it seems easier. She's definitely a path of least resistance kind of girl. I kind of get it, as she's a girl who's got little to no experience with people, especially guys. She's just more trepidatious than I thought she would be after the reviews I'd read. But, I suppose she's got to so that the story progresses...still, I'd kind of like to see her punch Saito once or twice...

The art is good and the voice acting is as well (it's in Japanese). Will post or update this once I've played it some more...

In sort of funny news...I have to play this on the little dude's laptop because it won't run on a Mac. And I realised this weekend that hubster had installed some kind of tracking software on little dude's laptop so he gets a screentime report. I dunno that he actually checks it much (or he might have mentioned the, er, hours I spent playing Pastry Lovers...) but sheesh. Now I'm trying to think of some excuse to buy myself a new computer...especially because sometimes I'd have both going while working on my Mac and I'd just leave the game running on the side. So some days it probably looked like it was on literally all day...oopsies.

...check out the follow up post to see how horrified I later become...