Pub Encounter

 There's a big lunar New Year Steam sale on right now and so I picked up Pub Encounter for less than £5. I was going to do it on mobile rather than Steam as it only works on Windows, but it appears you have to unlock each route for £3.99...so it made a heckuva lot more sense to buy the whole thing for less. I did download the mobile version to try the prologue first though. But I'll have to play it either on little dude's PC (unlikely, given how often he's on it) or on the very slow Windows laptop I have. It's seems to be very basic though (minimal graphics/CGs), so it should be okay to run on that.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to try this one was because it features old dudes. No, really. All of the Love Interests are middle-aged men. The MC seems to be younger than them (figures) but she is out in the workforce, so she's not a total baby. I'm not entirely wowed by the art as they apparently took "middle aged" to mean "lots of wrinkles around the eyes" but oh well. 

Anyway, it starts off with you stopping off at a pub you've never been to before to let off some steam after work. You've been making mistakes and are just feeling down. As soon as you step inside, all the regulars hasten to greet you. They're not used to any women in the pub. They're all fairly nice, with a few of them being flirty (but not too creepy) and welcome you with a drink and a toast. 

There seem to be the standard tropes -- the all-business dude who's probably a softie inside, the flirty one, the mysterious one, etc. I won't know more until I install it on the old laptop, but it looks at least passably intriguing. Not sure about the "Forbidden" part, though this is the same company that does The Men of Yoshiwara (about the male red light district?), so, eh, it may get a bit steamy. Hard to say. No real hint of that yet. Just so long as it isn't squelch-y like Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome. That still makes me laugh every time I think of it.

The only bad thing so far is that I can't say that any of the dudes particular stood out to me and it's not an organic thing where you fall into a route. It appears you have to immediately choose after the prologue. But, we'll see. For the sale price, it was worth a go.