Steins;Gate: Hiyoku Renri no Darling

Steins;Gate: Hiyoku Renri no Darling is a visual novel adventure game. The game was developed by 5pb. and Nitroplus. Both developers are well known to fans of visual novel and Japanese pop culture. The developers have made many console titles, but only a small percentage of them were released in the Western. This production is a spin-off of Steins;Gate, which in turn was the second installment of the popular series of sci-fi adventure games. Hiyoku Renri no Darling abandons most of the important plot points of the original but leaves the entire cast and some of the key events. The popular scientific thriller turns into a parodistic romantic comedy.

Plot

The protagonist of the game is Okabe Rintaro, a first-year student of Tokyo University, who together with his college and childhood friend runs what he calls a "laboratory of futuristic gadgets". In a rented flat, the heroes unsuccessfully try to build functioning and profitable electronic devices. Okabe dresses in a white apron all the time to feel like an inventor - he also uses an irritating pseudonym and manner of speaking.

Mechanics

Hiyoku Renri no Darling is a typical Japanese visual novel, which means that for most of the game, we read and listen to character dialogues, mostly with little influence on them. From time to time, we use the main character's phone and, for example, we dial the number manually to call someone or send a text message. At the most important moments, however, we make decisions which result in one out of the several endings.

Technical aspects

The two-dimensional graphics and portraits of the protagonists, which we watch for several dozen hours of the game, testify to the quality of the graphic design of the production. The majority of them were done by a well-known graphic designer, hiding under the pseudonym Huke. Its characteristic style and the use of special graphic filters distinguish it from other games on the market.

Last updated on 01 February 2013