Title	Infatuation
Credit	AspenGlen, MaskCover
Media	General Visual Novel
Platform	PC
Genre	Horror, Romance
Year	2020
Character Type	6 Yanderes

You live in a small town called Rosalind. Nothing much happens in the quiet town until the arrival of 6 rich and handsome boys. They will be attending your school. Although they seem eccentric, you were able to get along with them. But you can’t help but wonder: could they be hiding something more?

SPOILERS AND PERSONAL OPINION

*Note: This game features murder, drugging, kidnapping, some depictions of gore.

Before I begin, please note that the entirety of my opinion is based on Infatuation the game itself. I had not read the Wattpad novel it is based on, and I am unqualified to judge the novel content.

Based on a Wattpad novel, Infatuation is a free, short visual novel centered around you, the main character who lives in the quiet town of Rosalind. Nothing much happens in town until the arrival of 6 young and rich boys, who just transferred into your school. Your besties, Lala and Saki whom you had known since young were excited to know these boys, and you decided to play as their wingman.

One way or another, you had the chance to interact with the 6 boys soon enough. Although eccentric, you were able to get along with them somehow. That is, until they revealed more of their true nature…

I think its pretty obvious who the yanderes are when there’s 6 yanderes in game, and 6 boys who newly moved in town lols. But anyways, the game is relatively short. It features about 14 distinct endings and other minor ones with small differences. It took me about 7 hours to complete them all.

I like that most of the in-game choices made sense, especially the crucial parts where it determines whether we can successfully escape. However, there are also many other choices that didn’t really matter, or just matter for one specific route or instance. Nevertheless, I find the game pretty well-branched, featuring a variety of choices and ending.

Character-wise, I did not really like our protagonist. Personally, I like to self-insert when the game encourages you to do so. In this game, you are able to choose your name, gender, physical characteristics like eye, hair, and skin color, favorite food and flower. So all the more I try to self-insert. But gosh, I cannot relate with the protagonist at all.

The protagonist can be whichever gender, but I will refer to the protagonist as “she” for convenience sake.

She is bubbly one moment, and cruel to others next. She can draw obscene pictures on her friend’s face for all to see as a prank, and her friend just forgives her. She is thick-skinned enough to just drag the new boys she had just met to her friends, leave, and dump them there by themselves as if that’s the most natural thing to do.

Story-wise, I find that the plot can be draggy at some point. The main plot of the story was the kidnapping of the protagonist and her attempt at escaping. But I found that the repeated attempts at gaining trust, plotting escape, then failing at running away in a single route to be quite long and repetitive. It would be fine if there is obvious progression, but each attempt and consequence felt so similar, it seemed as if the story was stagnant.

On the other hand, I find it quite abrupt in terms of the emotional aspect of things. I would think it is more logical for the protagonist to experience a build up of fear and anger before a burst of emotions during her capture. But in the story, she freaked out, then calm out almost immediately, then freaked out again, and this process kept cycling. This is not how emotions work, and I find it hard to empathize with her.

Also, when the protagonist or the male leads did something wrong, the ones involved just got angry for a moment and everything went back to normal the next day. I couldn’t keep up with all the weird emotional changes of the characters.

Besides, the male leads literally fall in love and declare that they can’t live without the protagonist within a few days of meeting her. Through the short amount of interaction, I never found any instances where it clicked for me why the male leads found the protagonist so attractive and so necessary for them in their life. (I will describe for more each characters in their own pages.) Again, I found these sudden display of affection so hard to make any sense of.

Another thing is that I find the male leads to be extremely similar, especially in terms of the yandere aspect. I do notice some characteristics that the author/game creator tried to change within each character. They have different ethnicity, different dress sense, skin tone, hair styles, etc. Some are shy, some are more flamboyant. But somehow, I still had a hard time finding each one’s unique point. And when it comes down to how they behave as yanderes, they are even more similar – like carbon copies of one another. (More in their character posts.)

There are some instances that really scared me though, and I think those are done really well. When you are trying to hide, or during critical moments where you are given a limited time to make a decision, those instances really worked for me and I really did felt tense. So I think the horror element was executed quite well.

In terms of the features and interface available in game, I quite liked that the creator color-coded each name so its easier to identify the character. But I do think some colors made it hard to read along with the background, so maybe some slight adjustments might help. There are also quite some typos, grammatical errors, and punctuation errors here and there, so maybe getting someone else to vet will improve the quality. Also, as someone lazy, who likes to eat while reading VNs, it would be good to include an auto function. I don’t complain about this if the VN is really short, like 30 mins to an hour. But if it takes 7 hours to complete, I would prefer to not have to click through the entire length.

Personally, I am not really a fan of the art style, though I can really tell the effort of the artist. Each character certain unique features, like Hiroko with his scar, Ren with his moles, and Ryo with his freckles. Each character also have their individual dress sense which hints at their personality (studious, sporty, artsy, shy, introverted, flamboyant, etc.)

The sound system of the game leave much to be desired. There is no voice over for any of the characters, which I am fine with. However, the background music can really be improved. Some of the tracks are fine, but they loop so often and obviously that you can tell exactly where the loop begins and ends, which made the experience really choppy. There is one track in particular, with some strange ticking sound added, going from loud to soft and back and forth. I found it so hard to bear, after 10 mins, I decided to mute the game because unfortunately, that track was played so often. I did turn it back on once in a while just so I can review the other tracks, but I muted it again immediately once the ticking track came on.

In summary, Infatuation features a decent game length, some character customization, good amount of story branching, and the sizeable number of characters. However, the game can be unevenly paced, with fair amount of grammatical and punctuation errors, and slightly poor narration (particularly with regards to each character’s train of thought and emotions). Aspects of the game interface, music, and art can be further enhanced. Given more effort and refinement, I think this game and the story can be made even better.

To be honest, I find it painful to critique this piece of work, because I know it is not a simple task to get such a game running and in good condition. There is programming, script writing, art, music, interface, and so many more things that the creator need to work on to push this game out, even with the help of a small team. And from playing the game I can tell that the creator must have interest in her work. Not many people out there has the knowledge and the good will to put out a full length game for the public, and for free. I really appreciate such effort. It is simply not easy.

However, I think that as a reviewer, it only make sense to be honest to myself. And to the readers of my reviews, to give an accurate depiction of my thoughts. I should give credits to any job well done, and I should critique on the parts which can be improved. Hence, despite my honest appreciation for the creator and their game, I must still comment as such.

Nevertheless, I do recommend you check out the game. It is rare to have a game themed around male yanderes, much less with a plot decently branched out with a good length. The art style and music may not be to my liking, but that cannot be said the same for everyone. Do give it a try, and you can make your own judgement of the game.

CHARACTER SPOILERS