Visual Novel Review: Crimsoness

And what better way is there to revive a dead blog than with a visual novel review? Today, we have a doujin visual novel made by Porn (no that was not a Freudian slip, that really is the name of the creator) named Crimsoness. You play as Bakumi Moriyama, a normal, everyday Japanese school girl who wrestles alligators, beats up hoodlums, and most importantly, splits the earth. But she only has three minutes to do all that before the visual novel force quits. Yes, you heard that right: There is a three minute time limit before everything stops and you’re forced to do everything all over again. Is this crazy? Yes. This visual novel will absolutely rape your mind. Read on if you are intrigued by cute Japanese school girls, epic action, teenage angst, and splitting the Earth. (Which covers just about all of you, right?)

Bakumi Moriyama is having an awful day. Her ugly teacher gives everyone a pop quiz which she accidentally flunks by offsetting her responses by one question. In a fit of rage, she decides to single handedly take revenge upon the cruel, unfair world. Luckily, Bakumi has the handy rage meter to help her along her violence filled adventure. At the upper right corner of the screen, there’s a numerical gauge that you can build up by clicking repetitively on it. As you accomplish certain deeds in the story, the upper limit of your rage meter increases, allowing Bakumi to unleash ever more powerful attacks at key storyline junctions. Even though this game play addition is simplistic, it’s still extremely satisfying to power up a mega powerful attack and down the various villains that stand in your way. And click you shall: some of the most powerful attacks require as many as 180 clicks to successfully charge. My mouse hasn’t seen this much action since I played Diablo back in middle school.

Charge and destroy!

As if this wasn’t weird enough, there’s also a three minute time limit. After three minutes has passed in the game, it’s over. The game stops and the only option you have is to exit the game. Even though this game play mechanic itself is in genius, the way it’s implemented isn’t. The time limit means that you’ll be in a race against time to run across the school, charge up attacks as quickly as possible, and defeat all the necessary villains in time before the time runs out. The time limit adds an added sense of pressure and it’s exciting to see whether you’ll be be able to charge up enough powerful attacks before time runs out. Unfortunately, what’s annoying is that once you do run out of time, you have to quit the game and return to your desktop. An alternate option to just restart the game from the beginning would have been much better, considering that you will have to replay the game many, many times before you see everything.

The art is simplistic, but also very retro.

The art of Crimsoness is simplistic, but extremely stylistic. It all looks like it was made on Paint, but you can still tell the huge skill of the artist from them. In addition, there’s an animated red static effect on the screen that makes the game all the more interesting to look at. Even though it’s presented in black, white, and red, this visual novel is still awesome to look at.

What’s a school girl with too much teenage angst to do?

Crimsoness is a blast to play and features a hysterically funny story. I can’t believe “split the Earth!” has not become an Internet meme by now. There’s something just appealing about watching a petite school girl cutting a path of destruction across the school and destroying increasingly ridiculous and powerful foes with her bare hands.

Download it here.

~ by Samu-kun on July 11, 2009.