Other Media Review

Game Review: Regency Love

While all of us here at the Bitchery love Mario Kart, I would probably say I’m the gamer amongst us. I played World of Warcraft very seriously (Burning Crusade expansion) for end game content. At one point, I was the second best geared in my class on my server, first on Alliance side. (I’m sorry if this all sounds like a foreign language!) I frequently helped host LAN parties for Halo tournaments. My favorite game series is Katamari Damacy, if you’re curious, where you play a space prince who rolls up a bunch of crap on a sticky ball to help rebuild the cosmos because your dad and his tight pants destroyed everything.

I really love video games. They were a way for me to bond with my brother, and some of my earliest memories are sitting on my mom’s lap while she played DOOM and Duke Nukem on a computer. My favorite thing about them is their ability to blend amazing visuals and an awesome story, and I can’t get enough of RPGs in general. Bioware does amazing things with their Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchise. The former is medieval fantasy and the latter is set in space. All of the games let you play as a female (which is so awesome I cannot even tell you). You get to make choices in the game that alter and effect later events, how characters respond to you, and how you’re perceived by others, which all add to the replay value. For Bioware in particular, your characters even have romance storylines, which are inclusive of heterosexual relationships and gay and lesbian relationships as well.

Over in Japan, they have games marketed toward women in which you play through a visual novel, making choices and interacting with characters: otome games. At the end, based on the choices you make, your character will end up with a certain guy (or girl!) and have a particular ending. Some games allow for multiple endings per character and you have to work through the different combinations of choices to get them all. The games also vary in rating, from very chaste to downright explicit. Unfortunately, most of the games are only available in Japanese, though some are slowly making their way over to the U.S. with English translations. Also, if this thing totally interests you, I highly recommend checking out Lijakaca’s Otome Blog. I’ve been following it for years and it has a nice breakdown of otome games, new, and reviews.

But all of this background isn’t why we’re here. We’re here to talk about Regency Love made by Three for Tea Studios! Regency Love is an otome game that Bree Bridges told us about over Twitter, and we are forever grateful for that!

You play as a woman in a Regency setting, interacting with townspeople and learning certain skills as you try to find a husband, much to your mother’s insisting. The game was intuitive to learn; it also includes helpful little tutorial bubbles that pop up at the beginning as you play.

Right now, there are three men whom you can romance.

Mr. Ashcroft – a bit of a serious man with a younger sister prone to illness and a scandalous brother

Mr. Curtis – a regency Severus Snape

Mr. Digby – a shy man who comes from a good family

I’m going to let my bias shine through and say Mr. Digby is a milquetoast of a man and I took great joy in being terrible to him.

I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly, Mr. Digby

There is also an additional expansion for the Mr. Graham romance ($5.99) – a charming lieutenant colonel. That’s actually pretty typical, by the way of these apps. Other otome games on the market are free to download and you can play through the prologue, but to unlock a character’s romance, it’s usually $1.99 or more. With this game, you’re already getting three romanceable characters for the app price, which is $4.99. One play through took me several hours because I’m an overachiever and wanted to max out all of my skills. They cap at 100, if you’re wondering.

Your character has six different skill areas – reading, music, dancing, drawing, needlework, and riding. As you go through interactions, you get the opportunity to earn “motivation points,” which you can then put into the skill areas. The game also offers other ways to earn these points – hangman-type mini-games will appear to solve the word in a particular quote or multiple choice questions will pop up to answer. These questions vary from Jane Austen knowledge to what you know about the Regency time period.

At first, I thought I was fucked. But there’s a helpful hint option and the questions cycle through, so some will pop up again that you’ve already answered. I’m not sure if the questions or mini-games were randomized or not, but earning motivation points definitely gets easier once the games start repeating themselves.

Skills

In terms of spending your points, some interactions can’t be unlocked unless you have a certain number of points in a skill, but the text will tell you what you need to reach.

Each romance option also has their own specialty. Mr. Ashcroft likes riding and Mr. Curtis likes reading. And screw Mr. Digby. The more points you put into a skill, the more your proficiency with it increases.

As you interact with people, you’ll also earn character traits based your choices. Your top five traits will be listed in a little box, but you can scroll through and see the rest as well. Truth be told, I’m not sure if these have any effect on the action at all.

Skills and traits screen

The menu also stores little bios of the characters you’ve met (my one play through hasn’t unlocked them all, so I’m very curious who’s left), the epilogues of all the characters you’ve made and their endings, the cutscenes you’ve unlocked, and a list of achievements. One thing I will say about the achievements is that you have no clue how to unlock them. It doesn’t tell you, which makes me a little sad because I like having something to strive for. But honestly, that might be my only complaint in the game.

I adored the art and thought it was really lovely. I know other otome games can let you customize your character or even have cutscenes with your character in them, but there’s none here. The only thing you can customize is your name.

Mr. Ashcroft in all of his stoic glory.

I was Katherine Withersfield, in case you were wondering. The story was well-written, and I really loved the breadth of options your character has in terms of how to respond to people. I actually started out wanting to be a badass bitch who loves to read, but I couldn’t seem to be mean to anyone else besides Mr. Digby. Even the nosy Mrs. Norris got some compassion from me.

After finishing the game, I poked around the studio website where they mentioned adding future romance options, and even the possibility of a F/F romance. I’d love to see one with Mr. Ashcroft’s brother and THIS NAMELESS DIMEPIECE WANDERING AROUND IN THE BACKGROUND:

Mysterious piece of regency ass. WHO ARE YOU, GOOD SIR?

I really enjoyed this game, and I hope it sets a precedent for more like it.

Right now, I believe it’s only available for iOS (iPhones and iPads) and the game is $4.99. No word on an Android version, much to Sarah’s dismay.

It’s a worthy purchase for the time and care put into it, especially for a small studio made up of some clearly awesome women.

Oh…and there’s a cat:

Behold Lord Fat Cat

 

Here is the trailer as well, if you wanted to give it a peek:

Add Your Comment →

  1. Lostshadows says:

    I’m kinda glad it’s not available for Android. My tablet is doing something with my storage space that I can’t figure out and I can’t download anything.

    BTW, thanks for getting the Katamari music stuck in my head. Great, weird game, but the music is very earwormy.

  2. Ren says:

    This sounds very nice, I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the writeup!

    If you like the genre I recommend also Choice of Romance (https://www.choiceofgames.com/romance/) in which you play a noblewoman (or man) trying to find a husband (or wife) and also trying not to run afoul of a courtly conspiracy (or else trying to start a conspiracy yourself). There’s no pictures unfortunately, but I liked that you could have M/F, F/F or M/M romances. They have also made other games (most of which are free) and they are very good at letting you pick if you want to play as a man or a woman, because of my god YES I want to play as a woman, please always give me the choice of playing a woman!

    Anyway, off to spend the afternoon romancing Regency dudes. 😀

  3. Amanda says:

    @Lostshadows: You’re welcome. 😀

    Actually, after I wrote this review, I dusted off my copy of Katamari Forever and played it for hours. You become like this weird glutton for punishment when the King just shits all over your hard work and you’re like, “I’ll show you.” Three hours later and you’re still striving for some sort of compliment.

  4. Julia aka mizzelle says:

    If you like the Regency period but want a more traditional game, there’s Regency Solitaire on PC/MAC: (http://www.greyaliengames.com/regencysolitaire/) A storyline plays out as you advance through the levels. Very pretty art and tricky levels.

  5. Ashley says:

    I agree. It’s a fun little game and the visuals are really lovely!

    Poor Mr. Digby. He was a poor little puppy I couldn’t resist kicking.

  6. Cecilia says:

    nooo no Microsoft/PC version? ç_ç

  7. Amanda says:

    @Cecilia: Nope, it’s an app, so it’s only available on the Apple App Store. I’m not sure how much an app differs from a computer game in terms of programming, so I don’t know if that’s an easy fix for the studio to make at a later date or if that’s tough to do.

  8. Valerie says:

    I’ve played Regency Love quite a bit, including the Mr. Graham expansion (which I think is quite good, and I didn’t mind paying for it to support the game devs in the hope they will make more games).

    The character traits do have an effect–they may change the ending epilogue of the game. The different love interests prioritize different traits, and if you end marrying someone when you don’t have a high value in the trait they prefer, your epilogue may end up being negative.

    If you’re curious about how to get certain achievements or endings, you can check the Regency Love wiki, where there are a lot of tips for most of them: http://regencylove.wikia.com/wiki/Regency_Love_Wikia . But be careful with the wiki, because there are spoilers for all of the stories, so I’d suggest playing through the game at least once for each love interest before checking out the wiki.

    If you’re interested in another romance-themed visual novel type of game for mobile devices (both iOS and Android), I’d suggest checking out Everlove: Rose. It’s set in a medieval fantasy type of world and has great art, and there are four male love interests in the game.

  9. Amanda says:

    @Valerie: I had no idea traits possibly effected the epilogue! And I’ll have to check out Everlove: Rose; it looks really neat.

  10. Ele says:

    Oh, this is so my kind of thing! I’ll definitely give it a go.

    I play all sorts of games, and have come across some very entertaining romance titles from Japan. “Long Live the Queen” and “Magical Diary” (both available on Steam) are some of the more recent ones I’ve enjoyed. Also a fun game: “Loren the Amazon Princess” from Winterwolves. (That also is on Steam, but if you want the version with nudity, get it from Winterwolves directly.) The first 2 are text-driven, and Loren mostly is although it also has some (very simple) combat.

    Would LOVE to hear more about “romance” computer games–Do tell!

  11. lijakaca says:

    Omigosh, thank you so much for the shout-out! I didn’t know about Regency Love so I’ll definitely have to check it out. There are more and more otome games being developed in or translated into English, it’s a pretty exciting time to be a gamer and a romance fan! I can barely keep track of them all now ^_^

    If anyone has Steam, I highly recommend Nameless, a Korean otome game, and Amnesia: Memories, a Japanese otome game that just got released.

    Also, if you’re on Android, a very popular Japanese historical otome game is Hakuoki.

    Oh, and if you’re into M/M, a very popular online M/M sci-fi webcomic just got its own great game that you can play right in a browser: Starfighter

    Phew, so many good games to recommend!

  12. Amy Raby says:

    For the Horde!

  13. kitkat9000 says:

    @Amanda: Wow, you really didn’t like Mr Digby did you? Was there a specific reason why? Reading the comments, it looks like Ashley didn’t either. Hmm, I guess it’s just him then. That’s kinda funny actually.

    I would love to play this but, alas, possess an android and am therefore not eligible. Though I may check out some of the others.

  14. Amanda says:

    @kitkat9000: I like my love interests with a bit more oomph. He just seemed like a big wet blanket. In the game, anytime you talk to him, he’s constantly blushing and stammering, which isn’t my thing, haha.

  15. Lisa says:

    in their FAQs, the first Q/A is “…Android?” and they pretty much say its too expensive.

    Le sad…

    but I will mention it to friends who have i-thingies.

  16. Nelle says:

    Ah WoW… the only game I really got into! Well Besides SIMS 😉 I was addicted for 2 solid years, now I play randomly:) This game looks so damn neat! I adore the Regency Era, too bad I’m and Android girl.

  17. Beth says:

    Uhm, I NEED this to be available on Android. Hear me, O Computer Gods!

  18. Since I work for Big Fish Games in my day job, this sounds like it falls squarely into my bailiwick of “casual games”. I’m going to have to check this out. 🙂

    And poor Mr. Digby! Does he have any scenes where he has less simplistic features? The artists for the game aren’t doing him any favors, I fear.

  19. Andrea D says:

    Re. Mr. Digby: I don’t think he is meant to be a serious love interest. As Angela notes, his features are very simplistic, especially compared to all of the other characters. The random gentleman in town has more detail! Plus there are other things that are a bit spoilerish.

    I’ve played through a few times, and it was rather fun, though the questions and quotes do get a bit repetitive. Which helps with earning points but can be somewhat tiresome. Also there were a few glitches (I don’t know if I played scenes out of the order or something) because conversations/scenes would sometimes take turns that were out of nowhere and didn’t make sense.

    I think it’s a bit pricey, but it could be fun especially as the creators might expand the story and options. I bought the Mr. Graham story on impulse, and that might be my favorite; the cutscenes are very pretty and I found the characters/story more enoyable.

  20. I’ve just about finished playing the plotline where you have Mr. Curtis as your primary love interest. And I TOTALLY kept imagining him played by young Alan Rickman.

    And if they do an F/F storyline I will buy the HELL out of that in the app. 😀

  21. lijakaca says:

    @Valerie: Since I have no i devices, sadly I can’t play Regency Love, but I bought Everlove: Rose and am having a great time! I need to review it after I finish all four routes, it’s totally fun. Thanks for the rec!

  22. Alessandra says:

    Hoolllllyyyy crap! This is AMAZING!

  23. Just won the game (and the heart!) of Mr. Ashcroft! Thank you SO much for writing the review of this game. I really loved playing it. I hope we see more games like this.

    I agree that the quiz questions got repetitive after you’ve been playing for some time, but seriously asparagus ice cream??

    I’m going to have to buy the extra add on romance option now with Mr. Graham. I think it’s fantastic that this has repeat play just within the basic game, to romance different characters. Mr. Curtis didn’t do it for me, but if I picture him as young Alan Rickman, I’ll give it a go.

  24. Julia aka mizzelle says:

    I’m sad to hear the answer for Android. Wish they’d at least consider a PC version. Lacking a iPad/etc leaves this out completely for me. (And I love Big Fish Games, btw.)

  25. Julia @ #24: YAY! My paycheck and I are glad to hear it. ;D

  26. Charlotte windover. says:

    Played it for the first time a few days ago and now am apparently stuck in my room with no ability to go to town or anywhere else, or to acquire new skills. Is this a glitch? Do I have to start again? I’m not eager to run thru those dialogues again and just wAnt to play the characters I created. So right now am not happy at all…

  27. Taye says:

    If you haven’t checked back on this game since writing this review, they’ve added a new love interest and another character who will hopefully get a route in the future. The new LI, Mr. Graham, is by far the best in my opinion, so definitely go back and give it another playthrough if you haven’t already!

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