Our stroll through the erogamescape was a bit delayed this month due to the big releases being split across two weekends (Thursday the 22nd and last Friday, the 30th), but better late than never here we are with our habitual dive into the seamier side of bishoujo gaming. It’s been a pretty big release month with some hot new titles now on the market – check below for an annotated list of arbitrarily chosen games that seemed interesting at the time (KIRA KIRA!!!).

Black Package’s
Hitozuma Harem

Wendy Bell’s
Zoku: Kairaku
Izonshou

Black Lilith’s
Kanagi

Distortion
Interactive’s
Rental Kanojo

Kiss’s Batsu
Batsu na Kanojo
no Tsukurikata

Etude’s Soshite
Ashita no Sekai
Yori

Siesta’s Pastel

Circus’s
Eternal
Fantasy

Overdrive’s
Kira Kira

Liar Soft’s
Kakuen no
Inganock

Colors’ Mahou
Shoujo Ai Full
Set Box

TinkerBell’s
Harame

Overdose’s
Asenure Shoujo
Misaki

Illusion’s
Jinkou Shoujo 3

November 9th releases

The game’s title (“Hitozuma” translates as “housewife”) pretty much says it all. This is the game with the famous (?) do-it-yourself oppai pop instructions on its official site, which unfortunately seems like it might be the most interesting thing about it; ardent fans of the housewife persuasion might want to give it a second look.　[Erogamescape]

Cyberworks’ recently launched budget brand Wendy Bell presents the sequel to TinkerBell Nanigashi-gumi’s Kairaku Izonshou, the G-kilobyte illustrated tale of a nymphomaniac secretary and her pursuit of sexual pleasure. This sequel focuses on her relationship with a shota character, not the sort I would’ve chosen (they had a perfectly good futanari college student in the original) but still a nicely priced addition full of more great art. [Erogamescape]

November 16th releases

The third title in Lilith’s Mist brand lineup, having not received my copy yet I can’t say much about it other than that art is from Senbata-Roh and it looks rather dark hot. As of this posting it has sold 1,762 copies at Japanese DLsite, a performance on the low side for a Lilith release but given time I’m guessing it’ll rise to the 3,000+ mark along with the rest. [Erogamescape] [English DLsite]

A new brand makes an entry to the recently growing ranks of interactive polygon-based games, and not a very sophisticated one at that. From the looks of it Distortion has succumbed to the typical eroge developer mentality of building an engine from the ground up when perfectly licensable (though expensive) ones already exist; I’ll be curious to see some sales numbers on this, as I can’t imagine anyone buying it when the more technologically advanced fare from Illusion is available. [Erogamescape]

November 22th releases

We first reported on this back in August as the world’s first combination Sim City / eroge. In a fusion of Kiss‘s Custom Reido series with the venerable city planning simulation you have the chance to design both the game’s heroines and the city you inhabit with them, populating it with date spots and suspicious shops galore. A landmark the world of ero-gaming? Erogamescape doesn’t seem to think so.

A big, popular title I don’t know anything about. Erogamescape really likes it.

[Erogamescape]

Circus’s latest magnum opus. The fact that it’s not a Da Capo title should be encouraging to us all. [Erogamescape]

You portray an average Catholic (?) academy student, drafted into a punk band by a bizarre girl at your part time job. You wind up as the band’s crossdressing bass player in a story that Japanese fans like – they really like it! I’m digging the concept for this game, and HOLY SHIT I JUST DOWNLOADED THE SAMPLE TRACKS AND THE MUSIC FUCKING ROCKS. Sample [1] [2]

…wow, just wow. I had no idea they were going to go this far with this game. Suddenly I want to play it, really, really badly. The opening movie is awesome, too. If you’ve ever had fantasies of being in a rock band this looks like the game for you (and me). Man, unexpected discoveries like this remind me why I’m doing this otaku thing every day…

We scooped this title back when the official site opened, and it seems our predictions were correct (according to Erogamescape); Liar Soft has another hit on their hands. As I enthused back when the site opened the music for this one is really good, too…

A rerelease of G.J?’s 2005 title Shichinin no Online Gamers with some crappy animated sequences added. As we noted early last month when the game was unveiled it seems this is an attempt to milk a bit of cash from an earlier Sano title while the next one is in production; here’s hoping for news of the next G.J? game soon!

[Erogamescape] Seems like this is a good one.

Contains the two complete Mahou Shoujo Ai games (1+ and 2+), plus soundtracks and a mini-artbook with rough illustrations for the upcoming third game, all for a bargain price. I picked this one up and am glad I did, though I haven’t had a chance to install either game yet; seems like a great opportunity to get in to the franchise for those of us who missed the boat when they first came out.

This one didn’t quite click with me; I think it’s the designs and the generally rapey-looking theme. [Erogamescape]

A budget title. [Erogamescape]

November 30th releases

[Erogamescape]

[Erogamescape]

[Erogamescape]

The deviant in me demanded that I pick this up, and having played through the first two encounters it seems to be exactly what is advertised – a fetish game based around… “glow”, I guess, as we all know that women don’t really perspire. Will play more when time allows. [Erogamescape]

Another of this month’s titles I picked up and have been working through the past two nights; the lone review currently on Erogamescape sums up my feelings about it pretty well (95th percentile, can be used as “snack” fodder). Oh Japan and your euphemisms for masturbation! Like most other games in the Touchable lineup this is a great title for fans of an immediate collapse into delirious pleasure without any of the messy “plot” or “character development” or “psychological breakdown” that can accompany similar tentaclefests; highly recommended if you’re into that sort of thing.

The elephant in the room when it comes to pirated titles of the month (or year, perhaps), this is the first Illusion game I’ve purchased in quite a while, and I’ve only started exploring its many nooks and crannies. This was a title I’ve anticipated since I reviewed its predecessor, and the announcement in August that a third game was coming put me in high anticipation mode for the past three months (most recently here)… I haven’t had much time to mess around with it yet, but I’ll try to post some impressions once I’m a bit further in. [Erogamescape]

[Erogamescape]

[Erogamescape]

Apologies for yet another shift in format here, it seems I can’t settle on one solid mechanism for presenting eroge news. This time around I didn’t try to list every single release title and didn’t cover the budget titles and doujin releases as well as I should have; I’ll try to remedy this in a future post along with a list of recently announced upcoming items that are looking promising – my goal is at least one more solid eroge post before Comiket at the end of the month.