FOCUS on YOU is a VR romance game with photography gameplay. You can spend time with Yua while you act as her photographer, growing closer over a series of photoshoots.
Snapshot of A Love Story
One day, you’re taking photographs at the park, and a girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland accidentally makes her way into your photo of a rabbit. As a photography major, you take the chance and ask to take some pictures of her, but after doing so, she runs away in embarrassment.
The very next day, that same girl approaches you. She introduces herself as Yua, a student at the same school, and she asks you to help her. She’s a fashion design major and wants you to take some photos of her for a competition.
The story is told through a series of events, mostly consisting of meeting up with Yua to take photos. Each time, she speaks to you and you can interact with her by choosing replies occasionally. You’ll also occasionally receive messages from Yua and others, and be able to choose responses in the same way.
Yua herself is adorable. She occasionally acts shy, but she’s the type who calls herself beautiful and, at one point in an unlockable event, literally sings her own praises. While VR provides immersion, the voice acting (in both Japanese and Korean with English subtitles), combined with an incredibly high level of detail in her face, posing, and subtle movements is a large part of what makes the character so convincingly cute. Spending time with Yua is really the primary attraction of FOCUS on YOU, which isn’t surprising as a romance title.
There’s only one problem, and that’s just how short FOCUS on YOU is. I completed the story in an hour and ten minutes. That said, I do think it worked well to have the events mostly take place over a series of days, as we can see Yua becoming closer to the protagonist quite quickly, and the time skips of days and sometimes weeks account for that in part. It does also mean that there isn’t much to the story, but this is really more focused on spending time with the charming Yua and experiencing a brief romance, and that isn’t a bad thing. That said, I can imagine many won’t be happy paying about $40 USD / £31 GBP for such a short experience.
Romance on Rails
As well as the runtime, another aspect of FOCUS on YOU that’s quite limited is the gameplay. It could be described as ‘on rails’ as you never really have any impactful choices, and you just move along to the next step.
Most of the time, you interact with the game by listening to Yua and choosing from either one dialogue response or two. When you do get a choice, the response doesn’t matter too much, either being similar or just being a choice between being nice or a little mean.
Apparently, there used to be some kind of voice recognition system that allowed you to speak your responses, but it was removed from the game. From context, I imagine this used an external service, but there isn’t enough demand now, several years after the game’s original release.
Aside from dialogue, the major gameplay aspect is photography. This works well enough for a short VR game like FOCUS on YOU, since it’s enjoyable to just take photos of Yua. But all you can do is point and shoot, with options to zoom and turn background blur on, so there isn’t much variation other than the seven places this can be done in throughout the story. Yua gives her opinions on your photos at one point, but there’s no scoring or actual rating; it’s just dialogue lines. You can revisit the photography scenes in the post-game and change Yua’s clothing, but there isn’t much reason to replay aside from that.
There are a few other little events where you can interact with the environment in very specific ways. Some are tied to Steam achievements that involve making correct guesses or doing things on multiple playthroughs. It’s along the lines of just pressing a button, pulling a lever, and so on to move events along.
While the gameplay itself isn’t exactly exciting, it is much more about the experience in my opinion. You’re taken through a variety of locations, including one particularly interesting one, and immersed in the little world that you share with Yua. The pressing of buttons and even taking photos to an extent is just to add that touch of interactivity.
Verdict
FOCUS on YOU is a short experience, but a very pleasant one. It’s very easy to recommend, especially to fans of titles like dating simulators and romance visual novels, except for one big point: it’s significantly overpriced for just over an hour of a very limited experience, even if just how niche this is justifies it to an extent. Still, Yua is adorable, and it’s a great showcase of what can be done with romance games in VR.
WAIT FOR SALE ON FOCUS ON YOU
If you’re interested in more VR games, we have a variety of articles on VR products and games, which you can check out here. For example, if you’re interested in a more active VR game, check out Knockout League – Arcade VR Boxing.
Many thanks go to Smilegate for a PC review code for FOCUS on YOU. This title was played via Meta Quest 3S.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
