Hana’s Campus Life (also stylized Hana’s Campus Life! Slice of Life With Little Deity!) is an indie visual novel made by Korean developer Limited Factory and published in English by Sekai Project. I’d not really heard of this title before offering to review it, but I liked some of the art, and I enjoy checking out works that fly under the radar in the hopes of finding a hidden gem.
Our Little Group
Hana’s Campus Life mainly takes place on a Korean college campus, mostly focusing on a group of early-20’s programming students. One member of this group, Lee-han (whom the player’s perspective is from), meets his end after getting hit by a truck one day. However, he then encounters a being who calls herself Hana, who offers him a second chance at life. This causes her to lose a considerable amount of her power (and take a smaller form), forcing her to stay with Lee-han for a considerable length of time until she can recover.
Despite the name and subtitle implying it to be a “slice of life” story, Hana’s Campus Life features plenty of its own supernatural elements. Hana is one of several characters classified as Maintainers, divine beings from a higher plane who try to “maintain” order on Earth and keep things from going off the rails due to threats like demons. As such, there are some more action-oriented scenes involving superpowers.
There are three main heroine routes for the story. One of them is Hana herself, and the other two are classmates of Lee-han named Si-eun and Jung-in. Each one has several different endings depending on your choices.
The Three Routes
Each of the three routes in Hana’s Campus Life do something different.
Hana’s route involves day-to-day activities with the titular character, a cute yet somewhat acerbic girl with a big appetite. Before living with Lee-han, she was considered the top dog among Maintainers. Her going AWOL from her position causes much of the drama in her story as she tries to deal with her current life situation, her growing affection for Lee-han, and her role among the Maintainers (including one who seems desperate to get Hana back to her old job).
Si-eun’s route is the most straightforward of the three, given that nearly everything in it is much more grounded in family drama, with supernatural stuff kept to a minimum. Lee-han has a crush on her from the beginning of the story, and they begin dating very early on in the route. However, Si-eun’s family situation makes things complicated for their relationship, and the route involves navigating around the problems that ensue.
Jung-in’s route goes the opposite direction, as she has more supernatural talent herself (despite being a human) and has had the ability to see spirits and demons for much of her life. Most of her route involves a battle with a demon and her trying to cultivate her powers. It’s more action-oriented, with fewer scenes of the more social variety and a dearth of the romance aspects found in the other two.
Ordinarily, I would consider discussing each route in its own section, but there are two main reasons I condensed them to a paragraph each. The first of which is that each of these routes is remarkably short for what they try to do; you can get all of the endings of each in just a few hours, so there aren’t a lot of events to talk about. The second is that this is a wildly inconsistent visual novel when it comes to the stories it tells, the sense of scope, and how much it is reasonably able to accomplish.
Identity Issue
Each route of Hana’s Campus Life has a completely different sense of what it’s even about. Si-eun’s route barely touches any of the Maintainer plotlines, and Jung-in’s barely has any of the “campus life” aspects the other two do. Each route also feels way too ambitious for what it’s trying to do, and it results in a story that moves too quickly for anything to truly stick. Often the plot just felt like a sequence of events moving things along, with twists and developments that don’t really land that immediately follow one another without proper buildup to make for a satisfying payoff.
I struggle to remember much about the characters in any of the routes. Hana herself feels woefully underexplored, and she starts the story off as rather rude and hard to really like before settling down without much of a proper arc explaining her change in personality. Si-eun’s route just feels rushed, with its main conflict not even feeling like it was actually dealt with by the end, resulting in an awkward soap opera episode that just came and went. Jung-in’s route features her using some absurd abilities that felt like they were as strong as the plot needed despite meager justification for being able to do what she can, with a scope far beyond what the story is capable of in a few short hours. None of the heroines have much in the way of interesting dialogue exchanges that help to make them stand out either, and I didn’t find their personalities or stories very endearing.
This isn’t helped by Lee-han feeling like an observer rather than a character throughout much of the story, even by the standards of a ‘low personality visual novel audience insert’ protagonist. I almost never felt convinced of the chemistry or affection involving him and the heroines of the game, and he barely feels like he even exists in the Jung-in route. The one time in Si-eun’s route he felt like his own character involves a decision that I found more frustrating than interesting.
Most of the supporting cast just feel like they’re there to fill a basic role and do next to nothing for me otherwise. The antagonists often feel like a means to an end rather than a compelling part of their stories. I also couldn’t tell you an ending in this game I actually liked or felt anything strongly towards. It’s remarkably difficult to even describe my opinions of this story at length in hindsight because so much of this story is just forgettable.
Missed Potential
If I were to describe Hana’s Campus Life’s issues in one word, it would be overambition. It simply does not have the time to tell the story it wants to at the level it feels like it’s going for, leaving me with no attachment to its characters, a lack of thrills from its action bits, and little in the way of thought-provoking dialogue or moral to the story. There was potential for some worldbuilding, but just not enough space to ever feel like it had the room it needed. Even the dialogue choices rarely felt like they had a rhyme or reason for why they lead you to get certain endings, which made getting the endings feel like trial and error (which isn’t helped by the lack of resources about this game, even in Korean internet spaces).
There’s also some weirdness that hurts some of the more redeeming qualities. There’s a part of Si-eun’s route that feels like a strange bait-and-switch that suggests something deeper, only to never really be elaborated upon, leaving it up to the player to just kind of imagine what happened, yet it also has no real bearing on anything. Jung-in’s route had some intriguing potential for the Maintainers and demons plotline, but simply doesn’t have the space to get a sense of scale or how things operate.
The closest thing to a high note for me was a scene in Hana’s route where the route’s antagonist goes through some scenes of reflection and introspection. I think some aspects of this felt more fitting for Hana herself, given her actions don’t really feel elaborated on all that well. At the very least this could have made said antagonist more interesting if she had more development. Unfortunately, this route’s tension is solved very abruptly and leads to a conclusion that is hasty, contrived, and unsatisfying.
Presentation
The visuals of Hana’s Campus Life are fine, and the CGs and characters have their cute moments. The music is satisfactory with some neat and occasionally catchy tracks. The story is fully voiced (outside of Lee-han, which is standard for visual novels), and for the most part the performances felt satisfactory to me, though the voice acting is fully in Korean which I imagine many who read visual novels might be less used to. There are also a few characters who felt quieter than others to a noticeable degree, though there are volume sliders for each character if you feel inclined.
The script itself feels a bit basic and straightforward, without a ton of personality or memorable flourishes. The only observations on the translation I really can make in fairness (as I know next to zero Korean) is that the English text doesn’t have the Korean honorifics, which isn’t that surprising given the rarity of English-translated visual novels from Korean compared to Japanese (and thus the Non-Korean audience is less likely to be familiar with them).
I also encountered a couple of issues pertaining to this game’s engine with some scenes. Hana’s Campus Life was made in Unity, and has its share of performance issues on lower-end PCs like several other Unity-based visual novels have when I tried them on my laptop. Even when running on my far more powerful desktop, scene transitions can be a bit long, to say nothing of how awkwardly placed some of them are. The biggest issue I had was with the skip button, as it loved to deactivate “skip mode” at random points during scene transitions and certain pauses in dialogue even on text I had already read. This made going for all the endings even more tedious and was a problem on both of my computers.
Verdict
Hana’s Campus Life feels like a visual novel that wants to reach the highs of some of the medium’s greats but doesn’t really have the space to do so. It’s far too short to do everything it wants to, leading to a story that is dense with events but lacking in emotionally resonant scenes or characters to earn any satisfaction from reading it. While it doesn’t have extremely low lows, there’s a lack of striking moments, and even some of the parts I did like have an asterisk attached. The experience of trying to get all the endings was bogged down by some programming issues and requiring certain choices that sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.
I do think Limited Factory genuinely tried with this title, and I don’t think it’s without redeeming aspects, but the positives are few and far between. I wish the story had either focused more on the “campus life” or “deity” aspects of the title instead of trying awkwardly to do a visual novel with slice of life, action, and drama all in one and not succeeding much at any of them. With its runtime, its story and characters are hurt by a lack of picking a lane and sticking with it, leading to an ultimately very forgettable experience with little to get attached to. As such, I struggle to find much of a reason to recommend this title.
WAIT FOR SALE ON HANA’S CAMPUS LIFE
If you are looking for another visual novel, you might like to check out our review of AMANATSU ~Perfect Edition~.
Thank you to Sekai Project for providing a Steam review code for Hana’s Campus Life! Slice of Life With Little Deity! The all-ages version of this title was reviewed as the adult patch is being made available post-release.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
