Meeting an Old Love
Here we go again! Let’s get into another date with our good old partner Dee Dee in the demo for the fifth installment in this series of visual novels. These are developed and published by DigitallyDownloaded for PC, and available to their Patreons!
Showing off my Dee Dee skills
If you’ve ever gone through our archive of visual novel reviews, you probably saw that I am the number 1 fan of the Dee Dee series. I might even be leading the Dee Dee fan club. As such, you can expect me to be quite happy to have the chance to grab a bite out of their new project. As it always has been for previous titles, this game has its sights on improving over the older ones with a much larger narrative, more endings, and more characters for you to interact with. Does the game have what it takes to be Deefinitely Deelightful? Who knows, it’s a demo after all, and we are exploring it!
The Tale of Gideon
The demo actually starts with ominous music and a blurry background, all based on a dream you are currently having. Our protagonist Gideon has the dream of rising through the political ranks in order to reach his father’s position of mayor one day to shape the city as he sees fit. For some odd reason, the people in this dream call him a name you can decide on – I went with Nick.
Gideon’s ideas for the city are quite radical, as he looks for profit over anything and believes that anyone who is below his social class simply isn’t trying hard enough, and so shouldn’t receive help. His main obstacle in the way, however, is Dee Dee, as her ideals are totally the opposite of his. Despite this, he still desires to be with her by his side. In fact, he would like to have his way with every girl in the group and only then marry Dee Dee.
Despite the odds, the stars have lined up for one week where, even with their different careers post-high school, the schedules of the group lined up and they were able to find one week for all of them to spend time together. And that’s the moment that Gideon needs to prove his worth. Unfortunately, things go south during the first night of their get together, with someone breaking the window of Dee Dee’s house with a note saying “hi” attached to a stone. Unfortunately, no one can tell who it was and the police aren’t as cooperative as they could be. After dealing with reports and such, Gideon falls asleep on the couch again and has a dream that tells him someone is going to die on the fifth day of the week, so he should keep his eyes open.
Overall, quite a premise, right? I enjoy Gideon’s personality being quite different from the usual, as it makes dealing with making his choices quite interesting. The cast of girls has expanded to include Amelia, a cute petite girl who played volleyball with the group on the beach last game, and Aisha, a girl who hates you. In Aisha’s case, that hatred is mutual but she accepts you due to having mutual friends, otherwise she would break your head on her thighs.
The game is all about Marquis de Sade’s writing. It brings some uncomfortable topics to the table even in the demo, but I will leave it for you to experience. And yes, you are supposed to hate Gideon. Deal with it as best as you can.
Writing and Gameplay
The gameplay is the usual for a visual novel, with the demo having three points for decision-making, the first two converging at the end of the story pieces, and the last one shaping the ending you arrive at. I enjoyed the writing on this one as well, in relation to the theme and evolution of a grander story than usual. The characters were also a highlight since Gideon is a realistic asshole and the girls are slowly shaping up to be more lively. The introduction of Aisha was quite refreshing as well since it’s expected that not everyone would enjoy our main twat of the group.
Art and Sound
The music in the demo went up a notch in my book simply because of the ominous start but I believe it’s gonna come out great in the full game. The sprites are of the great quality they’ve used in the Dee Dee series so that’s good. It’s a simple game on visual aspects and such but as I always say, simple isn’t bad.
Closing the Curtains
Overall, it’s a solid demo. Considering that it’s the first day of the game, it has quite a chunk of gameplay to it in fact, and is able to show what the game plans to do on the remaining days of this lively week. The Dee Dee series is slowly evolving and I am certainly looking forward to seeing where it goes, especially with this game planning to be quite lengthier than those before it.
Demo Link: Patreon
If you would like to read about visual novels, you might be interested to read about the previous Dee Dee game or perhaps Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen.
Many thanks to Digitally Downloaded for early access to the demo.
Nick has been gaming for quite a while, a decade now! His first console was the DS but the first one played extensively was the Nintendo 64. He loves a huge variety of games, favourite genres include RPG, platforming, metroidvanias and visual novels. No longer a member of the NookGaming team, but still here in spirit. Follow him on @NickMendz.
