Developer: Cheritz
Official Website: http://dl.cheritz.com/en
Ay, this demo was hilarious after playing it for 5 hours with all the guys' routes. The first time was an hour long of playing, and then the skipping feature came in handy when I tried to get as many affection points (I'm looking at you, Jiwoo). Dandelion is originally a Korean VN developed by a group called Cheritz that used Ren'py, the same program I'm using for my VN as well as many others, and made a polished product which unfortunately I yearn for more, but I'm so poor... Anyways, it was awesome of Cheritz to fully translate this Korean VN into English. Since I can't buy the game, which is $30, I'll just review the demo hoping that this post can encourage others to try the game out.
- Heejung concocted a nasty plate of chestnut shells, apples, broccoli, aloe juice, etc., nearly choking Jisoo and Jiwoo to death. Jiyeon just hisses while Jihean and Jieun eat the apples. There's a funny conversation later about the incident.
Story: So far, the demo presents the everyday lifestyle for our protagonist, Heejung Kim. The demo takes place a bit after Heejung takes in a basket of 3 rabbits and 2 cats. She's a college student who is graduating soon and hasn't figured out what to do with her life afterwards. This kinda hit me in the feels as I'm worrying about just trying to achieve what I'm planning. Heejung lives alone in order to escape from her perfectionist mother breathing down her neck over grades and career. One look at her mom and you can tell based on her attire and brand name bag that her mom fits the bill of a strict Asian woman who likes to keep up with fashion trends like all the other Korean women I've seen in SoCal strutting around Cabazon during a Black Friday sale. For now, Heejung has a particular interest in art, but doesn't do anything extraordinary with it yet. After she wishes for her life to stop being boring, she gets what she asked for when the animals she took care of turn into men. Supposedly, the story turns into fantasy and gets a bit dark, but I wouldn't know until I bought the full game.
Characters: There are 5 guys with the standard archetypes: Arrogant, docile, polite, gluttonous caring, and happy-go-lucky carefree (I don't know about this guy based on a CG I saw...). Respectively, the men all start with the first two letters "Ji" and then deviate into different combinations: Jiwoo, Jieun, Jihean, Jisoo, and Jiyeon. I'll elaborate more on the characters in the storytelling portion of this review. All the characters are fully voiced during cutscenes, but not everyday events and the voices are paired with a nice touch of basic lip movement.
- From left to right: Jiwoo, Jiyeon, Jisoo, Jieun, Jihean
Art: Like other Ren'Py-made games gone commercial, the art production is very good for character designs and the backgrounds are crisp and clean. The GUI is just right with its simplicity according to the theme of stationary and isn't cluttering the rest of the art.
Gameplay: Dandelion is also a small stat-raising sim with 3 stats to raise: Art, beauty, and femininity. The other two meters are stress and pressure which are both meant to be kept down and can pose a challenge to working on the 3 stats. The game also has an inventory feature where Heejung can inspect a location and get whatever random things are on the ground as useless as a thread to something valuable such as a pearl. Heejung can also give the things she found on the ground to the guy she likes (pff, "Here Jisoo, I found this seashell on the beach which was actually stepped on and covered in dirt so unsanitary") or sell them off at a store.
If Heejung is low on cash, she can work at an art gallery (see a form of interest here?) to get more money so she can buy expensive beauty products and books. Aside from working, Heejung can choose to go out with her pet/guy to a location and pick one of two actions followed by another action or scavenging for items or character stickers to unlock bonus stuff in the gallery. At home, she can choose to raise her stats or lower her stress/pressure. Stress accumulates from studying, but pressure accumulates from procrastinating. Aside from the traditional homework or studying, there's the educational channel which somehow counts for studying in real life... Apparently, someone managed to make Heejung get killed from too much stress or pressure, but I don't dare go near game overs.
During the animal portion of the game, Heejung can max out relationship points to get a gift from one of the animals. The entire game has the characters randomly moving through each room in Heejung's apartment throughout the phases of the day. So it could be difficult when I want to pursue, say, Jisoo but he's nowhere to be found for a day and then the next day he's in the living room then later on he's in the bedroom. It's difficult as in you gotta try and get to the minimum stat requirements while accumulating relationship points when your guy is either gone or moving into a room where your activity isn't available. I totally sucked at the animal interaction part where most of the time, I guess the desired skinship/interaction wrong and Jiyeon's the only guy you can't go wrong with. How was I supposed to know Jiwoo's weakness is his belly or Jieun's is his forehead? A few activities raise the heart meter, when full, that allows the player to unlock 1 of 3 activities or upgrade the stress/pressure inhibition level. Most others will either slightly, moderately, or greatly increase the 3 desired stats while lowering stress/pressure at the same time. I didn't realize watering the plants or watching animal documentaries count for femininity... Or talking to plants raises beauty and femininity LOLOLOL. Always check the Status notebook to see if you meet the satisfaction of the 3 stats because not all the guys' demands are the same and you don't want to waste time going over a stat. The notebook will tell you how much the guy likes you and if you're good to go in the progression of the relationship. As animals, however, none of them are picky yet.
Overall: Definitely give this game a chance by playing the demo. Although some players might have experienced connection issues because the full game requires the creation of a user ID (yeah I don't know what's up with that). Nonetheless, Cheritz has a troubleshooting FAQ for such a problem. Dandelion is the real deal with full voice-acting, nice art, and (according to Tumblr) tons of feels to experience. It's a shame I can't buy the game because it's a lot to put down even though the hours are promised at 30-40 hours if you play all the guys.
STORY TIME, PEOPLE!!!
JIYEON
I went for Jiyeon first in the demo because he had 35/50 points for a cat versus everyone else at 10/25. As a cat, Jiyeon happily accepts whatever form of play or affection you give him.
- D'AWWWW, You can't resist that.
I feed him oranges and take him out to the park or beach. I often see Jiyeon in the bathroom for some odd reason... One day, Jiyeon kept meowing and Heejung thought he was sick so she took him to the vet. While she was waiting for the vet office to open, Jiyeon's transformation spell ended and popped onto Heejung's lap. Of course like other guys, Heejung is baffled and speechless at her life turning upside down when all her pets turn back into men. Despite being taken cared of as animals, Jiyeon and others like to go out and do... something. I don't know, Jiyeon came off as a playboy of sorts when he talks about girls and he's also really bad at using words despite speaking Korean decently. "Those coca-colas are cute!" "Um... no, you mean cocker spaniels?" Jiyeon wears a hoodie with cat ears as one of Heejung's rules to hide their animal ears when outside.
One day, Jiyeon tells Heejung he's gonna play with fire as in playing with the fire of ladies' hearts, AHAHA. Heejung is worried for him and Jisoo knows the reason for Jiyeon's behavior, but resists telling Heejung why. Jisoo asks if Heejung really wants to tail Jiyeon and she says she wants to see what he's up to. She quickly realized it was a mistake as she came across this scene in front of her apartment complex.
- BWAHAHA, JIYEON YOU FREAKING LIAR.
Heejung eavesdrop on Jiyeon's scam at work and tries to intervene, but Jisoo interrupts her. Apparently, Jiyeon has been begging for food since it's natural from wherever Jiyeon and Jisoo come from. Jiyeon has been toying with these middle-aged ladies who don't know any better to get some food for himself and Heejung. Saying things like "My sister works hard to support my brother and I because our parents died" or "My brother's in the hospital so I'm struggling to support him while living with someone else" cracked me up. Especially the part where he said he was living with a tenant 6 months ago when Heejung internally retort with "You weren't even here 6 months ago" and Jiyeon says a blatant lie like "The tenants are nice, but they only feed me oranges, that's why my hair is orange" AHAHAHAFLDAFJDFJAD;FJDF. And then the ladies started fighting over who could invite him over. Heejung felt super uncomfortable as she learns that Jiyeon is mysterious possibly in a bad way where one, he's a liar, and two, he's begging for food out of habit.
JISOO
- YEAH? WELL FUCK YOU TOO, JISOO!
- This game has assigned areas on their bodies so poking their belly has a different effect than poking their head. In this case, I decided to poke Jisoo in the balls for fun XD
I thought Jisoo was gonna be the badass type or the troublemaker, but he was surprisingly a caring guy. Jisoo the cat gave Heejung a pair of earrings which boosted Heejung's beauty (because his beauty requirement is higher than femininity). One night, Heejung show signs of fatigue and was dreaming about her perfectionist mother harping on younger Heejung over being #1 because #2 is nothing. When Heejung wakes up, Jisoo the man is on top of her.
Of course, Heejung thinks she's hallucinating and tries to go to sleep until Jisoo pins her down on her bed even harder. Er, despite his glare above, he was concerned about her fatigued state and tried to care for her, but Heejung just passes out until morning. Afterwards, the introductions came along again. I forgot to mention, the bleeping part where all the guys temporarily discuss about sex breaking out in Heejung's apartment was hilarious. Especially Jieun's innocent reaction to @#$%^. Jisoo likes to call Heejung "Foodgiver" as a sign of appreciation, but Heejung initially takes that as being treated like a servant.
Based on instincts, I managed to woo Jisoo easily on lucky guess to his reactions. Things like picking the right coffee at a café or going to the park.
Jisoo has a thing for art, judging from his stat requirement, so sometimes he's such a sweetie when he happens to be in Heejung's room and compliments her.
God damn, Jisoo, you're making me blush >__< Anyways, a cutscene breaks out and it's about Jiyeon walking around with nothing but a towel on after taking a shower. Jiyeon's like "What? It's totally normal for me to clean myself everyday." and Jisoo yells "Idiot! Can't you see Foodgiver's embarassed? Go put some clothes on! And why do you take a bath everyday? That's terrible!". Jiyeon teases about how Heejung "saw everything of him as a cat so it doesn't matter" and then Heejung demands Jiyeon go put some clothes on. After that argument, Heejung gets into another spat with Jisoo over bathing. Heejung gets slowly grossed out when she inquires about Jisoo's bathing habits and he says "So? Cats groom themselves everyday. There's no need for baths, that's so freaky." Then Heejung had enough and said that she hates guys who don't bathe the most. LOL, and then Jisoo has a change of attitude. He weakly asks,"So... you prefer guys who bathe everyday like Jiyeon?" and she says "Yeah, why not? Better than not bathing at all" like the last time she bathed Jisoo weeks ago as a cat. This is the part where I was just gushing with joy as Jisoo was soooooo cute as Heejung drags him to the bathroom and he just weakly complies because HE ALREADY FELL FOR HER AND CARES ABOUT HER.
At least Jisoo has the compassion to greet Heejung first, even though she's the Foodgiver.
JIWOO
- His weak spot is his general area of the chest.
WHY DO THESE RABBITS HAVE WEIRD EYE COLOR EXPRESSIONS? Anyways, I thought Jiwoo would be decent but he has the Korean rom-com voice expression I hear while watching a few dramas. As in I want to shove a carrot up his ass for all the things he has said. Ok, to be frank I just sucked guessing his weakness to rack up affection points because the paws and chest were the last things I interacted with. Even when he turned into a human, he was a little bitch.
Well I enjoyed the part where Heejung was uncharacteristically sadistic by cornering and molesting rabbit Jiwoo. When rabbit Jiwoo jumped underneath the covers, BAM, human Jiwoo shows up with the frightened expression on his face. After that, he just stopped being cute altogether. Didn't really help I didn't feed his ego and I didn't get more than a couple of "Are you stupid? You should be called Dumbo. I'm amazed someone like you is my owner" and a couple of other things. I mean god dammit Jiwoo, I could tolerate Okita's killing demeanor but there wasn't a single redeeming thing about you in this demo. I supposed he gets better in the full game, but fuck his noise.
Oh well, at least I can make fun about his romance novel habits.
Despite his snooty remarks, he's a total FRUITCAKE in my book as he reads romance novels as scholarly reads. If a poor girl-rich guy romance story is his idea of a masterpiece, he might as well enjoy Titanic. One cutscene has Heejung talking with Jisoo about wtf is up with Jiwoo's smut habits and Jisoo tries to honor the BRO code by giving as little information to Heejung. Turns out Jiwoo is surrounded by ladies and he's reading romance novels for (what Heejung thinks) a girl Jiwoo likes. GAHAHAHA, that's hilarious. I want to know if that's true. In the end, Jiwoo is ok... if he stays in the 2D world of bishies.
JIEUN
He's so cute above when he's eating apples. Jieun is addicted to apples like it's crack and his friend Jihean wants him to stop eating so much. I later found out Jieun's weakness is his eyes as a rabbit and that he prefers his girl more feminine and artistic than beautiful. Jieun is often quiet and I feel like I don't get anywhere much by talking to him so staring and giving gifts is better. Jieun keeps calling Jihae "Eddie" and doesn't go anywhere without Jihae. I couldn't say much about Jieun because... he doesn't say much. There was a cutscene where Jiwoo drags Heejung into her bedroom to warn her about getting involved with Jihae and Jieun because more importantly Jieun is definitely royalty and then it's bad news if a royal member is involved with the game. Nonetheless, I think Jieun will (unfortunately) be at the bottom of my list next to Jihae's.
JIHAE
SORRY BUTLER, BUT I FORGOT TO GET A SCREENCAP OF YOU.
OK NEVERMIND, I GOT ONE. I... didn't really enjoy Jihae's route in the demo. He's the nicest guy in the whole bunch, polite and stuff plus he doesn't insult Heejung in anyway. Despite that, he was overly polite and I got bored -__- At least early in this stage, he compliments Heejung's art skill and seems to be the type to encourage her to consider pursuing more into art. Aside from being Jieun's mom friend, he seems to have some kind of mysterious past attached to his western name. Yep... I got nothing else >__>
Anyways this game is fun so try it out! Lol, I also noticed each character's post got shorter slowly...
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