GOR
Grim Reaper
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Game title: Evening Starter (already in English)
Developer: baronsengia/Danshaku-ryou (
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)Genre: Turn-based JRPG, 1st person dungeon crawler
Setting: Modern day, Cthulhu Mythos
Game Engine: RPGMaker VX Ace
Fetishes : Rape, Gang rape, prostitution, interspecies sex, bondage
DLsite(JP):
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Dev's blog:
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Dev's twitter:
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(Not available for sale on DLsite EN)
Translation thread : https://ulmf.org/threads/evening-starter.12187/
Full translation made by Farcefield.
Premise:
The game is set in H.P. Lovecraft mytholocygal world of Cthulhu (Although not as strict as the roleplaying game "call of Cthulhu", the game is still fairly restrictive toward magic and character are rather weak for rpg game, you'll need strategy and cunning to survive battle).
You play as the "sweeper" (i.e. "cleaners") Nozogi Ren, a female private-eye/fixer with ties to the Yakuza and the Public Security Intelligence Agency (Japanese CIA). Ren specializes in investigating occult (read: Lovecraftian) related incidents and containing them using any means necessary, including assassination (she "sweeps" up messes, hence her job title). Ren is also a toxokineticist — she has the ability to manipulate toxins to harm enemies and heal or buff her allies. This makes her a spellcaster of sorts (drawing from knowledge of forbidden lore of the Cthulhu Mythos, but without the SAN damage), but she also has significant expertise in martial arts and firearms.
Due to her skills, Ren makes a killiing working for both the Yakuza and the PSIA. Sometimes both on the same contract, so she's getting paid twice. Unfortunately this all comes to an end in an 'incident' (second tutorial mission, spoilers, it's funny if you go through it yourself) that landed her in massive debt (to the tune of 2 billion yen) with the Yakuza and put her out of favor with the PSIA. This kicks off the main plot of the story as you desperately take on contracts to pay off interest for the loan (working out to 1 million yen a week, just for the INTEREST alone) to avoid getting forced into prostitution and adult videos to make up the difference.
You were commissioned by the Yakuza to investigate a weapon smuggling ring （by another Yakuza group) at the warehouse district. You managed to stumble across a bunch of Shoggoths said smuggler had summoned (and his corpse, incidentally), forcing you to blow them up with a cache of heavy weapons.
Along with the rest of the district.
The police, naturally, covered the whole fiasco up as a 'gas leak' (denying allegations about a terrorist plot) . Miraculously, there were no casualties.
You wound up costing your employer 70 million worth of damages. Oh sure, no problem, you can pay it, you have 90+ million Yen in the bank at all...
But then the damage estimate turned out to be in dollars. Not Yen.
(Which work out to about 8 billion Yen. The Yakuza rep converted it as 6 billion, which may be based on older exchange rates.)
The Yakuza, being 'understanding' of the extenuating circumstances at hand (plus some of their stuff are insured), and since you're a friend of the bosslady and all, decided to reduce your debt to 2 billion Yen. Plus all your current assets, including your house.
Oh, don't worry, they understand that you can't pay up immediately, so they'll try to find some jobs for you -- you'll get first priority. Plus they can arrange for some side gigs in their little, shall we say, red-light business if you're really hard-up. Oh and they won't take all your money, you'll get a bit to cover your living expenses and rent.
You start with 120 000 Yen at hand and a 2 billion Yen debt. Interest work out to about 1 million Yen per week (I doubt it gets prorated even if you pay the principal). First two weeks are only 500 thousand, since the bosslady is willing to pay the difference out of her own pocket. Also don't worry if you can't pay the interest for the week... it can be settled with just "One Video" instead. They're sure it'd sell!
Along with the rest of the district.
The police, naturally, covered the whole fiasco up as a 'gas leak' (denying allegations about a terrorist plot) . Miraculously, there were no casualties.
You wound up costing your employer 70 million worth of damages. Oh sure, no problem, you can pay it, you have 90+ million Yen in the bank at all...
But then the damage estimate turned out to be in dollars. Not Yen.
(Which work out to about 8 billion Yen. The Yakuza rep converted it as 6 billion, which may be based on older exchange rates.)
The Yakuza, being 'understanding' of the extenuating circumstances at hand (plus some of their stuff are insured), and since you're a friend of the bosslady and all, decided to reduce your debt to 2 billion Yen. Plus all your current assets, including your house.
Oh, don't worry, they understand that you can't pay up immediately, so they'll try to find some jobs for you -- you'll get first priority. Plus they can arrange for some side gigs in their little, shall we say, red-light business if you're really hard-up. Oh and they won't take all your money, you'll get a bit to cover your living expenses and rent.
You start with 120 000 Yen at hand and a 2 billion Yen debt. Interest work out to about 1 million Yen per week (I doubt it gets prorated even if you pay the principal). First two weeks are only 500 thousand, since the bosslady is willing to pay the difference out of her own pocket. Also don't worry if you can't pay the interest for the week... it can be settled with just "One Video" instead. They're sure it'd sell!
The PSIA has also decided to keep a tighter rein on Ren's activities by sending her minder (one Seijirou, basically a modern day ninja) to the field to monitor her directly. Of course, this turns out to be a boon for the player (despite Ren griping about it every chance she gets), since Seijirou is a pretty effective party member, especially in the early game.
Game Mechanics:
All shortcut are explain during the tutorial, but one easy to miss is "a) for opening the dungeon map !
Unlike most RPGMaker games, this game is a 1st-person dungeon crawler, like Wizardry and the Etrian Odyssey series (which is itself inspired by Wizardry). Some of you might have played the Raidy series or Lunasoft's Spirit Master of Retarnia, which also have you explore dungeons from a 1st-person perspective. You use arrow keys to move forward and turn your party left or right, and have an interaction key to interact with objects, doors, switches, staircases, elevators, etc. There is also a direction-lock key (I forgot which, spam keyboard keys until you find it) that lets you strafe without turning, and you get access to an automap (thankfully there's no need for old school map drawing by hand), which you can enlarge with the A key.
Enemies are of the random encounter type, with some event encounters that get triggered when you move onto certain map tiles or interact with certain objects. To add to the tension, you cannot save whenever you want while in a dungeon — you need to escape the dungeon or to find a resting point first (you can also recover for free there), so be careful as gun ammo an magic (TP) are limited (no shop in dungeon and TP don't regen even at lv up). Most enemies you fight are Lovecraftian-themed, so you'll fight lots of undeads, cultists, and eldritch tentacled abominations throughout the game. These have somewhat unique battle sprites (not the usual RPGMaker kind).
Battles are turn-based. Speedy characters/monsters get to act first. Uniquely for an RPGMaker game, characters also have 'bonus action' skills that don't end their current turn, letting them buff and shoot or do a quick snap-shot to finish off a low HP enemy before emptying most of the clip on a meatier target. Some upper end buffs also let a character perform two actions per turn (on top of their bonus action) while active.
A big difference compared to most rpg maker games is the fact that you won't just use the latest gear available - you'll have to use the best gear for the situation. Military grade armor have great physical defense, but low magic defense and can't be upgrade with magic. Magic clothes offer lower physical defense, but can be upgrade to boost magic resist depending on the magic you'll be facing for example.
Same goes for weapons - each weapons as pro and con, and can be upgraded. You'll have to chose which upgrade you'll want affixed on which weapon depending on the enemies / character using them.
Each character can perform melee attacks and shoot if they have a gun equipped. Some skills also have melee or shooting properties (the latter is usually keyed to a specific gun or type of gun). Spellcasters can also cast spells, while your non-spellcasters get 'spell-like' abilities that require items (like a flashbang or 'bazooka'/LAW) that are expended on use (which are notably not counted as spells, useful against certain bosses with magic resistance or reflect).
There is a wide variety of guns in this game, ranging from pistols to SMGs to shotguns to assault rifles to SAW machine guns to sniper rifles. The author pays great attention to the real world magazine sizes of each gun, but is otherwise liberal with the real world aspects of the weapons so you can have your ninja teammate fire a sniper rifle at near point blank range while wielding his katana, or your soldier guy lugging around a squad-support machine gun as though as it's as light as styrofoam while punching enemies and totally going down full CQC with them. Oh and you can customize your guns (especially the upper end ones) to ridiculous (in a good way) tacticool levels like multiple grips or scopes on one gun with extended mags and pyrotechnic ammo. Quite fun. Sadly you can't see the result of such weapons though.
Guns use ammo for each shot. Automatic weapons can fire multiple shots with one action (usually at a decreased accuracy). This makes guns exceptionally powerful sources of damage especially in the early to mid game. You recharge ammo by using magazines of the appropriate type (pistol mags for pistols and so on, mags are universal for each gun type). That said, ammo is otherwise treated as a stat like HP and MP (with your gun determining your max ammo), so there is an exploit in the game involving switching weapons.
Different characters have different weapon proficiencies (and cannot equip guns they are not trained in). Spellcasters generally have worse weapon proficiencies (Ren gets access to shotguns though, so she's good, since she's a hybrid archetype like most JRPG heroes). There are passive skills that raise the damage dealt by certain gun types.
Speaking about skills, each character has a large skill tree filled with many skills with prerequisite skills. You unlock and upgrade skills by spending skill points that are gained on level ups. Sadly, you can only see skills that are available for unlock/upgrade though — subsequent skills down the tree are hidden until you unlock their prerequisites. Assigned skill points are also locked in, so you can't freely reassign skill points. That said, most characters still have some use even with suboptimal skill assignment (passive skills still have an effect even if the character is held in reserve), as it it takes deliberate effort to junk a character. There is also a certain rare item that lets you respec a character and reassign skill points.
All the "town" interaction take the appearance of menu to move from one place to another and choose the action on each place.
Now, an important part of the gameplay is the resource management.
The main character will end up having a HUGE debt to repay after the end of the tutorial. You'll need weekly repay have well as interest to repay. So you'll only have limited fund for equipment (consumable & gear). Each dungeon take a day, being defeated in dungeon take 3 days (for recover). You'll have to choose wisely what to buy to make an earnings in the dungeon(s) to pay back the debt.
Most dungeons are associated with a mission from the main questline and are accessed from a central hub area — Ren's safehouse. Time passes when you exit a dungeon (certain other hub actions as well), so try not use too many days to explore a dungeon (unless you figure out a safe grinding route) because you need to pay interest on your loan every week.
The hub also lets you rest your characters and save your game. You can also view mail messages, which will sometimes unlock certain subquests. You can also review CG galleries here (by accessing a webpage run by the Great Race of Yith; timewarp fuckery is implied). You may also travel downtown to buy items (magic items from the fortune teller and black market supplies from the Yakuza), You may also choose to pay the PRINCIPAL of your loan when visiting the Yakuza bosslady; this unlocks new tiers of items as you reach certain milestones (you also get free items as gifts sometimes). There is also a bar of sorts downtown where you can visit to ask for information or to accept subquests.
Generally speaking, there is usually no hard failure state for this game. If you suffer a TPK in a dungeon, you just wake up three days later as though nothing as happened, and you also receive a Fool's Tarot Card (+1 skill point consumable) for troubles. This is despite seeing a scene where you Ren is ritually sacrifice while her teammates are turned into scraps of flesh. Again, Yith timewarp fuckery is implied. Of course, this can end up in a 'failure spiral' where you waste time and items on a failed run, causing you to be unable to fund your next expedition or pay the next interest installment, which forces Ren into prostitution. You can still clear the game, but there is one ending that requires Ren to not prostitute herself even once.
H-Content:
Scenes all involve rape or (forced) prostitution with human partners. There is some degree of corruption involved where Ren gets more and more willing over time (with increasing lewd stats), and a 'bad' end associated with it, but overall there is nothing too explicit or 'extreme' (the kind that caters to corruption fans). Scenes are all event-related, usually triggered in the safehouse (when not having enough money to pay interest) or downtown. There is the occasional scene which is triggered by dungeon events, but there is no GoR or in-battle scenes (the TPK scene is mostly text).
Controls:
Standard RPGMaker VX Ace ones, but dungeon movement is in first person so left/right arrow keys turn your party instead (unless you strafe-lock). There is a 'strafe-lock' key, which I can't remember the button for (it's been 3 years), and also a "show entire map" key, mapped to A. Likely some other keys as well, so try the usual suspects (QWASDZXCV CTRL SHIFT) first.
Wondering why no one created a topic for this game...
From the dev who made "Escape from the Lugome Fortress"
Such a big trial (276 MB). Downloading...
You must be registered to see the links
From the dev who made "Escape from the Lugome Fortress"
You must be registered to see the links
Such a big trial (276 MB). Downloading...
Last edited by a moderator:
, I do hope it's just a poor demo that doesn't demonstrate the strengths of the game. I quite like this guy's art style so I'll be keeping an eye out regardless. Thanks!
