Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Helping Your Boyfriend

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 122026
 

Over the weekend, I saw a post about a free horror romance visual novel called Helping Your Boyfriend, so I decided to give it a try.

You live with your boyfriend, a doctor named Adrian, who takes care of you due to a condition that left you unable to walk. You also take apart old dolls for him.

(With this premise and the knowledge that it’s horror, you might already have an idea of where this is going.)

The first thing I did was turn off the voices, because the voice acting came in the form of little laughs and things to accompany the lines, and it felt more distracting to me than anything else. I also puzzled over the difficulty settings for a while, because I couldn’t see what they affected…

…until I encountered a QTE where I had to hit buttons on a timer, and then I understood why there were difficulty options.

Yes, it’s not just a visual novel. There are minor adventure game elements in certain scenes, but also sections where you need to get past rapid QTEs or die. It adds a definite sense of urgency to those scenes, although a generous auto-save means dying doesn’t force you to repeat too much content.

Helping Your Boyfriend is pretty short, under two hours to get all four endings, but it manages its time well to build up a tense atmosphere. It also got me good with a jumpscare at one point.

My biggest criticism is that on subsequent playthroughs to get the other endings, I felt like I kept needing to hit the skip text button again (partly because of the number of dialogue options, but there were also times when I couldn’t tell if it wasn’t skipping or if the text was just slow regardless) instead of just skipping through smoothly.

Overall, however, Helping Your Boyfriend is a nice, creepy visual novel with some great moments. I’d recommend it if you like horror disguised as something cute or if your brain starts vibrating at the phrase “serial killer doctor.”

Celebrating All Things Spooky: ZENO Daily Life

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 092026
 

Last October, we talked about an intriguing horror adventure game called ZENO, and I mentioned that I might check out the side games.

So this October, I continued the ZENO journey with the sequel ZENO Daily Life.

Despite the title, it doesn’t have a slice-of-life focus or anything like that. Instead, the characters’ peaceful life quickly reaches a crisis when someone with new ideas about how to handle the ZENO virus puts his plan into action.

ZENO Daily Life is much shorter and simpler than the first game. You largely just interact with things in the environment to get items and move from place to place, with very little to figure out.

Well, except for navigating the map. My one complaint about ZENO Daily Life is that despite only having a few locations, it’s strangely confusing to find your way. The way areas connect isn’t intuitive, and at one point I got stuck only to find the entrance I needed in a place that didn’t look like an entrance at all.

Aside from that, I enjoyed this shorter ZENO experience. ZENO Daily Life isn’t as horror-focused as the first one (and even the cannibalism and murder take a backseat here), but it’s nice if you want to see more of these characters.

I know, that makes two “this isn’t quite horror” games in a row. We’ll pick up next week with some games more in the spirit of the month! In the meantime, what are your thoughts on ZENO Daily Life?

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Higurashi When They Cry – Rei

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video Games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 072026
 

Last year, I finished Higurashi When They Cry after a 70-hour journey and mentioned that there were still some bonus arcs left.

Well, I kicked off October by playing through the first of those bonus stories, Higurashi When They Cry Hou – Rei.

Rei consists of three stories. The first is Saikoroshi, which serves as an epilogue to the main game. Having reached a happy ending in the previous chapter, Rika now ends up in a different world where everything is different from the world she knows.

I mentioned last year that the horror label no longer quite fit the later parts of Higurashi, and the same applies here, to an extent. Saikoroshi lacks the “spooky” sort of horror that best fits October and instead features a much more somber mood that could still be seen as a type of horror. Although I liked the happy ending of the main story, I appreciate what this epilogue does and the questions it raises about what makes one world happier than another.

The second part is Hirukowashi, in which two ancient magatama are accidentally released. The holder of one will fall in love with whoever picks up the second, so when Rena accidentally swallows the first one, comedy antics ensue. It’s ridiculous and entertaining, but it also includes something truly terrifying: mahjong.

Yes, when the final section of Hirukowashi featured an extended look at a mahjong match, with characters talking about who had various hands and when to call riichi and various mahjong strategies, it was like reading another torture scene.

I’m kidding. Mostly.

The third and shortest part is Batsukoishi, which is basically just the characters discussing detailed fanservice scenarios they’d like to put other characters into as part of the punishment games. I assume this would have felt more ecchi if it had the CGs from the console version, but I never modded Higurashi, so it was just reading stuff like “imagine her cleaning the window with her butt.” Maybe I shouldn’t have played this game for spooky month…

Anyway, Higurashi When They Cry Hou – Rei was a nice capstone to the Higurashi experience, albeit not much of a horror game. You know, except for the mahjong.

If you’ve played Rei, what did you think of it?

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