Have you ever wondered how Danganronpa would have looked like if it was an eroge? Well, now’s your perfect chance to find out.

Release: 2017 (Xuse)
Writers:  Kuro
Japanese difficulty: Easy
English: None
Ratings: VNDB (7.72); EGS (8.08)

Kamisama no Game doesn’t attempt to be a literary masterpiece, but you can’t go wrong with it if you’re into death game genre and are looking for pure fun. It introduces a bunch of likable and surprisingly profound characters who then have to go through a very psychologically rigorous game of sex and death which unravels all sorts of unexpected parts of their personalities.

At first I thought the premise sounded like something from a nukige, but then I was very pleasantly surprised to find that despite the abundancy of ero scenes, not only the game had its main focus on the plot, but it also did a fantastic job at using sex for character development and making the whole death game more emotionally charged.

Basically, try killing one girl out of a five… and then try killing one girl out of a five after having gone as intimate as having had sex with each of them. It really shuffles everything up in a way that’s not readily apparent at first and moves the torment of the decision to a whole other level.

What’s better is that the game’s rules are extremely well thought-out, and it’s organic — evolves as the time passes — so the experience never gets stale. At first you may think that it’s a bit too lenient and may be beaten with minimal sacrifices as long as everyone’s being smart, but… you have no idea how insane it becomes on the second half. I absolutely love when works play with my expectations, and this one kept pulling the rug from under me with every twist.

The only real negative that doesn’t come bundled with the genre that I can come up with is that the ending of the game is a little underwhelming. I’m not sure if they were going for a sequel bait or figured to leave it a bit open, but it kind of lacks on catharsis and punch. It’s actually not even that bad of an ending regardless if there will be a continuation, but the plot that leads to it is just so packed with power and sets such expectations that nothing short of a nuclear bang would have sufficed to make it justice, and it certainly isn’t that.

Anyway, if you’re up for some undiluted fun with lots of ero that also somehow manages to add a surprising amount of depth to its characters, go no further and check Kamisama no Game out. I got totally sucked into it and enjoyed pretty much every minute of the experience (granted I was a big fan of this genre ever since watching Cube — a movie that actually gets referenced in the game — in my childhood).

Oh yeah, and this is probably the first plotge eroge I played that managed to successfully integrate its ero with plot to this extent. It would have never happened if it wasn’t an eroge, and almost everything that happens on ero scenes is pivotal to the plot.

P.S. Kokoro is fucking nuts, don’t underestimate her.