This is a new erotic/romantic comedy VN from Christine Love and Raide. The people behind Analogue a Hate Story and Hate Plus.
You are the twin sister of a devious and manipulative man who is black mailed into cross dressing and assuming his identity on a week long cruise with all his class mates and have to try and blend in and pretend to be him. You are a pretty firm lesbian and thankfully most of the women you will interact with are either lesbian, bi or open enough to suggestions.
There are two main romance routes you can follow, but most people you interact with are open to flirtation and going further after a few times together. However you do have to be careful as well. Your twin has many enemies in the class and if you are not careful you can raise too much suspicion about not being him and end up locked in a cargo hold and used to try and hurt him.
The way this works in practice is that you have a 5 bar gauge of suspicion and if all 5 fill up then it is game over. At least until you reload a previous checkpoint. Typically the suspicion building options will be optional prompts, but not always. So you will build up suspicion as the time passes. Luckily one of the romance options also has the ability to clear things up and remove the built up suspicion you have gained. But there is a steep price for her help. Your submission to her at night.
The story and systems of the game do make strong points about domination, submission and power exchange as a whole. And it is used in good well described roles and intelligent in its portrayal of BDSM. Even as the titles load up there is a screen emphasising how power exchange must be consensual and with full communication and trust.
The game uses an art style that is semi Manga/Anime. Although Raide himself is South Korean I believe and it is a style more akin to their native styles. The title itself is graphic and at least in its Humble Store version DRM free and uncensored.
The game is not cheap at £23 and its dollar equivalent. But for me I feel it is well worthwhile. Each playthrough is approximately 6 hours covering 7 days in game time. The game plays out with the day being split into segments and it will ask you who you want to spend time with. The choices there will have an approximate difficulty and how many marks of suspicion you might earn in that scene. Each person has 5 or 6 scenes to their stories so there is option to replay and see what different interactions or flings you might get into. It also has 3 different epilogues to discover as well. There is also a game within the game as a challenge is set up where each person on the cruise is given a single vote which can be given to anyone else on the cruise. An announcement early on says that the person with the most votes after the week will win $5m. So you can also approach the game trying to play and manipulate the others for their votes.
For those not in the know Christine is a trans woman developer who has spent the last 3 years working on this game. All her previous titles have had good LGBT aspects as well. Talking about discrimination or how many are pressured into hiding by changes in society. In the case of Analogue/Hate Plus it focuses on when a neo confucianism conservative rule took over in Korea, but posits it into a future version on a long lost space ship where the events of the past repeat themselves.
Ladykiller is very much a present day tale rather than Sci Fi. But is very much worth a look over. Obviously if Visual Novels are really not your thing then this will not likely convert you, but if you have enjoyed some or are just interested in a good story with some erotic moments. Also humour and deeper connotations especially when it comes to sexuality in late teens and challenges faced by many LGBTQ people then you could do a lot worse then supporting Love Conquers All games and check this out.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/ladykiller-in-a-bind
