I was first introduced to eroge in the late 90s at the precocious age of 14 via an old IRC chatroom I used to visit (that ironically was made for RPGMaker but mostly became a hangout for people who liked RPGs) They were often passed around and referred to as “hentai games” From there I sought out every “hentai game” I could find.

Among them was a game called Divi-dead. Despite not being a big fan of horror (I’d been freaked out by very mild horror films/games before) I found the art enticing enough that, despite it being over 100 megabytes (in an age of dial-up), I ended up downloading it as soon as I came across it.

Make no mistake, it was a pretty creepy and gory game, but I found comfort in the visual novel interface. Being able to control things made it much easier to stomach the unnerving parts, and thanks to that I was actually allowed to become interested in the story itself. A story which was pretty wild.

Years eventually went by and I forgot most of what happened in the game. Somewhere in the mid 2000s I looked it up again to find out that apparently the translation had been pretty bad, and when I started learning Japanese, I thought it might be fun to actually reread it to see if I could get a better handle on the story.

Well that’s exactly what I did. Now I cant claim I understood everything 100%, but I did read through it again recently (obtaining all endings)

It was good. I can’t say it held up as well as it did when I was younger, simply because I’m not as driven by hormones (Back in the day the art was pretty enticing) Though I do really like one of the concepts behind one of the endings (which I believe ultimately inspired stories I would write later as a teenager)

The game does kind of suffer from the whole “Check everywhere for the spot you need to go for the next scene” loop. It also has no previously read text feature. Thus, I ended up forgoing a completely blind playthrough and instead followed a guide for all routes.

Best-girl is Sachiko