You and Me and Her: A Love Story
| You and Me and Her: A Love Story | |
|---|---|
 Promo art | |
| Developer | Nitroplus |
| Platform | Windows |
| Release |
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| Genre | Visual novel |
You and Me and Her: A Love Story[a] is a 2013 eroge visual novel. Developed by Nitroplus, the game is about a Shinichi Susuki, a self-described loser who is caught between two romantic interests in his life: a strange young woman named Aoi Mukou who believes to receive messages from God that tells her she's a character in a romantic visual novel, and Miyuki who is Shinichi's childhood friend and the most popular girl at school. As Shinichi, the player must initially choose which girl to pursue romantically.
The game was released in Japan on June 28, 2013 and was localized for English-language audiences in 2020. Joshua Roorda of Hardcore Gaming 101 said that game did not gain much widespread recognition in the United States until this later release.
While released in both a version with and without erotic scenes, academics Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel wrote in their book The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels that You and Me and Her was a rare eroge, or erotic game, that was best experienced with the erotic scenes as they enhanced the plot and suggested audiences to enter it with little knowledge of the plot as possible while Roorda summarized the game as "a must-play visual novel for even the modest fan of this genre."[2]
Gameplay
For the first several hours of gameplay in You and Me and Her: A Love Story, the game operates as a visual novel.[3] These are narrative-focused games. where the player is able to impact the story's progression or world. The story and interactions in the games commonly presented through a text box and often employ forms of interaction which includes menu-choices. These menu options often employ additional forms of interaction including choices with set actions the player can perform or dialogue options that represent the player's character speech or thoughts. Visual novels have their stories progress when the player clicks, taps or presses a button to see the next part of story.[4]
The aesthetics of visual novels are often conveyed through static images of characters, background art, soundtracks and sound effects for feedback.[4] The game's point of view is from the protagonist Shinichi Suzuki.[3][2] His face is rarely shown beyond a few scenes where his eyes are obscured.[2] As Shinichi, the player can make choices that will determine his romantic partner by the end of the game.[3]
Academics Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel described the game as both an utsuge and eroge in their book The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels.[5] Utusuge or a depressing game, was described by academic Ana Matlde as being "unconducive to players' feeling "properly" rewarded at the end of the game."[6][7] They generally feature no happy endings and have few interactive choices.[6] An eroge, or erotic game, feature sexual content in which range from being put loosely into their stories to visual novels that require sexual content to advance a purposely disturbing story.[8]
Plot
Shinichi Susuki, a self-described loser who meets a strange young woman named Aoi Mukou on the rooftop of a school. Aoi's informs Shinichi that she can talk to God who told her that she is a heroine in a romantic visual novel.[3] Their meeting is interrupted by Miyuki Sone. Miyuki is Shinichi's beautiful childhood friend and currently the most popular girl in school.[3]
Eventually, Shinichi and Aoi have sex. Miyuki appears and breaks Aoi's head open with a baseball bat and kills Shinichi.[9] A blood-covered Miyuki, addresses the player for cheating on her and restarts the story with her own programmed event flags and consistently reminds the gamer that they are eternally in her narrative "route".[10] Miyuki prevents the player from exiting the game, deletes the game's save files and image gallery information that involves Miyuki.[11]
The game traps the player in the in a route where sex scenes are abundant and repetitive. Miyuki continues to have sex with Shinichi, using the character to communicate with the player whom she wishes will declare their love for her during sex.[12] The final decision between choosing Aoi or Miyuki will erases one of the characters from the game as the players watches them disappear on the screen.[13]
Production and release
You and Me and Her was developed by Nitroplus.[14] The illustrations in the game were by Santa Tsuji while it was written by Shimokura Vio.[1][15] Shimokura Vio was affiliated with Nitroplus who predominantly writes scenarios for adult games for personal computers (PCs). He was in charge of planning, scenario direction, and writing for You and Me and Her.[15]
Nitroplus announced You and Me and Her in December 2012 for release in mid-2013 in Japan for Windows-based personal computers.[1] It was sold on USB flash drives in Japan on June 28.[16][17] Miyuki and Aoi would re-appear in other Nitro Plus titles, such as the fighting game Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (2015).[18][19]
As an eroge, the game is available in censored and uncensored versions.[14] It was released to Western world in 2020.[3] Joshua Roorda of Hardcore Gaming 101 said that game did not gain much widespread recognition in the United States on as it wasn't localized until 2020. While the game features voice acting, the localized version does not features an English-language dub.[2]
Reception
At the end of 2013, the Japanese website 4Gamer.net polled 151 Japanese game developers on the games of year, asking the creators to state a game they either admired or had shocked them the most.[20][21] Yuji Shinoda, producer of Chain Chronicle for Sega and said the You and Me and Her had "truly struck a chord" with them, while game developer Takumi Nakazawa said he was deeply impressed by the games bold concepts and mechanics and motifs unique to the game as an adult-only release. He specifically recalled that it was exactly the story that could only work as an erotic game.[22][23]
From later English-language reviews, Roorda complimented score, graphics, voice acting. While saying the game had "odd patches in the story" it still "hits hard" concluding that "There are few games that use meta elements so effectively, and after the finale, so heartbreakingly, as well as this."[2] He concluded that the game was "a must-play visual novel for even the modest fan of this genre."[2]
Academics Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel wrote in their book The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels that You and Me and Her was best experienced without knowing the too much about the plot while saying it was a rarity in erotic games where the pornographic content adds to the story.[14] They suggested audiences to experience the game with the pornography scenes enabled as doing it without blunted the impact of the story as much of the dialogue is altered so much altered in the censored version that some exchanges would not make sense.[10]
Comparisons have been made with Dan Salvato's Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017), released four years after You and Me and Her as both games gradually reveal escape their reliance on well-worn narratives to shock an audience and reveal what Kretzschmar and Raffel described as both game's "true purpose".[3] Roorda also compared the titles, as well as Undertale (2015) as games that breaks the fourth wall successfully to deepen the emotional impact of the story, but also added that You and Me and Her did this before the release of these popular games.[2] A reviewer for Polygon complimented the game for its subversion of tropes, calling it "delightfully twisted."[11]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b c Loo 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g Roorda 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 178.
- ^ a b Camingue, Carstendottir & Melcer 2021, p. 11.
- ^ Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 180.
- ^ a b Sousa 2020, p. 74.
- ^ Sousa 2020, p. 89.
- ^ Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 154.
- ^ Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 178-179.
- ^ a b Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 179.
- ^ a b Cosmos 2015.
- ^ Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, pp. 179–180.
- ^ Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 182.
- ^ a b c Kretzschmar & Raffel 2023, p. 239.
- ^ a b Taitai 2013a.
- ^ Mertz 2013.
- ^ Taitai 2013c.
- ^ Romano 2015.
- ^ Vincent 2015.
- ^ Nutt 2013.
- ^ Arai & Iriguchi 2013a.
- ^ Arai & Iriguchi 2013b.
- ^ Arai & Iriguchi 2013c.
Sources
- Arai, Yosuke; Iriguchi (December 27, 2013). "今年は総勢151名。ゲーム業界著名人に聞く2013年の注目タイトルと2014年へのメッセージ" [This Year's Total: 151 Participants. Game Industry Leaders Reveal Their Most Anticipated Titles of 2013 and Messages for 2014]. 4gamer.net (in Japanese). p. 1. Archived from the original on November 23, 2025. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Arai, Yosuke; Iriguchi (December 27, 2013). "今年は総勢151名。ゲーム業界著名人に聞く2013年の注目タイトルと2014年へのメッセージ". 4gamer.net (in Japanese). p. 6. Archived from the original on December 15, 2025. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Arai, Yosuke; Iriguchi (December 27, 2013). "今年は総勢151名。ゲーム業界著名人に聞く2013年の注目タイトルと2014年へのメッセージ". 4gamer.net (in Japanese). p. 9. Archived from the original on November 27, 2025. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Camingue, Janelynn; Carstendottir, Elin; Melcer, Edward F. (September 2021). "What is a Visual Novel?". Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 5 (Chi Play) 257. Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/3474712. ISSN 2573-0142. Retrieved November 5, 2025.
- Cosmos, AM (July 15, 2015). "How to Understand and Play Dating Sims". Polygon. Vox Media. Archived from the original on July 21, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Kretzschmar, Mark; Raffel, Sara (2023). The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-5013-6862-2.
- Loo, Egan (December 29, 2012). "Nitro+ to Release Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi. Game". Anime News Network. Kadokawa Corporation. Archived from the original on December 31, 2012.
- Mertz, Joanne (April 26, 2013). "Nitro+'s Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi's 2nd Promo, Story, Characters Revealed". Anime News Network. Kadokawa Corporation. Archived from the original on January 29, 2026.
- Nutt, Christian (December 26, 2013). "Japanese Developers Pick The Last of Us as Game of the Year". Game Developer. Informa TechTarget. Archived from the original on August 27, 2021. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Romano, Sal (January 15, 2015). "Ignis and Anna join Nitroplus Blasterz". Gematsu. Archived from the original on April 5, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Roorda, Joshua (July 22, 2021). "You and Me and Her: A Love Story". Hardcore Gaming 101. Archived from the original on July 28, 2021. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Sousa, Ana Matilde (Fall 2020). "She's Not Your Waifu; She's an Eldritch Abomination: Saya no uta and Queer Antisociality in Japanese Visual Novels". Mechademia: Second Arc. 13 (1). University of Minnesota Press: 72–100. doi:10.5749/mech.13.1.0072.
- Taitai (November 9, 2013). "イシイジロウ氏ら第一線で活躍するクリエイターがアドベンチャーゲームを語り尽くす！――「弟切草」「かまいたちの夜」から始まった僕らのアドベンチャーゲーム開発史（前編）" [Ishii Jiro and Other Leading Creators Discuss Adventure Games in Depth! —Our Adventure Game Development History, Beginning with “Otogirisō” and “Kamaitachi no Yoru” (Part 1)]. 4gamer.net (in Japanese). p. 1. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Taitai (November 9, 2013). "イシイジロウ氏ら第一線で活躍するクリエイターがアドベンチャーゲームを語り尽くす！――「弟切草」「かまいたちの夜」から始まった僕らのアドベンチャーゲーム開発史（前編）". 4gamer.net (in Japanese). p. 3. Archived from the original on May 26, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
- Vincent, Brittany (February 2, 2015). "Nitroplus Blasters Adds Four New Faces to its Extensive Roster". Destructoid. Gamurs Group. Archived from the original on December 5, 2025. Retrieved February 13, 2026.