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Features, MoeGamer Awards 2018

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Character I Learned to Love

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by AK.

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A really interesting aspect of characterisation is when creators are able to put together a character who might initially seem obnoxious or odious in some way, then gradually bring the player to sympathise with them — or at least vaguely understand them –over the course of the complete narrative.

It’s a difficult thing to pull off, for sure; the most common approach taken to create this effect is to have an “anti-hero” main character, but in those instances it’s very easy to go overboard on the edginess and just create someone who is an unrelatable sociopath or psychopath.

But when it’s done right, it can make for some really interesting storytelling. So who fell into that category for me this year…?

And the winner is…

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From the Archives, READ.ME

From The Archives: Man, I Feel Like a Woman… Oh, Wait

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What would you do if you suddenly found that you’d changed sex?

That’s the core question in Crowd’s X-Change, localized for us Westerners by Peach Princess. At heart, it’s an interesting question and, frankly, one that I have found myself pondering in quieter moments — as, I’m sure, have many of you reading this, regardless of whether you identify as male or female, or even if you’ve taken that next step and started to explore your gender identity further.

Either way, wondering if the “grass is greener,” so to speak, is a fundamental part of human nature, so of course I was always going to jump at the opportunity to play something that explored these themes.

What I found was… hmm. Perhaps not the best example of a visual novel you’ll ever come across, to say the least, though it is at least something that warrants a certain amount of discussion, if only because it’s quite a well-known title.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2013 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been edited and republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

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From the Archives, READ.ME

From the Archives: Reading Deeper into Magical Diary

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I realize I’m being terribly unorthodox here, but after playing the subject of last week’s column a little more, I feel the urge to talk about it for the second week in a row.

And this time I’m going to get spoilery, so those of you who have not yet played Magical Diary and are intending to do so may wish to look away now.

Today we’re going to examine the character of Damien and the protagonist’s relationship with him, because this is by far one of the most interesting things about Magical Diary’s magical high school drama.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: Reading Deeper into Magical Diary →