Echo is a visual novel with such impressive and rarely seen depth that delivers a truly touching and personal experience, one that reads like a heart-to-heart from the writer to the reader. It is a shame, therefore, that The Smoke Room feels antithetical to Echo, never seeking to go beyond the surface level and instead only acting as a shallow puddle far removed from what made Echo so beloved.

What stands as a prequel to a story playing on the diversion of the overabundance of romance VNs of its time, The Smoke Room instead takes a nosedive into the opposite direction and ditches any sort of narrative cohesion and purpose in order to provide an erotica of supposedly epic proportions. Just witnessed a murder? Why not try 69! Barely escaped a monster in the woods? What better time than a threesome!

Understandably, there is to be sex in a story based around a prostitute, but these scenes are never written to be anything more than a pleasuring reward for anyone who stuck around with a plot that uses many words to say nothing of interest. It speaks for itself that I have nothing to say about the "horror" in this VN; It's hard to be afraid of or have any reaction to anything when you know that nothing you read matters and thus you have no reason to be invested in the characters or world.

I tried to give TSR leeway over the years for being led by a different writer than Echo, but ultimately anything to be found in this VN only serves to push you forward to the erotica, and as a result I was pushed away from reading it any further and regretted what I had already read.

Pretty gay, and pretty good! A lot more nuanced than I expected from it and a lot less concise than I wanted it to be. I really appreciate the dedication towards preserving the horror elements that precede this in Echo while still trying to tackle some of the more oppressive themes of homophobia that something set in this time period in this part of the country might have. I obviously don't have a lot of historical context for things were, I'm mostly just going off of what I know and what I feel, more than anything.
I'm excited to see this all the way through! I think it's well written and characterized, but unfortunately some of the routes drag on for a bit too long and one of them especially starts making turns towards the melodramatic. It's kinda disappointing with that route specifically because it's one that I think has the most potential, for sure. Regardless of that, my curiosity into The Smoke Room has been sated, and I will definitely revisit this when there's more substantial updates or when there's a full release, like my original plan was.
Love me some gay furries!