This game is the Scott Pilgrim of 2020~ for women.
This game takes the idea of a dating sim and adds some flashy color that appeals to a Western audience and makes it look like it's something brand new.
This game is quite funny because dating/raising sims from Japan are usually considered as something bad in the West, many parodies of dating sims were released in the West like that one Normal Boots game with Projared or that KFC visual novel, but this one received no hate since the translation didn't just translate the text, it's a full-on localization to make it seem like a game made in the west, and for the longest time I thought it was a western game. I'd like to give credit to the translation team for making this game seem seamless without letting a single Japanese oddity get in the way, there's not a single reference to some cultural Japanese thing or anything which is a far cry from the literal translation that sure tries to go for what the original writer had in mind but ends up being weird and actually doesn't really works in the English language.
This game reminds me a lot of Princess Maker which is a game about raising a little girl into becoming a grown and proper princess, the game pretty much works the same with the stress, activities, and skill points based on the activities you allow her to do during the day. Unlike Needy Streamer Overload this game happens in a Western medieval setting which is expected considering we are raising a princess, but what perplexes me is why isn't that game getting as much popularity as this one. It might be because the games are a bit dated, or maybe because they feel too "Japanese".
From what I've noticed people seem to like Needy Streamer Overload because of the art style and character, people don't really care about the gameplay, they just care about the quirky girl and the setting she is placed in and how she behaves making people wanting to be her or relating to her. I think it's a shame that the gameplay is overlooked simply because of the personality, if people cared about the gameplay then they'd also care about the Princess Maker franchise.
Thinking more and more about this, another franchise suffered a similar fate, this franchise is "Idolm@ster". It's a widely known franchise in Japan, and especially during its heyday which was when the franchise ditched the raising sim aspect of the franchise which was utilized in the early games from 2007 to 2014, and now mostly just focuses on mobile games that have no raising aspects, even the later console games stopped being about raising idols and mostly just about rhythm gameplay, it's not always a bad thing as the Idolm@ster raising gameplay was a bit rough at times but you can see that most people cared about the girls themselves rather than the gameplay, and princess maker having no redeeming iconic girls or anything else that could let the franchise live past it's raising sim age. So I wouldn't be surprised if the creator of the game would pick up the art style of the game with its character and just put it in something else as if it never was about raising in the first place, I might be thinking about this too deeply but I doubt I'm far from being wrong.
Other than me ranting about game localization, women, and the death of raising sims, is this game any good? It is quite entertaining to play, similar to how Princess Maker did it it's some sort of playground where you mix and match combinations of actions to get different endings, getting all ending without a guide is obviously a chore as a tradition for raising/dating sims but it's really easy to get enjoyment out of this game. The English translation can get a bit on the nerves with how cringe-inducing it can get but honestly, it's mostly just cringe with how realistic some dialogue is, it really feels like you are talking to a woman using Twitter, right oomfie?
This game takes the idea of a dating sim and adds some flashy color that appeals to a Western audience and makes it look like it's something brand new.
This game is quite funny because dating/raising sims from Japan are usually considered as something bad in the West, many parodies of dating sims were released in the West like that one Normal Boots game with Projared or that KFC visual novel, but this one received no hate since the translation didn't just translate the text, it's a full-on localization to make it seem like a game made in the west, and for the longest time I thought it was a western game. I'd like to give credit to the translation team for making this game seem seamless without letting a single Japanese oddity get in the way, there's not a single reference to some cultural Japanese thing or anything which is a far cry from the literal translation that sure tries to go for what the original writer had in mind but ends up being weird and actually doesn't really works in the English language.
This game reminds me a lot of Princess Maker which is a game about raising a little girl into becoming a grown and proper princess, the game pretty much works the same with the stress, activities, and skill points based on the activities you allow her to do during the day. Unlike Needy Streamer Overload this game happens in a Western medieval setting which is expected considering we are raising a princess, but what perplexes me is why isn't that game getting as much popularity as this one. It might be because the games are a bit dated, or maybe because they feel too "Japanese".
From what I've noticed people seem to like Needy Streamer Overload because of the art style and character, people don't really care about the gameplay, they just care about the quirky girl and the setting she is placed in and how she behaves making people wanting to be her or relating to her. I think it's a shame that the gameplay is overlooked simply because of the personality, if people cared about the gameplay then they'd also care about the Princess Maker franchise.
Thinking more and more about this, another franchise suffered a similar fate, this franchise is "Idolm@ster". It's a widely known franchise in Japan, and especially during its heyday which was when the franchise ditched the raising sim aspect of the franchise which was utilized in the early games from 2007 to 2014, and now mostly just focuses on mobile games that have no raising aspects, even the later console games stopped being about raising idols and mostly just about rhythm gameplay, it's not always a bad thing as the Idolm@ster raising gameplay was a bit rough at times but you can see that most people cared about the girls themselves rather than the gameplay, and princess maker having no redeeming iconic girls or anything else that could let the franchise live past it's raising sim age. So I wouldn't be surprised if the creator of the game would pick up the art style of the game with its character and just put it in something else as if it never was about raising in the first place, I might be thinking about this too deeply but I doubt I'm far from being wrong.
Other than me ranting about game localization, women, and the death of raising sims, is this game any good? It is quite entertaining to play, similar to how Princess Maker did it it's some sort of playground where you mix and match combinations of actions to get different endings, getting all ending without a guide is obviously a chore as a tradition for raising/dating sims but it's really easy to get enjoyment out of this game. The English translation can get a bit on the nerves with how cringe-inducing it can get but honestly, it's mostly just cringe with how realistic some dialogue is, it really feels like you are talking to a woman using Twitter, right oomfie?