Unrequited love, long-lost loves, opposites attract – no matter what the theme is, romantic media tends towards what we would call universal experiences or themes to which everyone can relate. This is especially the case in the visual novel Tricolour Lovestory, a game infused with romantic manga themes and whimsical notions of young love.
That’s right. Whether you’re a fan of romance novels or romantic films, you know that the genre has more than a few cliches to its name.
How to Download Tricolour Lovestory
The game can be downloaded from Steam. To start, click on the Download link. And if you like anime visual novels with love interests, try also ACE Academy, Doki Doki Literature Club! or Sabbat of the Witch.
The Game Review
Developed by Hi-GalGame and published by SakuraGame, Tricolour Lovestory is at points a beautifully crafted love story and also an engaging point-and-click style adventure.
Interestingly, despite its anime appearance and overtly Japanese style, Tricolour Lovestory actually takes place in China, Wuhan City specifically. This explains everything from the saccharine sweet C-Pop opening theme to the characters used in promotional pictures.
Like many other games in this genre, the gameplay mechanics put a premium on player choice and how the player interacts with the characters in the game. The devs are particularly proud of Tricolour Lovestory’s ability to reflect nuanced choices in the narrative and encourage players to make different choices on each playthrough for different outcomes and effects.
This isn’t abnormal for the genre but seems to be a particular focus for Tricolour Lovestory. If you don’t enjoy narrative-heavy games then you might want to pass up Tricolour Lovestory. That’s because there’s more text here than in most novels and it isn’t for people who don’t like reading. The voice acting is competent but it is in Chinese so, unless you understand Mandarin, you’re going to be doing a lot of reading.
And that’s the player’s main point of interaction with the game. Reading text and making choices might not sound like much of a game to most players but that is pretty much the meat and bones of this experience. That said, the writing is well done and the translation into English is actually pretty darn good – a rarity among any genre.
What can players expect when picking up Tricolour Lovestory?
Pretty much it is a high-school romantic comedy set in China with elements of a visual novel and point-and-click adventure. Its world is fully realized and the characters are actually interesting and make sense within it. It is a bit melodramatic, to be sure, but, being a romance visual novel game, that’s to be expected.
Where the game surprises is in how good it is. Not only is this a well-made game but the translation, artwork, music, and sound are all on point. Players that enjoy well-crafted tales with beautiful artwork should give Tricolour Lovestory a peek. For fans of the genre, it is almost a no-brainer but, for the rest of us, the game’s overwhelming quality might help get over any initial inhibitions gamers might have with the premise as a whole.
