In Winter Wolves’ first The Flower Shop game, we were introduced to a Steve the slacker who, after a summer working at his uncle’s farm in the small town of Fairbrook, realized he needed to get his act together and maybe even found love with one of the four young women in his life. Now, Winter Wolves has teamed with Sakevisual for the sequel, which introduces us to an entitled young woman named Natalie whose parents insisted she get a job over her winter break to learn responsibility. It’s time for Fairbrook and its residents to work their magic again….

Hi everyone and good morning! It’s Friday and time for your casual game update for the past week. This week saw seven new games released, two of which can also be played on Macs. There’s a nice variety of titles to sort through this week, as there’s not only hidden object games that were released. There was also a new visual novel, not to mention a match-3 and strategic simulation.

This week’s best bet is: Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook (Windows, Mac, Linux)…

So, Hatoful Boyfriend. Yeah. Way to go proving those Japanese gaming stereotypes right Japan!

Here, I’ll translate the title. That should be enough to give you an idea of the crack-tacular adventure you’re going to embark upon if you play this free, recently translated into English, dating sim. Hato means pigeon. Hatoful is a combination of “Hato” and “Beautiful”. So basically it’s Pigeon-Beautiful Boyfriend.

Did I just blow your mind? I knew I would…

Aksys has taken on the challenging task of not only releasing a PSP game late in the handheld’s life cycle, but also choosing an otome visual novel as its next game. Allow me to clarify for those of you now going, “Bwah?” An otome game is a dating sim for girls. A visual novel is pretty much a choose your own adventure story. Are we good? Good. The question is, how does Aksys get people to crave Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom? It’s actually a pretty easy task, especially since there are a lot of girl gamers out there who have been asking for an otome adventure for a while.

To get people interested and invested in Hakuoki, Aksys has decided to go all out on the website…

If you follow Japanese trends, then odds are you’ve heard of the Starry Sky series, but not because of the games. Rather, because of the surprisingly popular shojo (girl’s) anime series that this four part otome (girl’s dating sim) visual novel inspired. I’m going to be blunt here – the Starry Sky series as a whole is tripe. It’s insubstantial, light, fluff that you can breeze through within a few hours. Granted, it’s satisfying and cute tripe, but it isn’t particularly memorable and not one of the finest otome visual novel out there. Especially since whatever ending you earn in Starry Sky in Spring Portable will quickly be forgotten and cast aside once you start playing the immediate follow-up, Starry Sky in Summer Portable…

Lucky Rabbit Reflex stars a fairly normal, 17 year old heroine who lives in the UK. She’s in her last year of college (high school) and has just transferred to Northmain College. Little does she know that she’s a blank slate with her whole future ahead of her and she may just make friendships and build relationships that may last her a lifetime. She just has to plan her schedule so she participates in the right activities and says the right things to the people who matter…

You know how you kind of expect the weirdest video games ever to come out of Japan. Well, prepare yourself for another one. Though honestly, Bakudan Handan, an Idea Factory otome (girl’s dating sim) game doesn’t score as high on the weirdness scale as games like Kyuiin (PS1) and Duel Love (DS). It’s a PSP game involving a hostage situation at an amusement park, love and Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune.

Okay, I guess that is still pretty weird.

And no, that screenshot is not from Bakudan Handan….

Otome fans all throughout North America rejoiced when Aksys announced it would bring us Idea Factory’s PSP game, Hakuoki: Shinsengumi Kitan as Hakuouki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom. 2012 is still a long ways away though, and that’s how long we have to wait before we’ll actually get to play it in English. In the meantime, here’s a brief recap on Hakuoki to help get you up to date on the series, anime and real Shinsengumi.

Anime Expo isn’t the place one would imagine a company announcing its forthcoming games, but that’s exactly what Aksys did today. The company attended Anime Expo 2011 and held a panel earlier today (July 2, 2011). There it announced two PSP games with dating sim elements, one being Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom and the other Fate/Extra. Of course, given that both are games with anime series that go along with them, being Hakuoki and Fate/stay Night, it makes sense….

Zeiva Inc., and independent developer, has just taken the plunge and released X-Note, it’s first commercial game. The result is an mystery visual novel with dating sim elements and multiple endings that is reminiscent of Hanako’s Fatal Hearts, another supernatural, indie adventure. It’s an interesting and pretty initial endeavor, despite its flaws, and proves that Zeiva Inc. has a lot of potential.