The ambitious and heartfelt sequel is back!note
The second game in the Kokoro series stars Player Tuu, "your average sweaty goofball" and a third-year student at Sakura Blossom Academy. Players guide her through one of three possible routes, each one focusing on one of the game's three love interests: Moku, who returns from the first game, Genki, or Kuuru.
The game was taken down from Game Jolt but is now available on itch.io
(NSFW warning).
"Welcome to the tropes of Kokoro!"
- Amazonian Beauty: What Tuu considers Genki.
Tuu: (thinking) Even her breasts look like they could beat me up.
- Ambiguous Time Period: According to Prof. Balsawood at the start of the game, the story takes place in the year 201X. Furthermore, Moku wears a MAGA hat at one point, which narrows the time period to between 2016-2019.
- Animation Bump: Compared to the first game, there's a lot more animation for some characters.
- Compared to the rest of the game, Moku's transformation into Neko Neko Princess and subsequent mass-murder of a bunch of Yakuza are animated much better than the rest of the game.
- Art Shift: Happens for event CGs, which feature hand-drawn or painted backgrounds and more detail on the characters compared to their sprites.
- Backstory: The player learns about each love interest's past through their own routes, and even some in the other routes.
- Back for the Finale: After being absent for the whole game, Sensei returns to tell the girls about their new mission depending on the route.
- Beach Episode: There's a scene where Tuu, Kuuru, Genki, and Genko play volleyball in the latter two's backyard beach.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted during a fistfight between two girls; The loser gets their face bruised and bloodied.
- Berserk Button:
- Moku doesn't take too kindly to her friendship with someone being compromised.
- Oppai, the main characters' teacher and Moku's older sister, despises it when Moku misbehaves.
- Kuuru is almost always calm... unless someone messes with one of her sock puppets.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mokuyoubi seems friendly… for a bit. They're quickly shown to be a bully, a manipulator, and potentially even a mass-murderer.
- Bragging Rights Reward: If the player reaches one of the three main girls' sex scenes, then that girl's panties will show up on the title screen.
- Bully Turned Buddy: Either of two school bullies can become this to Tuu depending on the route.
- Cast of Snowflakes: While small, the entire cast is visually distinct from each other.
- Cat Girl: Neko Neko Princess, returning from the first game.
- Cerebus Syndrome: While it's still a comedic parody, compared to the first game there's a good amount of dramatic moments, with the story actually taking itself seriously multiple times. Within the game itself, however...
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: Depending on which love interest the player pursues, the point in the story, and the ending that they get, the tone can be anywhere between lighthearted and comedic to depressing or horrific.
- Content Warning: One appears every time upon start-up.
- Cool Shades: At different points in the story, Moku wears either brown-tinted shades or red-tinted ones. Aniki and another man each sport a black opaque pair.
- Crazy Enough to Work: At one point in the story, someone comes up with a plan to glide across a giant sewer pit with a poncho. It works.
- Crazy-Prepared: Downplayed. Kuuru carries scissors in her panties, which comes in handy when Tuu plans to use her own hair to use as tinder for a torch.
- Creative Closing Credits: The credits show chibi versions of the characters and development team falling to the ground and then walking offscreen.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Genki can potentially give someone a nasty beat-down to the point where she makes them vomit from punching them so much.
- Cutting Off the Branches: The canon ending of Kokoro No Doki Doki Senpai is the Bad End where Player squirts mustard on Moku and dies from spontaneous combustion.
- Dark and Troubled Past: A few characters, Moku, Genki, and Kuuru in particular.
- The Day the Music Lied: If the player chooses to fight the unseen creature that confronts Tuu and Kuuru in the sewer, then the funky and upbeat "Face Punch" plays... until Tuu starts charging at it blindly.
- Demoted to Extra: Emo goes from being a major supporting character to having only a handful of appearances throughout the game.
- Deuteragonist: Each girl on their own route respectively.
- Developer's Foresight: When Prof. Balsawood asks the player to type in their name at the start of the game, he'll say "But I'm pretty sure that's not your real name" regardless of what they put. That is unless they type Tuu's name, in which case he'll say "Unfortunately, that's your real name."
- Dialogue Tree: Several ones occur in Moku's and Kuuru's routes.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Moku tries to murder Genki just for them wanting to be friends with Tuu.
- Downloadable Content: The NSFW "Fan Disk", which contains a developer's commentary, concept art, and sex scenes that coincide with a particular point in each of the three routes.
- Dysfunction Junction: Moku, Genki, and Kuuru all have their own major problems.
- Epic Fail:
- During Oppai's spelling bee, the player can get every word wrong and score zero points. Doing this prompts Oppai to roll her eyes in annoyance when she announces your score.
- When Tuu and Genki fight each other, it's possible for Tuu to beat her... by going into a fetal position and having Genki trip over her.
- The player can potentially make Tuu attempt to jump across a giant sewer pit. It goes as well as one would expect.
- Erotic Eating: Downplayed. Moku sucks on a sausage, but she does so with what Tuu describes as "a morose dead gaze in her eyes."
- Evolving Title Screen: See Bragging Rights Reward above.
- Faceless Masses: The rare background with people in it, thanks to a blur effect. In a strip club, a group of people are portrayed as completely gray with black outlines.
- Fanservice: Half the point of the Fan Disk, which features sex scenes between Tuu and one of the three main girls.
- First-Episode Twist: Happens at the start of each story branch depending on the character.
- Moku's route: Tuu replaces Genki as Moku's best friend.
- Genki's route: Moku denounces Genki as her friend due to the latter truly becoming friends with Tuu, and Genki becomes depressed as a result.
- Kuuru's route: Moku and Genki abandon Tuu, prompting Kuuru to pity her and the two to become friends.
- First-Person Shooter: There's a Doom-like minigame when Tuu, Kuuru, and Aniki have to fight through a horde of alien parasites.
- Foil: Kuuru's route contrasts her's and Tuu's positive friendship (and potential relationship) with Moku's and Genki's toxic friendship, where they both encourage each other to be worse people by bullying Tuu and Kuuru. While Tuu and Kuuru butt heads at times, they both support each other, with Tuu encouraging Kuuru to be more positive and Kuuru encouraging her to think outside the box.
- Foreshadowing:
- When Tuu first meets Moku and Genki, the former snaps at the latter for making a lighthearted jab at Moku's expense, which is the first hint that Moku isn't as nice as she was in the first game.
- Early on, Moku jokes about her parents being dead, which surprisingly isn't initially relevant. That is until it's revealed as Oppai's excuse for abusing Moku.
- For Want Of A Nail: If Kuuru didn't bring Tuu into her bedroom, then the two of them wouldn't have fallen into the sewer due to Kuuru's floor caving in.
- Fully-Clothed Nudity: Inverted. The player can get Kuuru to undress down to her underwear and stockings, which arouses Tuu. But then, the player can get Kuuru to take her stockings off, at which point Tuu then freaks out as if Kuuru was nude.
- Gainax Ending: Every single ending. Regardless of the story branch, Tuu and at least one of the three main girls get kidnapped by the Secret Earth Government. They're then told of an alien attack on Earth, that SEC has chosen the girls to defend Earth from the aliens, and that they'll be continuing their training in Sakura Blossom Space Academy. The suddenness of these endings is alleviated a little bit for the few people who played the first game and paid attention to certain story beats, as well as Kuuru's ending making the most sense considering the events that happen during most of it.
- Genre-Busting: The game initially seems like just a romance game. However, depending on the route the game can also become a raising sim or even sci-fi horror.
- Hot Springs Episode: There's a brief scene where Tuu (tries to) relax with Genki and Genko in their backyard hot spring.
- Hotter and Sexier: The game is about as lewd as its predecessor... not taking the DLC into account.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: Kuuru, who's smart yet very reserved.
- Karma Houdini: Oppai, who never receives any comeuppance for abusing Moku and likely influencing her to be the scumbag she is now.
- Keywords Conversation: Happens a few times, with the largest one being the spelling bee, where the player listens to a word and must manually type it out correctly.
- Kinky Role-Playing: In the DLC, Tuu and Moku role-play as a prisoner and... a Soviet Union warden.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: See Cutting Off the Branches above.
- Multiple Endings: There are six endings that the player can achieve depending on whose route they chose.
- Raising Sim: The majority of Genki's route, and the determining factor in whether the player earns her Good Ending or not.
- Reformed Bully: Genki in Moku's route and her own route.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Kuuru can become this, from having to remove her clothing for various reasons to having to wear a stripperific outfit.
- Schrödinger's Question:
- At the very start of the game, Prof. Balsawood asks the player for "sex", which the player can answer "Boy", "Girl", or "Yes, please!" Subverted in that the correct answer is "Girl", since the player character is Tuu.
- Prof. Balsawood then asks for the player's name. This gets subverted again by him saying that he's sure whatever name the player put in is wrong. See Developer's Foresight for the exception.
- Sci-Fi Horror: Kuuru's route, specifically her and Tuu trying to escape from a sewer system infested with alien parasites.
- Screen Shake: Used a lot for impacts, such as when Tuu jumps through her second-story window and crashes into the ground below in her introductory scene.
- Sequel Hook: The game ends with a teaser for Kokoro Space Academy. Sadly, the project was cancelled a while ago.
- Skinny Dipping: Conversed between Genki and Tuu when they hang out at the former's house.
Genki: "Hey! How about we go skinny-dipping?"
Tuu: (thinking) "Why does she do this to me?"
Tuu: "Uh... maybe later. Let's keep some clothes on for now."
Genki: "Fine."
- Sleeps in the Nude: Implied when Tuu goes to bed after her computer makes her room hot from being on all day.
- Story Branching: The largest branch happens about an hour in; Depending on whether or not the player wins Oppai's spelling bee on top of their (potential) choice afterwards, they'll do either Moku's, Genki's, or Kuuru's route.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: How does one unlock Moku's and Kuuru's routes? Simple: They have to fail Oppai's spelling bee (intentionally or not). Furthermore, the player has to have Tuu assume the fetal position when she fights Genki in order to do Moku's route.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The start of Kuuru's route. Turns out that trying to fight a trained martial artist as a complete novice is a terrible idea. On top of this, it should come as no surprise that the two bullies ditch the new kid after one of them beats the hell out of them, even if they were friendly to them at the start.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted with Kuuru, who can actually seek therapy off-screen depending on the route.
- Too Dumb to Live: The player can make Tuu this on a couple occasions.
- When she and Kuuru come across an unsee-able monster in the sewer, the player can choose to fight it... which results in Tuu charging in its general direction with her eyes closed.
- The player can also maker try to jump across a giant sewer pit. It goes horribly wrong.
- Wham Line: If Tuu and Moku confess their feelings for each other, then some time afterward Moku drops this bombshell on Tuu:
Moku: Why won't Largo-senpai love me?!
- Wham Shot: While Tuu and Kuuru are trying to escape the sewer, they come across a tunnel and look inside it. They're then greeted by the pleasant sight of dead Yakuza members, with their blood staining the entire tunnel up to the ceiling.
- Yakuza: Aniki is a member of them, and he shows up in each route.
