All Eve ever wanted was to protect and preserve the land, but after five years of being a ranger in Yosemite National Park, she’s just about ready to throw in the towel. The people are careless, her co-workers are annoying, and thanks to an increasingly tight budget she can hardly do her job. Fed up and burned out, Eve lashes out, but after being transferred to a remote cabin post in return, she only finds herself more uncertain of the value of being a ranger. Soon after arriving, three strange girls corner her in the cabin. Not only do they claim to live there, but they also say they’re the manifestations of Zion, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Parks! Are these girls really who they say they are? Why is Yosemite so obsessed with her research? And why does one of them have a volcano on their head? Follow Eve as she gets closer with these spritely cuties that put the “natural” in “supernatural,” and maybe even discovers a new kind of love for the parks.
— Official Description
National Park Girls is an episodic Kinetic Novel developed with Ren'Py by Studio Coattails (now merged with Studio Élan), who also made Highway Blossoms, and published by Sekai Project (up to Episode 4 before self-publishing). The first episode was released on Steam on March 19th, 2019, and its final release came out on September 8th, 2023, and is also available on itch.io.
Its current episodes are:
Episode 1: Cabin Fever (Base game)
Episode 2: Happy Trails
Episode 3: Daughter of Zion
Episode 4: Eternal Evergreen Part 1
Episode 5: Eternal Evergreen Part 2
Tropes Include:
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Episodes 1-3 have a 'Fireside Chat with Yellowstone and Zion’ after the main story is over, telling the player details about the national parks, including their history and the national park service.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion are personifications of the national parks of the same names, with a ‘connection’ to each of their respective parks, such as Yosemite being able to -feel- when a fire breaks out in Episode 1, and Yellowstone nearly causing an eruption while in her namesake park after she quite literally ‘blows her top’ in Episode 2.
- Bedsheet Ghost: What Zion looks like when trying to scare Eve away from the cabin along with the other Park Girls on her first night back on the job in Episode 1.
- Black Comedy:
- Near the end of Happy Trails, Yellowstone gets really angry, which runs the risk of causing the super-volcano in her namesake park to erupt, according to Yosemite and Zion. After they tell Eve this is happening, Zion says to her 'Don't worry, Ms. Eve, I know you didn't mean to doom Western civilization.'
- At the beginning of Eternal Evergreen Part 1, after telling a kid on a tour at the park that the Native Americans who lived there were 'forced out', another one asks what she meant by that, causing an uncomfortable silence. She begins to answer by asking them 'You kids know what a genocide is?', but the accompanying teacher quickly moves the students along.
- Bland-Name Product: Averted, as some real-life products are called by what they actually are (such as Eve's Blackberry phone, and when Yellowstone and Zion are playing Uno in Episode 4).
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The 'Fireside Chats' at the end of Chapters 1-3 do this to inform players of facts about the national parks.
- Call-Back: In Episode 4, Yosemite takes one of the 'Tell Us How We Did' surveys Jessie gave to Eve after getting really happy upon seeing it. In Episode 5, she shows this to Eve while she's having a breakdown, revealing it to have a crude map she drew for a camper, taking this as a sign that Eve will always remember the park.
- Cooldown Hug: Yosemite gives one to Eve at the end of the first Episode after she had chewed out several campers for nearly starting a wildfire because they wanted to see if they could start a campfire with a cigarette and didn't check to make sure it was put out. Eve was about to deck one of them before being stopped, as well.
- A Day in the Limelight: Each episode focuses on a different character:
- Eve in Cabin Fever
- Yellowstone in Happy Trails
- Zion in Daughter of Zion
- Yosemite in Eternal Evergreen Part 1
- Eve and Yosemite in Eternal Evergreen Part 2
- Developer's Foresight: In addition to a Backlog option to see what characters have said, you can also scroll back scenes with the mouse wheel in case you didn't have an earlier save to see an earlier scene again. Also, you can jump to the start of any of the episodes once you've purchased them.
- Due to the Dead: After Yosemite finally manages to get through to Eve, and convince her to return home to the cabin, everyone, including Death Valley(though she's just leaning against a tree), have a funeral and mourn for Pup over an empty grave/memorial Eve made for him.
- Episodic Game
- Foreshadowing:
- Yosemite mentions a couple of times about the girls 'forgetting', and Yellowstone mentions that Zion is different now than how she used to be. In Daughter of Zion, Yosemite tries desperately to make Zion remember a story she had told the former when she was younger and looked older.
- A few times in Episodes 3 and 4, it's mentioned that Pup was getting a bit too close to the campers, as well as Pup nipping at Eve's hand. In Episode 4, a young girl gets too close to him and gets her hand bitten, resulting in her losing three fingers, despite being rushed to a Fresno hospital. This also results in Eve having to put Pup down.
- Innocently Insensitive: Both Yellowstone and Zion call Jessie 'Ms. Eve's mom', since she acts like it, at least to them, and Eve 'acts like a bratty teenager' around her, according to the former. Eve is very sure Jessie wouldn't appreciate the remark since she's only in her 30s.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: It's a visual novel with American national parks turned into cute girls. Do the math.
- Noodle Incident: Eve remembers in Episode 1 that a camp visitor hyped up on something once tried to bite her finger off.
- Official Couple: Eve and Yosemite by the end of Eternal Evergreen Part 2.
- Precision F-Strike: When Eve is having a nightmare about the incident that got her suspended, after the person who she punched in the nose for making graffiti art across several trees yells at her for it breaking it, she angrily tells him 'Yeah? Well your fucking neck is next!'. Said visitor also calls Eve both a bitch and a whore during this scene. Eve also drops a few in Episode 5, both in narration and voiced lines.
- Scenery Porn: The locations in the parks are given pretty detailed descriptions and artwork.
- Shout-Out: During the first 'Fireside Chat' segment, Yellowstone says 'Execute Order 6166', both referencing Star Wars, as well as naming a real Executive Order that pertains to National Parks.
- Shown Their Work: The 'Fireside Chats' have accurate historical information about the national parks and their founding.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Eve and Yosemite speak to each other this way often.
- The Stinger: At the end of Episode 4's credits, there's an image that looks like the face of a woman with drill hair, and possibly wearing what looks like a ranger hat. It's revealed to be Death Valley.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Pup, the wild coyote pup that Eve takes care of, runs off at one point in Episode 4, and is later revealed to have bitten a young camper's hand when she got too close, causing her to lose three fingers. This results in Jessie blowing up at Eve, as she had warned her before to not take care of wild animals. And, at the start of Episode 5, Eve ends up taking Pup far away and having to put him down because of what happened.
- Teleportation with Drawbacks: Each of the Park Girls can teleport to and from almost anywhere in their namesake parks as long as the paintings of them are in the cabin, and can take normal people like Eve with them, as well. Whenever it happens to Eve, we're shown a static-y background, like on a TV with no channel signal.
- Time Skip: After it's prologue, Episode 5 picks up one month after the end of Episode 4.
- Title Drop: In a way. Near the start of Daughter of Zion, Eve calls Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Zion 'Park Girls', which makes Yosemite ask her 'Is that what you really call us?'
- Wham Episode: The tail end of Eternal Evergreen Part 1 has Yosemite encounter...something in a strange cave in her park that was removed from the more recent official maps, and Pup wanders off too close to some campers and ends up causing a young girl to lose 3 of her fingers after biting her.
