What secrets lie in the hearts of these attractive women?!
Alternative Titles: 俺の現実は恋愛ゲーム？？ ～かと思ったら命がけのゲームだった ; 俺の現実は恋愛ゲーム？？ ～かと思ったら命がけのゲームだった～ ; Is My Reality a Love Game?? ~I Thought it Was a Life Like Game~ ; Ore no Genjitsu wa Ren’ai Game?? ka to Omottara Inochigake no Game datta ; Ore no Genjitsu wa Renai Game?? ka to Omottara Inochigake no Game datta ; My Life Is A Romance Game?? Was What I Thought But Is Actually A Life Risking Game
Author(s): Pon Jea, Waruiotoko, Nashyu
One day, 25-year-old Hasegawa Ryou wakes up to see a holographic screen floating in front of him. The screen prompts him to save/load files and an item shop, as well as his stats. It seems like he’s been sucked into some erotic love game, since his stats depend on seducing women and “capturing” them.
After finding a target and going through game-like options, Ryou thinks he knows what he has to do to “capture” his target. Surely he needs to have sex with her, right? And yet when the woman turns out to be a murderer, Ryou finds out the shocking truth: he has to capture these women and unveil their secrets! And if he fails, he dies...
Associated Tropes:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The "item shop" upon which Ryou depends to clear this game is wildly expensive. Example, a six-use multi-function key costs 600,000 yen!
- Bait-and-Switch: On a meta level. The game clearly leads Ryou to think it's a dating sim, by using galge terminology, interface, and having him target attractive women, even saying "find pleasure or die." The game is actually a detective mystery type game where Ryou has to find, and fix, the Dark Secret of all his female "capture" targets.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Most of Ryou's targets only appear to be kind, decent women. It's Ryou's unwanted task to rip the wool off the facade.
- Fan Disservice: There are a lot of scenes with attractive women in erotic poses and underclothed, but almost all of them involve rape, sexual torture, or some other highly undesirable situation, like a corpse found in her shower.
- The Game Plays You: Hasegawa Ryou learns that not only is he a sentient, self-aware "game piece" in this Sudden Game Interface, but all his capture targets are too, and he has to act accordingly.
- Guide Dang It!: Ryou gets only the barest of explanation, if he gets any explanation at all, on how this "game" works. About the only thing he's got going for him is the "Load" and "Save" feature which allows him to experiment, as on several occasions, the most correct action happens to be the most counter-intuitive. For example, Ryou learns very quickly that despite all his assigned targets being women, having sex with them is decidedly not the end goal of a "capture."
- The Most Dangerous Videogame: If Ryou doesn't succeed in capturing all available targets, within the 8760 hours left (roughly a year), real time, after the "game" started, he dies in real life! He doesn't even know how many targets he has to capture. And dying in the game might just result in dying in reality as he has to be conscious in the game to use the "load" feature. What's worse is that while the "load" feature rewinds time inside the game, the real-time clock doesn't reset.
- Necessary Drawback: The "load" function has quite a few.
- Ryou must physically touch the "load" button and then confirm. This alone has caused him several near-death experiences.
- The "Load" button costs 10,000 yen per use.
- The "Load" button may rewind the time in the game, but doesn't affect the real-life clock that's counting down. What's worse, there's no guarantee that the female capture targets will respond the same way in the scenario that occurred post save-point.
- Loading a saved game does not refund money spent, but does take back items bought in the item shop.
- There is only one "save file" so Ryou can't check the outcome of multiple branches...
- A capture target's affection rating carries over into the new game state. So he can't just go pissing off women and then re-loading to encounter them like nothing happened. They will still be pissed, but won't remember why... Gaining too much affection with them has its own, yet unstated, dangers too.
- Save Scumming: About the only advantage Ryou has is using the "Load" feature to get himself out of danger, and even this has drawbacks, as seen above.
- Schmuck Bait: At various points, Ryou is offered sex by the attractive women he has to capture. He very quickly learns that this is a death-trap.
- Standard Hero Reward: Sort of. Should Ryou get the affection rating of his "capture targets" to 80% or more and win the game, the women involved will follow him into reality.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: On many occasions, Ryou is in the middle of an investigation, and the game time stops as he's presented with two (or more) options, that basically read "dumb choice" and "dumber choice," forcing Ryou to pick one of them. He usually has to engage in Trial-and-Error Gameplay to figure out which of the boneheaded options is correct, or if another new option appears which will ultimately be the correct action he needs to get through the situation alive.
- Sudden Game Interface: Went to bed one night, woke up the next morning with the "status window" flickering at the edge of his peripheral vision.
- Win to Exit: Ryou has to win the game to return to reality. He fails, he dies, for real. In truth, he just ends up being stuck in the game world permanently as Hikami's Master reveals, being a former player who failed to leave the game in time and has been living inside the game for 30 years. Her real body is most likely long gone though.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Ryou starts the story believing he's been dragged into a galge game, not just because his targets are all women, but his "interface" shows all the relevant Galge stats and prompts. He very, very quickly realizes this is not correct.
- Yandere: Many of the capture targets are clearly insane.
