The Letter Visual Novel

[LumberingCrane]

This game may deserve a listing:

Marianne, one of the playable characters in the game, has her whole story revolve around her getting over her tragic past involving her only friend in her school years, who confessed to being in love with Marianne only to be rejected by her. Marianne's friend then commits suicide and it haunts her ever since. The whole angst revolves around her guilt about lying to her friend and herself about her own attraction towards her, since she's a roman catholic in a catholic all-girls school and she was expectedly raised to think that that kind of attraction was abnormal. The ghost that haunts her in her portion of the story takes on the form of this friend of hers. She also shows attraction to this other playable character (Hannah) who happens to look like this friend (for more of that aaaangst). Hannah also happens to be bi, but she's married during the game (having marital problems though). Haven't finished the game yet though, but I think this is enough for it to be listed. Will update this soon to help with a more accurate description.

[LumberingCrane]

Alright, done with the epilogue and there's an ending between those two female characters. They're heavily implied to be in a relationship in the epilogue I got. Of course, that also meant that part of that epilogue included the married one of the two divorcing her husband. It is also listed under the romance endings in the game.

That should be enough for the game to be listed.

[rincewind]

Thanks a lot for telling us!

I'm not terribly sold, I must say.

[Hanako Games]

I'm not adding a specific warning for TRAGIC LESBIAN ANGST SUICIDE because I think anyone looking at the genre of game that is should be willing to expect some depressing/death things. Let me know if you think what I did say is too strong or not strong enough.

I do want to play it.... though if you look at my backlog...

[Lina Inverse]

Is there a "true ending" in this game？Or just different routes？

[LumberingCrane]

Originally posted by Lina Inverse:

Is there a "true ending" in this game？Or just different routes？

yep there's a true end, which I coincidentally just got right now.

True end involves ashton, Marianne, Hannah, and Luke dying based on your choices. Considering that that effectively kills off the only queer characters in the main cast, there's no yuri to be had here in the true end.

[rincewind]

I guess that I'm scratching it from my list then.

Dead lesbians background plus maybe lesbians plus in truth dead lesbians again. Is Corpse Party all again!!!!

Thanks again for reporting!

[Minuto]

Well, that sure sucks. That said... at least they can hypothetically survive in some ending unlike the poor lesbians in Corpse Party. Even if it's not the true ending, it's better than nothing, I guess... sure seems like a shitty true ending if 4 people out of ike 8 die though (it's not really different from CP in that respect though).

[Minuto]

I was looking at the Kickstarter again, and it seems that Marianne's not listed on the page. The $70,000 stretch goal promises 2 additional chapters, so I would assume that's where she shows up (plus some other character I suppose). You know, maybe, just maybe, they'll decide to change the ending like those people with two "yuri" routes that involved polyamory (I don't remember what game it is, but yeah). I imagine that their deaths are probably important in some way and it'll probably be harder to change it in a VN like this in which all your choices allegedly matter, but, still, one can hope...

[LumberingCrane]

I feel like Marianne came from the 3000 dollar pledge, where the backer gets to help design a playable character ingame. In retrospect, she's pretty much an outsider in all this even though she's part of the main cast. She's not a part of the group of friends, and she's not that close with the couple who bought the mansion. I feel like if we took out the chapter dedicated to her, not much will be lost. No wonder she got axed in the true end, no matter how unfortunate that is. While the other three deaths are really substantial, Marianne's death was swept under the rug really quickly. It's not a very good ending, I must admit.

[Lina Inverse]

Well,I simply hate choices matter games with true endings.

[Entrexia]

Don't you always love how Steam's spoilers are always revealed in the header, regardless of tags?

Originally posted by rincewind:

I guess that I'm scratching it from my list then. :sarah5:

Dead lesbians background plus maybe lesbians plus in truth dead lesbians again. Is Corpse Party all again!!!!

Thanks again for reporting!

Yeah, I feel you. Truth be told, It's pretty hard to have fulfilling Yuri (or any romance, for that matter) in horror stories, if the romance is part of the narrative, and not outside of it (like detectives investigating a scary incident, and falling in love with each other outside of the case).

[souryuu5]

I'll admit, I'm a bit miffed about hearing that the characters that can be in an LGBT relationship have to die in order to get what the devs consider to be the "true" ending. While I heard that the characters that have to survive to get the "true ending" can't get into a romantic relationship (hence the developer nickname of "cockblock ending," I'm still on the fence about this game since I really don't like the "kill all LGBT characters by the end of the story" trope.

NOTE: I'm not saying that people can't use that particular trope, it's just that said trope carries a lot of negative baggage, and I have never seen it done well.

[Hanako Games]

I've been reading a let's play of this game which talks a bit about the background, and yeah, it seems like the LGBT content was added solely at the request of a kickstarter backer who paid a lot of money to get Marianne and her plotline put in. (And who wanted hentai as well, but the devs said no.)

So the choices that lead to the 'true' ending weren't exactly designed for that purpose, as that content wasn't part of the original plan for the storyline.

*shrug*

Of course I have no idea how the actual true end works out!