So there's this game called Cartoon Hearts and honestly? It's kinda weird but in that good way where you can't look away from a car crash, except the car crash is horny teenagers and cartoon characters going to high school together.

You play some random dude - because it's always some random dude, isn't it - walking around what looks like a normal city but surprise! Raven's doing her goth thing in art class, Violet Parr's trying not to phase through her desk during math, and Starfire's probably setting something on fire in chemistry because that's just Tuesday for her. The whole setup is unhinged in the best possible way. Like someone took Saturday morning cartoons and said "what if they all went to the same school and had raging hormones?" which is either brilliant or deeply concerning depending on your perspective. The writing bounces between actually clever character interactions and moments where you're like wait did Raven just say that? Because she did and it's weird but also... kinda works?

Each girl's got her whole personality thing going on - shy artist with mysterious vibes, popular athlete who's secretly insecure, alien princess who doesn't understand human customs but definitely understands human anatomy. Standard visual novel fare but with characters you actually recognize instead of Generic Anime Girl #47. The dialogue gets pretty explicit when things heat up, which they do because that's literally the point. Some scenes hit different when it's characters you've known since you were like twelve, creates this whole cognitive dissonance that's either your thing or absolutely not your thing. No middle ground here. The art style does this thing where it tries to stay true to the original designs while making them more... adult-oriented, if you catch my drift. Sometimes it works great, other times Starfire looks like she walked out of a completely different universe than Teen Titans but whatever, you're not here for art consistency anyway.

College town sex drama with messy people, that is what this thing is, no fancy wrapping. You drop into campus life as this pretty normal guy, not a hero, not a loser, just someone who ends up in way too many bedrooms and way too many bad choices. Classes and exams exist mostly so the game can shove you into hallways, libraries and dorm corridors where clothes do not stay on very long. Girls in tight tops pretending they care about studying, guys pretending they care about friendship while staring at asses. The rival shows up early, that smug bastard with perfect hair who smiles like he already fucked half the dorm. He keeps nudging the story into cheating territory. Not in a soft “oops I tripped and landed on a dick” way, more like “I know your girl is weak when she drinks and I am going to prove it.” The game makes you watch it, too. A lot of scenes start with you as the voyeur, behind a cracked door or across the courtyard, listening to moans that might be for you. Or maybe not.

The cutscenes are where it gets fun and also kind of trashy, in a good porn way. You can feel the AI CG doing heavy lifting. Faces look a bit too smooth sometimes, like those Instagram filters, but the expressions when a shy girl finally opens her legs for another woman are surprisingly hot. There is a sequence in a shared dorm shower that really stands out: steam all over, towels barely hanging, two girls teasing each other with soap while the male MC is “accidentally” walking in. One of them notices him, does not say a thing, just keeps rubbing the other’s nipples, slow, while maintaining eye contact with you through the half-open curtain. That moment when the other girl realizes someone is watching and her thighs clamp together, but she still leans into the touch, that is the kind of corruption the game likes. It is not instant brainwashing, more like small decisions stacked until someone’s “good girl” act is completely ruined. And sometimes the camera cuts away right when you want that final close up, which annoys the hell out of me and then they never fix it in the next scene.

Sex variety is all over the place. You get classic dorm-room grinding with underwear tossed on the desk, lazy afternoon blowjob while some sad university music track plays from a laptop, and then it swings into full-on interracial scenes where the rival drags a drunk girl from a party to a quiet corner. The skin tones in those scenes actually look decent, especially compared to a lot of cheap porn games where darker characters look like plastic. Here, when your girl sneaks off to fuck someone else, you really see the difference between your body and his, and they lean into that. One late-night bar scene has your date slow dancing with you, then swapping partners with another couple, then hands wandering, then she ends up pressed against the wall with someone else’s fingers inside her while you stand there pretending it is all part of the “open-minded college vibe.” I liked the way the game lets you grope in crowded places too, like sliding your hand under a skirt in the back row of the lecture hall while the professor talks about something nobody cares about. Knocked my coffee over once during a long grinding scene, keyboard sticky for a week, still no dedicated “clean desk” option in settings and yes, I am bitter. Music is hit and miss, sometimes it nails this late-night chill mood that fits a slow lesbian make-out in a dorm bed, sometimes it loops a weird little upbeat track during a very serious cheating scene and kills the mood. But then you get a simple stripping sequence in a cramped dorm room, just your girl awkwardly dancing out of her sweater and bra while trying not to laugh, and suddenly it feels more real than half the “professional” erotic stuff on Steam. You kinda wish the game would slow down more often like that, right before it throws you back into spying on your not-so-faithful love interest as she rides someone else on a squeaky mattress with the door slightly open, like the whole corridor is invited to listen.