There is this trashy little tropical resort game that feels like somebody mashed a sleazy dating sim with a lazy idle tycoon and then asked, “how far can we push the horny?” and just never stopped. You show up on this sunny island because daddy died and left you a resort, and instead of grief you get a UI and a to-do list that’s basically: hire busty women, pretend to care, squeeze both their labor and their bodies. It’s not subtle. The first time you promise a girl “a real career” while the dialogue clearly nudges her toward stripping down for “special client service”, it feels like a hentai parody of every fake inspirational LinkedIn coach. One moment you’re adjusting room prices and assigning shifts, next moment you’re in a Ren’Py scene where she’s bent over a desk, tits bouncing, you clicking through lines about “team building”. Very professional, yes. Totally HR compliant.

The part that actually got me is how fast your brain switches between numbers brain and degenerate brain. You’re checking profit margins, then a new horny event pops up: that island cutie you put at the front desk is complaining she can’t pay rent, and suddenly the “solution” is you fucking her brains out as “staff housing benefit”. The game pretends it’s comedic, and to be fair, some lines are actually funny in that dark, mean way: jokes about selling “emotional security” while your dick is literally inside her, side comments about your dead father probably doing the same shit before you. Sometimes the humor hits, sometimes it’s like your uncle discovered hentai memes and tried to write them himself. The girls are written like classic eroge archetypes, just with the morality slider ripped off: the shy one that folds under pressure with a wet moan, the ambitious one you bribe with promises of promotion if she swallows, the island girl who “owes the resort” and works off her debt on her knees. Ren’Py makes it all feel familiar: click, fork a choice, watch an H-scene, open another menu to make more money off the same girl you just creampied. It is trash, but that kind of trash where you catch yourself min-maxing your harem and thinking, “ok, but if I make this one my personal assistant, does that unlock more office sex or just better income?” and then you realize you don’t care, because she’s already moaning your name in another event window. Tropical capitalism, but with cum everywhere.

This time manipulation visual novel hits different when you realize the protagonist isn't some noble hero wrestling with moral dilemmas. Nah, he's basically a horny dude who stumbled into godlike powers and decides to use them for exactly what you'd expect. The whole "what would you do if you could stop time" premise gets real explicit real fast, and honestly? It's refreshing to see a game that doesn't pretend otherwise.

The yaoi elements blend surprisingly well with the fantasy setting - there's this whole magical academy backdrop that gives context to why time magic exists, but let's be real, nobody's here for the worldbuilding. When our MC discovers he can freeze moments and mess around with whoever catches his eye, things escalate quickly. The art style captures those frozen expressions perfectly, which adds this weird voyeuristic layer that works better than it should. Some scenes drag on too long though, like the developers got carried away with their own concept. The dialogue tries to be clever about the whole time paradox thing but mostly just serves as setup for the next steamy encounter.

What caught me off guard was how the game handles consequences - or rather, how it completely ignores them for most of the runtime. You'd think there'd be some cosmic punishment for abusing temporal powers, but the story seems more interested in exploring every possible scenario our time-stopping protagonist can get into. The fantasy elements feel almost secondary to the gay romance and explicit content, which isn't necessarily bad but makes the genre tags feel a bit misleading. By the end, you're left wondering if the whole time manipulation gimmick was just an excuse to create the ultimate power fantasy scenario. Works for what it is, I guess, but don't expect any deep philosophical questions about free will or temporal ethics.

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.

Kohei comes back to his old town for something boring like university, and instead walks straight into the kind of summer that fucks with your head for years after. It looks harmless at first. Childhood streets, cicadas screaming, cheap fans pushed to their limit, that older girl next door who used to ruffle his hair and laugh too loud. Misaki feels like she should be safe territory, familiar, almost family, this cozy fantasy of “onee-san who waited for you”. The game knows that expectation and plays with it in a way that’s honestly pretty mean. She’s still teasing, still bright on the surface, but her eyes slip away at weird moments, her smile freezes half a second too long. Small details like that. You pick a flirty choice, she laughs, leans in, you can almost smell her sweat and shampoo mix, and then some other guy’s name casually comes up and your stomach drops. It’s not subtle, and it’s not gentle.

The horny parts grow slowly, like mold in a corner you pretend not to see. At first you’re just choosing where to spend a day, which cheap cafe, whether to help her carry groceries. One scene you’re alone with Misaki in her apartment, the sun too bright through thin curtains, her in a loose tank top and shorts that ride up when she sits cross-legged. She offers you iced tea, your hand brushes her thigh when you take the glass, she goes quiet for a second. That silence is hotter than any moaning later. The game loves those tiny pauses, the routes where nothing explicit happens yet are somehow dirtier in your head than the straight-up sex scenes. Then there are the runs where you lean into the NTR sickness on purpose, like poking a bruise. Letting her reply to that late-night message. Choosing not to follow her when she “just goes to meet an old friend”. Coming back to a half-buttoned blouse, a faint smell that is not your cologne, and a CG that stings more because she is still smiling at you like she wants to protect you from what already happened. It gives you options to avoid that, sure, to keep things “pure” and romantic, but you feel the game secretly smirking when you pick them, like a producer forced to include a vanilla route to keep the sponsors calm.

What makes it interesting for me as a genre nerd is how it plays with POV shifts. One route you’re stuck inside Kohei’s head, rationalizing, pretending it’s fine, one bad choice, no big deal. On another, it flips and suddenly you’re watching scenes where you’re not supposed to be present at all, getting that ugly voyeur thrill. Sometimes you see Misaki from another guy’s eyes, the way he studies the sweat creeping along her neck, the way her body reacts even when her voice says “we shouldn’t”. That’s where the eroticism goes from simple horny to slightly cruel, because it forces you to admit that her desire is not a thing you own. And still the game offers proper romance lines, soft endings where you manage to hold on to her and build something tender out of all this mess. Those paths feel almost suspicious, like you wandered into a different title hosted on the same site by accident. But that contrast gives the sex extra charge. A slow kiss in a quiet room means one thing when you trust her; the same CG, same pose, after you saw what she did in another route, becomes loaded with paranoia, with “who touched you like this yesterday”. It is not elegant writing, not “high art”, but it understands really well how lust, jealousy, nostalgia and that stupid first-love hope all bleed into each other and make you click “next” even when you already hate the ending you know you’re walking toward.