Elysium Heights offers polished visuals and an engaging start, but its early promise fades as the narrative shifts focus, leaving its potential as a unique, female-centered story unrealized.

^{Note: Game was in early access when review was written (game may still be in EA at time of reading)}

Over the years, many games appear as early access and are released as saleable to the public ahead of being finished, with the idea being to include customer feedback in the development process in order to make the final product as high a quality and as enjoyable as possible.  However, a percentage of these fall by the wayside, and for any number of reasons, become abandoned before completion.  Sometimes Otome Lovers team will acquire one of these games, possibly through Steam’s curator system, a direct review request, or privately purchased either as a well-intentioned gift or simply to show support to an independent developer.

In this section, we look at any such games which have come into possession of the team, and address the question:  is there enough content and entertainment value in these products to make them still worth your time considering?

Originally supplied to Otome Lovers as a pre-launch single chapter demo in March 2023, this adult-oriented novel was intended to contain multiple chapters and arrive as a completed product during the first quarter of 2024. A second, briefer, chapter did arrive in July 2023, but that was the final activity related to the project which subsequently fell terminally silent.

The Steam platform is heaving with “adult visual novels” which are well over 95% dedicated “male-gaze porn” style affairs, but with Elysium Heights being offered to Otome Lovers, a group whose name clearly indicates its area of coverage and interest of its community; could it be that this would be a little different, even daring to venture into spicier material targeted towards female readers hoping for some desirable masculine eye candy?

Upon receiving the review copy at a time when we as a review team had never covered adult games and not being sure how such a visual novel would be received by our readership, we chose to hold back assessing the product until completion and gauge at that point whether it would be appropriate to our review catalogue or not.  Obviously, such a time never arose, and so we have decided to have a look back at how the project turned out for as far as it went.

Things actually started pretty well.  The female protagonist, Catherine, is presented well and is introduced at the end of her shift working a dead-end job in a catering company for an unappreciative boss who pays badly.  Graphically, both backdrops and character sprites are impressive, with the latter featuring multiple poses and expressions.

We discover that Catherine had split from her ex and befriended Lisa, who not only secured her this job but who also offered her the opportunity to share her apartment, along with Lisa’s boyfriend Peter; thus keeping serious financial difficulties at bay in the immediate term.

Peter, it turns out, is quite physically attractive and reinforces that initial optimism that there may be  some hetero female consideration in the story.

There’s even a (non-sexual) moment where he is presented in only his boxers (complete with obvious bulge)..  but any thoughts that the story is going to lean in this direction is soon pulled out from under any such blind optimism.

On the second day of the story, a work situation arises whereby both Catherine and Lisa are asked to cover sickness leave and perform waitressing duties at the penthouse of an elite residential skyscraper.  Despite being personally inexperienced at the task, Catherine agrees and persuades Lisa to join her; and subsequently discovers that the residents are a stunningly attractive billionaire and his stuck-up, bitchy, but inevitably visually perfect wife.

Sadly, things do go rather badly wrong, so much so that Catherine loses her job with the catering company and is compelled to work as a maid for the couple instead, at a lower wage, in order to redeem herself for the course of events that took place.

This sets up the story for a potential love triangle, or more, at the penthouse.. but we never get to find out how it would have developed.

Catherine, as seems to be the standard for these types of games, is not simply a hetero woman, but a bisexual one, and within the amount of story available, there are three other women – two of whom are clearly open to her advances, and one who most likely would have been further down the line – and three other men, although one of them being her original boss did not seem to have any romantic links either present or future, making just two of possible interest.

It made no difference to the protagonist whether the potential love interests were attached (or even married) in the slightest; and neither did these people seem to care when expressing their thoughts about her.  This does not make for particularly comfortable reading, nor render the protagonist easy to empathise nor identify with; something of a pity as initially she seemed quite well rounded, as do the others introduced during the first chapter.

As the story progresses, it becomes ever increasingly apparent that, ultimately, the target audience for this game is predominantly the same male fanbase as for the typical AVN.  While this story contains only static pictures, no animation; these are almost exclusively of the female characters in an undressed or partially dressed state, with the one sex scene visual showing the man mostly hidden behind his partner – demonstrating that, yet again, the hetero female market has been casually brushed aside and/or unaccounted for.

Chapter two, which concludes the extent of the story prior to early termination, ends with Catherine  masturbating whilst imagining whichever partner (the reader has encouraged via player choices) to be there with her.  We are, of course, treated to a fully naked protagonist picture for this closing scene.

Overall Verdict

Built using Ren’py, initial impressions of this game are very positive, with all user features associated with this engine having been implemented; characters in chapter 1 introduced as individuals with lives and personalities of their own, decent backing sounds and graphics which do the creator a great deal of credit; a perfect example of the quality within seen in this penthouse kitchen shot, below.

However, the positive vibes dwindle quite rapidly once into chapter 2, which is not only shorter than the opener, but leads the narrative firmly in the direction of “who is Catherine going to chase after for sex” whilst playing a contest of “how many boob shots can we fit into the story?”

Unsurprisingly, the game received predominantly negative reviews on Steam, and with the second chapter unapologetically chasing the male youth audience who seem to prefer animation over stills in their sex-based stories; the creator discarded a solid opportunity to build upon the initial decision to go with a female MC and construct an intimate story with a truly feminine bent that may well have appealed to an altogether different, and possibly more appreciative, market sector.

Had that potential support been encouraged with an alternate approach to “the single girl looking for intimacy” idea, the game might have maintained the interest to be able to evolve through to completion.

As it is, Elysium Heights is still available on the Steam store at £4.29; and while it does offer a small degree of entertainment at a fairly high standard (so long as you’re willing to ignore a series of low level English language slips); the amount of content and sadly predictable “male gaze” presentation serve to make what’s there, well below par value for money, and very unlikely to appeal to our Otome Lovers’ community.

A shame.

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