I Deserve a Happy Ending is a boy-love novel about a prince who never got his happy ending. It is up to us, the reader, to help him find one and maybe romance along the way. 

The Story:
Now this is a story that is unique. You play as a prince who has an unfinished story to share with the reader. He needs your help to determine how his story will end. Will he find love and claim his rightful place on the throne or will his story go unfinished? That is up to us as the writer of his tale disappeared without finishing his story.
The story can end in one of two romantic interests, a soft-spoken elf named Elyon, or a dark sorcerer from another time named Yvoress. 

There are seven endings in total but only 3 achievements (one for each love interest's good ending and one for the true ending). Two of the seven endings are closed off until you complete the game once with either Elyon or Yvoress. One of the achievements, the True Ending is one of the endings that must be completed during the second play-through. 

Elyon has three potential endings, a good, bad or neutral. While Yvoress only has two. There are dead ends in this game and if this happens the main character (the Prince) will be confused and ask you to backtrack your story.
Depending on what choice you make at the start of the story will determine whose route you go down, Elyon or Yvoress. The two stories do not intertwine until you play though once and then the two alternate story-lines will involve both Elyon and Yvoress in one play-though together. 

Gameplay & Features:
The settings for this game are your usual; display options, skip options, language (English or Spanish), audio controls and text speed. There is a gallery you can unlock as you play the game. And a nice touch during the credits is the change of backgrounds as it scrolls. The text is very easy to read and the hud clean and organised.
* Screen capture lovers you can hide the hud for some beautiful screenshots. 

Gameplay is your standard for most visual novels. A story in which choices pop up from time to time to allow the reader to steer the story in one of many ways the story can end. Usually with a bad, good or neutral outcome. The individual stories are very short. But considering some endings take more than one play-through that adds to the length. 

In terms of spiciness I played through the game without the dlc. So my experience was vanilla. Romantic but not spicy. However for those of you who do crave super spicy a free, uncensored dlc is available to amp up your experience. 

The Visuals & Audio:
I really love how the characters are drawn in this game. Anime-style, cel-shaded and vibrant colours. The characters all have unique looks. And the chibi art is adorable, really well done. The character graphics or special moment art is just beautiful, I made sure to screen capture them for personal wallpapers. 

The backgrounds are equally beautiful and mesh well with the character art. 

Some of my favourite special moments from the game…

The soundtrack is nothing great to be honest, I kept my volume down low. The tracks themselves are instrumental and do fit the theme of the story but overall I found them distracting. The characters are not voiced but there are some ambient sounds which add to the scenes such as birds chirping or pages turning. 

Overall Experience
One thing I loved about this novel, despite it being very much on the short end, was the abundance of key artworks portraying special moments. Some games reward you with one at the end of each route or a few here and there but this game had so many beautiful moments to capture. I tend to first and foremost choose visual novels based on the artwork, it is what draws me in initially to a game. 

I like the unique twist of us, the reader, being the narrator of the story and the Prince breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, at the start of the novel. Also the ending (the true ending) also threw in a nice twist. An enjoyable, yet short experience to pass the time. 💘

Review originally posted on Steam

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