Join Ella McConnell for Waifu Material, a monthly column in which she navigates the murky, cherry-blossom-strewn waters of visual novels, dating sims, and everything in between (reader masochism not required but strongly recommended).
For better or worse (NAMING NO NAMES), vampire romance is a prolific subgenre in pretty much every contemporary medium and visual novels are no exception. As such, when Red Embrace popped up in my Steam recommendations I decided to embrace the inevitable.
Developed by Argent Games, an up-and-coming Western visual novel team whose previous title Chess of Blades made it into Rock Paper Shotgun s Unknown Pleasures roundup in January, Red Embrace is also part of the boys love or yaoi subgenre. Historically, yaoi fans (as well as fans of its female-focused counterpart yuri) have often found themselves under fire in popular culture, but will Red Embrace make a fujoshi out of me?
Let s find out. (more…)