As a romance game super-dork, you think you’ve seen it all for new exciting places to get dating games – Switch eShop, PS Store, Steam store, Epic, TappyToon, Love365… and then the app Dorian Stories somehow finds you, and you learn Dorian is a new platform supporting in-app streaming & direct creator support for interactive comics & romantic visual novels?! 🤯 And it also provides custom avatar creation so you can literally be IN the story?! With custom pronoun options and a focus on LGBTQ+ inclusivity?!!?!
Okay, I’ll stop yelling now. But you can see why I’m interested – all that stuff SOUNDS good. How would it look in reality? I decided to take Sharean of Dorian Stories up on her extremely generous offer to review both the platform and a featured game for Pride Month, Kingdom of Shattered Stone, and find out for myself.
Like with all new things I try out, I immediately went running crying to one of my more knowledgeable friends (that’s all of my friends). “MJ, have you heard of Dorian?!” I cried to my friend Marjory on Discord, which thankfully she couldn’t hear so it probably sounded like a normal question to her. “Yeah – isn’t that where The Arcana went?” she answered. I’d played The Arcana before a few years ago – it was awesome. I’d only played through one route and meaned to return to it when I stopped getting distracted by non-mobile romance games. Turns out, Dorian had picked that title up, and there was a ton more content up for it now. Including, I quickly noticed – a genderbent Julian route for Pride Month, Juliana?! Okay, I said I would stop yelling.
So now that that’s out of the way (Listen, The Arcana is a big deal!!), back to how it went using the app for the first time. Creating an account was easy peasy, I was done in maybe a minute. Not too long after that, Sharean’s team hooked me up with 200 hearts to mess around with in the app – these can be used to support the independent story and content makers directly, and, OR, to directly support streamers who are playing that content live.
Clicking around to view a few different featured game’s pages, I noticed that different some of the games would award 100% of hearts to streamers playing the games live – one of those games being Kingdom of Shattered Stone, which was running a promotion as a new story featured for Pride (and it still is today, July 2nd, 2023!).
Before I talk more about the streaming feature, which I got to experience first hand – I want to talk about the experience just as a player/reader. It was super easy to start new stories, and while Dorian does feature the in-app currency of hearts, these aren’t used to purchase the stories themselves, instead an option for paying for extra content or specific choices within the stories, or as a way to give a tip to creators or streamers contributing to the stories you’re experiencing directly.
At this point, I’ve used a few hearts to tip streamers I watched play something, and I’ve also used them to unlock the sexier or spicier options in the stories I’ve poked around in so far. Just saying. I haven’t really run into any content walls at all requiring I dish out the hearts. So, basically the least scary and most wholesome in-app currency ever. Well, the sexy parts aren’t totally wholesome I guess. BUT ALSO, THEY ARE. This isn’t hentai, people. It’s a pretty light and fun level of steamy content. Okay, I’m getting sidetracked again.
I do want to mention we can pick custom pronouns for the content – that was a major draw for me to try the app. But, I quickly noticed we could also pick custom avatars to represent us too – both from our profile as a default option for all new games (pictured below):
OR, we could ALSO pick from each game separately – given a lot of games, such as KoSS, had a designed Main Character (MC) in mind. But, this would only be the creator’s suggestion; you could still go custom or transparent, all of the other options we saw above. I personally went with Ailbhe’s sprite (below), so I could really get into the experience of his story.
Now, there is exactly one complaint I’ve heard about Dorian so far, and that’s that the “custom” avatars you can design WITHIN the app’s avatar engine (NOT talking about the custom art avatars you can upload as a transparent sprite – see the bottom right of the image above!) – have a limitation. At this time, you can only in-app design a female presenting avatar (as you may have already read in the image). A couple people have said things like, “If Dorian is so INCLUSIVE, why THIS issue??” Here’s what I have to say in Dorian’s defense on this front: Dorian is pretty new. They’re working on this now! Chill and find a custom PNG of a character you like and we’ll ride this out together.
As far as actually navigating the app and getting started reading stories: couldn’t have been an easier process. I could quickly browse featured stories and bookmark for later, or search up stuff I’d heard was on there (like the new Arcana Julian X Asra route…) and bookmark that for later as well, or just start playing immediately. If I exited the app, my progress was saved automatically and I wouldn’t lose anything. If I wanted to restart a chapter I had ALREADY STARTED but also NOT FINISHED, I did have to finish the chapter before re-reading previous material. Found that out the hard way, wasn’t paying attention and kept clicking through and then realized I hadn’t completely read a part before – listen, I have attention span issues! I did have to finish the chapter to restart it, no “log” or “rewind” option like some standalone visual novel games have – but given Dorian is aiming to provide as few options as possible for minimal setup or UI learning to get readers and creators started SUPER quick, I can’t fault it much for that. To use the app is to understand what they’re going for! It makes sense once you get in there.
Most players of mobile webcomic or visual novel style romance games know mostly mobile games AREN’T voiced, with voice actors reading the lines of the characters. Dorian is no exception to this, there’s not voiced characters and I haven’t come across a game with background music or anything yet – I’m fine with it. I imagine only Switch and PC-exclusive visual novel players will be shocked by this, and only if this is one of their first mobile experiences like this for the phone or, I guess tablet. Are tablets still a thing?
Another giant feature Dorian boasts that sets it apart from other similar-ish content apps is its built-in engines for making original visual novel style games, complete with pre-generated assets or ways to upload your own backgrounds, transparent PNGs of sprites, etc. As I’m not a dev myself and have never made a game, I can’t speak to these features as I didn’t try them. But, it’s insanely cool this is an option, and it’s insanely cool that the first time I’m seeing this sort of thing on an app with everything built in, it’s an inclusive space promoting LGBTQ+ representation.
Now, let’s talk about streaming!
Streaming looked pretty chill and easy – I noticed Dorian has a proper website as well, but it didn’t link to the content or give a way to stream from your browser. You’d just stream straight from your phone with no special equipment, leaving your camera on or turning it off and using your profile as an avatar instead. While some may see this as a potential negative, I’d like to argue that Dorian is built to be app-specific with minimal setup, to encourage independent and amateur streamers and content creators to participate too.
And, sure enough, even though I am shy about playing steamy games multiplayer – and had NEVER streamed before – that first day tapping around in the simple, smooth experience of the app and watching others stream with just their voice or a simple phone camera icon at the top, the wheels in my head began turning that maybe this would be a soft enough landing point to take advantage of the simplicity of the app with almost no setup at all, to have KoSS via Dorian be my very first video game stream ever. More on that, and how I made all my dreams come true there in a now-ongoing project [that will be linked here VERY soon].
Streaming was SUPER easy for me to try out even as a first-timer, especially thanks to my streamer senpai Sammi (otomeaddicted on Twitch and Twitter), who joined me to host the stream with me. We were able to schedule a stream linked directly to one of our Dorian profiles, and though we couldn’t set a co-host from the scheduled stream feature, one account was able to host the stream scheduled or just spur of the moment. Upon joining the stream of the other host, they were able to click into a simple menu next to my profile icon and set me as a co-host in a few seconds.
While I was super nervous for my first time, I managed to cause us minimal technical difficulties – first I didn’t realize my microphone wasn’t on, that was on me. Tapping into the microphone icon gives you a sliding scale of volume, easily adjusted. I also fatfingered my stupid phone at one point and accidentally left the stream by pressing the back button too many times (it does warn you before it kicks you out, I was just kinda shakey and twitchy and fumbled that one). This caused Sammi, my streaming partner, to be set as the primary host of the stream after I bounced from the room. She’d actually been the primary host to begin with and we’d ended up switching places a couple times in this manner as we figured out logistics at the beginning – VERY convenient it had this feature, since once I accidentally left later on, this meant the show was able to continue seamlessly with Sammi in charge while I got my crap together and re-joined the room and got re-set as co-host. No interruptions for our 28 guests playing along with us.
Which brings me to one of my absolute favorite things about this app – the audience absolutely plays WITH the streamers. We didn’t know how deep this went when we started our stream. Upon being faced with our first choice, Sammi and I discussed what we wanted to do and then picked that option. But the option wasn’t instantly selected – instead a countdown began, and we started to see that whatever we each clicked, would enter us into a “poll” and the winning choice would be chosen – and SAMMI AND I ONLY HAD ONE VOTE EACH AS STREAMERS!! The exact same number of votes per person as each audience member has. Meaning? We could easily be outnumbered even if we collaborated.
We actually didn’t realize this would apply to major/route choices as well, and we literally got outvoted on which love interest we chose to spend time with later. It was unexpected, and hilarious – all our bartering of which to choose between each other amounted to nothing, and we were at the whim of our viewers, who were just as much players of the game as we were. I was personally delighted by this and we were basically howling laughing the entire time. It helps that KoSS has a lot of written-in humor too, so the mood and the vibes were just on point that day, and it was a great experience.
Before we scheduled our stream, Sammi and I planned to do a max length stream of two hours, and we ended up checking in with each other around the 2-hour mark live, and our fellow players got to hear us quickly decide to just keep playing as long as it took us to finish the game (it’s an ongoing game and at the time of our stream had 7 chapters; the day I’m writing this post, about a week later, it has 8).
Would I use Dorian again to stream? I have a solid plan to. Sammi and I chatted after we streamed and decided we’d read a few chapters together every few weeks as they come out, and pile up deliciously. So that’s one streamer newbie and one senpai-level streamer satisfied enough to make it a regular thing on the platform.
Would I use Dorian again just to play through and read content solo? I’m already doing so in my spare time – I have a scary McDonald’s game begun and bookmarked, and you KNOW I’ve been hitting up those Arcana pride specials – like Julian x Asra route (whew!!) and that Juliana genderbent route.
Highly recommend you check out this platform ASAP if you’re a fan of romance VNs, books, webcomics, or visual-novel style games like The Arcana, and we can watch it continue to grow and develop together!
