(country cat voice*) Well hi! I’m Brooke, a game reviewer specializing in otome games and romance visual novels. I’ve been working for The SML Podcast reviewing games for almost two years now. My first review game was Cupid Parasite! I’ve actually covered all kinds of stuff at this point, from farming/life sim stuff like Story of Seasons games, lots of point-and-click mysteries, puzzlers of all climes, and even stuff like this weird little Sudoku game for Switch. I am actively reviewing all titles that interest me I have enough time for across Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC (from Steam and Epic stores, as well as independent alpha, beta, preview or review builds downloaded straight from the devs). I could review for Vita too, but, unfortunately nobody cares about the fact I have one of those too, mostly for VNs (it’s pink 🥰)
So why do I say I specialize in otome and romance visual novels? Because I want to! Those are my fav. And, nobody fights me for the otome review codes on our team. SML’s Aki likes some otomes okay, but she mostly specializes in the hentai and hentai-adjacent romance games for SML After Dark. That’s how I got involved in SML and reviewing games to begin with. I’ve been obsessed with otome for 9 years now, and in 2021 SML randomly got a review code for Cupid Parasite for Nintendo Switch. They basically all read the description and were like, “Lol. We don’t want to play this.”
“But wait!” said my friend Chris Taylor, long-time SML co-host and my friend of over 12 years. “I… may know someone who would love to cover that.” I’ll tell more of that story, and how I got to become a weekly game reviewer after giving that review, later in a separate post.
I’ve also done some developer interviews, which has been one of my favorite parts of being a part of this show! I’ve gotten to interview the developers of Tchia (!!!), Cabernet (coming soon!), Retired Men’s Nude Volleyball League, and a lot more I’ll add to this paragraph after I get this site more set up a bit.
I’m finally open for business with this brand new blog I JUST got the domain name for Friday night, and I’m going to start posting my game reviews here in addition to giving the podcast content managed by SML’s Joe. I’ll be going back and adding all the games I’ve reviewed up until this point, but for now, the next post will be my review of Kingdom of Shattered Stone, a new romance visual novel with 8 chapters up so far on Dorian, which I’m also reviewing as a platform! Stay tuned, lots more content incoming in the next few weeks.
*i’ll explain later, or just listen to the show idk
