Online: Negligee website
Download: Steam, Nutaku & MangaGamer
Developer: Dharker Studios
What is it: Visual Novel
Average Price: $19.99
We’ve all been there – the manager at the lingerie shop we work at skips town with a new beau and we’re left in charge. We have to restock the panties and bras, make nice with the customers, and do our best to not fall in love with our new employees. It’s a tough life for a single, twenty-something girl but someone’s gotta live it. Okay, so maybe we haven’t all been there, but such is the plot behind erotic visual novel Negligee (2016), the pre-sequel to Negligee: Love Stories (2018) which made waves last fall as the first-ever uncensored erotic game on Steam.
In Negligee you play as Hannah, the employee-turned-manager of the eponymous Negligee, a high-end lingerie boutique in an unnamed (yet strangely lingerie-friendly) American city. Over the course of the game, our protagonist faces a bevy of choices that can lead to good endings and bad, romance and heartbreak, jobs for the few or unemployment for all – the ending where the store actually closes is probably the worst ending a player can click their way into.
If you’re looking for porn without plot, this is not the game for you. What sets an erotic game like Negligee apart from, say, a nukige (known as a “one-handed game” amongst GPF correspondents) is that while yes it is quite a sexy game and, with the proper game patch is deeply and wonderfully lewd, it also has lovable characters each with their own quirks, flaws, and engaging personalities.
While the game is, at its core, an erotic romp about women-loving-women (known as yuri amongst the visual novel-loving set), it is also a game with sass and more than its share of heart. It says a great deal about an ostensibly erotic game that not only is their plenty of eroticism, but plenty of fun slice-of-life moments to enjoy. If we play our cards right we get to see our character-of-choice nude, of course, but we also get to see them interact with other characters, as friends and coworkers, with all the seriousness and comedy that that entails; one storyline even lets us go bowling with our potential love interests. And yes, jokes about balls abound.
Negligee, published by Dharker Studios, is available on Steam, Nutaku & MangaGamer. The uncensored patch, allowing players to see and enjoy all of the games naughty bits, can be downloaded directly from the publisher. Negligee features eleven different endings, as well as four very sexual “epilogues” for the very successful player. A players initial playthrough will be the longest at between 60-90 minutes with subsequent playthroughs taking less time, but different players will no doubt read (there’s a reason it’s called a visual novel) at different speeds. All endings should be achievable within 6-7 hours. For the gamer that loves to collect, Negligee also features Steam Trading Cards and 17 achievements.
