ArianeB 7.2 Walkthroughs

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Katawa Shoujo (かたわ少女 or freely translated Disability Girls) created quiet a buzz when it appeared in January 2012, but if failed to attract my attention. As a matter of fact I wasn't aware of the game despite its long history and I more or less stumbled on it accidentally. Manga, anime or bijuaru noberu isn't really my cup of tea, some exceptions notwithstanding.

The story of the making of Katawa Shoujo started over a decade ago. In December 2000 a manga fan art project contained a sketch imagining a game about disabled girls set in a Japanese high school. This idea was picked up seven years later by another group and slowly the plan emerged to turn this into a visual novel / dating sim (or eroge if you prefer the lingo of the initiated).

After months of brainstorming a volunteer group of twenty-one developers from around the world, joined up as the 4LS team. Then it took about five years to bring the project to a good end. According to the official blog:

The first year of KS project was a real struggle. We kept losing people, especially artists, and getting a full stable team was just seemingly impossible.

But slowly the job was brought to a good ending. What could easily have developed into a weird Japanese fetish-driven orgy became a visual novel where compassion, respect and love are central.

Story

After a nearly fatal heart-attack and a long stay in hospital 17-year old male protagonist Hisao Nakai is transferred to Yamaku High School. In this school annex rehabilitation centre, with 24/24 7/7 medical supervision, he will be monitored while continuing his high-school studies. In the beginning he is as shocked as every visitor who enters a rehabilitation centre for the first time. He wonders what he is doing among the crippled and the burned, among the deaf, dumb and blind. It turns the place into a reservation for the unfit, hidden from the outside world. A prison and a sanctuary at the same time.

His bitter-sweet inner monologues sound a bit like Philip Marlowe's pseudo-philosophical - often ironic or mildly humoristic - musings, but slowly he starts to see the people behind their physical handicap and at the same time he tries to cope with his own condition. Here is where the dating sim comes in, as five possible arcs (written by different authors) can eventually evolve into virtual relationships - or not (every branch has two or three different endings, ranging from good to disastrous, including death). Hisao has to learn that the girls he dates all have emotional scars and that he must move rather carefully to win their confidence.

Contradictory to most games in the adult genre you can't get your girl 'in the sack' after a dozen of consecutive clicks. Each storyline takes several hours to develop before the girl can be consumed, but I admit this is a rather inappropriate (and frankly male chauvinist pig) term in this case. Do not really expect explicit sex scenes but a mild form of eroticism that fits in nice with the story. This is not a game about one-night stands (as even in ArianeB is the case) but about creating difficult relationships build on trust. Sort of.

Controversy

Although written and designed by a western volunteering clique the game could be easily mistaken for a Japanese commercial production and for once this is meant as a compliment. There was some controversy when the concept was revealed and immediate online protest by people who were fearing fetishist sexploitation but the released product clearly shows that the controversial concept has been dealt with in an adult (meaning: grown-up) way.

Another controversial point lies in the title. Katawa is actually a derogatory term in Japanese, meaning something close to 'cripple' (literally: 'one wheel'). But the 'crippled girls' title was taken from the fan-art picture that started the project and at that time nobody from the 4LS team was fluently enough in Japanese anyway to understand its pejorative meaning.

A very slow path

As a visual novel each story benefits from a slowly evolving and meandering approach, but unfortunately this is where the dating sim as a game fails. It takes at least an hour to get through the introduction that is roughly the same for the five different story lines. Add an extra five hours to explore one of its many endings. A completist who is willing to track all possible paths in the game will be busy for weeks. For those that are impatient there is an express way using this walkthrough and the fast-forward button.

The game has a few crossroads where a decision of the player is asked. What happens next is arbitrary and not always logical, but since the butterfly effect we know such is life. For most of the time the dialogues are quite banal: conversations about the bus schedule, the food in the cafeteria, the exams... Weirdly enough this works quite well and creates an atmosphere that fully surrounds you. There is, in my opinion, one arc that seems out of place and doesn't interact as well with the others, but 4 good stories out of 5 isn't bad at all.

So if you are in for an airport novel that evolves more like Kurosawa's Dreams rather than Tarantino's Kill Bill this is for you. Some have baptised this the most boring game of the world but the simplicity and repetitiveness of things make it something special and unique.

Katawa Shoujo deserves to be read with attention and at slow pace. Those who are hastily clicking forward in a frenzy session will be duly disappointed when they arrive at the naughty bits. Those who want to be slowly immersed by these bitter-sweet symphonies (the soundtrack with 38 different tunes is excellent as well, by the way) will be agreeable surprised.

Katawa Shoujo download area.

A couple of years ago the adult gaming market suddenly boomed and Shark's Lagoon may well have been one of the main reasons for that. This website not only contains a nice collection of free adult adventures, but has a very active forum as well where programmers, designers and writers meet and new adult games or stories are presented, tested and reviewed.

Some freelance creators suddenly got $-signs in their eyes and over the past few years a few websites were launched where free and payable adult content was offered. Making 3D adult graphics is the easy part. It only takes you an afternoon to learn to create (rather amateurish) 3D human characters, especially with all the free graphic programs that float around, but maintaining a professional website and its webshop is something else. But apparently Virtually Date Games and Play Force One are still around.

Next to ArianeB, who plays in a league of her own, I have a soft spot - what a weird term when it comes to adult gameplaying - for Shark's games and recently a new adventure has been added to his collection. The Jungle Call is one of Shark's 'call of nature' adventures (see also his Whakawai-series) where the western world clashes with the idyllic vision of the noble savage.

The story starts with Flor who enters the South-American jungle to find her sister who disappeared six months ago. Flor is a rather naive girl who isn't aware of the function of several parts of the human anatomy. The Omoro tribe may seem rather primitive, but of course they are well aware of the modern world and like to play around 'for the tourists'.

Head of the Omoro tribe is Ramaoni who initiates Flor to several primitive rituals that will tempt the spirits of the forest to find her lost sister back. But he uses some other tricks as well to get her private attention. When he claims to be bitten by a snake Flor immediately proposes to suck the poison out although it would have been safer for her to ask first where the bite had taken place. After a while, when he has slightly abused his shamanic privileges, even the villagers come into action, although their Pythonesque intervention is not exactly what Flor had hoped for.

You get the point, here is a typical Shark's adventure with humour, innuendo and a lot of caricatural sex. As usual this game is playable online and can be downloaded (often in better quality) at Rapidshare. It has a built-in hint system that can be activated by typing a secret word.

	The Jungle Call (Pt. 1)	JC1	Flor is looking for her sister who is missing in the Jungle. The Omoro tribe welcomes her. Toggle hint: type "river" to highlight next move. More hints at the forum.
	The Jungle Call (Pt. 2)	JC2	The Omoros revere the spirits of the forest... but they love pretty white girls too. Toggle hint: type "river" to highlight next move. More hints at the forum.

It's always nice to play Shark's games and this one isn't an exception.

The first of April gave us a new update for the ArianeB dating simulator, and as we know her to be a serious girl this is not a prank.

The seventh incarnation of this game has already been enhanced a couple of times. There are two main reasons for that.

First: when the first ArianeB dating simulator was made the Creator borrowed a few backgrounds from existing games, like the Sims and Second Life. He found it about time to get rid of those, you never know what the copyright police are up to.

Second: as its sequel, Something's In The Air (SITA), will have other interiors and landscapes the upgrade maintains the continuity between both games. This is not the USS Enterprise that changes elevator shafts every bloody movie.

But why bother, one might think...

Well there is a third. Something's In The Air will start were Date Ariane ended and will take that quite literally. Date Ariane 7.2 gives the player a code when the game ends and this code will be fed into the game at the start of SITA. Here is how the official Ariane blog tries to explain this:

Basically, at the end of every complete date, you are given up to five hexadecimal digits which define your first date experience. You will then have the opportunity to type that number at the beginning of the sequel and the sequel will be catered to that first date. Five hexadecimal digits, means 20 binary states.

This gobbledygook really means that Ariane will be able to say things like 'you haven't seen my pool yet, have you?' if you failed to have some skinny dipping in chapter one. It is a very intriguing concept and will make sure that players who want to discover all situations of SITA will be obliged to play the first game as well (unless they pinch the codes from the walkthrough pages).

This new update has 30 new images, mainly from the dress memory game, but also 6 changed html pages. This means that one or two situations may have changed. Over the next days I will play the walkthroughs all over again and when they pass the test the 7.2 logo will appear at the top right corner of the page. Edit: done!

What a splendid occasion to have another go at the first adventure of ArianeB that can still be found at arianeb dot com, playable online or as a download: Go on a virtual date with me, Ariane .

And if you are stuck the blog you are reading now offers nearly 50 different scenarios for the game. Have fun!

How to start the game: Start.
Introduction: Introduction.

Whoops! We forgot to wish you a Happy New Year, although those looking for a quick and easy way to get ArianeB in the sack will not really care for these wishes. So let's get on with it because some believe this is the final year of our universe.

Ariane Barnes: Aspiring Video Game Star

A spin-off of the ArianeB series are the comics that can be found under the title Ariane Barnes: Aspiring Video Game Star. Thirteen comics have been published so far, mostly with a gentle nod from the gaming to the real world. They range from the amusing to the brilliant and we still have a soft spot for number seven as it is so damn realistic in a funny way.

It took the creator three years to make this new comic and it contains a mild sarcastic stab to those fans who think that the new ArianeB should still look like her previous incarnation.

Something's In The Air

But the best news is about the sequel that has finally found a name: Something's In The Air. You can read all about it at the latest blog post of the ArianeB domain: The sequel has a title.

The new version will have 6 main stories, five that can be played in random order and a sixth that will only be opened when the other 5 have successfully ended. Within the next six months a demo of the first chapter should be published and work on the other chapters will be finalised at a later stage.

So splendid news for us, Ariane-lovers. But something in the six-story-set-up is nagging us and we wouldn't be surprised that only the first demo will be for free and that some additional chapters will turn into a commercial venture.

There's nothing against that, obviously, there have been enough ArianeB clones around that all asked a fair amount of money to be played, while the high-quality original has been free for as long as we can remember.

In the meantime the first adventure of ArianeB can be found at arianeb dot com, playable online or as a download: Go on a virtual date with me, Ariane .

And if you are stuck the blog you are reading now offers nearly 50 different scenarios for the game. Have fun!

How to start the game: Start.
Introduction: Introduction.

It took me some data mining to dig this out but I'm pretty sure I created the very first ArianeB walkthrough on the 16th of September 2007. In an entry from the day before, called Cyberhugging, I had already declared my unconditional love for adult oriented games that probably started in 1986 with Samantha Fox's Strip Poker on an Amstrad machine (that I still have out of sentimental reasons). The game however, that will be tattooed forever in my brain, is Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards that was shown to me by my brother-in-law who used to play the game all day long during his military service. A good thing that the Soviets never found out that the Belgian army computers, used to protect our capitalist borders, were mostly used for harmless fun.

Four years and three million clicks later the ArianeB walkthroughs now encompass about 50 pages. Most of these game solutions haven't been found by me but by the various members and contributors of the Shark's Lagoon forum where the ArianeB thread now counts over 60 pages or 900 posts (one possible scenario was pointed out by the Creator him/her-self and immediately hijacked by this blog).

With ArianeB #1 probably over, finished, ended, buried and death and ArianeB #2 still in embryonic mode it is perhaps appropriate to point out that the aforementioned Shark is a game creator in his own right. That Cyberhugging post of mine mentioned a game by Shark, called Horny Afternoon and this month the fifth episode of this continuous adventure has seen the light of day: Wendy Birthday Party.

Shark's games, programmed in Flash, are deliberately caricatural. They are in shrill contrast with those Daz 3D and Poser (free) characters. Since a couple of years, and more or less triggered by the successful Shark's Lagoon forum, there has been a boom of adult 3D generated html adventures and frankly all the characters and situations look the same. If I have to play a truth or dare scene again, other than in the original ArianeB dating sim obviously, I'm gonna puke.

Shark's creations bring us a breath of fresh air in an overcrowded adult gaming cyberworld and that's what I like about them. Enough said. Why don't you give them a try for a chance? They are free to play... (paying visitors can play games in advance and are treated with some hidden content, often an extra scene).

The Horny Afternoon series (so far)

All games are playable online and can be downloaded (often in better quality) at Rapidshare. Most versions have a hint system that can be activated by typing the right word, highlight or mark the space between the quotes ("like this") to reveal the secret word.

	Horny Afternoon	HA1	A piano lesson turns into all that jazz. Toggle hint: press "TAB" key to highlight next move.
	Another Very Special Horny Afternoon	HA2	Frank, the handy man, repairs some light bulbs in the bath room. Toggle hint: none.
	An Afternoon at the Swimming Pool	HA3	Cloé visits Wendy's house and they revive those lonely nights at the boarding school. Toggle hint: type "cloe" to highlight next move.
	First Time	HA3+	An additional back-door scene for HA3, with Cloé, Wendy and Frank. Toggle hint: none.
	Secret Fantasy Dreams	n/a	In this spin-off Wendy joins Nanny in bed, truth or fantasy? Toggle hint: type "dream" to highlight next move.
	Private Consultation	HA4	Kenny who studies medicine arrives. The girls ask for some free medical advice. Toggle hint: type "nurse" to highlight next move.
	Wendy Birthday Party (Pt. 1)	HA5	Wendy celebrates her 19th birthday with a Roman Empire themed party... Toggle hint: type "gift" to highlight next move.
	Wendy Birthday Party (Pt. 2)	HA5	Wendy's party turns into a Bacchanalian celebration (password protected, revealed at the end of part 1). Toggle hint: type "gift" to highlight next move.

Most episodes have been turned into walkthrough videos by Arnulf, including scenes that have been deleted from the freeware versions of the game, fun to watch but it takes away the gameplay experience. These are hosted on the contradictorily named Rapidshare server so that by the time you have finally downloaded these you could have played them as well.

Have some nice hot and horny holidays!

A couple of weeks ago (see: A New Ariane) it was revealed how Ariane's features were going to be upgraded as the earlier model dated from about a decade ago. The result was a 'new' Ariane who looked a bit like the original's older sister.

Reactions from the fans were mixed although everyone had to agree that the old 3D model was outdated and needed a makeover. The Creator did listen though to our wishes and created yet another incarnation of our favourite cybergirl. ArianeV4 has been modeled 'trying to balance between matching the proportions of “classic” Ariane, and what actually looks good'.

The final result with technical gobbledygook can be found on the official Ariane blog: A Final V4 Ariane and Poser 9 is Out.

The sequel will not only have an entirely new Ariane. Also the gameplay will change considerably as it will be a visual novel, made with the freeware Ren'Py.

Visual novels are quite common in Japan but have never really caught on in the western world because they mostly fiddle around with typical Japanese subjects and fetishes. I have once jokingly described those as stories 'where the only purpose seems to be to put as many tentacles from an alien octopus into the different orifices of a badly drawn under aged hentai girl'. I'm afraid those are only the soft ones as I recently was disgusted by a manga where nude girls were stir-fried alive in a huge wok.

The Ariane sequel, working title Date Night in America, won't have anything of that sick shit. Let's quote the Creator:

First of all, potential dates are women, not girls.
Second, Manga art is out, 3D art is in.
Third, an actual plot, with good guys, bad guys, surprising twists, and humor.
Fourth, a focus on American style modern story telling, inspired by Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon and others.
Fifth, instead of a story that takes weeks to develop your character and your relationships, it all takes place in a single day.
(Taken from: More Info on “The Sequel”.)

Ariane will be one of the many characters in Date Night and most characters can be seen on the official Ariane blog. It's a good read, as all articles are on Life in the Metaverse.

It will take several months before a demo version of Date Night will be published. In the meantime ArianeB can be found at arianeb dot com, playable online or as a download: Go on a virtual date with me, Ariane .

And if you are stuck the blog you are reading now offers nearly 50 different scenarios for the game. Have fun!

How to start the game: Start.
Introduction: Introduction.

A forum post, added by dating sim creator ArianeB, at Shark's Lagoon points towards a scenario that was present in the game since quite a while, but that has never been described before.

When the right conditions have been met it is possible to challenge ArianeB for a basketball shooting contest in the nude. For those fans who have not the guts (nor the time) to seek for the solution by themselves a new walkthrough has been added on this space: Nude Basketball.

At the same time this is an excellent opportunity to lead you to the games of Mr. Shark himself, although most adult game players will already be aware of his website and (excellent) forum. His latest freeware creation is called Desire & Submission 3 and is a BDSM adventure in the typical Lagoon style that I once described as witty, funny and sexually overt without being smutty (or at least, not too much).

Next to some interesting news at the official Ariane blog, that we will copy paste here on a later date, it was also mentioned that a new stealth update has taken place.

A stealth update is an update (obviously) that is released without any record of the change being preserved, in other words, officially this is ArianeB 7.1, but a comparison between a recent and an old version of the same version will show some changes. This August 2011 update has new graphics for the home décor shopping scenario and we are glad to say that the horrible kitschy picture that ArianeB bought before has now been replaced by a neoclassical one, Pompeo Batoni's 1761 depiction of Diana and Cupid.

For the pseudo-philosophers, nitpickers and linguistics among us: a stealth update will lose its secret status when its existence has been revealed, so this stealth update no longer is a stealth one.

Nothing has changed in the code itself, but our walkthrough that deals with this part of the game has now been updated to be in line with the new release: Dress & Home Decor Shopping.

And if you are stuck the blog you are reading now offers nearly 50 different scenarios for the game. Have fun!

How to start the game: Start.
Introduction: Introduction.

The official ArianeB blog asked for comments about the new version of their star at their entry: Ariane gets a makeover, published about a week ago. The first ArianeB simulation used 3D models that were up to par when the game was first devised – already a decade ago - but that have passed their expiration date for quite a while.

Obviously the new characters in the ArianeB sequel are based upon contemporary 3D models. In our last entry, First look at Ariane B2, it was announced that the strip club owner had been upgraded, but the ArianeB creator soon found out that mixing old and new 3D models don't really fit together. In other words: classic ArianeB looks inferior compared with the new characters.

The only option was to upgrade ArianeB. You can read for yourself on the ArianeB blog how this was done and find some prototype pictures as well.

Reactions went more or less along these lines: “Not to say the new version isn’t pretty, but she’s certainly not the Ariane we’ve come to know and love.” (Josh, 2011 08 18.) Others found that the new Ariane character, like in a movie sequel, has been replaced by another actress. A bit like Saavik in a couple of Star Trek movies, first Kirstie Alley, then Robin Curtis.

Useful recommendations were given as well and after a couple of days the creator came with a new prototype:

Making another attempt, adjusting eyes, nose, mouth and cheeks. The parts that still don’t match up simply are not possible even on V4. And, just to put the finishing touch on, I am using classic Ariane’s eyeballs. If eyes are the windows of the soul, then that is the biggest change of all.

And just like we grow accustomed to a new actor who replaces another one in our favourite soap we will get to like ArianeB mark 2 as well. To quote Danny:

In truth, I really can’t wait to play, no matter how Ariane looks. I love the original game, you did a great job on developing it and the title character, so all in all, if the game plays as well as the first, with both the feel of the game, and the great stories, I’ll be sold.

It will take several months before a playable version of Ariane B2 will be published. In the meantime the official version of ArianeB 1 can be found at arianeb dot com, playable online or as a download: Go on a virtual date with me, Ariane .

And if you are stuck the blog you are reading now offers nearly 50 different scenarios for the game. Have fun!

How to start the game: Start.
Introduction: Introduction.