Developer: Softstar Entertainment, Noisy Fish
Publisher: Softstar Entertainment
Platform: PC, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Voice Love on Air – Review
We enjoy dating sims that are pretty self-aware about what’s going on. Noisy Fish and Softstar Entertainment seem to have gotten the message with Voice Love on Air, a gay dating sim about creating boy love audio dramas. It honestly doesn’t get much more on the nose than that. But with a fun cast of characters and casual management elements, we can say this title still managed to win us over.
Story
Voice Love on Air is about a young man named Aki. Aki aspires to be a sound engineer but finds himself in debt when he opens his own studio. A friend offers to help him make some money, but the twist is that he has to produce radio dramas where all the scripts happen to fall in the boy love genre. After hiring a few voice actors, Aki finds himself growing closer to them and striking a friendship. And for one lucky guy, Aki might even develop romantic feelings.
The game features four love interests to choose from. There’s Yuki, the pretty basic but kind childhood friend who obviously already has feelings for Aki. Junichi, a hotheaded and energetic guy with a lot of passion but not a lot of impulse control. Ryousei, the stoic one who seems very tough but hides a much softer side. And then there’s Wesley, a mature and strict man who has set high standards for himself. If all of this sounds familiar, that’s probably because none of these character types are really uncommon in dating sims, though we still found the respective character storylines interesting enough to be worth replaying the game. One important note is that Yuki’s route can only be completed on a New Game+, since it ties most heavily into Aki’s own tragic backstory.
Graphics
The game has a wonderful anime art style that’s really vibrant and pops off the screen. The backgrounds are detailed, the character sprites show off the fun designs and have emotion, and there are plenty of special images to unlock during the romantic scenes of each route. The game is divided into visual novel segments and management segments. To display your actions during that second one, you are treated to cute 3D chibi art of the characters too. Our only complaint is that the developers used AI-generated art for some assets, such as the covers of the radio dramas you produce. Regardless of our feelings towards AI art, the iffy quality is obvious and makes for a strange contrast. Considering the devs already hired excellent artists for the rest of the game, it’s curious that they decided to use AI for some parts of it, which we can only assume was to save money or rush development.
Sound
Since Voice Love on Air revolves around producing radio dramas, it shouldn’t surprise us that a stand-out feature of this game is the voice acting. The game is almost fully voiced in Japanese, aside from some very short scenes, with great actors lending their talents. We enjoyed how each character had a voice that really fits their personality and also played a role in the managing mechanic. Especially since the radio dramas you produce can be listened to. The soundtrack is a bit boring by comparison, with the music being rather bland at times, but not terrible or anything.
Gameplay
Voice Love on Air is a dating sim with management elements in the sense that you need to run a successful studio. To do so, you can pick scripts to work on, assign actors to them, and even the recording itself happens by means of a fun minigame. Every voice actor has a few styles of acting they’re good at, so you can’t just assign your favorite guy to scripts all the time. Scripts also require a specific amount of stats to work on them. The profession, communication, and performance stats can be raised by attending classes or buying skill books, both of which cost money. The recognition stat is determined by the popularity of your studio. If you need some extra cash, you can go out to record ambient noises in the town. Every business action takes up a whole work week and the game only lasts two years. This means you’ll have to use your time wisely, especially since you have deadlines to meet.
During the weekend, you can take things easy. Both Sunday and Saturday can be used to record ambient noise for extra money too, but the much more fun activity is to go out into the town and meet your heartthrob of choice. As the relationship progresses, you can even ask him out on dates and send him gifts. A nice gimmick in this game is that you’re encouraged to develop your relationship with all four love interests at the same time since you unlock their portfolio while doing so. Only near the end will the game force you into making a final decision on who to date. Similarly, there is a colorful cast of side characters who you can’t get into a romance with but who also have a relationship meter to fill. They have their own unique events. Just make sure to rest on the weekends too, or you’ll get a fatigue penalty. Or just buy a dozen coffees from the shop and never sleep again!
Overall, the management part of this game is very simple and sometimes a little repetitive, but it is a nice addition to break up what would otherwise be a simple visual novel. It gives Voice Love on Air some more substance and gameplay, which is something we did appreciate. We also enjoyed that the difficulty seemed to be extremely low, as it’s very hard to run out of money. This gave us more freedom to focus on pursuing guys.
Conclusion
While the story of Voice Love on Air might hit a tad on the cliché style, that doesn’t mean it’s bad by any means. The voice acting, cute art, and simple management mechanics were all things we greatly enjoyed. For a casual experience, this more than serves its purpose. And yes, there are enough implied sexy times to keep people looking for spicy BL content satisfied, even if the game has no nudity and never gets explicit.
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