Ladykiller in a Bind has a lot going for it. It’s got some really interesting characters, a great setting, and an interesting story. It loses a lot of the momentum as it goes though. It is a game that takes place over the course of seven days and it makes you choose how to spend your time on the ship which means on a single play through I not only have to spend time with some characters that I didn’t care about but also couldn’t spend as much time with those I did. For instance my two favourite characters were the Photographer and The Swimmer but you have to choose between them early on so right off the bat I can’t spend time with both of my favourites. I also am forced to spend time with The Hacker or The Beauty each day. I didn’t mind either of them but I enjoyed my time with The Bro and The Lieutenant more. The game does have a lot of customization to it which is nice. You can choose custom nicknames for pretty much every character. You can choose to skip lewd scenes. There was one choice that still wasn’t much of a choice though. There is one borderline non consensual sex scene that you can skip but it still happens because the dialogue afterwards still implies it took place, you just didn’t have to watch it. I would have preferred that skipping it means it takes it out of the plot. The sex scenes in any case are mostly dialogue as there is little but still images on screen and even then many just involve sensual touching or acts rather than full blown sex. Basically if one were to play the game mainly for the lewd scenes they will come away disappointed. Even if you don’t come just for those you still may. By the end I had many questions about just what the overall goal of The Brother was and what role certain people played. They just randomly did things with little to no explanation and then take random potshots at capitalism. The visuals had a pretty good style and the music was decent. The menu system was pretty unique as many Ren’Py games end up with really similar menu systems where Ladykiller went for their own style. I played Ladykiller on Linux. It had a weird issue where it froze on my three times. If I left it there for about twenty to thirty seconds it would unfreeze on it’s own. This was really strange because I have played hundreds of visual novels over the years and I can’t remember any of them freezing on me, the genre is usually pretty bug free. The game has a manual save system with no save game limit I could tell but you can’t save at any point however it is almost any point. One of the biggest technical drawbacks to the game was the lack of a back button for the text. Basically as the dialogue progresses and you get to make a choice that isn’t the only choice you get. If you let the dialogue keep going without choosing you can sometimes get additional choices but other times you lose the ability to make some or all choices. I really disliked this system. I would have preferred we get to see all choices at once. This way I clearly see what my options and and don’t lose out on any dialogue. This system is especially annoying combined with the lack of a back button I mentioned earlier. Game Engine: Ren’Py 6.99.6.739 Disk Space Used: 654 MB Game Version Played: Build 786 CPU Usage: 5-12 % System RAM Usage: 4.2-5.7 GB I would say that Ladykiller in a Bind ended up as a good game. It started off great but sadly a combination of technical issues and choices with the weird twists to the story hampered it. The other issue would be it’s current price. It retails for $25.99 plus tax CAD which is pretty high for a visual novel. I finished my first play through in five hours and fifteen minutes. I’d say that the price range of $10-15 would have been better. The length seemed fine as what the game needed wasn’t more content but a more cohesive story and better freedom with what characters you spent time with. My Score: 7.5/10 My System: Intel i5-12600K | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | Trisquel 11.0.1 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.9.5-gnu

Despite the controversy surrounding this game on both sides it is engaging, brave and more fun than you might expect of a visual novel. The premise of the game provides a good excuse to engage with the story and justify the behavior of the characters. Also given the paths through the game I can see already that I am going to be playing this one through many times.