G x B, by Jake Richmond
What is this?
G x B, or Girl x Boy by Jake Richmond and published by Atarashi Games is a lightweight, quick, dating simulator-style game, somewhere between a TTRPG and a chamber larp. It uses a deck of playing cards and some bio cards to tell a simple, targeted story in probably about an hour.
Why do I have this?
This is another Leisure Games reduced price purchase where I'm trying to my order value to a free postage threshold. The bright colours of the cover attracted me; I guess I'm a bit of a toddler really. At time of writing they still have copies at 46% off, if by the end of the review you still want to get it.
Level of review: Deep Dive
It's a short (24pp), small-format (half-letter I believe) zine, and I read the whole thing in a single train journey. It's also not very deep, detailed, or crunchy, so I can talk about everything in the zine. I haven't played it, and without some heavy modifications, I'm not likely to.
Vibe Check
A brightly-coloured triptych of three manga-style line portraits, overlaid with a full-colour, shaded picture of a girl in a high school uniform. It's a very manga-esque cover, and you can picture it in the manga section of a school library. There's actually nothing on the front cover which suggests it's a game; the back, which has chibi-style portraits of the same characters, gives a bit more away: "Guide Momoko through three dates and help her choose the perfect boy (or girl) to be her first love in this story based dating game!"
The blurb is well-written and professional-sounding1, and it does make me want to dig in. It seems like a cutesie-cutesie kind of game, which isn't normally my bag, but it also doesn't sound entirely "kawaii".
The cover is gloss card stock, not too thick, and the paper inside is just thick enough to be not translucent, but just thin enough to feel like a manga publication. At least, the ones I'm familiar with2. It's something that Far Horizons tried to emulate too with their (our?) Short Games Digest line: a publication that deliberately feels flimsy to suggest mass production, and wide appeal. If that's what they were going for, it worked, and I think they pulled it off well (it actually doesn't feel flimsy, just looks that way).
Staff roll is on the inside cover: it's by Jake Richmond, with art by Heather Aplington, and "Atarashi school uniforms" by Gloria Weber. I can't find reliable websites for any of these people, but both Richmond and Aplington did work for Atarashi Games and Cel*Style (their distributor)3.
Flick-Through
This is a 28-page zine in small format, but, four of those pages are blank, two are adverts for other Cel*Style games, and two are internal cover and copyright.
Most of the pages are laid out to look a little like a school notebook; three are a brief set of instructions in comic format4, which is a really nice touch that I wish more games would do (Zephyr is another example which does it nicely; the forthcoming Trash to Treasure is also planning to do this) because it's so accessible to me (and presumably others). There are also a few pages with copy-and-keep larp-style "character cards", which is another great addition here.
The thing that really catches my eye is Aplington's art. The same four subjects are captured over and over again, but in different manga styles. It's really fascinating how varied these pieces, and how they capture the tones of the pages they're placed on. In short, Aplington and the layout designer have done a really cracking job here.
Deep Dive
This is a game which covers what seems like an innocent kind of subject: the main character Momoko, played by one player, is new to Atarashi High School, and she's looking to find love. She gets the choice between three other characters: the bad boy, the smart boy, or the class president (a girl); they're played individually by the other players.
The game is played out in three dates, and then Momoko makes her decision, which hinges on what basically comprises the game's only "mechanic": during the dates, Momoko gives out playing cards (face down) when the other character does something she likes (romantic, or brave, or kind, etc.). At the end of the date, the suitor looks at them, counts the number of Hearts, and records this number; at the end of the game, the suitor with the most Hearts becomes her boyfriend or girlfriend.
The game does offer some pretty decent advice about how to play this kind of game, including telling players to really try to embody characters, and giving some okay safety advice (important considering it's a romance game). It also provides really good structures for running the scenes: the proposition, the date itself, the dialogue choice, and the end of the date. It's a decent way to introduce players to this kind of scene-framing game, and to this kind of larp-like in general.
It's also nice that Richmond has offered Momoko a bisexual choice, despite the game getting the name "GxB". In a genre which usually feels pretty straight (or, pretty gay), this is better than it needed to be. I note that there have since been two other games released by Atarashi called GxG and BxB, which I presume are much gayer5.
Here's the first of two minor twists: during the scene, the non-suitor players get to offer a choice to Momoko to do or say something that's embarrassing but helps to seal their intimacy, or saves her embarrassment but drives them apart. The first gives three cards, and the second takes one card away, from the suitor.
This is an opportunity for the non-suitors to do something really mean to the suitor's player (and, to be honest, Momoko), and I think it's either going to be used kinda meanly, or completely blandly, and I don't think there's a good centre ground there. Maybe that's okay, but I don't love this "choice" thing as a mechanic, even if it's really close to what dating simulators do.
The second twist comes at the end of the game: the suitor with the second highest number of Hearts can tell Momoko a really embarrassing secret about the suitor she's picked. They then draw a card at random, and if it's a Heart, Momoko goes through a second round of dates and chooses again.
This sucks as a mechanic, because it's just begging for the incel asshole in the room to make everyone play the whole damn thing again just because they lost. There's a caveat in there to say that the second round is always the last, but, it's still pretty crap. This is an actively "play-to-win" game; you're trying to beat the other players, if you're one of the suitors. That's built into the premise of the game, and if you can't stomach the idea of losing, maybe don't play.
Final Thoughts
Aplington's art really, really lifts this game up; it would feel significantly less good without it. That said, Richmond has done a decent job emulating the over-the-top manga/anime style of prose here.
I do find myself feeling a bit uneasy about the idea of roleplaying a high school girl in potentially awkward and embarrassing romantic situations. This feels like the icky part of this entire genre: the idea of a group of teenagers playing this game is very different to the idea of a bunch of 30-somethings playing it. I also feel like it's very different again if it's played by just blokes (or worse, the Kagematsu setup of one woman and several men). It's the Monsterhearts problem of doing sexy-times roleplaying for teenagers, in that once you get past a certain age it should feel wrong to do. It's enough to put me off playing it as written.
On the other hand, I think this has some nice, if basic, mechanics and structures that make it an interesting game to hack or reskin. You could play this imagining Momoko as a 30-something in a diminishing dating pool, or as an older man looking for love after his long-term partner has died, or as a vampire looking for their next victim (please somebody do this). The idea of the playing card favours is really good, if perhaps open to abuse. I would, however, definitely drop the final scene twist from the game, because it's totally unnecessary.
As ever with these things, the pool of players willing to play a larp-like is shrinkingly small, and of those you have to find the right kind of nerd to want to roleplay awkward romantic encounters. But that's an issue with the scene, not with the game.
As written, I wouldn't play G x B, because frankly I'm too old and it gives me the ick. But give me a reskinned version where I can imagine myself as a player character, and I'd gladly pick it up and run with it.
Might just be a challenge to find somebody to be my Momoko, though.
I particularly like that it has the price listed in both yen (800) and dollars (10). The exchange rate hasn't been that low since 2012.↩
I'm not telling you which ones these are.↩
Websites for both of these companies are offline.↩
Look, I know it's a manga, but writing down "manga-style" again was going to make my head spin.↩
And also one called Jedi x Sith, which frankly sounds better.↩