From my North American perspective, video games (and all media to an extent) are bracketed by ridiculous notions of “maturity.” For some reason, it has become acceptable and expected that young children can view depictions of violence in games. Parents may not like it so much, but they buy their kids games like Call of Duty anyway. However, show one scantily-clad character or make one heavy-handed sexual euphemism and the content inexplicably becomes more “adult” than seeing a character’s head bursting open with sickening detail in slow motion.

The strange concept that violence is okay, but sexual content is not, has been present on Steam as well as game consoles for a long time. We have finally begun to take formative steps toward sexuality in games in the West, but they still feel very childish in execution. As such, when Sakura Spirit launched on Steam, the community went absolutely ballistic.  Where most new games on Steam get a few dozen players during the first week, Sakura Spirit had an immediate player base. People all jumped on board writing ridiculous, juvenile reviews and posting screenshots on their accounts. What was it that caused one small visual novel to gain so much attention?

Simple: It was the designs of each woman in the game. Sakura Spirit is not subtle with its intent to titillate heterosexual men. Each character has a typical “moe” permablush style face paired with a very large chest, hips, and whatever else is stereotypically deemed to be attractive to the typical guy.  Yes, theoretically anyone could enjoy the artwork but it’s doubtful the designers really considered a lesbian, bisexual, or queer audience when creating the artwork.

Even though we have sayings like “don’t judge a book by its cover,” that’s exactly what innumerable players did with Sakura Spirit. Either they avoided it because of the artwork or bought it purely for that reason. The latter camp should be very pleased with the game since it has a copious amount of CGs to showcase each character in compromising positions. Sometimes they are even nude, minus careful (and often anatomically incorrect) covering of a few regions.

As far as story is concerned, it feels undeniably average. Thanks to a quick grammar patch most of the unfortunate lines have been fixed, but that change alone can’t make a story worthwhile. It took me around two hours to “beat” Sakura Spirit, but it felt much longer thanks to a lot of fluff in the storyline. Once the game finally kicks into gear, it unfortunately ends way too quickly.

Despite being a middling visual novel, the game has received a tremendous amount of attention. Publisher Sekai Project didn’t seem to anticipate it at all. Now that they’ve tasted what “sexy” content can do for them, well, it’s likely they will push that further in regards to what games they publish in the future. They’ve mentioned considering 18+ games and actually appear to have negotiated with Valve to help create an environment that is eroge game friendly. One change due to these negotiations was a warning page on Steam as well as a warning on the store page itself. Usually, M-rated games ask for your age but this one says the content “may not be appropriate for all ages” or for “viewing at work.”

Therein lies a strange divide since other games actually have semi-depictions of sex in them (Mass Effect, The Witcher, etc) and never were charged with such warnings. In any case, it appears Valve may now be open to more sexual content on their storefront. If so, things are going to become very interesting. Personally, I would love to see story-driven eroge (ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two, Dengeki Stryker, etc) arrive rather than ones like Sakura Spirit. My biggest fear is that, if Valve really opens up the store in this way, that it will become another DLsite. DLsite certainly features some good content but the adult side of things is often frightening. Although I acknowledge everyone has their own tastes, if any, it feels like a bad idea to allow dark titles with rape elements to be easily accessible via Steam. Of course, as of right now Steam does not allow eroge at all.

Although I can’t help but roll my eyes at Sakura Spirit, I must give credit where credit is due. Publishers such as MangaGamer with a stable of eroge games apparently have never attempted to ask Valve about adult games before, simply operating under the notion they’d say “no.” But if Sekai Project has helped to open the doors for it, then this is the start of a very interesting era on Steam.