Review: Our Mountain

The developer requested that VN Game Den review Our Mountain.

Our Mountain is a free visual novel about a young woman named Kumiko who encounters two yokai one day on the mountain where she lives. They are currently in a bit of trouble due to the flooded river they are unable to cross. Despite her misgivings, Kumiko makes a deal with them that they can stay with her until the river recedes in exchange for not harming her.

And so, she takes them back to her home and begins adjusting to living alongside two nonhuman beings. The two yokai are a bakeneko named Takeo and a tengu named Kenji, both of whom have humanoid forms they adopt while dealing with Kumiko. Since this is an otome game, they are—of course—the game’s two love interests, with routes that have a significant number of unique scenes despite following the same major beats for the main story.

Unfortunately, the development of the romances feels rather rushed. An early choice determines whose route you’re on, and then a handful of subsequent choices lead to either the good ending for that character or the bad ending. It does present some interesting conflicts with Kumiko seeing sympathetic sides to the two yokai yet also being aware that they are dangerous—and not normally friendly toward humans. Unfortunately, the romance seems to hinge upon these softer moments, and I never really felt there was chemistry between the characters.

There are two versions of Our Mountain you can play, a downloadable version and an online version hosted through CloudNovel. The downloadable version is reportedly buggy, but unfortunately the online version has some issues as well. There are large sections without any music (which may or may not be a bug; I thought the audio had stopped entirely until a new track began playing late in the game), and at one point a sound effect that played during a scene looped continuously for the entire rest of the playthrough.

When the audio is working properly, however, the music is lovely and helps set the tone of this supernatural romance. It is also visually appealing. Although the sprites don’t have a wide variety of poses, there are some beautiful moments and nice CG art at key points in the story.

Our Mountain is a short visual novel that should take you about an hour to finish, depending on how fast you read. It might not be the most satisfying romance, but the overall story does have some interesting moments as it progresses.

You can play Our Mountain for free at CloudNovel or download it from itch.io.