“Stay! Stay! DPRK” – Romantic North Korean Visual Novel Review

Written by Otaku Apologist

“Stay! Stay! DPRK”, is a romantic political parody visual novel, developed by DEVGRU-P. Released in August 10th, 2017. Available for PC Windows, and Mac operating systems. Available for download on Nutaku’s digital store for $10.00.

A wonderful story of privilege, and oppression that explores the mythical wonderland of communist North Korea. With two sexy military girls to seduce, and accidentally grope, this game makes choosing the lesser evil a hard one.

We’re going on a trip, my anime-loving friends. We have a one way ticket, to North Korea.

STORY

You are a war veteran from the United States occupation of Afghanistan. While there, you made two pen pals in the North Korean military. When you finally meet your pen pals at the Pyongyang airport, they turn out to be super cute anime girls. Named Eunji and Jeong, these babes will take you around tourist locations in Best Korea, carefully black-bagging your head like the mafia, while driving close to military locations, and the concentration camps where millions of people die.

You arrive at a simple house, that acts as your base of operations. The girls frantically enforce the paranoid will of the communist regime. Your luggage is fully searched by customs, your T-shirt with symbols of “enemy states” is burned. Without greedy capitalists producing technological innovations, or any entertainment media, your only sources of fun are unintentional sexual harassment and listening to state propaganda on the radio.

You are taken to different destinations inside of North Korea, playfully called “date locations”. Get ready for soul-harrowing examples of the life-destroying effects of totalitarian communism! You are randomly apprehended by state security, many are starving to death, the masses are brainwashed, protesting against the government lands you in jail, the starting of private business is downright impossible, your money is stolen to fund the military, the media is pure propaganda. Sounds almost like living in the United States, or a European country.

The grammar was borderline perfect. The reading itself was a pleasure. While the descriptions of the environments was left to the images, the dialog shined. The comedic contrast between the blissfully ignorant feminine cheerfulness, and the surrounding madness, kept things interesting.

The quirky premise of a trip to a totalitarian communist hellhole was entertaining. I really enjoyed the sightseeing and lessons of history with the cute girls. Without checking every fact and date, the game seemed to place great emphasis on accuracy. Some peculiarities, like the plastic vegetables in grocery stores, reminded me of news articles I’ve read about the country over the years. I was disappointed that we never visited the secret concentration camps where generations of criminals and political prisoners are held in subhuman conditions, eating mud and rats, while the prison guards torture and rape. I’ve read that female prisoners who get pregnant from the rapes are stomped on their stomachs until they get a miscarriage.

The sisters Jeon and Eunji were damn cute. The developing love triangle between the player, and them, was starting to pull my heart strings. Eunji was hitting every sexy tsundere trope, up to and including kicking and screaming “pervert!”, only to blush like a horny teenager a second later. Meanwhile her elder sister Jeong, was oozing an intoxicating feminine aura. She was always so happy, completely at ease with flirting and getting accidentally groped. More than once, I found myself stroking my dick at the sight of her stacked anime breasts.

The story encompasses several in-game days. After you’re settled in at a motel near Pyongyang, you start the routine. Wake up, visit location, return home for dinner and shenanigans before bed. Repeat this cycle until you unlock one of the endings.

GRAPHICS

The character art is beautiful and crisp. The coloring, shadows, the lines in the flocks of hair, look so good, I didn’t get bored of watching the girls the entire run of the visual novel. The lines are tiny, body proportions fantastic, the uniforms look delightfully realistic. The sprites change poses and expressions frequently. Only the two female leads received their own sprites. I especially liked Eunji’s pose when she’s pointing a finger, and Jeong’s saggy boobs.

The art is consistent throughout the experience. The characters look like their sprites in CGs they’re featured in. It seems that the same art team forked out all the artwork. Points for consistency, because patchwork bullshit tends to be a trend among western hentai games.

The backgrounds look incredible. There’s so much detail and color, I felt like I was playing a Japanese game. I usually don’t care about backgrounds so much, but here, even the intentionally dull motel room had an air of intrigue around it. The backgrounds were so beautiful, it was like watching a slide show of postcards. I felt that the illustrious background art was telling the censored story of this totalitarian nation.

GAMEPLAY

“Stay! Stay! DPRK” is a visual novel. You click the screen to “turn the pages”. You choose between date locations, and make choices for replies during key moments in dialog, like when a girl asks you a question. Your choices influence the game’s events, though often the only thing affected is the ending. When replaying scenes, you can skip parts you’ve already read with the skip-button.

You can theoretically save your progress, to backtrack choices and easily unlock new content, but there was a glitch. Note to developer, the glitch first occurred in the water park, midway into the dolphin show.

Every time I tried to save, the game gave me an error. The saving glitch caught me off guard. I hadn’t saved my game for a long while. I tried saving in other points of time, I tried saving into other folders, but the problem insisted. Wanting to not lose progress and get this review out in a timely manner, I burst through the game, ending my playthrough at night-time.

MUSIC

The opening theme is mega cute, with incredible Japanese vocals. I think it was Japanese, I had a hard time making sense of the fast-paced lyrics. It’s a great performance, and really got me hyped for this trip to Best Korea. The beat is definitely not coming from any physical set of drums. There’s some electric guitar in the opening riff, but beyond that, my ears were assaulted by a cacophony of cheerful synthetic melodies.

The songs that play during dialog scenes, are equally energetic. There’s a couple of songs on the soundtrack, and I found myself liking all of them. Most of the songs are memorable enough, in the way that you’d instantly recognize them if you heard them years from here, but would certainly find yourself forgetting where you heard them. The soundtrack is full of happy energy. They really pushed the parody with the contrast.

SOUND EFFECTS AND VOICE ACTING (SFX)

“Stay! Stay! DPRK” has no voice acting. There are very few sound effects.

HENTAI

I accessed very little hentai in this title. Two impromptu erotic scenes with the girls happened in the shower room. These accidents never escalated into fullblown genital contact, but the artwork was quite exquisite.

The game has plenty of sexual tension between the characters. I found myself holding my dick while reading the banter between the characters. Even without voice acting, even without sex CGs, the content was sneakily erection-inducing.

I only played one route, and failed to woo a love-interest. I was too indecisive with my choice of date locations, and ended up in a gruesome re-education prison. I was kidnapped by the state, and extorted into staying. It was depressing.

CONCLUDING WORDS

If you’re entertained by the meme of North Korea, this is your game. It’s the kind of game you look at, laugh at, before moving on to a product with shinier packaging. I ignored this game despite knowing about it for a while, thinking it couldn’t possibly keep my interest. In the end I loved it, and I’m glad I picked this title to review for my free-speech-hating left-leaning audience, to redpill you commie fucks.

Support free speech and right for political parody. Download Stay! Stay! DPRK