Dong-Jin Rice-hime（東津萌米）

Dong-Jin Rice-hime invites you to take up residence in the Taiwanese harbour town of Donggang to care for a super cute rice field. Even just the concept of personifying a rice field is impressively unique, but I was further impressed by how well they personified it. The character you raise isn't just a generic anime girl who happens to have a vaguely rice-like appearance, she actually has insecurities and concerns relating to being a plant, such as getting upset about her weed companions being killed and her slow growth rate compared to other crops . The story is inventive and the writing is full of warmth, humour and sincerity. The player spends action points and makes choices in order to successfully raise the young rice girl in their care, so it's a combination of management and visual novel gameplay. It's fun but relatively superficial, so the characters and setting are more likely to be the reason a player sticks around. Together, the writing and gameplay combine to give the player a sense of working in agriculture. It is romanticised but doesn't shy away from giving details of the relentless heat, the aches and pains, the monotony and the exhaustion. It suggests that rice farming is a tough yet fulfilling job, that working outside in nature to produce food is meaningful. There is a tone of humility, respect and gratitude throughout that appeals to me. The only negative I ought to highlight is the translation. There is the occasional bizarre line: "From the country after the small so early, just as early as eighteen college attendance rate of less than half of the." "Today, I am responsible for teaching you the basics of farming, or hit the snail group without mischievous group is not responsible!" Those are the most extreme examples though, I promise. Most of the time, it's a single word that goes awry, but it can still cause confusion. For example, the 'Health Status' report is there to let you know how your rice girl is developing, but it repeats the 'intimacy' heading when the second one should say 'extrovert level'. If you don't realise that, you'll be lacking important information. Typos and such irritate me a lot but, in Dong-Jin Rice-hime, they don't affect the overall comprehensibility of the game and they don't detract from my enjoyment of it. Indeed, I love this game. Dong-Jin Rice-hime is fun, silly and quirky, but it is also a special and reflective game that makes me feel genuinely happy. Faye Strawberry Curator

Not a bad VN, but the English localization needs a lot of work. Honestly, I'm not sure if I like it enough to get into NG+.

Rice-hime was a fun little raising sim/visual novel. Your rice begins as a seedling and you raise it until harvest using a total of 8 action points per day to weed, fertilize, talk, etc. The artwork is really cute as is the voice acting (in Chinese). The English translation had me fooled at first, since it began really well done, then slowly slid into something very hard to follow. Hopefully a work in progress that's going to be fixed. I think the translation would have bothered me a lot more if I had paid full price for the game, but I got it on sale. I'm giving it a thumbs up if you can get it on sale, but I wouldn't recommend it at full price.