Marvelle’s Notes: 2020

I feel like I only update with these broken promises.

I’ve been doing this blog for a long time. I started reviews back in 2014 under my Marvelle Blog site, but when they took over my other content, I switched them to the blog you see today. This was back when Voltage Inc (now Otome Romance) was the best source of English Otome Games and they hadn’t consolidated all their apps under one (really shitty) hub.

I had more time to write reviews back then and the industry has changed. Before, I could buy by the route and read/review in an afternoon. Now, the only way you can get a game not piece-mealed over to you is through the rarely localized non-mobile games. I used to play primarily before sleeping at night and taking over a month to do one review isn’t conducive to content or very fun for me. I also refuse to pay unless I can get 100% of a story to read.

I’ve started reading more light novels. Thanks to Cross Infinite World and J-Novel Club “Heart”, there are a lot more shoujo light novels coming to the market. So I may focus more on those this coming year.

Nintendo Switch is supposed to be the next Playstation Vita. Who knows if this will translate into more games coming stateside, but I sure do hope that’s true!

I am still going to try and do more reviews and more previews. I may be late, but I discovered itch.io and I want to do more indie otome game previews and reviews. I still have a full-time job and I’m a full-time student working on a Master’s, so I can’t promise regular updates, but I do want to try to do it more than once a month.

And as one more thing, I may end up changing the domain. When Cute and Steamy started, I reviewed romance novels in addition to other things and the broad name made sense. Since it’s primarily Otome Games/Otoge now, I want to change the name to reflect this fact. I haven’t quite settled on a name yet, but there will be a rebranding when this has taken effect. I’ll work on it when I can.

Much love,

Marvelle