The Fruitless Flower 雾雨中的徒花

The game has a duration of 6 hours with all unlocked, it has three bad endings and one good ending, and you're going to want to collect all the items to get the good ending. These girls went through a lot of hardships, they deserve the good ending

It's the classic RPG Maker game where you grab an item and interact with another part of the map, but the story is on another level

It's the yuri romance type, but imagine the Holocaust in a universe where there are witches, spirits, and magical beings, and a certain political party takes over the government and starts an ethnic cleansing campaign in the name of the human race, among other things... you can already imagine where the story is going

The game is very heavy emotionally, it has some translation issues, but even so, it conveys very strong emotions
Completely recommended

A simple but excellent yuri game. The story is nothing fancy, two girls trying to escape a country ruled by human supremacist (basically just comically evil bad guys). The writing is nothing fancy either, played it in Chinese because English translation is not very good, but even in its native language, it's clear that the writer is not that experienced, everything is simplistic from word choices to dialogues. However, it's not really an issue because this game is also clearly a passion project, the lore, the setting, story-telling, and most importantly the main couple were all written with passion and the love for yuri/GL. The story is simple, yet can make one experiences different set of emotions throughout the game; the relationship between the girls are well paced and well written, from childhood friends to inseparable lovers. Also, it's only 1 dollar, so there's no reason not to buy it if you like this genre.

RPG Maker strikes again!

The Fruitless Flower 雾雨中的徒花 is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.

As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.

Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.

Notably the author here couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make an RPG... and that's the only thing RPG Maker can do properly... except it's not even very good for making RPGs. Instead, we have a crap E-book/Interactive novel.

Presumably the author couldn't work out how to use the craptastic Ren'Py visual novel construction set, so this E-Book is a matter of using RPG Maker top down view to shuffle between passages of text. Badly written text.

We know it's badly written because if they could write professionally, they'd be published authors.

Instead, gamers have to put up with this non-game E-book trash that's written like a high school anime club dropout fanfiction. I can't stress how bad the amateur writing is here... but the fact they tried to self-publish a book on Steam using RPG Maker should tell you exactly how far you should go to avoid this trash. This E-Book has been translated from some other language into English... badly. If this was done through Google Translate, Google Translate should feel ashamed of itself. Regardless, the language in this E-book is somewhat broken and will put off a lot of readers.

The poor quality of this E-Book is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 7 readers. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only reader activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 real games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality E-Book is to be expected.

The Fruitless Flower 雾雨中的徒花 is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the E-Book, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger. It's also impossible for me to recommend things which aren't games to gamers.

After finishing the story and obtaining all endings, I can say that I was not expecting the flow of emotions that it makes you feel throught the story. The interactions between the two main characters may not be fully fleshed out, as the plot moves at a rather fast pace, and some aspects of their personalities (Flora's being somewhat weak in this regard, maybe because of her role in the story), but it lets you infer a lot from what is presented and you can feel the connection between them. Their relationship is very cute and they get to retain some innocence as shown in their interactions later on.

It may not delve that deep into the political aspect of it, but gives enough detail for the setting to be properly established (it is clearly a reference to Nazi Germany), and it is also what gets the story going.

The music is really well done and accentuates the story most of the time. It made me feel curious and excited when they first met, and even feared for their futures at times due to the dramatic tone of the setting.

The illustration quality is all over the place, but I still found it charming and really cute overall.

The translation is very rough at times, noting several menu options not appearing properly (mostly just yes or no options), and even had to translate the text from Newspaper - 9 from Chinese on my own, as it was missing in the English version. Other than that, it does not detract too much from the story and found it acceptable.

Getting all the achievements is a cakewalk if you follow a guide (also if you want the best ending, as some requirements for it may be easy to miss), and it does not take you out of the main story either.

There are also three additional sub-stories to unlock if you complete the sub-quests that are very cute and also contribute to the best ending.

Another extra story is obtained by collecting all the pages and illustrations along the way, which is also cute on its own regard.

Many aspects of the story's background can also be inferred through the newspaper entries that can be obtained (again, Newspaper - 9 gives some closure to an aspect of chapter 5).

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience.

After receive the hope It would turn into the despair in no time. And, It's happens throughout the story.
Take your hopes and become despair over and over again.
Therefore I think that's why it's fun and very romantic.

little too yikes for me sorry

A real tear-jerking story of a pair of lovely, innocent girls caught slap bang in the middle of the rise of a totalitarian regime and suffering all the tragedies that came with their struggles.
It was an excellent story, despite the grammatical hiccups occurring from the English translation.
Care must be taken to obtain ALL of the items and do all of the side quests if a good ending is required.
I would in fact welcome any similar yuri VNs (Chinese - English translations), considering the caliber of the story.
My only gripe was that I couldn't get any screen shots, as the F12 key didn't work!

This is a really good made game but the story plot line is messed up, Its good in the beginning but then it turning into a very...how would i say this, holoc*st thing, its really bad and i recommend you not to play this if you hate these topics. In general i am frusterated that there are no reviews about this AND theres nothing said about this.

a deep and immersive experience

PROS:
interesting but really sad story, the character designs are pretty, the relationship was depicted respectfully
(actual LGBT friendly game lol)
CONS:
some untraslated text (however you can still beat the game just fine), not sure how to get the other endings

This story is really inspiring and it teaches the lesson of life and death.
We must preserve the valuable freedom we have today.
Some political opinions included, but mostly positive.
I really love this game.

Alisa is an orphan who receives a seed which when planted turns into the flower girl Flora. The story is about them growing up and growing closer to each other. Meanwhile, a political party which sees non-humans (including flower girls) as inferior rises to power.

The game is a visual novel with some RPGmaker elements mixed in. You mostly walk around and talk to people, or perform simple "find item A and bring it to point B" type of quests.

The story is decent. It's a very sweet and innocent yuri (girl love) story with four possible endings, and is a nice story to just enjoy and relax to.

My main complaint is that the localization is just awful. Grammar mistakes, wrong spellings, words missing or being replaced by ▯▯▯, it all happens very frequently. Still, seeing as the game is so cheap I'm still going to give it a thumbs up as I did enjoy it for the five hours or so that it took me to complete it.

Some untranslated dialogue, two continuity issues, and a couple of easy-to-miss items. Also rather sad and repetitive. Make repeatable text skippable again!

the fact that it's as effective as it is despite an... exceptionally rocky translation, says a lot. it's difficult not to get seriously attached to the characters, at least if you're anything like my terrible lesbian self. the political subtext is a little simplistic at times (the fact that the ascendancy party eventually starts actively saying democracy and equality are bad is a little on the cartoon villain side and some of the allegory is a little brick-in-the-face, like "rudolf hitz" and "make sandybrook great again"), but i've certainly seen much worse in this regard and overall it's handled well and gives a strong basis for the events that go on in the main plot. those familiar with yuri as a genre and the typical themes that accompany it will find it's handled overall very well. again though, the translation needs work and i would suggest they work on a new patch with an editor, as much of the dialogue is wooden in places, and outright grammatically inaccurate in others, which seriously hurts the flow of the storytelling.

overall though, it makes an effective emotional impact alongside political themes that are skilfully kept in the background while also being impossible to ignore. i think that's an overall effective way of handling the kind of storytelling going on here. i do think there's something to the previous argument that sometimes the tragedy was a little excessive, but i didn't overall find it came off as torture porn and the fact that the ending (the one i got, anyway) resolves into a hopeful and very obviously fulfilled lesbian coupling means it doesn't commit the common crime of only handling yuri as a blip in the girls' lives, characterized by excessive tragedy; in fact, the political aspect makes clear that the world around them is fully culpable for their suffering.

anyway point is i had a good time with this one, cried many lesbian tears, and so on. thanks for reading my gay-ass review

The Fruitless Flower 雾雨中的徒花 (Flower in the Fog)
This is a heart wrenching tale of two young girls living in a war torn land of ethnic hatred and distrust. The developers took a hug risk with the topics that are presented in this game and made a very enjoyable experience that allows the players to learn about the darker sides of human nature.
Cons:
This was the first major project for the translator and I think they did a fairly good job for what experience they have and their limitations. There are quite a lot of grammar issues and some text issues that will confuse players and non-English speakers. It is usually hard to translate things from most languages to another language, so this is not a huge issue, but there will be some who may find the issues a little daunting or annoying. I had to think a few times about some of the issues, but I was able to figure them out after a bit. They definitely put forth an effort to translate and did not just use a translation program to do the job for them. I give the translator some props for trying.
The story is very heart wrenching and actually made me feel like a horrible person. The scenarios that the girls struggle through are very hard to understand unless you have lived in a similar way. They are treated so poorly and it can sometimes be hard to play the game when you see what these girls go through. It is not an easy subject to put into any kind of media, yet the developers did a great job with it.
There is some horrible symbolism presented in the game that may be discriminatory. This is a game about internment camps, gulags, working camps that use some of the real life symbols presented in the game. If you are not very accepting of these kinds of symbols, then you may wish to avoid the game at all. However, if you think you can look past those things, it would be worth giving a try.
Pros:
There are many subjects that are usually not portrayed in media. This game deals with racism, internment camps and slavery all in one package. These are usually things frowned upon by most people today and it is usually kept away from most media because of how serious these issues can be. However, the developers of the game decided to take a huge risk with this game and they did an amazing job explaining the situations, ideas and experiences of these topics in a fair and gentle way. They do not push these topics too far, but are willing to touch that borderline of acceptance. I really enjoyed all they tried to do and how well it came out in the end.
There is some amazing artwork and music done for this game. They picked an art style and stuck with it the whole way. They did their best to make the characters look close to human, but also allow some cartoon aspects to make sure the readers understand that this is a game and not reality. This allows the player to connect with the characters, but also distance themselves a little when the tough spots hit. The music is also very well done and works perfect for each situation. They picked songs that worked for each situation and make the player feel more immersed in the game while listening.
While Yuri may be one of the main ideas connected to the game, there are actually quite a few females hooking up together, which is the main focus of the game. It does give fans some Yuri connection and allows players to enjoy some Yuri moments, but then goes back to being serious about the situation the characters are stuck in. So it is not what most Yuri fans may be looking for, but it is a very good story that does give female x female fans a chance to experience some new kinds of interactions.
All in all, this is one of the most heart wrenching and heartwarming tales I have every played through and I would gladly recommend to others who may be willing to try it out. Sure there are some issues with translations, the Chinese version is probably better, and there can be some symbolism that may be a little touching. But if you are willing to fight through these issues, just as the characters struggled through their life, you may enjoy the game a whole lot. I would gladly love to see more work from this developer and team and hope that they will give more chances to translating their work. It also gives me a reason to learn Chinese so that I can actually play their game. Amazing Game.

If you're really desperate to play a game with yuri elements then I recommend this. If not, then there really isn't any reason for you to play this game. The translation is shoddy, the text is barely readable during certain scenes and the lack of a proper skip button really makes finding different endings tedious.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed playing this game. The story does a complete 180 and becomes so much deeper than you would've thought. The price point is what overrides all of the cons. If the translation was re-done and the font was a different colour so you could actually be able to read it properly, this game would be amazing. At this current point in time, it's a really, really, really rough hidden gem.

I originally heard about this game while looking on the Hella Yuri steam group page and since it was on sale during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend sale I thought I'd give it a try not expecting that much. Boy does this game exceed my expectations by a lot. The characters and plot are well written and make you want to care about the protagonist and her plight throughout the game. The translation however can be a bit rough at time with some options being left untranslated although it doesn't make the game to hard as the choices are generally amount to either yes (top) or no (bottom)- however the translation quality is generally speaking quite acceptable. Overall if you like yuri (there's plenty of couples not just the two main characters) and visual novel style limited gameplay this game is well worth the money.

7/10