Strawberry Vinegar

Thanks to the unique perspective and concept of the tale itself, the setup of Strawberry Vinegar leaves room for all sorts of potential.

Telling a tale as sweet as its graphics, the aptly named Strawberry Vinegar is a positivity-boosting read, with food and friendship at its core. Living with a demon is far from easy, but Rie learns to live with, and even like her, and ends up playing a special role in her life that changes it for the better.

When Rie, a cynical and insular 9-year-old, finds Licia, a young demon from Hell, stealing cookies in her kitchen, her life undergoes a sudden and dramatic change. Just how things develop is up to you in Strawberry Vinegar, a slice-of-life (and cake) visual novel.

Strawberry Vinegar is a visual novel whose concept is a friendship that arises by gluttony and develops when the characters share meals. Although the choice of children as protagonists causes some initial fear, the work approaches the purity of friendship and love in childhood in a very honest way. It is very worthwhile for those who want a short visual novel with beautiful illustrations and mouth-watering foods.

Strawberry Vinegar is a visual novel focused on friendship and food, lots of food. With a 'cute' aesthetic, quite heavy, with six endings and a duration that can exceed five hours reaching the normal end, they make up a title of more than 80,000 words with an operation that does not depart from the canons of this genre, and that nor does it need it for those who like it.

The artwork is just as amazing as the story, and the music is cute and sets the mood for every single scene nicely. In common visual-novel-style, there are different choices you can make (do you want to make pancakes for Licia, or go buy her a crepe?), these choices will lead you to one of six different endings, making for plenty of replay value. On top of that, there are your standard artwork collectibles (which are all beautiful artistic creations) of the characters and your more-specific-to-this-game splendid drawings of food. I can feel how much love went into this game. The author clearly loves each character, and the artist clearly loves food! Ratalaika Games hits another home run for publishing this one, and the developer ebi-hime is an excellent author. Ebi-hime has other visual novels under their belt as well, and I am really looking forward to checking them out too. Strawberry Vinegar has such a modest price point that I would highly recommend it to any fan of visual novels. Also, I think it’s an excellent starting point for any young gamer looking to try out a visual novel.

Strawberry Vinegar ends up being incredibly straight forward if not a little messy with some of its story elements. I thought the writing was comical and engaging, but then the pacing would be hurt by Rie’s unbalanced characteristics and overly mature attitude. In the end, it’s a visual novel about food and friendship, and you’ll get plenty of that here.

OK, so I'm still not quite sure how I feel about visual novel experiences on dedicated gaming hardware and Strawberry Vinegar, though certainly having a novel premise, is further down that path than most...

Strawberry Vinegar tells a weird story centred around a graphic passion for food that is genuinely funny and unexpectedly wholesome despite some subtly suggestive undertones.