Ladykiller in a Bind

released on Oct 10, 2016

An erotic romantic comedy about social manipulation, crossdressing, and girls tying up other girls. Will the hapless lesbian ladykiller Beast succeed at pretending to be her ruthless twin? By the creators of Analogue: A Hate Story, featuring choice-driven mechanics... and lots of sex.


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Probably gonna get roasted for playing a porn game but but but I genuinely think this has some of the best conversation mechanics in games. Every conversation is a tight-rope walk where you have to juggle various interests (including potentially porn-y ones!) to get the result you want and this is maybe the only game I've ever played that has properly validated rude and catty dialogue options, never mind made them fun. Moment-to-moment this is Love's best, funniest, most well-observed writing (though admittedly I should probably replay Analogue, and I never played Hate Plus).

And in the interest of not making it seem like i'm reading playboy for the articles, the sex parts are also pretty good, i dunno what to tell ya.

you're just so full of shit sometimes

Well, the original release of the game had a man raping the lesbian protagonist and her deciding she enjoyed it, and when I tried to play the patched version Without that scene I found out it still has the lesbian enjoying sex with a man (but consensually this time).

So there's that.

this a special brand of kinky for sure

Much as I deeply respect Christine Love, this game is so Messy (in the neutral sense) and filled with complex intertwining social situations that are just too much for my almost certainly autistic ass to keep straight that at some point I was more or less just reading for the sex scenes. I think that by choosing the most willing and subby options at every opportunity (a real shocker, if you know me), I dodged most of the things that get people riled up and engaging in extremely emotionally charged debate, so I have very little to add to any of that except that I respect things that choose to be queer and lefty and still messy, and that we generally ought to give those things the benefit of the doubt to see what we can squeeze out.

I leave this with a neutral rating simply because between all the bits I enjoyed, there was a ton of being thrown in situations that were simply too much for me. And a lot of scenes with alcohol :<

A quality visual novel with some interesting things to say about power and consent, as explored through dominance, submission, and other complex topics. I think the framing device and endings don’t quite live up to the conversations within the game’s main story. That said, I enjoyed how those conversations were designed to be flexible without necessarily being predictable. Ladykiller pushes back on player choice depending on the situation, which is wholly appropriate to its themes. If the frame held up to how well the rest of the game considers power, it would be a sure winner.