This is the two hundred fifth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred fifth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is very excited about drawing cute girls romancing each other. It’s Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day! (All Ages Ver) by NewWestGames, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Cute lesbian fun in Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day!

I can confirm that this is, indeed, a cute game about lesbians.

I admit, I was apprehensive upon seeing the “All Ages Ver” in the title. There is, as one might expect, also a “Mature Ver” of this game, which I presume must contain sexually explicit content. Itch.io has a reputation for hosting sexually explicit games that may not be accepted on other storefronts, even making headlines for this several years ago when Apple bizarrely brought it up in its lawsuit with Epic Games. Now, I don’t have anything against games with sexual content, but many such games that focus on lesbians are actually made by cishet men, for cishet men, and as such feel exploitative to me. I worried that Ecchi Sketch might be one such game, which would make it an odd inclusion in this bundle.

I’m happy to report that these fears were unfounded. Ecchi Sketch is a game about lesbians, for lesbians, and is at least partly about reclaiming this type of sexy game. It’s a visual novel that puts players in the role of Yume Akiyama, a young artist living in the suburbs of Tokyo, who is obsessed with girl x girl manga and anime. Her day job is doing graphic design for a funeral home, but she draws manga in her free time, and nerds out about girl x girl stuff with her online friend. Through a series of serendipitous events, she soon lands her dream job working at a small manga studio, run by women, that focuses on sexy girl x girl content.

Ecchi Sketch is a game about lesbians in Japan and some of the challenges they face, as well as the manga industry and how it exploits lesbian romance and sex for other audiences. But it is also, simultaneously, a sexy lesbian story itself. There are heartfelt slice-of-life stories and lots of details about how manga gets made, alongside disbelief-suspending events that inevitably lead to sexy situations. I felt a bit of whiplash from that, but then wondered if it was from my own prejudices about raunchy writing. Why do I place more value on writing that deals with hardships and complex emotions than I do on writing that is sexy?

The sexiness here is done with a light touch. Only after playing did I learn that “ecchi” is a Japanese term for things that are playfully sexy, without being too explicit or involving fetishes (making the title of this game a clever pun, riffing on the Etch A Sketch). That’s definitely the tone that Ecchi Sketch goes for: lighthearted and positive, even when it touches on some of the tougher things in life.

There aren’t a ton of choices for players to make in the game. Most of them are choosing which of Yume’s three coworkers she should meet with each day. These women are the romance-able characters, which means it’s going to be an entanglement of work, love and sex no matter who players choose to pursue. There’s a lot of inappropriate behavior and slightly absurd situations when it comes to the sexy stuff, in a manner one might expect for the genre. Sneaky sexy situations at the office, with coworkers, are the type of mildly taboo behaviors that might grace the pages of an explicit manga series. In keeping with the ecchi theme, however, it never gets too weird or leans too much on power dynamics between the characters. The All Ages Ver is fairly tame on-screen too, cutting to a black screen on a few occasions that I assume were censored sexy bits, and mostly limiting itself to showing women in their underwear. There was one image of a character topless, though.

Even so, I’m not sure this is actually appropriate for all ages. There may not be much nudity, but there are a lot of discussions of sex, details of the explicit manga that the characters are making, and descriptions of situations that make the characters — and will probably also make players — very horny. I don’t know if the scenes that cut to black also censor the text, but they’re pretty sexy even without being able to see anything. It’s definitely a game for sexually mature players. There’s also occasional voice acting, which can be a bit jarring when it happens. After some time reading through the story at a fast pace, these voiced moments slow things down a lot. The voice work wasn’t to my taste either, done in a style I recognize from English dubs of anime shows that I personally find too melodramatic and overacted. But it is in keeping with the manga / anime theme of the story.

Even though there are three characters to romance, one of them is introduced before the rest and seemed like the “main” romance. I met with the other characters once each to get to know them a little, but then fixated on this main character for my remaining meetings. Before long, the choices disappeared and I found myself committed to this person. It mostly went the way I expected, but there was a surprisingly poignant twist thrown in, a nice reminder that Ecchi Sketch is about more than the sex. Yume is lucky to have a supportive family, but other characters may not, and even for Yume it’s tough to navigate Japanese life as a gay person. Ecchi Sketch doesn’t dwell on this, but neither does it ignore it, and this adds a hefty dose of heart to the tale. I didn’t go back to try the other romance options, but I’m guessing they’re just as heartfelt.

It’s hard not to like such a genuinely sex-positive game, but I also know that some players will roll their eyes at the situations that arise. Ecchi Sketch is more interested in being sexy than being believable, in these moments. Approach with the right mindset, however — and a willingness to be titillated — and you may find a lot to like. If some sexy lesbian stories sound interesting to you, and you missed it in the bundle, Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day! (All Ages Ver) is sold for a minimum price of $9.99.