This is the two hundred sixth 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 sixth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is gazing at us with loving eyes. It’s By Your Side, by Takafumi, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Live a daily life of love!

This one is very lovey-dovey.

Like our last entry, Ecchi Sketch, By Your Side is a visual novel. Also like Ecchi Sketch, it’s about lesbian romance. But where Ecchi Sketch is playfully sexy, By Your Side is all about the loving relationship. One that’s honestly a little strange.

From the description on the itch.io page, I was worried that the romance in By Your Side would just be a facade, its earnestness masking something disturbing underneath. This is not the case, but there is an undercurrent of oddness to proceedings. As the game opens, the unnamed protagonist tells a strange background story, involving a possibly magical camera and a faerie’s curse. Then players are dropped into the protagonist’s shoes, in the apartment she shares with her devoted girlfriend. It’s Day 1. Each day, players can converse with the girlfriend and change her outfits before heading off to work. This means being tasked with photographing something, then choosing which part of the city to go to look for it. Choose correctly and earn a bit of money, which can be spent on new clothes for the protagonist’s partner. After work, there’s another chance to chat before heading to bed and starting the next day.

The opening story about faerie curses had me wondering about this girlfriend. She just seems to hang around the apartment and dote on the protagonist… does she have her own interests, or is she completely defined by the relationship? Is she even here willingly, or did the faeries have something to do with it? As the days passed, I was able to talk with her about a lot of things, mixed in with a lot of cute and loving banter about snuggles and kisses. These conversations were more believable than I expected. I learned that the protagonist is a bit reserved and shy, less inclined towards outward displays of affection than her partner is. I learned about their different likes and dislikes, mannerisms and dreams. It all seemed genuinely loving.

As the days passed and the number next to the heart symbol went up (a representation, I think, of the characters’ growing relationship), I got more bits of backstory, or other special conversation scenes. These filled in some details, but left a lot of others open to interpretation. I also started to notice certain things that seemed off about the world. It’s not clear what city our heroines live in, for example, although the currency uses the symbol for British pounds. More importantly, it’s not clear when the game is set. It looks like our modern world, but a few specifics don’t match up with that. I eventually concluded that this world is not exactly our world, and it may have much stranger things going on. I like that By Your Side never fully spoils this mystery. I was still rolling a few theories around in my head after I reached the end.

But it wasn’t clear there was even going to be an end, at first. The day-by-day structure of By Your Side can’t really support its narrative ambitions, with conversation snippets and photography requests starting to repeat long before the story is finished. I’m glad I stuck it out — the ending comes, I believe, after a set number of days have elapsed — but for a while it looked like I’d exhausted everything in the game. There are a few special things to find (some I found while intentionally picking the wrong location for a photo, just to see what happened) but the daily choices either need to be expanded significantly or the total number of days shortened to fix the pacing. These issues are likely due to the fact that By Your Side was made in a single month for the NaNoRenO online game jam. A shortage of things to do in-game is therefore understandable, but players should be aware of it going in.

Given these problems, it’s hard to recommend By Your Side. I am, however, still thinking about its story. Where most games would weave strange hints into their worlds to subvert genre expectations and lend things a sense of dread, By Your Side uses them for melancholy instead. Both the protagonist and her partner have been through some weird stuff, but they’ve found love with each other, and have chosen to live in this moment together. It’s certainly an interesting tale, if nothing else. If any of that sounds intriguing to you, and you missed it in the bundle, By Your Side is sold for a minimum price of $3.

That’s 206 down, and only 1535 to go!