Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day! is one of the most successful games developed and published by NewWestGames, and a continuous mark on its specific aimed audience, with a girl on girl Visual Novel.
We take the role of Yume, a young woman whose heart desires an artistic career, involving design and drawing manga, with deep romantic ties and sexy hand drawn lines across beautifully shaped bodies. But what does she get instead? Designing generic funeral pamphlets and other work-related material, that is slowly eating her soul.
Living with her father, and only with one real friend that she met online years ago, her life seems a never ending routine of train trips between her job and the Otaku’s heart; Akihabara, searching for mangas, while gathering inspirations for future drawings.
Sudden changes happen when her boss decides to lay off some employees, and a new opportunity arises for Yume. Her artistic career will finally glow, and her dreams will no longer be sketches, but full pages of an erotic manga, praised by her new work colleagues and boss. What other opportunities may arise among such a hot and seductive environment?
Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day! delivers a medium-length visual novel, with choices that determine the final ending. The narrative dives in the life changing events of our protagonist, while she tries to break for an opportunity to work as a manga artist. The game clearly has an adult vision, and it avoids empty vague fillers, but still builds up a main character who exhibits a sense of feelings.
There are 3 possible dating routes to choose from, and each gives a very distinct taste of personality. Decisions appear midway through the game, and it’s entirely clear what they are intended for, as players don’t choose answers or text based choices, instead, one chooses whom they want to interact with, and therefore spend time with. Spending way too much time with one character will most likely make things go down her route, and since there aren’t many options, it’s pretty straight forward.
Dialogues are well written, with interesting elements, providing a good and simple read. Since it’s an adult oriented game, expect some high quality teasing, sexy puns, and other sexual events. Each of the three possible dates have their own kinks and sexual preferences, so it’s pleasant to see a large amount of variation even within such a small plot. The story development is more sex-oriented, so it’s less of a romantic development, such as seen in games like Sweet Volley High. Some feelings are described and portrayed, particularly for the Main Character.
As said, this is a full Yuri Visual Novel, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but in case you haven’t read the first paragraph, it’s a Girl on Girl themed game. This theme is portrayed in the narrative as characters struggle slightly with some morality from society/family, but it shouldn’t come off as a drama.
Visually, the game direction is on par with other NewWestGames releases. A western approach for renders, depicting well drawn characters, usually with good details, and the occasional Chibi when humour strikes. It’s clearly a very distinct art choice of the studio, that has an Anime vibe, but still far from that specific art style.
The backgrounds are very minimalist with simple designs, and some were re-used from old titles such as Sweet Volley High. It’s not a negative aspect, but it’s a crossed artistic choice. Some areas such as Yume’s room have a basic hand drawn style, while others, such as the office, maintain the hand drawn, but with extreme detail and light works. Overall, the game has a nice setting, and having different artists or styles did not affect the visual art at all.
An adult patch is available of course, that can be downloaded through the official NewWestGames website. This new content adds nudity and completely new scenes with explicit sexual content. It’s by far the best adult reference seen by the studio so far, with top quality scenes, amazing erotic contextual narratives, and high quality immersive dialogues. Definitely one of the strong points of the game, which is appealing to see such dedication to an extra patch, delivered for free.
Partially voiced-over, with pleasant voices, the soundtrack is generic and provides a good ambience to the whole game, but with little substance to be considered remotely a reason to buy the game. Instead, it’s a good simple synthetic up-beat electronic/smooth piano based tune, that suits well with the narrative.
It’s not my personal favorite from NewWestGames, but it’s understandably one of the most well developed adult games in the studio's catalogue, which might reflect on each individual preference. With a good narrative structure, Ecchi Sketch: Draw Cute Girls Every Day! may be a great game for Yuri fans, or anyone else who enjoys a simple but fun Visual Novel.