For the spooky month, I wanted to play something fitting for the season. I’m a huge wimp, so horror games were out of the question. A gothic theme game with a sprinkle of fantasy seemed like a better option for my sensitive heart. And that’s how I came across Blood Domination.

An innovative title

In Blood Domination, you’ll get to experience the student life at the Éclair Gymnasium Academy through the experience of 5 different main characters, each one having a specific love interest with whom they must enter a temporary contract and engage in Dom and sub acts, like sucking blood (and occasionally making out since it’s still a BL game!).

This game is really like no other! You can probably say that for a lot of other titles too, but I was really impressed by the novelty of the format. I like that we didn’t get only 1 main character who gets to date 5 different guys with each new timeline. It made the game more interesting because it explored different relationship dynamics based on their economic status (noble vs commoner) and second gender (Dom vs sub). Not every noble or Dom is a top, which I found interesting too, because it would have been the boring dynamic to choose. Although the cast is diverse, the relationships are still generic in the sense that the most frail one will always be the bottom and the taller, more muscular one, the top. I’m not emphasizing this because I’m some kind of huge pervert solely playing this game for the H-scenes (just a little…), but because it still has an impact on the flow of the routes. Somehow, social status is not a huge topic here, it’s more about how two people fall in love with each other and how that complicates things between them.

So even with all the supernatural stuff going on, all the stories gave off a normal coming of age feeling. After all, the characters have to get accustomed to their second gender and their new needs, which kind of looks like a second puberty in a sense (well I’m even not sure if they even get to experience a real puberty before that!). This is the main driver of the stories.

Last but not least, and since it is a normal practice for men to enter these D/s acts, we get characters that do not frown upon the idea of making out with other guys. This is a breath of fresh air and helps the story flow nicely and makes up for an enjoyable experience. No one is disgusted by the prospect of kissing another man since in their “universe”, it’s pretty normal stuff. Actually, you may think for 80 % of the game that women simply do not exist and that the Éclair Gymnasium Academy is for boys only. But at last, at some point, you’ll get to encounter “Girlfriend A” (and her one and only line) in the game. So they do exist!

Another thing that I quite liked is that every character, even outside of their routes, appears and interacts with each other. Takamine is friends with Uzuki and Narumi, for instance. So even if Takamine is not the love interest of Uzuki, we’ll see him in Izayoi x Uzuki route. This made the school setting even more natural and made all the cast of guys endearing, since we get to see them in the role of lovers, but also friends or acquaintances.

Let’s meet our couples!

A spoiled aristocrat winds up with a devoted and mysterious lower-class vampire.

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Another insufferable character (the pink hair guy) who actually softens up through the chapters. I would say that unlike Izayoi, he fits a bit more into the tsundere trope. I get why he’s so fed up with everyone, since he’s a noble and everyone wants to get him to afford a life of abundant wealth! But even with Takamine with whom he enters a contract, he’s still cold and acts like he hates him! Surprisingly, that doesn’t deter Takamine from doing everything for him: from dressing him up in the morning, delivering him his breakfast, escorting him to their shared room… He’s basically acting like his servant! Why does he act like this? Well, maybe because he shares certain fond childhood memories with Chihaya, even though he’s the only one to remember…

Two childhood friends enter Éclair together… Will their friendship survive a shift into something more?

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Another type of difficult relationship! On one hand, we have the overprotective Narumi (blue hair) with yandere type-esque personnality, and on the other hand the little princess Mizuho who doesn’t care about a lot of things except eating and sleeping. When the inevitable requirement to enter a D/s act comes up, they have the idea to conclude one contract together. After all, they are pretty comfortable together since they are childhood friends, and they would rather avoid having a partner chosen by the lottery! What could possibly go wrong for two best bros like them to be thrown suddenly into an intimate contract?! It certainly brings a lot of complications, and even more when one of them feels really attached to the other (to the point where Izayoi from the first route asks him if he wouldn’t want to imprison his partner if it meant that he could keep him to himself, scary!)

An outgoing player finds himself smitten with a shy, yet intelligent student.
However, as their relationship deepens, a dark and troubled history that ties them together comes to light…

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I had a soft spot for this couple since their visuals reminded me of Yata Misaki and Fushimi Saruhiko from K Project, whom I shipped at some point in my younger years. But the implication of the backstory of Yuugiri (the one with glasses) was a bit too heavy for the game. He’s afraid of Doms, terrified of looking into their red eyes and is just a huge introvert that would be better off if no one interacted with him! From the beginning of his route, you know why he feels this way, and it’s pretty dark. A bit too dark and unfitting for the game and its format, since his issue which goes back to his childhood is glossed over and is given a resolution far too quickly considering that he has a trauma of Doms. It did not help that these two characters first appeared in this route, so you didn’t feel any connection to them beforehand. One highlight of this route was Kazuha genki and flirtatious energy.

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Surprisingly, I think that my favorite couple was Izayoi and Uzuki. Their banter was pretty fun (although at some point you want these two to kiss already and stop with the misunderstandings!). But I genuinely liked every route and character, which is surprising for any visual novel experience I would say. Narumi and Mizuho route was a bit hard to get into since you are first introduced to them in their own route, but you see them again in Kazuha and Yuugiri which helped me to like them better.

Not the most intricate story…

Maybe it was explained at some point, and I missed out on this crucial piece of information, but as I was playing one question was left unanswered: why do these lovely men go through the trouble of entering a D/s act?! It seems to me like a dangerous idea, since you have this enforced dynamic between two people. Although, consent between the Dom and the sub is key, and safewords can be used by either party to forcefully reject a request of the other party. But aside from that, subs can enter into a sort of heat condition, where they will feel feverish until they perform an act with their Dom. If they neglect this need, it can even become lethal! So why is it that these dudes are so willing to enter this contract?! Why is there a school enforcing this kind of relationship? We’ll never know…

Another key element got me reflecting deeply on the worldbuilding of this game: what kind of vampires are they? Clearly not the usual kind that we know since they drink blood from each other. Are they really vampires since the D/s acts entail every order possible and not just “Drink my blood now!”? This missing piece of information will certainly not detract you from appreciating the blooming romance between our characters. But you would think that for a game called Blood Domination, they would think this through!

…But who cares?!

I was nitpicking in my previous paragraph, but frankly it’s not a big deal to be left in the dark and have an underdeveloped world! Although it makes me want more games with the same premise! Vampires are pretty popular, but you don’t see them often in visual novels, aside from Diabolik Lovers as far as I know.

Cute vampires with an unusual anatomy

The elephant in the room that I still haven’t addressed is the censorship… Don’t expect their dingle to be hidden by a mosaic, no. Instead, they simply don’t have anything going on down there! Envision a Ken doll, and that’s what you’ll get. To get in the mood for the sexy scenes, you’ll need to ignore this missing detail and use your imagination instead. Not sure why the port could not change that, but I assume that asking an artist to simply draw body parts would have been a strange request. And maybe an impossible one? At least the CGs don’t have this problem, since the chosen angle hides this part of their body. And since they are really hot and well-made, this make up for the lack of proper anatomy of our poor vampires.

I need more of this!

At $19.99 without any sale, the price can seem a little steep for essentially a mobile port with no voice acting. But the content of the game clearly makes up for it, with approximately over 30 hours of gameplay. There are 5 couples, 4 routes with 8 chapters and the last one with 4 chapters. And you even get side stories with special scenarios. Coming from the other mobile game port I played Oops, I Said Yes?!, I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of the background arts. This seems like a detail, but in the Voltage title, the quality was really uneven and in a low-resolution, which soured my experience a bit. But in Blood Domination, they work seamlessly and really help with the immersion and the feeling of being part of this supernatural campus. The translation was also good!

In their post for the last major update on Steam, the developers said that they would be willing to translate other projects but are limited by the size of their team and the fact that BL games are a niche within a niche. So that’s what compelled me to write this review, especially since it surprised me how it seems like an unnoticed game. Give it a chance, if you can. Maybe you’ve even played one of their other BL games without noticing it? Here is a selection, both of otome and BL games, from Abracadabra Inc.

This game got me thinking about other mobile ports, especially since it seems to be a new trend to port them on Steam or on Nintendo Switch. They are looked down upon for poor writting quality but I would say that it’s a preconceived idea since their business model relies on making people pay to get access to stories, with tickets and stuff. If they had no redeemable qualities, why would people be spending money on them in the first place? Their format is a little bit more restricted and I would assume that they don’t have the same budget as PC or Nintendo Switch exclusive visual novels. But that doesn’t mean that they should be given the cold shoulder!