Wet Steps Switch Review: Slippery When Read

Whatever I’ve written before and said about visual novels, don’t pay attention – I’m getting into them as much as when I was anti-deckbuilding games, but now I love them. After seeing a few screenshots for Wet Steps and verifying it wasn’t a hentai game, I committed and was ready to get stuck in.

Just a heads up without any spoilers: it’s pretty short. It’s not as brief as, say, Giant Wishes, but it’s still something you could finish in one sitting. Is that common? I usually pace myself as if reading a chapter or two a night, so sometimes these games feel longer. It’s not that the story is rushed, but a part of me felt the ending(s) was abrupt.

In Wet Steps, you play some smug prick name [you]. At the beginning, you can choose a name for your protagonist, but I advise against using your own namesake unless you’re also a prick. He’s cocky, cringey, and massively deluded. In the opener, we’re at a school, and he’s bragging about how girls go moist in his presence (to some extent). Oh bugger, it’s going to be an uncomfortable hentai, right? Nope, and it doesn’t turn out to be one either. Spoiler?

Wet Steps Switch Review: Slip And Slide

A random girl bumps into you at the beginning. You act like a smarmy pants and put her off. Outside, you see another girl, but her attire is a bit cosplay-esque – as in period drama, but I don’t know from what era – or realm. Regardless, she’s a bit of an oddball, and our protagonist distances himself a little until he encounters some weird Ringu-like wildling who’s a bit… wet.

Our new cosplay character is back and knows a little more than they’ve let on and is now the mage to your party. So to speak. There’s some back and forth where the wildling who attacked you may or may not be infatuated with you, and the new girl, Iris, is here to help with her magic. It will spoil it if I tell you anymore of Wet Steps’ story, so let’s say it’s a common anime-type story with fantasy/supernatural elements. Don’t expect anything scary other than the dodgy breathing the wildling makes when she’s near you.

Who’s Your Daddy, And What Does He Do?

Wet Steps is a visual novel by Orika Nekoi and published by Valkyrie Initiative (Mondealy) for the Nintendo Switch. I seldom (never) sit with a stopwatch, but it took me around an hour to finish the game and unlock all the endings, which were essentially two. The choices didn’t impact the narrative other than the ending, and like a lot of these games, once you’ve finished it, you can skip through the dialogue pretty quickly, meaning repeat plays are typically minutes. So yes, it’s a brief game, and other than a gallery for when you’ve unlocked scenes, that’s it.

The artwork in Wet Steps is good, and there are a fair amount of scenes for the duration as well. As a visual novel novice(!), I don’t have many comparisons, but I was surprised to hear voice acting for the whole thing. However, I turned this off as the main character personified the words he was saying. Iris sounded like she recorded her lines over the phone, and the wildling/stalker character was awkward. Other than that, it’s a fair game, but I don’t understand why Iris has a change of clothing in the game that says Daddy? on the t-shirt. It makes no sense.