Trophies, tears and a whole lot of sales
Big week. An award, the end of a two year series, a couple of new things, and a sale section at the bottom because half of bara is discounted right now. Settle in.
September 29, 2026
🏆 Wet Dreams Spa took third place at the Adult Game Awards
The gay sauna sim. Yes, that one. The one I played and had thoughts about.
Adult Game Fest held its first ever awards ceremony on the 29th, and Wet Dreams Spa placed third in The Next Big Adult Game Award, presented by Nutaku.
Let me put that in context, because people are going to scroll past it and they shouldn’t. These are the inaugural Adult Game Awards. Fourteen categories, a live ceremony, the whole industry in one room for the first time. And when you read down that winners list… Wet Dreams Spa is the only gay male game on it. Not the only one in its category. The only one on the entire list.
We spend a lot of time in here talking about solo devs grinding away at bara games for an audience the wider industry mostly pretends isn’t there. So a bara game standing on that stage, in the first year the stage existed, is a real thing.
Congratulations Xlyph, you absolutely deserve this. 🎉
And if you have somehow not played it, it is 20% off on Steam right now. Same dev also made Love is Everywhere, the free earthquake charity VN I posted about last month, which tells you something about them.
🛒 Get it on Steam 🎨 The dev’s itch page 📰 Read the announcement
October 2, 2026
Monster Ops is finished
NSFW gay VN dating sim that has been shipping an episode a month. Black Ops soldiers Wraith and Tide, rogue, with nobody left to trust.
Y Press Games dropped Episodes 23 and 24 on the same day, and that is the end. All 24 episodes are out.
Their own announcement said the final episode made them cry, which, after two seasons, fair enough.
The finale puts Wraith and Tide up against Hanson and her army of monsters with the virus already released. Episode 24 shows you two versions of the aftermath, one where you won and one where you didn’t, depending on what you chose the episode before. Multiple endings, CG art, some animation.
Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, and it carries the no generative AI tag.
If you have never touched it, you can start for free. Episode 1 is free, and so is Episode 13 if you would rather jump into season two. After that there are discounted bundles for episodes 2 to 6, 7 to 12 and 13 to 18, so catching up does not mean buying two dozen things individually.
Finishing a monthly episodic series is genuinely hard and most never make it. This one did.
🛒 Get it on itch.io 🎨 The dev’s itch page
September 30, 2026
Shadow Facade
3D gay bara point and click adventure, built squarely for people who like being the submissive one.
New on Steam, and cheap. Leo inherits an old house along with the debt, the dead-end data entry job and, as it turns out, a dark family legacy. There is a world underneath the house, and his new demonic Masters would like his attention.
Classic point and click underneath: items, puzzles, dialogue, a day and night cycle, fast travel, a quest log, and affinity bars for each of your three masters. Over 65 optional adult scenes, three ending variations, and a gallery to replay what you found.
$4.24 until October 7 (15% off $4.99). Windows, English.
Two things worth saying plainly. The content list goes a long way past vanilla into transformation, vore and degradation, so this one is not for everybody and the store page is admirably blunt about it. But credit where it’s due: the game has a content hint button in dialogs, the little ?, that previews what a scene contains before you commit to it. More adult games should do that.
On AI, the dev discloses some audio and very few textures made with local open source models. Specific and small, which beats a vague blanket disclosure.
October 2, 2026
Exes Assault!! (SFW version)
Office romantic comedy where Jorge has to work with four of his exes at once.
The SFW build just hit final release. The page flipped from in development to released this morning, so the complete version of the tamer build is done.
Jorge is, in the game’s own words, kind of a dick, and circumstances have forced him to become a responsible adult. He lands a great job at a multinational, right up until he finds out four of his exes work there. 285k words, cutscene illustrations, business trips, dates, a waterpark event, and a chat system for getting closer to the guys.
Windows, Mac and Linux. English throughout, Spanish for the common route plus Jacob’s. Ertal keeps this as a genuinely separate build, so you pick the version you want rather than toggling mid-game.
September 28, 2026
Yuuki’s Sky Demo
Modern urban BL story RPG in pixel art. Free demo covering the first 15 days.
You play Yuuki Hashi, starting his first real job as an intern at a company called Gentaku, trying to work out whether to chase the creative dream or the career. You share a flat with Kazuma Kamitani, a former classmate you unexpectedly run back into.
The pitch is about finding your way while you are already moving forward, which is a kinder framing than most things in this genre manage. 5.0 from 6 ratings, tagged no generative AI.
One catch: macOS only right now. Windows people, wishlist and wait.
👀 On the radar
Canticle … the first half of the big revision is due to patrons in early October, so any day now. The public build is still aimed at early November, which remains the date I am watching hardest.
Dawn Chorus … nothing since the Rune hotfix on the 24th. The Waves runs a chapter every two weeks, so Chapter IV should land around October 9.
Hypermancer … holding at 0.1.2, next build expected late October.
SHIP … up to 4.8 from 18 ratings. It keeps climbing and nobody is talking about it.
Those NPC’s Love Stories and Twin Coves … both unchanged.
💸 On sale right now
There is a big Steam promotion running and a lot of bara is in it. Most of these end October 8, so this is a this-week thing.
Y Press Games has put most of their catalogue on sale, which is good timing given they just finished Monster Ops: ・Alpha Hole Prison 35% off, $19.49 (4.6 from 95 on itch) ・Orc Covenant 30% off, $20.99 ・Dear Monster 24% off, $22.79 ・Oni Onsen 30% off, $13.99 ・To Trust an Incubus 50% off, $9.99 … the earlier game from the Alpha Hole Prison team
Our award winner: ・Wet Dreams Spa 20% off, $7.99. Genuinely the week to buy it.
The big ones: ・Robin Morningwood Adventure 20% off, $27.99. 4.8 stars from over 1,600 ratings on itch. ・Cerulean Invasion 20% off, $15.19 ・Baramon: Gotta Fu*k ‘em All 10% off, $17.99 ・Hooked on You 60% off, which is the cheapest I have seen it
Just launched, so a small intro cut: ・Shadow Facade 15% off, $4.24, but this one ends October 7, a day earlier
On itch: ・Exes Assault!! (SFW version) 50% off, which lines up nicely with it hitting final release this week
Under three dollars, if you want to just try something weird: ・Super Stream-Bara 77% off, $1.60 ・Pact of the Ancients 50% off, $2.99 ・Burning Secrets 50% off, $2.49 ・Where’s my Bara Deck? 50% off, $0.99 ・Bara Coloring Book 60% off, $0.79
📺 Catch me live
I stream every week, usually Sundays around 3PM EST. Bara and gay story driven games, plus whatever horror indie catches my eye.
Newest video: We Found the Missing Murder Footage… and Things Got awkward | Marble Mirage Episode 3
See you Sunday 🐹