Loan Wolf

Visual novels are designed to tell a story and make you feel like you are part of it. Some of them allow you to make choices along the way and change the course of the story, as well as choose a partner. However, such games are more about the experience than the actual gameplay, so there’s rarely anything to do other than click through the dialog and sometimes choose between multiple options.

Loan Wolf is an interesting interactive visual novel that tells the tale of a werewolf girl who reaches a critical point in her life as trouble seems to pile up more and more every day. There’s a clear emphasis on romance as well, since you are required to choose one of two potential partners along the way. Other than that, you shouldn’t expect too much originality from the game in the mechanics department.

As mentioned before, the main character is a werewolf girl and her name is Laika. She is working a very boring tech support job that drains her life away, and on top of it all her student loans seem to be drowning her in debt. However, she gets in the middle of a fairly interesting love triangle, which is suspenseful enough to take her mind off the student loan.

The two potential partners are two other girls that happen to be a nymph and a succubus, so there’s no shortage of weird things to see or do throughout the game. It’s nice that you have two main routes to follow, but then again the story as a whole is fairly short no matter which girl you choose. The choices are fairly obvious as well, so there’s no mystery or suspense.

Lastly, the graphics are quite nice on the other hand, especially if you are a fan of the furry phenomenon and you do not mind the slightly washed out backgrounds. They go along fairly well with the atmosphere, so it’s not a huge issue. The soundtrack is not bad at all, except that it tends to get a tad too repetitive if you go for a second playthrough as well.

In the end, Loan Wolf may not be worthy of a Pulitzer when it comes to the writing, but it’s quite entertaining and different from most of the games in the genre. Hence, it’s worth a try if you are down with the specific niche of players the game targets.