My last game for Spooktober ended up being a recent release by Sekai Project,
Nanairo Reincarnation:
Briefly, Nanairo Reincarnation is the story of Mokoto, a university student who upon moving into his departed grandfathers home discovers that said grandfather was a spiritualist who used demons to helped ghosts with lingering regrets depart to the other side. Motoko starts summoning his own demons and hijinks ensue, though the story takes a dark turn when Motoko finds the ghost of a girl thought to have run away from home.
The game was released without much fanfare, but it quickly cemented itself as one of my favorite reads this year, and I have read
a lot so far. If you are looking for a very funny, little bit scary, and occasionally heart-wrenching story, then I strongly recommend giving Nanairo a try!
The main strength of the novel is probably the central cast of colorful characters, including both humans and non-humans, with the main heroine (Kotori, bottom-left in CG below) easily stealing the show. Granted, none of the characters are particularly deep, but I ended up enjoying every moment spent with them:
Not only is the voice-acting superb, but the art is great and the sprites are wonderfully expressive:
This is a very funny game, but I will warn up front that it also features some rather disturbing content (my poor eyes will never unsee that evil spirit, among other things). The music is pleasant but not particularly memorable, and the engine is fully featured. The game even features a skip-to-next-unread button, that I wish was available in more VNs.
For anyone considering reading this, I would strongly encourage you to read the true route first, so as to maximize the impact of events in that route. Look up a walkthrough (there's one on Steam), as getting both ends on that route can be a bit of a pain.
The novel is not without its issues, however, the biggest of which is the fact the side routes felt like little more than excuses for H-scenes. There are still good (non-H) scenes in the side routes, but nothing that tops the true route. The Steam version supposedly adds additional scenes to the side-routes and alternative CGs instead of the H, but I have not yet read that version of the game, so I cannot comment on those. There are also some technical issues (in one scene the voices/sprites/text go out of sync for a bit), but SP are working on that with the developer.
Finally, I'd recommend that everyone get the Steam version of Nanairo, regardless of which version of the game you intend to read (all-ages or 18+). Sekai Project only sell the all-ages version on Steam, but have released a free 18+ patch for the Steam version, which means that buying the game on Steam gives you access to both the all-ages and the 18+ version of the game.