You are a cute anime princess, and your mother, the queen of Nova, has died. You know nothing of how to rule the monarchy of Nova, as you are only a 14-year-old girl. Your mission is simple: stay alive for 40 weeks so that you can be crowned on your 15th birthday.

“Long Live the Queen” is a strategy game/visual novel created by indie game developer Hanako games. The player makes every decision for princess Elodie. You choose what she decides to do in her off time, what classes she takes and what decisions she makes as a leader. Throughout the game, Elodie and her kingdom are threatened by multiple outside forces. The forces that threaten you are decided by every single decision you make in the game.

“Long Live the Queen” has a stunning but repetitive soundtrack. The most gripping element of the game is the frequency of when Elodie dies. You can prevent these deaths by training certain skills, but there is no way of knowing which skills you need to train – at least not at first. I’ve played approximately five hours, and I have yet to make it through 40 weeks. Each attempted playthrough, I have gotten a little further than the previous one. This is a challenging game that requires hours of gameplay to learn.

The problem with this game being challenging is that the gameplay is repetitive. You have the same choices at every decision, except story-based ones, which change each playthrough. You’ll have to play a lot of this game to develop a strategy, which is unfortunate because you’ll get bored fast.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed this game. I’ll definitely revisit just so I can see the ending, despite the tedious gameplay.

sgexner@mavs.coloradomesa.edu