I'm through cannabalizing my leftover Dredge of Seventeen content for the time being, as I figured continuing to extend a 2021 feature into this year via Indie Game of the Week was getting a little rote and lazy. With that in mind, this week's game is one of the visual novels I didn't get to play for last year's VN-ese Waltz feature instead. I'll be the first to admit that a yuri romance VN isn't typically my wheelhouse, but I had already installed it so...

Highway Blossoms is a road trip love story that follows Amber, a young woman raised on the highways and freeways of America in her late grandfather's motorhome, and Marina, a sheltered girl from a large family in New Mexico who impulsively travels to the nearby desert to find a rumored treasure haul with which to start her post-highschool adult life. Encountering Marina by the side of a desert road, her borrowed vehicle having run out of gas, Amber decides to tag along in Marina's quest until she's safely back home, feeling responsible for the well-being of this ditzy ingénue. The two then get caught up in the gold rush surrounding this mysterious motherlode, along with a host of other would-be treasure hunters, despite Amber's better judgment about the validity of this supposed journal pointing the way to a buried fortune through a series of geographical clues. This shaky partnership then naturally blossoms (so to speak) into something a bit more serious as they spend time together, travelling around the region and making memories en route to the location indicated by the next hint. The treasure hunt initially sets itself up to be the impetus of the adventure, like a low-key Uncharted, but eventually becomes the backdrop to this central relationship and Amber's original goal of reaching a festival in Palm Springs to honor her folk music-loving gramps.

Highway Blossoms reminds me a little of Go! Go! Nippon!, a visual novel-cum-Japanese tourist information guide that led to a disastrous LP of mine many years back. Chiefly in the sense that, between story scenes, the game tries its darndest to teach the player about the many sights and surprises to be found while travelling across the otherwise empty, hot, and dusty American southwest. The treasure hunt takes Amber and Marina through various famous national parks, like Arches and the Grand Canyon, and due to her itinerant lifestyle Amber is a font of geographical knowledge. I can't be sure how much of it is accurate, but the game seems well-researched; possibly a by-product of an author learning a lot about an area for the sake of giving their story verisimilitude and then integrating a lot of that acquired information into the narrative in a more overt fashion. Gameplay-wise, Highway Blossoms is a "pure" visual novel: that is to say, absolutely no interactivity of any kind besides clicking to progress to the next line of dialogue (or using the mouse wheel to roll back to the previous). Nothing in the way of decision points or story branches. The player can unlock some post-game stuff like CG galleries but that all happens automatically once the relevant parts of the story have been reached.

The relationship between Amber and Marina is a slow-burning one, complicated a little by Amber's hang-ups. Since Amber's the viewpoint character, Marina's often as much a mystery to us as she is to the heroine; however, her earnestness and innocence makes her more of an open book. Amber, who is on this road trip for the sake of her recently departed grandfather, is still dealing with her grief and is worried she's taking advantage of this cute girl that suddenly fell into her lap as a one-sided form of emotional support: it's the typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl scenario that gives little agency to the firecracker of enthusiasm that appears in the life of the depressed realist, at least initially, until Marina starts standing up for herself towards the end of the game after cheerfully accepting Amber's cynicism and occasional condescension for too long. The game does make it clear that Amber is perhaps the less emotionally mature of the two, despite being the more worldly woman who has to step in to help Marina out of yet another jam, and I appreciated the way the game both addressed and eventually resolved her neuroses and doubts. Their affection for one another does at least feel genuine and earned, snafus aside.

I'm not sure this is necessarily my preferred genre of visual novel but at the same time it was a nice of pace to play something without serial killers or murder ghosts (spoilers?) that instead focused on two people gradually falling in love with a small dose of the usual conflicts and drama. There is something complimentary about a love story and the desert plains of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California; all those beautiful vistas and endless roads with only your thoughts and the car radio for company lend the region a restless wistfulness that is made all the more romantic with someone to share it with. Having it set closer to home for American audiences might also make it a better onboarding point for casual romance novel fans poking into the VN medium than something like the usual Tokimeki Memorial types, at least if you weren't raised on a diet of anime and manga set in Japanese highschools. I'm curious enough now to check out some of developers Studio Élan's other works, like 2019's Heart of the Woods and their upcoming Please Be Happy, but I'll probably stick to sci-fi and horror thrillers in the vein of Steins;Gate and The House of Fata Morgana (both of which had plenty of romance too, mind) for future VN playthroughs.

Rating: 4 out of 5.