Every single person gets lonely at Valentine’s sometime, right? What if you could pay a hot girl to spend some time with you? In Blue Valentine, you’re just a man with some time and money to blow. And Sapphire is always here for you.




STORY
This mini-sode (the name Neon Ghosts calls these little side-chapter) is a standalone episode, but it does give you some nice backstory about one of the characters in Friends in Need. You don’t need it to play FiN and you don’t need FiN to play it, but they are complimentary. At this point, you could play it before FiN and the stories add up.

Spicy Sapphire is a camgirl who spends an awful lot of time on ZipFap, this universe’s camgirl site. She works tirelessly and Guy Harrison, the main protagonist in FiN, finds out something is up with her. This update, while technically just an online interaction with Sapphire, gives you more information about the kind of chats she has, what she does and eventually, what’s around it without spoiling too much.

As MakeItRainXXX, you can ‘push’ Sapphire in different directions with the choices you pick. Talk to her, piss her off, crack a joke or let her turn the tables on you. Just as long as you spend tokens on Sapphire, the thing keeps going. Having the tip menu next to her shows you just how much MakeItRainXXX spends on getting the girl to abide by his wishes. You definitely have to play around and play multiple times to figure out the numerous angles this game makes great use of the renders it has.

In the end, without spoiling, FiN: Blue Valentine is a simple short story that shows you Spicy Sapphire. But it also shows you what kind of dubious chats and requests camgirls have to put up with in order to make money. The realistic way how the dialog is structured lets you explore these interactions while having unlimited tokens. For this game to be better, it would have had to have even more options - but it would probably also make it unmanageable.

The writing of the mini-sode is very strong and it allows you to experience so much of who Spicy Sapphire is in such a short time. There are callbacks within the conversation, jokes, insults, sarcasm and honestly this works well to bring Sapphire to life.




PRESENTATION
FiN: Blue Valentine looks average to fine. Spicy Sapphire mostly looks great as she does in FiN and while the game mostly plays out in the ‘camera’ angle, you get a little tease at the end in which the FiN style comes to life. It’s mostly conversations with variations of a pose, but Neon Ghosts made sure to include more than a few renders for people to choose from.

The intimate scenes are simple, but fun. There are actually a few and they are pretty much standard stuff, although the extended blowjob stands out. It’s a testament of how far Emily is willing to go - or must go - in order to do her job. It’s not going to win any awards for creative camera angles or sickest textures, but Sapphire is cute and that works well enough. There are animations by way of three screenshots packed together and it works. Sound isn’t a thing in FiN, so don’t expect any points there.




GAMEPLAY
The meat of the game are the choices here, and that’s what an VN is excellent at. Will you be nice to Sapphire or come in scolding? Do you care about her at all or is this interaction about you? And are you going to be dominant or do you just want to talk to her? The way the developer branches these pieces together is great writing and shows that with a couple dozen renders, you can tell an interesting story where multiple playthroughs tell an even bigger story than a single playthrough does. It’s still a choice-based novel and decisions don’t matter as much as in FiN, but it’s a fun way to explore this story.




OVERALL
Friends in Need: Blue Valentine is great. It’s short, punchy and leaves you wanting more. If you dive deeper into it thought, you’ll uncover a few things that are worrisome about Spicy Sapphire, the ending aside. It’s not exactly indicative of Friends In Need, but it’s a great way to start out the universe. Just know that in the end, the only friend in need here is between your legs.

Rating: 7.5 / 10