Booty Calls

Look, I went into Booty Calls expecting to hate it. Mermaid sex puns, an energy timer, that art style that's halfway between a dating sim and a perfume ad — every red flag was waving. Nine hours later I'm writing a 7.2 review and feeling slightly weird about it. So let's talk about why.

The premise is dumb in a way that's almost endearing. You wash up on a tropical island full of horny mermaids and have to "help them with their problems" via a dialogue tree that pretends to give you choices. There's a story. It's not a good story. It is, however, a story, and the writers are clearly aware they're working in trash genre, which is more than I can say for most of the Nutaku catalogue.

What works

The art is the main draw and they know it. Character designs are consistent, the lighting is doing actual work, and the H-scenes — which I assume is what most of you are here for — are animated rather than the static PNG-with-mouth-flap nonsense most F2P competitors get away with. There are real frames. People did real animation work. You can tell.

Writing is the surprise. It's not good, but it has jokes that land, and the localization is competent which is rarer than it should be. One of the early mermaids has a running gag about being terrible at metaphors and I caught myself laughing at it on hour three. Whether that's because the joke is funny or because I'd been staring at mermaid cleavage for three hours straight is between me and my browser history.

• Animation budget actually visible in scenes
• Translation reads like a person wrote it
• Free progression is genuinely possible if you're patient
• UI is clean by Nutaku standards (low bar, but cleared)

What doesn't

The energy timer. Of course it's the energy timer. Every action eats from a refill-over-time pool, and the pool is small enough that any session longer than fifteen minutes ends in you staring at a "come back in 47 minutes" screen. You can pay to skip it. They want you to pay to skip it. The whole game is structured around making you pay to skip it. I didn't pay to skip it and I still finished the first arc, but it took a week of logging in twice a day, and that's the actual review of the monetization right there.

The grind escalates. Around hour six the game starts asking you to repeat scenes for currency, which is when the seams really show. Up until then I was generously calling it "deliberate pacing." After that I just called it grind. Nothing here is broken or scummy in the way some of its peers are — there's no loot boxes, no gacha, the starter pack is actually a fair deal at ten bucks — but the design philosophy is "frustrate you into the wallet" and that's the design philosophy.

If they cut the timer in half this is an 8.5. With it where it is, it's a 7.2 and a recommendation to play it the way the game doesn't want you to: in tiny daily bites, like a soap opera.

Should you play it?

If you have ten bucks burning a hole in your pocket and you want a F2P adult VN that won't make you actively angry, yes. If you're allergic to energy systems and you don't want to pay, also yes, but treat it as a daily five-minute thing rather than a sitting. If you're looking for something with real choices and a story that respects your time — keep looking, and check our Treasure of Nadia review instead.

Where to play

Browser version is the cleanest experience. Mobile apps exist but the iOS one is missing scenes due to App Store rules, which is funny in a sad way.

Play Booty Calls on Nutaku → Affiliate link. We get a small cut if you sign up. Doesn't affect the score above.

The verdict

7.2 / 10 — Better than it has any right to be. The energy timer is the only thing keeping it out of the 8s. Play it in small doses, don't expect to finish it in a weekend, and you'll have a surprisingly decent time.

Press copy: no. We played the free version and bought the starter pack with our own money. Screenshots in this review are from our own playthrough except where marked.