Bliss Stage: Love Is Your Weapon
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Against an alien mind, we wield the human heart.' —Motto, Treasure Island ANIMa Corps
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Bliss Stage: Love Is Your Weapon is the official Visual Novel adaptation of the Tabletop RPG Bliss Stage, by Ben Lehman's imprint, These Are Our Games. The game is being produced by Perpetual Motion Games. The prerelease demo for the Kickstarter backers is available here, and the main discussion thread on Lemmasoft is here.
The story expands on the events and characters from the one-shot, Final Act, published in the first edition of Bliss Stage. It follows the adventures of Josh Preston, the newest pilot of The Treasure Island Resistance and son of it's Magnificent Bastard Commander, Jim Preston. They are fighting a losing battle again an Alien Invasion by the Nightmares, a race of Eldritch Abominations from a dimension adjacent to our dreams.
His weapon? The ANIMa, a reverse-engineered alien device that creates a psychic manifestation of his intimate relationships. But time is running out for him... Bliss happens, and if he drags his feet too long, or acts like a Jerkass, he is going to either die messily or fall to the Bliss.
The visual novel had no significant updates since 2014, to the point of the person responsible for the official Tumblr not working with them anymore. Some backers have accused the project of being Vaporware.
- Author Appeal: If a certain writer is in charge of a given character's dialog, this is probably part of the reason.
- Not to mention the character designer openly admits to a fetish for scars.
- Discretion Shot: This game is probably going to be the equivalent of an ESRB M rating. Including explicit Optional Sexual Encounters is probably, given the age of the survivors of the Bliss, a very good way to wind up in a hostile court.
- Dating Sim: The Interludes.
- Infinity+1 Sword: Hitting Intimacy 5 with a character gives you an upgraded weapon with special powers.
- Anna Lin demonstrates this with the Sunshooter and the Singular Void in a cutscene before the first mission. And yes, the Void is from a relationship manifesting as a Black Hole where her ANIMa's heart should be.
- Level Up At Intimacy 5: Based as it is on the Trope Namer.
- Translation Convention: Everything Joshua understands is 'printed' in English, but the voice actors will actually speak it in the language it's intended to be. Joshua knows Spanish at the start of the game and picks up some other languages.