Most of the time with a VN you get a great story, a set of cute characters that fit into a single archetype, and a familiar rhythm to go with them. Usually you will have the various dere girls, the cute nerd, and at least one more type; sometimes she’s the clumsy one, and sometimes she’s the super hot one. It doesn’t really matter which type shows up, because the point is the same: you get a set of girls, usually introduced right away, and you, the player character, are trying to woo them. This is done via a fairly simple set of interactions that raise how much a girl likes you over time, eventually leading to dates, and then the endgame. That setup is comfortable and easy to follow, and it puts the girls, rather than any larger plot, at the centre of the experience from the very start. Just Deserts takes a much less direct approach to this, for you see aliens have invaded. That is exactly why the game’s opening lands so differently: instead of easing you into introductions, it drops you straight into an invasion.
The game begins with you pulled onto an unknown military base, shown to the base’s commander Cornelia (who has pink hair), and briefed on the fact that the facility you are at is in fact a secret forward operating base that’s fighting aliens. Not your standard opening to a VN, but I guess it’s more plausible than finding two cat girls in a box (if you don’t get that, go play Nekopara). The briefing does more than set the scene; it gives the wooing a backdrop that is not a school or a cafe, but a base at war, and it makes the rest of the game feel like it is happening under pressure rather than in a vacuum. The rest of the game features 4 other girls, with hair colored blonde (Cecile), black (Yumi), white (Eve), and red (Jennifer), plus the commander we already met. You will spend most of the game getting small quests for these girls, and fighting turn-based battles against aliens. Before getting into how that mix of quests and battles plays, though, it is worth looking closely at how the game presents its cast, because the art and voices do a lot of the work here.
Because this is a VN, I’m going to be talking a lot about art, and voices, and not as much about the game part itself. If you really want a gaming experience, I cannot in good conscience recommend that you play a VN. Go play Overwatch or something instead. That out of the way, the V part of this VN is really stellar. It features a soft art style that’s full 2D instead of the pseudo-3D that many VNs opt for. There is no character movement in the sprites, so don’t expect something like the boobs slider you get in Nekopara to make an appearance. Backgrounds are beautifully penned, but they really do look like paintings because they are static. Everything has a soft glow that makes it sort of resemble an oil painting, which feels a bit out of place in a VN about alien invasion. That contrast is part of the charm, though: the soft, painterly look makes the base and its surroundings feel warm and inviting, even when the story around them is about an alien invasion, and the stillness of the backgrounds only makes that painted quality stand out more.
The girls themselves all have different body types and styles. Each one can be dressed in a variety of different outfits that are purchasable with in-game money. You can have each one wear these clothes in various poses, which you also purchase. That variety matters because it lets the same five girls look and feel different from one another, and it gives you another reason to keep earning in-game money beyond the battles themselves. The game’s CG screens (a must in any VN) are well drawn but basic. This is also an all-ages VN, so don’t expect any nudity here. The game is voiced but not fully; instead, you get kind of bits and pieces of what the characters are saying, which is a nice feature, but I’d almost prefer the fully voiced Japanese standard that comes with most VNs. The partial voicing still adds personality to the girls, even if it stops short of voicing everything, and it fits a game that is more about spending time with its cast than about hearing every line performed in full. The presentation, then, is easy to enjoy on its own terms, but a visual novel also lives or dies by its story, and that is where Just Deserts is thinnest.
The story is the most basic of VN stories: you’re dropped into a (future) harem of girls as the clueless MC, and expected to start doing things to woo these girls. Story is honestly the worst aspect of this otherwise fun VN. I know that sounds sort of backwards, since the second letter literally stands for novel, but I really don’t feel like not having a story takes much away here. Basically, you’re the typical super MC who can save the world, but also there are some girls you have to woo. It’s shallow on the level of Honey Pop but with less matching and more shooting aliens. As to the earlier-mentioned aliens, we never find out more about them than that they are invading. They simply serve as faceless antagonists to keep the game moving. The most plot we really get comes at the end of our month of time (yes, this is a time-limited game), when we go to the alien ship to destroy it. That late burst of plot only underlines how thin the story is for most of the game: for most of the month, the invasion is a reason to keep going rather than a mystery to unravel, and the girls, not the aliens, are what fill the time in between. If the story itself will not pull you forward, though, the relationships might, because in Just Deserts, getting closer to a girl is not just a side activity.
But you didn’t really come here for the story, did you? I mean, I didn’t; I saw cute girls and was like, let’s do that! Each of the 5 girls featured has a purpose, a skill, if you will, in the upcoming battle with the alien menace. The relationship aspect of this game is that the more you woo a girl, the better her weapons to fight the aliens will get. In each playthrough, you will have 30 days to get to know each girl as much as possible, unlock all of their weapons, and go attack the alien spaceship. The game is pretty kind about those days, and there are only a few planned events during the 30-day period. That kindness matters, because it means most of your time is yours to spend on the girls you actually want to get to know, rather than being pulled from one scripted event to the next, and it makes the 30 days feel like a space for choices rather than a strict schedule.
The scenes in between the combat are nice enough; you get to interact with the various girls, who slide on and off screen in a cut-out sprite style. Since you have 5 different characters to woo, you can expect plenty of time will be spent choosing which one you want to “power up”. These are basically the game’s different routes, and you won’t be able to do all 5 in one go, so there is at least some replayability here. That choice is the heart of the route system: powering up one girl means spending your limited days on her, and leaving the others for another playthrough, so each run can feel different even though the overall goal, attacking the alien spaceship, stays the same. Choosing a route is only half the decision, though, because every choice you make about a girl also costs you something else: time.
Your time is your most difficult resource to manage here. Training, wooing, or fighting all take time. You also have very limited money, and will need to get more to buy gifts for the girls to get them to like you better. That squeeze is what ties the dating and the combat together: time spent training or fighting is time not spent wooing, and money spent on gifts is money not spent on weapons or armor, so every day forces a small trade-off between getting stronger and getting closer to a girl. I don’t have much nice to say about the combat in this game; it’s pretty basic. I never felt like I was going to lose until the last boss, which ramped the difficulty up sharply in a scary way.
The battle system itself is turn-based and most resembles something like an early JRPG. You attack, use items, or use special abilities. Enemies are only encountered while on patrol, and on each patrol you can bring one girl, who can also use a special ability. You can buy new weapons (which all have limited use) and armor, as well as training to increase stats, attack, or survivability. This is basically all it is in a nutshell, with just a few more mechanics that I haven’t touched on. The patrol structure keeps combat contained: you go out, you bring one girl with you, you fight what you find, and then you come back to the base, where the dating and the questing pick up again.
Combat suffers from being almost too simple, but really, it’s a VN; I’m here for the cute, not the combat, so I can’t fault the game too much. I do have one complaint: enemy diversity is basically 0. Here is the enemy list: a cube, a fire cube, an acid cube, a grass cube, a hexagon, a diamond, and a sun. That’s it. Once you have seen that list, you have seen just about everything combat has to show you, which is why the battles start to feel familiar so quickly, even if they never quite feel unfair until that final boss. Still, combat is not really why I kept playing, and that brings me to the part of the game that held my attention. The other “game” part of this is, of course, the dating sim, which is pretty good, actually. The UI is fantastic; I really liked how slick and modern it looked. Just like most VNs, you will be spending your time here buying things for girls, wooing girls, giving them things, and talking to them. Each thing you do will earn you love points, and as those grow, you will eventually go on a date. After you complete a set number of dates, you fall in love and, well, win. That loop is simple, but it works because every small action feeds into it: a gift, a conversation, or time spent together all push the love points a little higher, and those points are what turn casual interaction into dates and, eventually, into winning a girl’s route. That loop, gifts, time, love points, and dates, is, in the end, what the whole game is built around, and it is what my final verdict comes down to.
Overall, I really enjoyed Just Deserts. It mixes up the usual VN formula of just dates with just enough combat. The combat is boring after a while, sure, but it’s still way better than it would be if you just didn’t have any at all. With the tiny price tag, it’s totally worth it. That verdict holds even with the trade-offs I have already named: the story is thin, and the aliens stay faceless, with little learned about them beyond the fact that they are invading. Those weaknesses do not undo what the game does well, though, because the girls, the dating loop, and that small dose of combat are what I came for, and they are what I enjoyed. For that mix, and at that tiny price, Just Deserts is totally worth it.