NU: Carnival. The erotic boys’ love (BL) social simulation RPG game that set the BL-loving fandom on fire at launch, starts off extremely strong with a threesome animated cutscene in full view. Players drown more as every sexy male character has unlockable scenes with the same treatment: uncensored intercourse.
Safe to say, these scenes are core to the attractiveness of this R-rated BL game, which led to conflicting views when NU: Carnival-Bliss, the safe for work (SFW) version of the game was announced.
With certain elements like intense movements or crotch shots without clothing taken out, the PG version of the Taiwanese BL game is at an appropriate level to launch on mobile platforms strictly against R-rated content, Google Play Store, and Apple App Store.
Passionate motions are captured in stills and private parts are cropped out or faded to black. While fan-favourite explicit content is not available, this has made the game more accessible to a larger audience of all ages. Before the launch of NU: Carnival-Bliss, players had to go through various steps to install the R-rated game, and minors could install the game despite various warnings on web pages leading up to the download.
Both NU: Carnival and NU: Carnival-Bliss follow the same timeline of in-game events, and as a celebratory perk, players can now pull for otherwise unobtainable event characters in a limited banner.
Now for the elephant in the room as to why there’s so much lovemaking. The storyline follows the main character sex toy maker Eiden as he is teleported to an alternate world, and to save the world, he must maintain magic crystals with the help of a harem of hot and sexy men. How do they get their magical essence? Through copulation, hence the sheer amount of scenes that get the game’s fandom racing through the night.
While this move has been polarising for the fanbase of the game, this is not a new move for explicit games. Even in the past, games such as Dramatical Murder and Sweet Pool have also released both the R-rated and all-ages versions of their games to cater to Steam’s stringent censorship protocols. Yet, the playability of both games has differed drastically in the all-ages version, where Dramatical Murder still had great flow but Sweet Pool’s pacing was jarring due to how certain suggestive scenes that have been taken out were tied to the reactions of characters.
As of now, the moments of characters intertwined together are quite linked to the appeal of the game itself, and in some of the intricacies of the relationship between the harem and Eiden. It does remain unclear if NU: Carnival-Bliss will be able to entice and keep players without the adult content, or if the developers are able to make sure the quality between both games is maintained.
For now, though, NU: Carnival-Bliss is still a great window for the game’s developers to further spread the word about BL and their well-loved game.
NU: Carnival-Bliss is available to download on the Google Play Store and App Store.
Kaylyn is usually geeking out over gacha games or the latest updates in a manga, and can talk all day about them. She’s also an avid collector, and really needs more space to store her game merchandise, utaite CDs and manga books.
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