One Night Stand

One Night Stand

PlayStation 4 - World - Title card.

Developer Kinmoku Publisher Ratalaika Games Published 2016-10-20 Platforms Linux, Macintosh, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Windows, Xbox One Genres Dating simulator, Visual novel Themes Drama Distribution Commercial

One Night Stand is a visual novel video game developed by Kinmoku and published by Ratalaika Games for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows on 2016-10-20, then later for several other platforms. It was developed in Python using Ren'Py.

In the game, you awake in a bed that isn't yours, next to a woman you don't remember. It quickly becomes apparent you slept together, but, with no memories, a terrible hangover, and a dying phone battery, you're having a hard time trying to piece together what happened the night before.

Personal

Own?	Yes. On itch.io.
Won?	Yes. All 12 endings.
Finished	2024-06-22.

I remember seeing reviews of this game online and being interested in the art work, but I made no attempt to buy it. When I saw it was included in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, I added it to my list to play, though it still took a couple years more before I got around to finally playing it.

Review

4	5	6	5	6

Best Version: Windows

Good

• The game deals with some important issues like making mistakes while drunk, how to behave in the private space of vulnerable strangers, how to act around women, and so forth.
• I like the rotoscoped artwork and limited use of color.
• The music, though it doesn't function as a stand alone, is a nice accompaniment.
• Limiting the amount of time you have to snoop and which topics you can talk about was a good design decision. It forces the play to have to try different approaches in subsequent play-throughs, which makes them less boring.
• Adding hints to the alternate endings helped point me in the right direction. I discovered six on my own and used the hints for the remaining ones.

Bad

• Like with most visual novels, the game suffers from having to replay a lot of the exact same dialogue over and over again if you want to finding all of the endings. Even with fast-forwarded enabled, it was a pretty boring and long affair, especially when I kept getting the same endings as before until I finally stumbled upon the right chain of events, a couple of which used very similar actions.
• The game is a bit on the short side. Your first play-through will take about 15 minutes, and each subsequent play-through will only take a few minutes more provided you fast-forward the reused dialogue, but it becomes more and more dull as you search for the remaining endings. Such a short script isn't really enough time to develop an attachment to the only character in the game, especially since she spends half of the game out of the room.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Covers

• 

  PlayStation 4 - World - Title card.

• 

  Steam - World - Title card.

Videos

Trailer.

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass	Robin will not let you push her around.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There is only one woman.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	All of the characters are white.
Queer character?	Fail	Nobody is clearly queer, although one ending allows the player to cross dress.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	One Night Stand
Japanese	ワン・ナイト・スタンド	Wan Naito Sutando	One Night Stand

Links