Who likes Princess Maker? Oh boy, I know I sure do! Sorry for the lack of blogging, I've been playing too many video games and the economy is crashing. Anyways. As an avid raising sim fan, I was excited to dive into this game after hearing of it's release. But is it good? Well...
Machine Child
Developer: Shoujo Kishidan (Ooyari Ashito)
Released: September 5th, 2025
A man (you) finds himself raising a daughter alone... He takes her from their solitary island in fuck-all nowhere to the big city where he hopes to see her gain life experience and grow into a mature woman... Well she grow up well? Well that's for your min-maxing to decide.
Note: I actually played through this on release like 5 months ago but was too lazy to make a post about it until right now so my memories may be foggy. Anyways is this even a VN. Well it's on vndb so it is I guess.
Game Details
I don't know much about the developer at all or even knew the game existed until the sudden announcement of it's imminent release back the month before it came out or so. Apparently it's a solo-dev passion project that was ten years in the making until finally coming out. As an avid fan of raising daughters, I knew I was someone who should be in the general target demographic. The artist himself is known for his lolicon and hentai works, so I'll just preface things with that to give you an idea of what mindset you should have when approaching this work.
The game has it's own website that contains general information (it's in Japanese).
I purchased the game on dlsite on release, but it will be coming out in English and some other languages soon on Steam.
Synopsis
A merchant man raises his daughter alone. Where she came from, nobody knows. All that matters is that he wants to do his best to raise her. He takes her to the city where she can go out and get life experience...
Okay that's seriously it. The premise is extremely vague, but it's implied that she's a machine. Maybe. Or that she's not. But he found some sort of machine and she's probably related to it judging by the title. This has like little to no bearing on the story whatsoever though.
Daughters
This game has four daughters you can raise. The three on all the promotional material, and a secret fourth daughter you unlock after your first run. I won't spoil so you don't need to see her.
 |
| My daughter stats on game completion, don't judge |
Florine: The default nice polite medium chest daughter
Cordelia: The cheeky spunky flat chest daughter
Chloe: The more mature womanly taller larger breasted daughter
Overall, their personalities are basically completely identical aside from the small idiosyncrasies from speech patterns and their general character archetype. They all love daddy and are good girls. Okay whatever. What really matters is each daughter has 5 unique career endings available to each of them. The only ending all daughters share is the marry daddy ending. Yes you can marry your daughter. However like I said, the marry daughter route is completely identical for every daughter.
In my opinion Florine is the prettiest daughter. They should remove all the other daughters and focus on her. Just kidding.
Gameplay
It's a raising sim. However, it takes a unique approach to the well known format of mindless stat min-maxing.
 |
| The main screen you will stare at for 90% of the game |
The main game revolves around managing your daughter's energy and sending her to complete as many events as possible per turn. There are 48 turns in total that cover an in-game time of around one year, and each turn you're allotted a set amount of energy to expend on social events or working jobs. The social events available depending on her stats, relationships, and skills and once they're unlocked you can just do them, resulting in a little story scene playing out.
Every time you resolve one of these cutscenes or work events, she will roll slots in slow motion to decide how many stats she got from the event.
 |
| These barely matter at all and it gets repetitive |
 |
| The skill tree |
Viewing cutscenes that are marked with an NPC will raise her relationship with that NPC and/or their faction.
 |
| Many relationships are summarized as the diff factions in the country your daughter becomes close with |
Each daughter has their own 'main stories' available, each story tree symbolized by a tarot card. As you clear each level of this storyline, they will have their own skill and relationship prerequisites in order to unlock them. Once you view the last story in this storyline, the game will end and your daughter will get that route's ending.
 |
| Daughter with all her endings available. You select the one you want to end the game and see her ending! |
If you reach your last turn without getting any ending, you will get your bum ass daughter end. I don't know. Because there is no manual saving and the game relies on auto-save, I have never viewed what happens because I didn't want to waste another 48 turns of my life doing this.There are no CG's connected to this ending so it probably isn't anything special.
As you get passive income, you can spend earned cash on items to increase your daughters learning speed or stat gain or buff her income. You can also buy her a pet cat that will give you a passive that activates each turn (like gain x money or x stat whatever). And of course you can buy her clothes. Yes there are some kinky outfits like micro bikinis and bunny girl outfits, but the game has no nudity in it so they're all surface level fanservice fits.
 |
| New clothes for daughter |
 |
| Letting daughter outside for enrichment |
Some turns you can use special points to activate an arcana card. You will be given two to choose from, and the card gives you a buff for that turn (like increased affection gain or increase a stat).
 |
| Pretty cards |
That's it. The stats don't actually seem to matter at all. All that matters is managing turns to learn the right skills she needs to see the right events to get the ending you want. If you want to marry your daughter you don't even have to do any of that and just focus on making her like you.
Overall it's extremely repetitive, dull, grindy, and boring. Sorry. It doesn't require a lot of brains either. It's not too difficult to just force make it so you can get every ending in one playthrough (which I successfully managed in my Cordelia playthrough), but you can't even view them all in one go because the game is locked into autosave and will auto restart once you see an ending.
Story Review
The story is very regular. It's just your daughter learning about how the world works and everyone being so impressed by how smart sweet and talented your daughter is. Like if you want your daughter to be president in that route it's just all the gov officials being soo impressed by how smart your daughter is and she climbs the social ladder until the King decides to give her his crown. Or your daughter is such good friends with all the prostitutes in town and ends up becoming one herself. Wow. The game is very cutscene and story heavy, but the story is not very interesting so it kind of drags down the entire experience.
There's all these factions and things going on, but it's all pretty typical fantasy kingdom demon lord afoot type stuff so most if it I just glossed over. Sorry.
Also, there are no suitors in this game. Your daughter will make very good friends, but she will not find a boyfriend or girlfriend in any ending except the one where she marries you, her daddy. Most of the supporting NPCs in this game are lackluster or uninteresting. Cordelia gets to meet a cute boy, but it is inevitably unable to go anywhere as the game won't let her fuck him as he isn't you, her daddy.
Even if you're a dad/daughter lover, the illicit father daughter energy in the marry daddy route is lackluster and uninteresting.
Minor Spoilers about that: It's just regular sweet dad and daughter and abruptly near the end of the route she's like "OMG actually Daddy I love you as a WOMAN not as a daughter" or whatever, and you're just like "omgg I'm so shooked how can this be..." until you pick that ending and it cuts to her with a bulging pregnant belly while standing happily with her fugly ass daddy. Like... I don't know, I didn't find it satisfying or titillating. It doesn't help that this scene is identical for all four daughters. But defiinitely the worst part is them visually depicting Dad. Like. I DONT LOOK THAT UGLY!
End of spoilers. Okay anyways. I think the story was just kind of mid.
Art and UI
Even with all my qualms, the artwork is all beautiful and the UI is incredibly smooth. It's a very visually appealing game, and even if I can only stare at a loli so long before I long to see mature women, it was still easy to be impressed by the delicate care put into all these shots of these daughters. There are a ton of CG's in the game that are lovingly handcrafted by the dev guy, and the passion really shines through.
The VN portions are cute as well, with dialogue all expressed via little talk bubbles. There are all these intricately drawn windows and borders and stuff, and yeah. It's just a very pleasing to see UI.
Overall Review
The game is okay. If you like stressful stat management min-maxing, then this will be a disappointing experience. The game is very easy and not very interesting, so it unfortunately falls short in my personal opinion as a daughter raising game.
STORY: D | BORING!
VISUALS: A | Pretty :)
CHARACTERS: D | BORING!
GAMEPLAY: C | BORING!
EROTICISM: D | BORING!
FINAL SCORE: MID
One of my main gripes was how you do not get to see your daughter grow up. You see her as a like baby in the opener, but the rest of the game she's just the final age you'll be seeing her as (around 14 or 15 or something). How can I fantasize about illicit dad/daughter ending if I didn't even get to see her slowly mature into a woman? For legal reasons that statement was a joke. Anyways, how can I fully immerse myself in the feeling of raising my daughter to adulthood if I only get to see her at 2 ages? Also, the 'machine' part of the title barely plays any roll at all in the game. Is she a machine? Am I a machine? Why are there high tech machines in this world, yet they play no part in the main storyline at all. Is this explained.
TL;DR, the story is kind of bland. For a game made by a NSFW lolicon artist, it is not as perverse as one would expect. There is enough fanservice so it's not as wholesome as the plebian daughter sim liker would enjoy. The gameplay is not convoluted enough to capture the min-maxers attention. The story is not deep enough to capture the plot lovers' interest. The daughters don't grow enough or have enough personal unique bonding to tickle the hearts of the players who want to larp as an actual parent.
Who is this game for? The developer. It's a passion project after all. If he is satisfied, who am I to judge? I'll just leave it at that. I personally did not really enjoy the game much, but I played it enough to get all those endings so I can't say I didn't get my money's worth. It's not an expensive game, so there's no harm in giving it a try if any of the above captured your interest.
Okay, that's it.
FINAL SPOILER CG SECTION!!
I've compiled some CG's to give you an idea of what to see if you don't mind spoilers.
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
I didn't get most of the career endings besides Cordelia's for some reason because it's a huge pain in the ass. Maybe there's more funny CG's out there, but that can be up to YOU the POTENTIAL PLAYER to DISCOVER!!
Okay that's it. Bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment