During the era of colonialism, adventure novels with a strong anthropocentric connotation were extremely popular. Faced with different plots, the structure of these stories was always very similar: a (super) Western man encountered savages and, in some ways, civilized them.
Some allowed themselves to be subjected without resistance, while others, the bad ones, opposed the conqueror. The former were usually characterized by submissive and virtuous characters, while the latter were prone to perform every kind of wickedness: from human sacrifice to cannibalism, through rape, black magic and so on.
Obviously it was rare that similar stories were born of direct experiences.In most cases writers started from travel reports, mixing them with clichés and legends, to write stories that met exactly the audience’s expectations.
Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! He does something similar: trying to tell his life in North Korea, he puts us in the shoes of an American tourist who goes to visit two of his pen pals. Arrived on the spot after several adventures, he discovers that in reality it is two girls, moreover enlisted in the army, who take him to a barracks outside the Korean capital Pyongyang.
The two have the task of controlling it and making him visit the nation, leading him to see some of his most characteristic places. Unfortunately, right from the start it is clear where the developer wants to go, because the protagonist approaches with an unpleasant sense of superiority to every situation.
HIKING
Stay! Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! is a classic visual novel, with nuances from appointment simulator. So we read a lot of text and, from time to time, make choices. The goal is not too veiled is to have a relationship with one of the two girls, making them fall in love.
The only variant compared to the standard formula of the kind is the presence of a map that allows us to choose which tourist attractions to visit in the company of one of the two (never together). In total the reachable places are six (seven if we consider the final location),
but in the course of a game you can only select three.Between an excursion and the other there are also some sequences that take place in the barracks and that usually involve all the characters involved.
At the interface level, the title of DEVGRU-P presents the classic text box at the bottom of the screen, with the options available during the reading on the sides (saving, fast text advancement, skip key and so on).
From this point of view, Stay! Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! does not behave in a different way from that of most of the visual novel, even if, frankly, the interface is not very pleasant and we would have preferred that it was less visible during the reading phases.
Fortunately, it is possible to hide it from the need, so you can admire the beautiful drawings of the characters, with the girls taking different poses to emphasize their moods, and the backdrops.
The latter are the most interesting element of the game, at least at the cultural level, being iconic images of North Korea. Of course, they are similar to postcards, but they give a strong support to the atmosphere and help to better frame the story.
Bad, bad, bad music, really ugly and not suitable for the story told. The world of visual novels has accustomed us to other soundtracks. That of Stay! Stay! Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! seems to be composed of stock tracks that never follow the tones of the storyand that indeed, they often clash with it. It is probably the worst side of the entire production.
