East Tower (Vol 1-4) by Roseverte

First, a word from the developer: “Welcome to the Dream World! You’ve been granted a chance to try the newest virtual attraction, the East Tower. Will you be able to save the princess at the top of the tower?“

Next, my one-sentence summary: East Tower is a gender-bending visual novel that combines virtual worlds, gaming tropes, and gay love.

What Worked For Me:

The game includes an interesting premise. Who wouldn’t want to enter a virtual world where your every wish could be granted? It was a fun thought-experiment for me, if nothing else.
Each of the romance options have distinct personalities. I won’t say who’s who since we’re not in the spoiler section, but we have a genki guy, a tsundere, a trickster, and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Fun.
The game explicitly focuses on gender and self-discovery. To my knowledge, there are few other games that tackle the same topics, especially from a trans masculine perspective (at least on Steam).
I was able to finish all four of the volumes in a single sitting, with the first three games averaging a run time of about 75 minutes. (The fourth volume was an outlier, coming in at closer to 2.5 hours.)
Though it is more focused on romance, the game also has an off-beat sense of humor. How many other VNs allow you turn your love interest into a carrot or encounter an octopus that loves french fries? Not many, that’s for sure!
The game includes plenty of smooching but never really goes beyond that. This may be a con for some, but I didn’t mind at all.

What Didn’t:

I know art is subjective, but I found the art to be … inconsistent. It wasn’t a deal-breaker for me; I did get through all 4 volumes of the game, after all. With that being said, I recommend looking at some of the game’s marketing materials to see if it’d be a deal-breaker for you. Beyond that, some of the game’s art assets really don’t match the “anime” aesthetic of the game; the “dog” in Akio’s path comes immediately to mind.
I’m not sure that the game really nails its ending. If you’re interested in specifics, check out the spoiler section below.
One of the chapters (Takashi) involved a lot of belittling and hitting played off for laughs. It’s made even worse by a secondary character saying something to the effect of, “if a girl hits you, it means she likes you.” Yikes.
(nit-pick) The user interface, from moment-to-moment game-play to interstitial moments between levels, felt dated. It was also a tad annoying to be asked to share to Twitter / Tumblr after every chapter. With that being said, the game is over a decade old, so it’s not really fair to hold it to modern visual novel standards.
(nit-pick) The music, ambiance, and sound effects are reused throughout the four volumes, and they aren’t especially ground-breaking or interesting. (I sure hope you don’t mind the sound this game uses for footsteps, because you’ll be hearing it a lot.) I am listing this as a nit-pick because the asset reuse never annoyed me.
(nit-pick) One of the joys of the “Bad Ending” in visual novels is that they often lead to weird, wacky, or even gruesome outcomes. This silliness almost never happens in East Tower, unfortunately. Typically, a bad ending is something to the effect of: “you didn’t do what the story required. Try again?” The only saving grace here is that the game usually only kicks you back to the start of the chapter you were playing, making it easy to get back to where you were in the story.
(nit-pick) In the virtual world of the game, the love interests are able to pick their desired forms. One of the players, Akio, manifests as a young boy. In the game, this is explained as him returning to a time when he felt happiest. The main character only shows platonic, “older brother,” affection to Akio in this form, but it still got some side-eye from me; I was worried it was going to go down a different, much more taboo route. (The same concern also goes for Kuon, who may be under-age based on his description. It’s made a hair better by being able to smooch his virtual adult form in the “love chapter,” but it still raised my hackles.)
(nit-pick) The game suggests playing the stories in order (Akio – Takashi – Kuon – Kurenai), and I agree. Kurenai in particular really falls apart without the context of the previous stories. With that being said, I think the game would’ve been better served as a single, cohesive whole rather than 4 separate games. I also found it odd that the games increase in price as you go, from $5 to $15 (though, admittedly, the last game does have the most complex story and art assets, so at least there’s that).

Conclusion:

Though the art is … dubious … and the ultimate ending is chocked full of sci-fi tomfoolery, East Tower still delivers where it counts. I found the characters likeable enough to carry me through all four volumes, which is critical in a visual novel. Beyond that, this game also serves a very specific niche by focusing on a character that could be read as trans masculine (my words, they never identify themselves as such). If that sounds like a space you’d like to inhabit, this game is worth checking out.