No.Hazed Heart is an erotic maze puzzle game and “casual strategy game” from Garbage Bin Studio. With no plot to speak of, it’s a rather barebones and short experience intended to entertain and titillate the player in the shortest period of time possible.

Scored by the sound of some melancholic piano music, the objective of each maze is to navigate both hearts that start on opposite sides of the maze. Your job is to ensure that they merge at the end of the maze simultaneously.

So far, so basic, but this is where No.HazedHeart’s nsfw endgame comes into play. Upon navigating the maze successfully, you are rewarded with a looping animation of a half-naked anime girl performing a lewd sexual act. Repeat these enough times and that is the full No.HazedHeart experience.

Cubes and Cute Girls

Despite its promises of cheeky sexual acts, the visuals of No.HazedHeart gives it an innocent facade. The sketchy art style paired with gentle coloring lends it a lovely tone that works in favor of the erotic elements. The off-white background makes the illustrations look like they were ripped from a sketchbook, granting the game a certain rustic quality. With its loose line art and faded coloring, No.HazedHeart has a distinct visual aesthetic that lends a gentleness to its presentation.

There’s a lot of detail poured into the lovingly designed costumes worn by many a baby-faced anime girl. I particularly enjoyed the more creative outfits that don’t quite fit into specific anime archetypes. I felt this allowed the artist to get more creative. The character designs are cute, if a bit interchangeable, so the art still makes for a gorgeous collection of gowns.

The slew of nicely dressed girls gets little to no characterization but, at the least, they are properly dressed before ridding themselves of their main distinguishing trait.

What little we do learn from what I would charitably call a “cast of characters” is whatever anime archetype their clothing implies for them. No.Hazed Heart ticks just about all the boxes of the average costume fetish. There are the old classics here: a maid, a cheerleader, and a school gym uniform-as well as some sprinklings of Lolita fashion. Although the game is two-dimensional in a visual and narrative sense, at least the twelve girls wear the common costumes well.

Easy Access Erotica

No.Hazed Heart is a brief excursion of a game consisting of only twelve levels and a total of twenty-five achievements. All these levels and each of the achievements I completed in about an hour.

Perhaps it’s all those replays of Portal that’s made me so good at problem solving, but No.Hazed Heart poses no real challenge. I’d even go as far to say that the twelve levels all have the same level of difficulty. But, to imply there was any difficulty at all seems inaccurate to the game’s self-described casual tone.

In all honesty, I think it’s due to its simplistic makeup that No.Hazed Heart doesn’t possess replay value. The mazes are ludicrously easy, the collective runtime is short, and the rewards remain permanently unlocked. So not only are you stripped of a challenge on your first go, but you’re also stripped of an objective. The sense of rediscovery ceases to be exciting, let alone titillating.

At times, it does feel like No.Hazed Heart is devising the simplest puzzle it can come up so you can reach the hypothetical climax much faster. And although I understand the intention of creating something for casual players, I feel that the erotic elements contradict that. 

Point A to Point B(oobies)

Let me start by saying that I am no prude. I’ve played a lot of Bayonetta in my day. Lollipop Chainsaw is one of my favorite video games. And I’ve seen my share of dating sims. Perhaps I’m in the minority when I say I see a lot of tongue-in-cheek charm to these games, but that’s due to my personal preferences. No.HazedHeart is as deliberate as they come, and I think that’s why I never quite clicked for me.

Beyond its charming exterior, No.Hazed Heart manages to be rather generic fetish fodder. There’s no joke to tell, there’s no narrative to unfold, and the girls with their sex doll programming lack too much personality to be anything more than passably cute.

Allow me to go back to my Bayonetta example. In that high octane and campy beat ’em up, a well-fought battle is never finished until you punch in Bayonetta’s cheekily titled “climax” button. Bayonetta proceeds to do a summoning dance, her clothes made out of her magic hair whisks itself off her body, and then the bloody demise of an angel plays out before you as a demon devours it.

One could say that the objective and reward of Bayonetta is the short glimpse of her naked body. In my opinion, the game’s difficulty and excess of gore grant the erotic elements some levity and narrative contrast. This element doesn’t exist just for titillation; it’s also a way of knowing you’ve reached the end of a long-fought battle. It’s a rather simplistic setup and payoff.

Where my problem with No.HazedHeart begins is the significant lack of both. Instead, it would much rather hurry the player along to the payoff without requiring any of the context and characterization that makes other games so sexy and satisfying.

And while No.HazedHeart doesn’t need to be Bayonetta, it would benefit from understanding the recipe that made the game’s erotic elements feel earned, not just expected.

Hardly Worth The Hazing

Now, I think this might just be a “me” problem. Maybe I’ve been on the internet too long. Perhaps my digestion of more extreme content ensures that anything within No.HazedHeart would cease to surprise me. While I have limits, the erotica of No.HazedHeart isn’t anything particularly thrilling. It’s nothing you wouldn’t find out of your average hentai, let alone a glimpse at a NSFW Reddit.

At the end of the day, I suppose that would depend on your personal definition of kinkiness. Does the sight of an anime girl in the buff make you blush at all, or is it just one of many images cluttering your Pixiv account? 

The erotic end game depends on how truly scandalous that is to you personally. I see no harm in at least seeing what boundaries it pushes. But as for me, when it comes to seeing anime girls in various states of underdress, I like to at least work for it.

With the game being a mere one dollar to purchase, I’d say it fulfills its role as a short and easy-going gaming experience that knows exactly what it’s setting out to be.