OniiKiss: Onii-chan, Where’s My Kiss?! is the story of a family who made kissing on the lips a mandatory way to celebrate occasions as dramatic as leaving the house, or returning home. It’s literally a rule. This being a hentai visual novel, the kissing rule inevitably leads to far more.
OniiKiss stars Onii-chan, the actual name of the male protagonist, his four cute sisters, and a miniature mother. The premise of the game is simple. Onii-chan needs to study to become a talented appraiser because his family runs an antique shop. He gets much too distracted when he has to dote on his sisters, which he loves to do. Therefore he is exiled to the family shop — which conveniently has a large bathroom, and a bedroom — after dinner to study. One of his sisters, whoever he has kissed on the lips the most during the day, will then be allowed to bring him a snack to give him a bit of a break. Selecting a sister to bring the snack is how you pick a route (and lewd them in private).
OniiKiss brings a tiny mechanical innovation to visual novels. Instead of selecting a dialogue option, Onii-chan is presented with opportunities to kiss his sisters. Clicking on their face, within a certain circle, generates an on-the-lips kiss, kissing outside of it generates some kind of other kiss, and you can also delay to not kiss them at all. I’ll give Tinkle Position, the developer, credit here, the fact they wrote three different reactions for these scenes is impressive. There’s no reason for players to ever see them, because if you just kiss every heroine at every opportunity, you’re given a final pre-study kiss selection from all the eligible characters.
Unfortunately, I think OniiKiss may have benefited from a more traditional structure. Because kissing is how you select a girl’s route, it becomes uncomfortable when one heroine, Yayoi, doesn’t want to be kissed. But to see Yayoi’s story content, you’ll have to force her. Even though she’s rejecting kisses because of secret feelings — and really does want to kiss Onii-chan — doesn’t make it okay to kiss her against her will. It’s supposed to play up her tsundere character, but I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if after time spent without kisses she’d finally realized that her desire should win out over her hesitance. Instead, she just gets forced to kiss until she’s providing complex excuses for why she needs more kisses. It wasn’t only uncomfortable, but created a less interesting story because of the mechanical mandate to select routes via kisses. The part of her story that focuses on the difference between appearances, and reality, is great enough to distract from that though.
The other three sisters all want kisses, but none as much as Saya, who needs them like she needs air. She’s the pushiest of the bunch, and she apparently keeps tabs on Onii-chan’s porn stash, consuming the same content whenever she can get away with it. Her story involves obsession, and a school friend curious to learn what’s so great about Onii-chan.
Mahiru, the second oldest sister, is the most moe of the bunch. She’s sweet, innocent, diligently does chores, and loves her Onii-chan. Her route’s full of love. Mahiru and Onii-chan share a special bond, a promise that they can always tell each other anything, and be perfectly honest with each other, as long as they make their intentions clear with the secret phrase: sweet potatoes.
Finally, there’s Asahi, the oldest sister in OniiKiss. Asahi is reliable, and acts as a role model for her younger siblings. Sometime in the past she and Onii-chan went through an existential crisis about their family rule where they learned that other families don’t really kiss on the lips, but they decided that what’s normal for them doesn’t have to be the same as what’s normal for others. That past actually comes up in many routes, but plays a big part in the realization on her route that she’s in love with her brother.
Focused on kissing, OniiKiss does a good job at everything kissing related. The kissing sounds, the zoomed-in POV camera during kiss scenes, even the little heart icons that pop up, are all quality design choices. The rest of its sound design is upbeat, with energetic voice actors, and peppy background music that is easy to hum along to. The color palette is well chosen, and complements the character designs.
Art-wise, it’s a delight. Work is put into the heroines’ main images, and the actual scene art takes that a leap further in quality. Whether it’s an h-scene, or just a heroine sitting around, all the CG is good. There’s also no censorship here, kudos to Sol Press.
As to the sexual kinks at play, obviously, there’s incest. Other than that though, it’s largely vanilla, with a few themes like teasing popping up rarely.
Each sister has a route, and there’s a harem route. There’s also a “bonus Mom route”, which is more like a teaser of what a full route could be. The bulk of the story development, and conflict is in the individual routes, which are the most fun as a result.
OniiKiss: Onii-chan, Where’s My Kiss?! is available now from JAST USA (NSFW).
