Murmur is in many ways your typical supernatural harem game. Adult MC dies, loses most of his memories, meets a goddess who sends his soul into the body of a recently deceased young man who is still in high school, and the goddess has one demand, the MC needs to create a haren with all the girls and women he meets so her power can be restored. Should the MC fail it will be his death since the goddess keeps him alive and she needs the power his romantic entanglements will provide her. So she can only keep the MC alive and guarantuee his survival if he succeeds. This is the motivation for him to go after everyone.
The game uses Honey Select and as far as HS games go this is probably one of the very best looking ones. There is great attention to detail and there are many, many renders for facial expressions. So the characters you meet feel quite alive and emote much more than in most other VNs. That being said, if you don't care so much for the typical HS aesthetic, this game won't change your mind. But rest assured that you will most likely not find a better looking HS game.
The game has a POV perspective.... so many times girls will kiss empty air, which I find silly. Ever so rarely you do get actual kissing scenes with the MC's head obscured or shown from the back or cut off above the lips, the usual.
And while character design and graphics are usually very good, the MC's penis looks like a plastic toy, that was a bit weird. But it's not a major issue.
The game world is a bit empty. There are virtually zero NPCs, only the MC and his love interests. You won't find background NPCs or maybe just friends, family, parents in this game. And when a stepfather is mentioned even confronted you never see that, you only know it happens. So things can look pretty deserted and a bit eerie.
So not everything is great in this game, depending on personal preference.
For one, there are no real paths. You must accept each and every girl into your harem or else it's game over.
And that means you may have to put up with characters you may like less than others.
Now I would assume that there is hardly any character in this game people will vehemently dislike. You do get the usual stereotypes here.
- the nerdy cosplay girl with a kitty fetish
- the very shy and insecure girl, she stutters a lot when she's nervous, and she's always nervous - after a while I found it no longer endearing but annoying... and it never stops. That being said Yui gets the best scene in the entire game
- the sporty girl (she's the sister with the patch)
- the very understanding milf harem enabler (who is the mom with the patch)
- the sexy teacher with a troubled personal history
- the kinky and naughty one (the goddess)
Three of the love interests are teenagers, two are "milfs" and then there's the goddess who is technically speaking also an adult, but she will also appear as a schoolgirl in disguise . Character design is varied, you can easily tell the women apart. The adults and one teenager have ballon breasts, apparently people like that, I don't, but it is what it is. The goddess and Sophie have smaller breasts, Yui falls somewhere inbetween, her breasts are big, but not too big. So there's something for everyone in this game, which is probably the way to go. People who like big breasts will be happy, people who prefer more natural looking and smaller breasts aren't ignored though.
One potential problem in the game is that it alternates between the love interests, which means you will get VERY long scenes with each of the women individually. And by long I mean REALLY long. For example one interaction with Yui close to the end of the current build probably takes an hour or more real time. It virtually goes on forever. And the interactions with the other love interests, while not as long, still take much longer than you may expect and certainly much longer than in many other harem games. This is owed to the fact that this is a mini harem with just six women. And at least Yui's ultra long sequence ends on a high note. All of the other interactions will also result in either a lovey-dovey scene or a more steamy scene.
These very long scenes with each love interest can be both a positive and negative thing. The positive thing is that you get plenty of time to get to know each character in detail. The negative thing is that if you dislike one of the love interests you could get a bit annoyed or bored. Of course you can always use the ctrl key in that case.
What may annoy you is that the supposedly 18+ teenagers can at times behave like 13-year-olds who kiss a boy for the first time. That's at least how some of the interactions feel with them. These are young women, 18 at least. They should not behave like that. It's probably meant to be endearing, but it makes them look and feel quite immature at times. Especially Yui feels much younger than she is supposed to be. And she stutters all the time when she's nervous...
That in turn resulted in me greatly preferring the actual adults in the game. But only Helen and the goddess have a few scenes... Kate the (not) mom has very few scenes, and zero scenes on the love path.
Another thing that may or may not bore or annoy you a bit is the very verbose nature of the game. There is a lot of dialogue. And I mean a LOT. So depending on what kind of game you prefer Murmur may either be a chatty ultra slow burn game with far too few intimate scenes... or it's just the right kind of ultra slow burn that makes you appreciate each character a lot more. This is certainly one of the rare harem games where the characters are pretty fleshed out and deep, not necessarily as in "complex", but you learn a lot about how they tick, what they like and dislike and so forth.
To give you an idea how few actual sex scenes are in this game... In my playthrough and on the love path the MC will have sex with exactly one love interest... and that only at the very end of the current build. So several hours of playtime. All other scenes (on the love path) are more or less intense petting/groping/kissing/oral sex. Not nothing of course, quite intimate, but if you want actual sex... you will need to be patient.
Now you do have some choices here though. This game uses a - in my opinion - somewhat silly love/lewd points system. Love is, as you may guess, usually the romantic choice, but in this game also often the much less steamy option. The lewd option is more about instant gratification and you will get several more steamy scenes only by picking the lewd option.
That being said picking the lewd option is not always be best choice, depending on what kind of content you like.
With the teacher Helen you will get a scene in a love hotel. If you pick the love option here it will result in kissing, fondling of the breasts (the teacher keeps her towel on though) and she will eventually finger herself.
If you pick the lewd option instead the MC will go down on her much to her delight. Which may be a bit more exciting for many.
But with Liz things are pretty different... you will eventually get a scene with her and if you choose the lewd option it results in a - in my opinion - very boring handjob (I wish VNs would do away with them altogether, it's so boring most of the time). If you pick the love option however the MC will go down on Liz and pleasure her, which - again, my opinion - felt better and more steamy. The scene was also longer. So it's not always consistent. Just check out the scene you consider non-canon in your playthrough and then reload and choose your canon option. You can easily see all scenes this way.
So you are free to choose here. I chose mostly a love path, a few characters have 1 lewd point or so, so I can't say too much about a lewd path and how it affects dialogue througout the game. I just checked out the lewd scenes out of curiosity, then reloaded the game and picked the love option for the actual playthrough.
On the love path the MC is more or less "ok". Not super great, he's your average ultra horny young man who wants to make love to everything that moves (motivated by the alternative, which is "death").
I do find the notion of "love" often resulting in less steamy content a bit silly though, it perpetuates the outdated idea that love and passion/sex/desire are somehow mutually exclusive. You certainly need to be a lot more patient on the love path.
The game also has lots of music... you may recognize some of the tracks from other games. Music is ok though, if you don't like it you can just mute it of course.
One thing I don't really like is how there are literally no obstacles for the MC. Everything is made super easy for him. The goddess sees to it that all the females already like the MC (she doesn't explain how). So he doesn't have to convince any of them to like him.
The entire harem aspect is also resolved super conveniently. It turns out all almost all the women are super ok with sharing. The one love interest who is less enthusiastic about it still accepts it.
Now if you like games without drama this will maybe please you. But it also means that there is zero conflict in the game, zero tension and everything can feel a bit boring. Especially given the fact that the game is so dialogue heavy.
But if you like a wholesome drama free game this is of course a huge plus.
Another thing, the character sheets list (unknown at first) kinks for each character. If you start this game in the expectation of getting some actual kinky stuff... you may be disappointed, the kinks are all pretty "normal" and mostly just cute and very tame. Not to spoil too much, but one kink is merely "getting undressed", another is cute "pet play as a kitty"... and the other kinks fall into the same category, more or less, further cementing the very wholesome nature of the game. So don't go in expecting any dark(er) stuff. You won't find it in this game!
So... who will enjoy Murmur? Fans of story driven slow burn harem games with a very manageable roster (six love interests so far) and a huge focus on the various characters will probably really like or even love this game.
If you want a harem game with plenty of girls, lots of action and with a focus on the "action" part... Murmur will almost certainly either bore you to tears or outright annoy you.
In my opinion Murmur has many things going for it, but for my own personal tastes the story lacks some drama, some tension, some conflict, everything is a bit too easy. And there is a certain imbalance between dialogue and more steamy scenes, the game would need a couple more scenes maybe to break up the very long dialogue here and there. Maybe it would have been better to shorten the individual interactions with the women and instead to alternate between them more often.
So I'd rate this game more like 3.5 stars... but the excellent renders and the fact that most love interests are pretty good (though not really original) round up that score to 4 stars, really good. But not excellent.
However, if you like story driven, character focused (ultra) slow burn mini harem games - absolutely give Murmur a try! You will not be disappointed and probably love the experience!
