Visual Novel / Kissed by the Baddest Bidder

"I bought you."

Kissed by the Baddest Bidder is a Romance Game Visual Novel by Voltage, Inc. for iOS and Android devices.

The protagonist works on the housekeeping staff of the Tres Spades, a luxury hotel and casino. When she accidentally stumbles into a secret VIP party, she ends up in much more trouble than she could have imagined: there's an illegal underworld auction going on in the lowest level of the hotel, and the last item up for sale is her.

After the winning bid is cast for the enormous sum of twenty million dollars, she ends up in the company of a Hong Kong gangster, a Gentleman Thief, a famous artist and fashion model, a police detective, and the billionaire owner of the Tres Spades himself. On the bright side, their intentions for her don't seem to be as horrifying as she feared... but on the other hand, they don't seem to be planning to just let her walk away, either.

In December 2017, Kissed by the Baddest Bidder was transferred into Voltage's Love 365 app.

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The game contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Eisuke doesn't seem to find Carolina Bucci abhorrent, just off-putting in her forwardness, but she definitely ends up in this trope when she changes her target to a quietly horrified Soryu.
• Alice Allusion: The secret auction is known as The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, with the auctioneer dressed in a Mad Hatter costume. In the prologue, Ota compares the protagonist to Alice having fallen down the rabbit hole.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The game is clearly designed with this trope in mind. All of the possible love interests are involved in underworld dealings - Eisuke is the CEO of a zaibatsu and does business with The Mafia, Soryu is a member of The Triads, Mitsunari is a thief, Mamoru ignores the others' illegal activities and the existence of the secret auction despite being a police detective, and Ota is a regular at the auction and treats the protagonist like a pet.
• Alpha Bitch: The protagonist's co-worker Erika and her two minions. Carolina starts off as one as well, adopting an immediate and undisguised loathing for the protagonist, but once she's persuaded to give up on Eisuke she becomes more of a Lovable Alpha Bitch.
• Alternate Character Reading: If you're wondering why a Hong Kong gangster has a Japanese name, "Oh Soryu" is the Japanese reading of "王　蒼龍," which in Chinese would be read "Wáng Cānglóng," and can be read as "blue dragon king" in either language.
• Alternate Reality Episode: A few side stories place the love interests in alternate roles including doctors, vampires, waiters, and more.
• Animal Motif: Several people accurately compare Ryosuke Inui to a dog: he's loyal, obedient, eager to please, and not very bright.
• Arranged Marriage: Mei Ling in Soryu's route is in Japan to find a husband who will be able to facilitate the Bell Crickets' expansion into the country. That Mei Ling herself doesn't want to marry anyone is mostly irrelevant, although at least her father cares for her enough to allow her to refuse anyone she doesn't find suitable as a partner, and Soryu is willing to present her with a series of likely prospects and let her turn them all down if that's what she wants. It works out a little too well: at the end of Mei Ling's stay in Japan, Simon Lee concludes that Soryu is the most suitable husband for her based on Mei Ling's trust in him and the lengths to which he's gone to keep her safe.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Soryu repeatedly and casually points his pistol at friends and allies when they annoy him, in flagrant disregard of one of the cardinal rules of firearm safety - specifically, "never aim a gun at anything you don't intend to kill."
• Attempted Rape: In Mamoru's route, The leader of the religious cult, AID, almost rapes the protagonist before she is saved by Mamoru
• Babies Ever After: The special side stories "Becoming The Perfect Family" are all set years in the future, with the protagonist married with children.
• The Bait:
  • On Soryu's route, the protagonist volunteers to pose as Mei Ling and let whoever's after her kidnap her so that Soryu and the guys can find out who's responsible and track them to their leader. Soryu is not happy about putting her at so much risk, but reluctantly agrees for lack of better ideas when the protagonist makes it clear that she trusts him to get her through it in one piece.
  • In Soryu's sequel, he ends up using the protagonist as bait to draw out the traitor among the Ice Dragons - this time without her knowledge. She's not happy about it when she finds out afterwards, but forgives him since he wasn't happy about it either and took every possible measure to protect her.
• "Bang!" Flag Gun:
  • During a trip to the shooting range in Soryu's sequel, Soryu offers to let the protagonist try firing a gun... which turns out to be one of these.
  • Early in his main route, Baba pulls a gun on the protagonist to emphasise the gravity of her situation. When Baba pulls the trigger, the gun "fires" a flower.
• Better Partner Assertion: On Eisuke's route, Takahiro tries to get the main character to date him by asserting he would never make her feel abandoned like Eisuke was doing at that moment. Because this is an otome game, it's a Foregone Conclusion she won't dump Eisuke for Takahiro.
• Billy Needs an Organ: A throwaway reference in Eisuke's route mentions that the rights to donor organs are a common item up for sale at the underworld auction, and are apparently always good sellers, although Ota finds them boring.
• Black Market: The secret auction primarily sells things that can't be purchased legally, including stolen artwork, the rights to donor organs, and occasionally people.
• Break Her Heart to Save Her/Cruel to Be Kind:
  • In Eisuke's route, he very coldly dumps the protagonist once the deal with the Buccis is concluded, which turns out to have been the first step in his plan to protect her from being targeted by his enemies. Plus getting Erika to lay off the harassment at work.
  • Eisuke does it again in his sequel, when he realises that being associated with him will sour his sister's relationship with her future father-in-law. And so he puts on a great show of publicly declaring that he wants nothing to do with Yukari, when finding her has actually been his raison d'être since they were separated.
  • In Soryu's sequel, he takes a page from Eisuke's book and abruptly breaks things off with the protagonist with a terse explanation that she's holding him back and he can't be free around her. It's because there's a traitor in the Ice Dragons who is out to get him, plus the violence is bringing the police down on him and he doesn't want her to be endangered or subject to suspicion by her association with him. After everything is sorted out, she extracts a stern promise from him to never, ever do it again.
• Call-Back: Eisuke's epilogue calls back to his first encounter with the protagonist when she is, once again, accidentally shoved into his path as he crosses the hotel lobby, and he catches her to prevent her from falling. This time, he takes the opportunity to make it clear to his crowd of female groupies that he's not interested in anyone but her.
• Chained Heat: After running afoul of Detective Ayase, the protagonist and Baba find themselves in a high-tech version of this predicament. Rather than standard handcuffs, they each end up wearing bracelets that will explode if they are more than five feet apart.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting:
  • Don Bucci's character design is modeled directly after Vito Corleone.
  • Eisuke's sequel and Soryu's route both include a villain drawn to look like Walter White.
• Cooldown Hug: The protagonist gives one to Mamoru.
• Crash-Into Hello: The protagonist's first encounter with Eisuke in the prologue occurs when she's accidentally shoved into him as he's on his way across the hotel lobby.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: At one point in Eisuke's route, it looks as though Carolina means to Murder the Hypotenuse. When Eisuke and Soryu show up to stop her, however, it turns out that all she was planning to do was douse the protagonist in skunk spray, in the hopes that Eisuke wouldn't want to be around her because of the stink.
• Ditch the Bodyguards: Mei Ling tries it early in Soryu's route, dragging the protagonist along with her and nearly getting both of them assaulted by a pair of thugs.
• The Don: Antonio Bucci.
• Dumbass Has a Point: For most of Soryu's route, Inui's eagerness to be of help is matched only by his inability to accomplish anything productive due to his inexperience and the fact that he's just not the sharpest tack in the box. When he reads the protagonist the riot act for giving up on Soryu without even trying to tell him how she feels, however, everyone present has to admit that he's entirely right.
• Fetishized Abuser: Hand in hand with the basic premise of the game. Not all of the possible love interests qualify, but Eisuke, Ota, and Season 2's Shuichi Hishikura certainly do. Eisuke because he is almost always pulling a Batman Gambit of some sort which he doesn't bother communicating with the protagonist (his plans have a high likeliness of involving the protagonist). Ota because he regards the protagonist as a mere pet.
• Healthcare Motivation: Why Kyoichiro turns on Soryu in Soryu's sequel. His mother is critically ill, and the only chance of saving her is a very expensive genius doctor. It just so happens that someone out there is willing to pay a lot of money for Soryu's death... When this is revealed, Soryu blames himself for not realizing that Kyoichiro was in need, and he and Eisuke arrange for Kyo's mother to be treated by the doctor.
• Hope Spot: The protagonist gets a brief glimmer of hope in the prologue, when she realises that the auction cannot possibly be legal and that the police will help her. Then the hitherto silent man by the window is introduced as "Detective Kishi"...
• Hopeless Suitor: Carolina Bucci, to Eisuke.
• I Have Your Wife:
  • One of Eisuke's competitors tries kidnapping the protagonist to use as leverage against him. Eisuke claims he doesn't care, but the other guys note afterwards how unusual it is for Eisuke to have come in person to negotiate at all.
  • Mei Ling in Soryu's route is targeted by the Arimura group, who want to abduct her to use her as leverage against her father's organization.
• I Just Want to Be Free: As the daughter of a Triad boss, even one as caring as Simon Lee, Mei Ling has very little freedom to pursue her own happiness. Between the risk of being a target for her father's enemies, the need to avoid doing anything that would cause her father to lose face, and the expectation that she will have to marry based on what will be most advantageous for the Bell Crickets, it's no surprise that she takes her trip to Japan as an opportunity to experience the kind of freedom she can't have in Hong Kong.
• Innocent Innuendo: Eisuke's sequel begins with him and the protagonist in bed, where Eisuke is teaching her the proper way to use her fingers... to activate the fingerprint recognition on a new prototype keycard.
• Interface Spoiler: A minor one occurs in Hishikura's main route Season 2 - the protagonist only knows Hishikura by his family name, so she has no reason to realize - as the player probably will from his introductory profile - that "Shu" is short for his given name, Shuichi.
• I Owe You My Life: Inui's over-enthusiastic loyalty to Soryu is because Soryu saved him from some yakuza thugs and gave him a place in the Ice Dragons.
• Latex Perfection: On more than one occasion Baba disguises himself as an anonymous mook using a latex mask designed for him by Ota.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Put Mamoru and the protagonist in a room together and the bickering will never, ever end.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: In one of the Soryu's side-stories, he bets the protagonist in a poker game against Ota and loses her.
• Lost in Translation: "Baba" sounds like a pejorative Japanese word for "old woman," and the card game Old Maid is called "Babanuki," the object of the game being to omit ("nuku") the Old Maid ("baba"). Thus, when Mei Ling abruptly changes the subject from arguing with Baba to suggest everyone play a game of Old Maid, she's actually telling everyone to ignore Baba via a bit of cute wordplay that unfortunately didn't survive translation into English.
• Love Triangle: The "Tangled Love Triangle" side stories give the protagonist nine potential triangles to put themselves in.
  • Part 1 gives the choices of Eisuke and Baba, Mamoru and Shuichi, or Luke and Rhion.
  • Part 2 gives the choices of Soryu and Momoru, Baba and Ota, or Hikaru and Luke.
  • Part 3 gives the choices of Ota and Eisuke, Shuichi and Hikaru, or Rhion and Soryu.
• The Mafia: Present mostly in the form of the Bucci family, who Eisuke hopes to form an unspecified business arrangement with. The English localization also uses the term to refer to The Triads without making much distinction between the two, beyond that the latter is based out of Hong Kong.
• Mafia Princess: Both Carolina Bucci (on Eisuke's route) and Mei Ling Lee (on Soryu's) fall into the Japanese "yakuza princess" variant of the trope, as they're both fully aware of what sort of business their respective fathers do. Mei Ling is even referred to specifically as a "mafia princess" on several occasions during Soryu's route. In both cases, their fathers clearly dote upon them, and neither woman has any particular issues with her father's activities, although Mei Ling chafes a bit at the lack of freedom that comes with being a Triad boss's daughter.
• Majored in Western Hypocrisy: Eisuke and Soryu attended school together in England.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Soryu Oh" can be read as "blue dragon king." He's the grandson of the leader of an organized crime family called the Ice Dragons.
  • "Mamoru Kishi" can be read as "protector with noble intentions."
• Mister Muffykins: Carolina's pet chihuahua, Fang.
• My Fist Forgives You: In the good ending of Mamoru's main route, Eisuke ends up on the receiving end when Mamoru punches him for selling the information that got Minami killed.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters:
  • Although Soryu is the only member of the main cast who is officially a gangster, all of them are in some way involved in illegal and morally questionable activity. Since they're also all potential romantic leads, however, none of them are shown doing anything too reprehensible, and the action of any given route usually involves one or more of them putting a stop to the activities of much less neighborhood-friendly criminals.
  • This extends to most of Soryu's gang, the Ice Dragons, as shown during his route. Their boss is said to lack Soryu's ethics and to be primarily concerned with profit, but all of the Ice Dragons the protagonist meets have great respect for Soryu and follow him loyally. Simon Lee's organization, the Bell Crickets, don't get much screen time but are described as a "moderate" group whose values are compatible with Soryu's.
• Never Found the Body: Implied with Arimura on Soryu's route.
  Protagonist: After that... Arimura turns up missing, and no one will tell me what became of him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • On Soryu's route, Soryu has the Arimura boss wholly at his mercy... until Inui, who followed Soryu hoping to help him, is taken hostage by one of Arimura's mooks. Only Eisuke and Mamoru turning up to play The Cavalry keeps the situation from ending very, very badly.
  • Later in Soryu's route, the protagonist tearfully confronts Soryu over what he's doing as he prepares to leave for Hong Kong, begging him to reconsider because she wants him to be happy. This leads directly to Soryu deciding to choose Honor Before Reason and nearly getting executed for it. Fortunately, Eisuke once again intervenes to make sure that everything works out for the best.
• Noble Demon:
  • Eisuke flatly denies that he's a good person, and indeed he isn't. On the other hand, his motives are often more benevolent than a casual observer might expect. He's prone to doing things like arranging an auction on short notice in order to help a woman get out of an abusive relationship with her yazuka boyfriend, for example.
  • Soryu likewise; as second in command of the Ice Dragons he's no stranger to doing unsavory things, but he has a strong personal code of honor and firm opinions on things like violence towards women or endangering innocent bystanders. Baba accurately describes him as "a bad guy but not a bad person," and a scene partway through Soryu's route suggests that he wishes he could be a heroic detective instead of having been born into the Triads.
• Nouveau Riche: The man who initially tried to buy the protagonist in the prologue shows up again in Baba's route. He's described as the kind of person who likes to flaunt his money in the most ostentatious way possible, and his supposed peers are laughing behind his back. During a spot of burglary, Baba and the protagonist make note of his gaudy possessions and share a laugh at his (lack of) taste.
• Operation: Jealousy:
  • Invoked for laughs by Eisuke on Soryu's route, gleefully abetted by Ota and Baba. Observing that Soryu seems to be taking an unusually personal interest in the protagonist, they take advantage of the fact that he's having the protagonist stand in for Mei Ling at her arranged marriage meetings by setting her up to meet a handsome young politician who's known for being popular with women... then sit back and enjoy watching Soryu quietly seethe with jealousy.
  • The entire penthouse crew pulls one on Ota in his epilogue as a form of What the Hell, Hero? when they finally realize that the whole "pet dog" thing isn't just a Running Gag and that Ota actually treats the protagonist that way all the time. Baba, Eisuke, Soryu, and Mamoru all conspire to lavish attention on the protagonist specifically for the purpose of making Ota jealous, and when he takes exception they point out that, since she's only a pet to him, he has no grounds to object.
• Out-Gambitted: Nikaido thinks he's managed to gain the upper hand over Eisuke by abducting the protagonist. Eisuke proceeds to demonstrate in every possible way how wrong he is. In fact, almost everything Eisuke does during their confrontation is just window dressing: before he ever showed up, he'd already formed an alliance with Nikaido's second-in-command, who is in the process of taking over control of Nikaido's company as they speak.
• Perspective Flip: The "His POV" side stories.
• Playing Card Motifs: In menus and promotional images, the main cast are represented with playing cards: Eisuke as the Ace of Hearts, Soryu as the King of Spades, Baba as the Joker, Ota as the Queen of Diamonds, and Mamoru as the Jack of Clubs. In-game, of course, there's the Hotel Tres Spades ("three spades") itself, which has 52 above-ground floors.
• Property of Love: The game entirely avoids the ickiest scenarios that its premise could lead into, and instead revolves around the romantic fantasy of being owned by one's lover as its central theme. How heavily the theme is played depends on the route - it's strongest in Eisuke and Ota's routes as compared to Soryu and Baba's, in which it's much less prominent.
• Regal Ringlets: Carolina wears her hair done up in huge cascades of ringlets on either side of her face.
• Romantic Runner-Up: Poor Takahiro. He gets as far as inviting the protagonist out on a pseudo-date and makes an impassioned plea for her to choose him as the more stable one between him and Eisuke. This being Eisuke's route, she obviously doesn't.
• Romanticized Abuse: Both Eisuke and Ota's routes are characterized by severely controlling behavior and denial of the protagonist's personhood on the parts of the guys in question, who treat her as property (in Eisuke's case) or a pet (in Ota's) and use the threat of going back up for auction to force the protagonist to go along with this treatment. Most of this is played as somewhat kinky fantasy, and the protagonist falling in love and choosing to stay with either guy on his route is portrayed as positive and romantic.
• Sex Slave: Implied as a possibility when the protagonist is auctioned off and the auctioneer announces that the winning bidder can do anything they want with her.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Eisuke's main route mentions his search for his sister, which becomes a major focus of his sequel.
  • As of the end of Soryu's sequel, there's someone out there somewhere willing to pay handsomely to have Soryu killed, but nobody knows who or why. This will assuredly be coming up again. The sequel also mentions that both of Soryu's parents are AWOL, another plot hook that's likely to be addressed in future content.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Most of the penthouse suite crew are snappy dressers, particularly Eisuke in his custom-tailored three-piece suit.
• Shipper on Deck: Pretty much the entire main cast, especially Eisuke and Baba and also including Inui and Mei Ling, become actively invested in making sure Soryu and the protagonist end up together by the end of Soryu's route. His epilogue occurs when they find out that he has yet to take the protagonist out on a proper date, and insist on arranging one then and there.
• Side Bet:
  • In Soryu's epilogue, the other guys do Soryu a "favor" by obtaining a sexy red cheongsam for the protagonist and laying it out for her in Soryu's room in the penthouse suite... then bet amongst themselves as to whether or not she'll wear it. Eisuke wins.
  • Mei Ling gets in on the action in Soryu's sequel: after Soryu breaks up with the protagonist, she and the guys place bets on whether or not they'll get back together, with Eisuke and Ota betting 'no' and Mei Ling putting five thousand dollars on 'yes'.
  • Played for high stakes when Mamoru and Eisuke gamble on the outcome of the former's main route. If Mamoru wins, Eisuke will not interfere as the auctions are revealed to the public and they all become subject to criminal investigation. If Eisuke wins then Mamoru will remain an auction sponsor and Eisuke's man in the MPD, and everything will be business as usual.
• Sleep Cute: Subject of a CG scene in Soryu's route when the protagonist falls asleep on Soryu's sofa and wakes up in his bed, with Soryu asleep beside her.
• Spotting the Thread: Multiple instances of this trope occur in Hishikura's main route:
  • Although seeing "Shu" come out of Hishikura's shower is the final straw that forces the protagonist to put the pieces together, the deception probably could have held up for at least a little longer had Hishikura not recently mentioned the protagonist not taking sugar in her coffee, a subject that had never come up in their previous conversations. She had, however, told "Shu" that she didn't care for sweets.
  • Hishikura realizes at the last minute that Maezono has demonstrated too much knowledge about the particular circumstances of the bribery scandal that ended his father's career - more than anyone not involved in engineering the scandal should have had. This tips him off to the fact that Maezono, not Eisuke, is the person responsible for his father's disgrace.
• Stockholm Syndrome: A possible interpretation of the protagonist's relationship with her guy of choice, particularly in Eisuke and Ota's routes:
  • In Eisuke's route, she gradually gets used to his controlling behavior, to the point that she's happy when he allows her to leave the hotel on her day off and gives her half an hour to answer his pages instead of the usual five minutes. In a moment of self-awareness, the protagonist then notes that this is probably not a healthy response to her situation.
  • Similarly, in Ota's route she struggles with the realization that she's being conditioned to enjoy being treated like a pet.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: Mamoru's response to hearing Aida claim that he was born to kill Mamoru and the protagonist: "That's the stupidest reason I ever heard for bein' born!"
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Detective Ayase. Not only does he lead the taskforce set to bring Baba to justice, but he's made it his personal goal as well.
• Tracking Device: In several different routes, one of the guys turns out to have secretly planted a tracking device on the protagonist for one reason or another:
  • The pager that Eisuke gives the protagonist also has a GPS locator in it so that he can track her down if she fails to respond to a page. This is how he knows where to find her when Carolina abducts her.
  • Soryu plants one on the protagonist in his sequel, in order to be able to keep track of her while he uses her as bait to flush out the traitor among the Ice Dragons.
  • Mamoru plants one in the protagonist's baggage before she leaves to join the AID.
  • The penthouse crew somehow manage to get a tracking device into her personal cell phone in Hishikura's main route.
• True Companions: The five prospective love interests are all pretty close and willing to help one another out whenever it's needed. Eisuke and Soryu, in particular, went to boarding school together and are obviously one another's closest friends: Soryu shares insight into Eisuke's character with the protagonist on more than one occasion during Eisuke's route, as well as protectively shadowing the protagonist on Eisuke's behalf after Eisuke cuts her loose, and Eisuke (assisted by the other guys) goes to significant lengths at the end of Soryu's route to make sure that Soryu comes out of the situation alive and able to be with the woman he loves.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: In Hishikura's route in Season 2, the protagonist finds herself increasingly torn between her feelings for two very different men, pitiless taskmaster Hishikura, and the kind but mysterious young man who calls himself Shu. In fact, they are the same person: Hishikura posed as "Shu" in order to use the protagonist in his plan to expose the black market auctions.
• Unequal Pairing: The protagonist is always at a heavy disadvantage in the balance of power of her relationship with whichever guy she ends up with, thanks to the whole "bought at auction" business and the fact that he's of a much wealthier and more powerful social standing than she is. Some routes, such as Soryu's, eventually balance things out to some extent; others, such as Eisuke's, very much do not.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Baba and Ota have shades of this, more so on Ota's side.
• "What Do They Fear?" Episode: The "His Weakness" side story revolves around the protagonist's efforts to find out what it is that her lover fears or has difficulty dealing with.
• Work Off the Debt: Repaying the $20 million she was purchased for as a means of getting herself out of the situation she's in is not always brought up as even being a possibility, but Soryu, at least, seems to consider the protagonist indebted to him. Since it's completely impossible for her to ever come up with that much money, he puts her to work as Mei Ling's companion and then as her stand-in. At the conclusion of Mei Ling's stay in Japan, he declares the debt discharged and the protagonist free... although given that by that point she's fallen for him, she finds herself not nearly as happy about it as she should be.