Saving the world through the power of sex! No, seriously.
NU: carnival is a free-to-play Yaoi H-Game made by Taiwanese game developer Infinity Alpha in collaboration with SGArts. It features both RPG Elements based on RNG-controlled turn-based game mechanics as well as visual novel elements, with a story revolving around isekai hijinks and Deus Sex Machina. The game opened for pre-registration in December 2021 and was simultaneously released in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean language with Japanese voice acting on February 24, 2022. It is available for iphone and android mobile platforms with additional limited browser access option for iOS. A safe-for-work version known as NU: carnival Bliss was released on January 25, 2024.
Players follow the journey of Eiden, a sex toy designer who one day, while working overtime deep into the night, comes into contact with a mysterious “neon gemstone” belonging to an important client. Before he knows it Eiden loses consciousness, only to wake up in a whole new world. The inhabitants of this mysterious land, known as the Klein Continent, draw power from a mysterious force they call essence. Each individual’s essence has its own unique scent which intensifies whenever their essences levels begin to rise. Eiden’s own essence, as it so happens, is considered particularly high-grade by the residents of this new world. Essence has a direct link to its owner’s sexual desires and the optimum method for replenishing or regulating essence levels is to mix bodily fluids by getting down and dirty...
Visit the character page for specific character-related tropes.
NU: carnival features the following tropes:
- Absurdly Low Level Cap: The level cap is Rank 60, unusual for a mobile game with cycling events. You do get coins in exchange for the EXP you can't get, at least.
- Achievement System: The missions act like this, granting you some resources when you fulfill certain objectives. There are separate sections for missions which can only be completed once, daily missions, and monthly missions.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Like most gacha games, the money farming in this game is tedious after a player has spent all their new player bonuses. Simply throwing money at the game will not help much as there are 3 different types of currency (4 if you count contract scrolls for summoning cards as one) and not all types can be purchased in bulk. The in-game currency gain/real life money expense ratio is poor as well, which is made worse by the bigger packs are not discounted as deeply as other gacha games.
- All Just a Dream: The Journey to a NU ☆ World event is an alternate universe-themed dream Eiden has, after picking up a notebook on the ground. The story begins like how the game originally does, except he's the villain to the gemstone clan.
- An Adventurer Is You: The game has 5 classes: the Striker, the Guardian, the Saboteur, the Healer, and the Support.
- Striker: The most common class among the characters, they focus on dealing damage in various ways, being either single target or multi-target.
- Guardian: The tank class, they focus on drawing enemy attention and automatically enter Guard stance after they attack.
- Saboteur: The debuffer class which specializes in inflicting debuffs and ailments.
- Healer: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Support: The buffer class which specializes in buffing their allies' damage output.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game automatically converts duplicate cards into shards, which can be spent to ascend your initial card. Not only that, but if you have already ascended a card to the max 5 stars or have enough shards to ascend a 4 star card to 5 stars, the duplicate cards or shards will instead convert to Memory Fragments, which can be used to buy shards for any cards that are lacking enough shards.
- Either escaping a level manually or being defeated gives you back all the energy you spent for it.
- Even though several of the consumables for AP expire, the icon on the inventory displays a timer on the top left that refers to the item(s) closest to their expiration date, as a form of a quick notification and to save the players from the hassle of checking every consumable one-by-one.
- Any fighting stages that have been 3-starred can be repeated automatically with Express tickets without having to play through them again.
- If you hit the level cap, EXP you would have got is converted into money to avoid waste.
- Anti Poop-Socking: The energy system for NU: carnival regenerates at 1 per 5 minutes and the intimacy system per 10 minutes. Considering the high energy requirements of daily gold and experience potion stages, a lot of waiting may be involved if no items are used to restore energy. Gaining a new level also results in a Level-Up Fill-Up, though.
- Anti-Wastage Features: EXP overflow from being capped on user rank gets converted to money, allowing you to have an extra flow of cash outside of the money hunting battles.
- Balanced Harem: Eiden maintains a sexual relationship with all of the characters, but there is no jealousy or competition for Eiden's affection, nor is their any clear main love interest that Eiden or the story prefers above the rest.
- Cast Full of Gay: Par the course for a BL game. Eiden is the only one that explicitly identifies as gay, but everyone else likewise only displays sexual interest in men, assumedly because the real-life history surrounding the word means it just doesn't exist in Klein.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Being a gay man with a high libido, Eiden is delighted to find out that all of the clan members are good looking men of different categories of appeal. Not only this, but there also isn't a single female character in the main cast, despite it being established that women do exist in Klein.
- Clothing Damage: A visual representation of the amount of damage characters take are expressed by their clothes getting torn in places (somewhat similar to Touken Ranbu but more sexualized, with the characters flushing or even making ahegao faces), first slightly then escalating to nearly Shirtless Scene like situations.
- Content Warnings: While it does have one on boot up to warn unsuspecting players about mature content (mainly the explicit sex), Chimes of Darkness is one of the few instances that gets a content warning beyond the boot-up screen. Specifically, it divulges into underground cults and sacrificial worship.
- Continuity Nod: Events are treated as if they happen on a real-world calendar, and are sometimes referenced in later events. Misty Vale, for example, is a reunion of the trio in Eerie Escapade, with Yakumo bringing up their old codenames from their last adventure together.
- Deus Sex Machina: At the end of every chapter Eiden ends up in a situation where he ends up having sex with someone, and majority of the time it is both a recreational activity as well as a method to regulate essence.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The Sorcerer's Trials is this. The regular levels can just be cleared with Auto-battle most of the time but the bosses require a specific strategy that simply powering through with high leveled cards just wouldn't do.
- Fantastic Firearms: Handheld Essence Conductors are essentially handguns that shoot with essence instead of gunpowder, allowing anyone with some level of essence to fire shots. Eiden used one during "Blood Key", but gave his up because it's too dangerous to trust himself with. "Desert of Dusk" mentions them again, with weaker reproductions circulating the lawless grounds of the Fire Territory.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: In the main cast alone we have a shapeshifting snake, a werewolf, a yokai, a vampire, an incubus, and a robot.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Fanciful Capriccio takes place in a land where fairy tales come to life but end in tragedy. When Eiden and co. run into the matchstick girl and buy out her matches to change the ending, it turns out the father wasn't an abusive asshole, but drowning his sorrows in regret from getting scammed with said matches. Then it turns out the story would've ended with the matchstick girl awakening her affinity for magic and becomes a vengeful, pyromaniac sorceress.
- Fun with Acronyms: The ''Army x Blood x Oath" event, when shortened, is "ABO", a common acronym found in Omegaverse works.
- Hyperactive Sprite: All the characters' portraits are animated, whether it's simple bobbing up and down, to clothes fluttering in the wind.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Nearly everyone in the cast save for Kuya and Quincy.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Your energy is fully restored and its maximum possible value goes up every time your level increases.
- Money Sink: A card is can be upgraded 3 different ways- leveling up (which uses coins), ascension (which also uses coin AND extra shards of the card) and potential upgrade (which requires coin once again as well as materials randomly found from explorations or level grinding). This makes it very expensive to fully upgrade a card to its maximum power.
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Nintendo Hard: The battle system is fairly straightforward to understand, but knowing the extra nuances with the system and putting together the right team becomes integral to progressing, especially after Chapter 3.- Events such as "White Storm", "Zest for Life" and "Mystical Banquet" feature steeper difficulty curves compared to the main story quests, and a set of even harder optional stages behind a time gate. These stages feature encounters that, not only have far more complex mechanics that can and will punish brute force, sync your team's level down to a level cap, necessitating power through Potential and Ascensions.
- The Sorcerer's Trial event is a gauntlet of one-wave encounters with increasing power levels. Every five floors pits you against a boss with a set number of mechanics to sort through, and also feature level restrictions to make it difficult to brute force the boss floors.
- Out-of-Character Alert: In Chapter 10 Part 2, Rin utilizes Eiden's stolen essence to create a doppelganger to tear the clan apart. Though Rin does trick Blade and get under Dante and Edmond's skin, Eiden trusts his allies are well-acquainted with who he is to catch Rin's slip-ups and see past the false pretenses.
- Puzzle Boss: Most of the more difficult boss fights (Rin and Rei and the majority of the Sorcerer's Trial boss rooms in particular) involve a precise strategy ranging putting your party members in specific slots, when to attack/guard/ultimate at the right time, inflict a certain a amount of damage in each phase, etc. or even a combination of them.
- Random Number God: Much of the gameplay, especially the summoning mechanics, depends on this.
- Self-Censored Release: Bliss tones down the sexual content so it could be published on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The H-scenes are static and zoomed in to avoid showing the more explicit parts of the scenes.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: Even against an enemy with a power approximately double of the player's, it is possible to win by careful planning and tactical/timely use of skills.
- Skinship Grope: A feature in the game where the player can tap on a character to get a different voice line from them. Tapping them somewhere lewd elicits an appropriate reaction, as well.
- Starter Mon: SR Aster is always the very first card you receive, with SR Morvay being a guaranteed first summon as part of the tutorial.
- Stop Poking Me!: Certain characters, such as Edmond, will complain depending on where they're poked. For example, tapping Edmond's head will have him demand the player not touch him in response.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The fighting mechanics feature a rock-paper-scissors like mechanic where the cards and the enemies are all associated with one of the elements among fire, water, wood, light and dark. Every element is strong against one element while also being weak against one.
- Thanking the Viewer: Journey to a NU ☆ World ends with an unaddressed note on the study desk saying the notebook was something that wasn't supposed to be seen, but thanking the reader for sticking with them in spite of how many drafts they went through. It's highly implict that it's a thank-you note from the dev team to the players.
- Trapped in Another World: Eiden is warped from his homeworld into the fantastical Klein Continent after coming into contact with a mysterious gemstone. Given that the Klein Continent has plenty of good-looking men around, he's not complaining about his ordeal one bit.
- World of Technicolor Hair: Most of the clansmen have naturally colorful hair such as pink (Aster), purple (Morvay), light blue (Edmond), green (Olivine) and lavender (Kuya).
