"Yuki-iro no karute” is an adult game for Windows 95/98 released on April 9, 1998.

With original artwork by illustrator Takeshi Ogata, it captivated otaku of the time with its deep gameplay and dramatic story.

I was living in Japan at the time, knew a little Japanese, and bought and played this game. It was a wonderful game. Japanese eroge from the ’90s and ’00s are at their peak.

Yuki-iro no Karute was a game in which the protagonist, who runs a hospital, interacts with three inpatients, one nurse, and three outpatients, providing medical care and, in some cases, engaging in sexual acts.

The protagonist could either treat the girls seriously to restore their health or, under the guise of treatment, toy with them as he pleased.

However, if the player continued to act selfishly, the girls’ physical and mental health would rapidly deteriorate, causing the player to feel intense guilt. To see the true ending, the player had to strictly manage their schedule and devote most of their playtime to diagnosing and treating the girls.

Hotaru Yano is the main heroine of this story. Born into a poor family as the eldest daughter, she is a young caregiver who looks after her younger brothers in place of her parents and has known almost no joy in life. She suffers from an incurable disease that is difficult to treat, but due to her family’s poverty, she was shuffled from one hospital to another before finally arriving at the protagonist’s clinic.

In the game, players could either restore her to health or take advantage of her weakened state to abuse her. As befits a main character, she had a wide range of reactions and events; while she would sometimes rejoice at rediscovering the joys of life, if players caused her particularly severe harm, she might try to leave the hospital, attempt suicide out of despair, or even regress to a childlike state.

Achieving her full recovery required a thorough playthrough, making it a high-difficulty challenge that left many players feeling frustrated or guilty.