The basketball player’s ass is a monument. Not just big, it’s architectural, the kind of gluteal geometry that makes you forget what you were doing. I was supposed to be curating a collection of erotic art pieces today, some delicate watercolors of tangled limbs, but instead I’m here, clicking through dialogue options for a guy named Dwayne who smells like a locker room and has the emotional range of a protein shake. The game is Just Bros, and it’s a visual novel about, well, bros. Gay bros. Muscle bros. A whole smorgasbord of dudes from twinks to daddies, all rendered with this deliberately unpolished, almost sketchy art style that I’ve decided is a bold artistic choice and not just a lack of budget.

The writing is like a Grindr message that accidentally became self-aware. You get these choices, right? And one of them was literally just “Stare at his bulge.” I picked it. No regrets. The game didn’t even try to be subtle about it, just a slow pan down and a text box describing the outline. It’s a dating sim where the “sim” part is mostly a delivery system for hookups and the occasional, surprisingly tender moment with a firefighter who reads poetry. I wish the UI wasn’t so clunky, the font choice is a crime against typography, but that’s never getting patched. It’s part of the charm, like a zine you find under a mattress.

There’s a scene with a personal trainer that’s basically a masterclass in male domination dynamics, all grunting and power plays, and then five minutes later you’re having a genuinely sweet conversation with a nerdy guy about his comic collection. The whiplash is the point. It’s not trying to be a polished, triple-A thing. It’s a horny, messy, oddly specific fantasy generator that knows exactly what it is. The muscle definition on some of these sprites is anatomically questionable, like they studied bodies from a 90s superhero comic and just said “yes, more veins.” I spent way too long on the swimmer’s route, his shoulders were just… I don’t even have a joke. Just shoulders. The whole thing feels like someone spilled their very specific, very explicit Tumblr feed into a Ren’py engine and I’m not complaining. Not really.