#alienworks

Thanks to the company's continuous modernization, its ideal location in the French steel basin and the restructuring of the steel industry, the company concentrated its entire production of French cast iron in the mid-1960s.

Despite all these favorable criteria and technical innovations, the company, like all other steel companies, suffered seriously from the crisis in the steel industry in the 1970s. The company managed to survive for a while, but was forced to announce its closure in the early 1990s.

Part of the site, including the blast furnace itself, was preserved as industrial heritage.

In this series of photos you see the power plant that was part of the blast furnace company. It is a classic power plant, with turbines from Brown Boveri and AEG, among others, driven by steam that was produced in the adjacent boiler room.

The site is well secured and difficult to access, which also explains why it has been preserved in its current beautiful state.

Highway Blossoms’ biggest strengths are its atmosphere and characters. There’s something about American road trip stories that I tend to really enjoy—the kitschy charm of small town diners and tourist traps, the historical significance of the big landmarks, and even the long stretches of desert highway are all really appealing to me. Maybe it just seems exotic to me because I’m a Canadian without a car, but I like it. And the contrasting personalities of the main characters—cheerful and naïve Marina and grumpy and cynical Amber—allow for a lot of comedic moments as well as more serious scenes in which they learn to understand the other’s viewpoint. Amber got especially believable and sympathetic for me as I gradually realized that some of her standoffish personality was a way to hide her anxiety, although her habit of over-analyzing everything got a little bit frustrating to read sometimes. I was glad to see her start to deal with some of those issues as the story went on.

The pacing and structure of the story seemed a little weird to me, however. The opening scenes set it up to look like the main plotline will be about a treasure hunt, and we also learn that Amber is doing some sightseeing on her way to a music festival, so I expected the festival and the final stretch of the treasure hunt to coincide somehow. Instead, the treasure plotline gets largely resolved about halfway through, the rest of the story focuses more on the development of the romantic relationship. Then once that’s resolved there was a little more about the music festival that I didn’t really think was necessary. I think it could have been better if the treasure hunt lasted longer, with the romance happening at the same time, and the music festival as an even briefer scene at the end. As it was, some parts felt needlessly slow and I wasn’t always sure where the story was really going.

Also, while I don’t have anything against linear visual novels, I think Highway Blossoms could have benefited from some interactivity. Finding the treasure requires the girls to do a little bit of riddle-solving, and there’s even a mechanic that lets you go back and re-read entries in the journal of clues they’re following. You’d think that would mean that you’d really have to pore through the journal yourself so you can make the right choice about where to look for the treasure, but there are actually no choices in the VN at all. There’s also a blackjack game later on that I didn’t find particularly interesting, but maybe it could have been more fun if there had been some kind of minigame and a bad ending if you lost.

Finally, I was a little uncomfortable with the way the treasure hunt had the girls traipsing around the Navajo Nation’s landmarks of Shiprock and Canyon de Chelly in search of gold. I’m not an Indigenous person myself, so I don’t mean to claim to be offended on that community’s behalf. But considering the history of colonialism and continuing conflicts over land rights, I think depicting presumably white characters pillaging Navajo land for personal gain is in very poor taste. But maybe I should appreciate that this story does at least acknowledge the issue, even if it doesn’t fully explore the implications of the characters’ actions.

I may have listed a lot of issues I had with Highway Blossoms, but I do still think it’s a cute story. And as you’ve seen throughout this post, it has some really nice art tying it all together. I especially appreciated that when the characters are driving—which is often—there’s actually an image of them in the front seat of the RV, with several different variations on their facial expressions. It’s a big step up from some other VNs I’ve read that just slap the sprites over a car background, and it makes the dialogue during the drive much nicer to read. The CGs are all very pretty as well. And when you finish the game, you unlock a “goofball mode” that adds some sillier jokes into your next playthrough of the game if you choose to turn it on, which is a nice amusing way to end the experience. I’d recommend it to people who enjoy lesbian romance VNs regardless of its flaws, and I hope to see more work from the developers in the future.