Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel

Set in an alternative 2017 reality where cryptocurrency mining has achieved global popularity, Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel follows the story of Dokkaebi, an ordinary girl from South Korea who decides to join the hype and become a miner. As she builds her own crypto farm, the world begins to suffer the consequences of the mining craze—video card shortages, economic instability, and even conflicts over hardware. The game features a short but unusual story with different endings and choices, allowing players to explore the mindset of miners while encountering various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin.

Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel: A Relic of the 2017 Crypto Hype Cycle Unearthed

Introduction

In the vast and often eccentric library of Steam, countless titles appear and vanish with the quiet desperation of a single drop in a digital ocean. Among these, a peculiar artifact from a very specific moment in time persists: Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel. Released in 2018 by the enigmatic Ghost_RUS Games, this title is less a traditional game and more a digital time capsule, perfectly preserving the manic energy, global absurdity, and sheer hype of the late-2017 cryptocurrency boom. Our thesis is that Crypto Girl is a historically significant, if artistically rudimentary, piece of commentary. It is a primary source document of a digital gold rush, rendered in the most appropriate format possible—a visual novel about that very phenomenon. Its value lies not in polished gameplay or narrative depth, but as a stark, unfiltered reflection of a bizarre and impactful period in tech and gaming history.

Development History & Context

The studio behind this curious project, Ghost_RUS Games, remains a shadowy entity. With no other credits to their name on MobyGames, they appear as a classic example of a micro-developer or even a solo creator, leveraging accessible tools like Visual Novel engine ports to quickly create and publish a game directly responsive to current events. The release date of March 21, 2018, is crucial context. This places its development squarely in the immediate aftermath of the astronomical peak of Bitcoin’s value in December 2017, when the price nearly touched $20,000 and cryptocurrency mining became a front-page news phenomenon.

The technological and cultural landscape at this time was defined by a specific kind of chaos. The mining frenzy, driven primarily by Bitcoin and Ethereum, created a massive shortage of consumer-grade graphics cards (GPUs), as miners built vast “farms” to solve the complex algorithms that generated new coin. This drove prices for GPUs through the roof, creating a schism between PC gamers and miners and impacting the entire hardware market. The developer’s vision, as gleaned from the official description, was seemingly to bottle this lightning—to create a short, satirical, and “hype”-driven narrative that mirrored the global mania. It was a game developed not in a vacuum, but in the overheated server rooms and online forums of the crypto craze, aiming to be as immediate and topical as a newspaper headline.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The narrative of Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel is laid out in its official Steam description, which serves as our primary source material. The game is set in an “alternative reality” 2017, which, in a moment of brilliant satire, is indistinguishable from our own. The protagonist is Dokkaebi (a name derived from Korean folklore, often referring to a mischievous spirit or goblin—a potentially clever nod to the disruptive nature of crypto), an “ordinary girl from South Korea” who decides to start farming cryptocurrency for the simplest of reasons: “because everyone else does it too. Just hype.”

This premise is the game’s strongest element, perfectly capturing the bandwagon mentality that fueled the bubble. The plot quickly escalates to global absurdity, mentioning that “even in Uganda, African Americans united, collected PC and began to earn the entire country with a crypto currency.” This bizarre, almost surrealist detail highlights the global and seemingly indiscriminate reach of the hype. The central conflict arises from the consequences of this mania: “video cards were not enough, people even began to fight for video cards and the dollar with the ruble began to fall down.”

Thematically, the game is a blunt instrument critiquing herd mentality, the volatility of unregulated markets, and the tangible real-world effects of digital trends. Its promise of “different endings” suggests a narrative where player choices—perhaps whether to buy, sell, hodl, or expand one’s mining farm—lead to varying outcomes for Dokkaebi, potentially serving as a parable for the risks and rewards of the crypto space. The description’s closing pitch—”Learn the game, without SMS”—is a wonderfully odd and likely ironic tagline, mocking the predatory “learn crypto” schemes that were proliferating at the time.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

As a visual novel, the core gameplay loop of Crypto Girl is inherently simple: reading text and making choices at branching dialogue or decision points that influence the direction of the narrative. Based on the feature list, we can deconstruct its proposed systems:

• Core Loop: The player progresses through the story of Dokkaebi, presented with choices that likely relate to her mining ambitions. These could range from financial decisions (how to invest earnings) to ethical ones (how to acquire more hardware).
• Progression Systems: The advertised feature, “You can become a miner and build your own farm,” suggests a light resource management or simulation layer. Players might manage Dokkaebi’s finances to purchase more PCs or GPUs, visually seeing her “farm” grow, which could unlock new narrative paths or endings.
• Innovation & Flaws: The game’s innovation is purely conceptual—using the visual novel format, typically reserved for romance or fantasy, to explore socio-economic techno-hype. Its flaws, however, are likely numerous. Given its low price point ($0.69 on sale) and the developer’s obscurity, the execution is almost certainly rudimentary. Expect minimal branching, simplistic choice mechanics, and a short runtime (as explicitly stated: “Short, but interesting and unusual story”). The UI was likely functional at best, a bare-bones presentation of text boxes and static character sprites.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The source material provides no screenshots, so we must infer the artistic direction from the description and context. The setting is a stylized version of our modern world, warped by crypto mania. The art style was likely comprised of generic or stock-style anime-inspired character sprites (Dokkaebi herself) set against simple, static backgrounds—perhaps a bedroom crowded with PCs, a neon-lit cityscape, or a store with empty shelves where GPUs should be.

The atmosphere aimed for would be one of chaotic, almost comedic urgency, mirroring the online discourse of the time. The promise of a “good soundtrack” is intriguing; it could range from upbeat, energetic tech-themed music to something more ominous, reflecting the impending crash that followed the 2017 peak. The sound design was probably minimal, limited to menu selection sounds and perhaps key story moment effects. Ultimately, these elements served a single purpose: to create a direct, no-frills vessel for its timely narrative. It is world-building as meme, art as commentary.

Reception & Legacy

Critically, Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel appears to have vanished without a trace. As noted on MobyGames, there are zero critic reviews and, perhaps more tellingly, zero player reviews. Its commercial performance was undoubtedly negligible, a speck of dust on Steam’s vast marketplace. It was collected by only two players on the entire MobyGames platform, indicating an extremely narrow reach.

Yet, its legacy is fascinating. It did not influence subsequent games in any meaningful way; it is not a pioneer that spawned a genre. Instead, its legacy is that of a historical marker. It is a quintessential example of the “asset flip” or “quick cash-in” trend on Steam, but one where the subject matter itself was a quick cash-in phenomenon. The game is a meta-commentary on its own existence: created rapidly to capitalize on a hype cycle, about a girl rapidly trying to capitalize on a hype cycle.

For historians and journalists, it serves as a perfect primary source. It captures the specific zeitgeist of early 2018—the lingering excitement, the global stories, the hardware shortages, and the sheer absurdity of it all—with an unvarnished, almost naive clarity that more polished games would filter out. It is a cultural artifact first and a game second.

Conclusion

Crypto Girl: The Visual Novel is not a “good game” by any conventional critical metric. It is a short, almost certainly janky, and obscure title from a forgotten developer. However, to dismiss it on those grounds would be to miss its unique value. As a piece of video game history, it is a brilliant, accidental time capsule. It is a raw and immediate satire of a unique moment when technology, finance, and gaming culture collided with explosive and often ridiculous consequences.

Its place in history is secured not on a list of greats, but in a cabinet of curiosities. It is a testament to the fact that video games, in all their forms, can serve as a mirror to the world’s obsessions, no matter how fleeting or bizarre they may be. For anyone seeking to understand the texture of the 2017 crypto craze, Crypto Girl is an indispensable, if flawed, document. The final verdict: a fascinating failure as commerce and entertainment, but an unqualified success as a cultural snapshot.