VNs for a 12 year old girl

I love the studio names, I grabbed those as well.

My daughter says "thank you" to all of you, she's very happy with all her new games!

Heartstring Bugs was just released~ It's by the same maker of Frozen Essence, but it's more of a stat-raiser game with sci-fi elements, so perhaps it might be good for her? It certainly seems a bit more light-hearted than the other game. Plus it's free, which is always nice.

Heartstrings Bugs is way less heavy than Frozen Essence, what with being set in high school and all. Each route also has something of a moral to it, which is kind of nice.

Oh nice! I grabbed it for her, she can add it to her backlog of VN games ^.^

It's not a dating sim, but if she has Steam she might want to check out Recettear. It's an RPG, but it feels a lot like a visual novel. You play as a young girl who has to pay off her father's debt by running a shop. It's cute and clean (though it has references to drinking and uses the word 'crap' sometimes)

If she ends up interested in DS games at some point, Princess Debut is adorable. It's a dating sim except replaces stat raising with dancing minigames similar to Ouendan/Elite Beat agents (but significantly easier and simplified)

Popping in to say Re:Allistair might have been the thing that got me into VNs. Sakevisual is wonderful.

We have Recattear, but she hates time limits (she loves to pootle, dawdle and RP) so that didn't grab her. I agree that it's a very cute game though :)

I'll look into that DS game, is it for the normal DS or the 3D? We only have the normal one...

It's a DS game. If it was 3DS I would've said 3DS since they're different systems x3 But since it's several years old now and a very niche game, you'll most likely only be able to find it on online shops and probably not new unless you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money.