Houkago Renai Club: Koi no Etude

Renichi Amagi is an average high-school student who has just joined the Afterschool Romance Club, where young romantic hopefuls meet up to get to know each other. Each afternoon, the club meets at a nearby restaurant, and Renichi can have conversations with up to three of the twelve girls in the club, learning more about them and potentially furthering a relationship with them.

Houkago Renai Club is an adult dating simulation game. Most of the gameplay consists of text conversations with the various girls, with the player occasionally making dialogue choices in response to the girls' questions. The player also has access to a notebook where they can keep notes on each girl, such as their likes and schedules. If the relationship with a particular girl has progressed far enough, the player can ask that girl out on a date, which might lead to an even deeper relationship.

The original PC version of the game includes explicit sexual content, and no voice acting in the original release; an accessory pack which included voiceovers for the main cast was released at a later date. The Sega Saturn version of the game removes the explicit content, adds animated cutscenes and newly-drawn CG illustrations, and includes re-recorded voice acting for the event scenes with a different cast; the story content is otherwise the same as the original PC release. An English/Japanese bilingual version was later released as Casual Romance Club which includes some redrawn graphics.