Community The Visual Novel Council | All Choices Lead To Here

[「Echo」]

You have no idea how jealous I am of you folk capable of reading VNs in Japanese.
There's just so much untranslated great stuff out there.

I suppose this is true, but there is also a lot of trash.

I feel like most of the good stuff gets official or fan-translations as it is. Sometimes anime or manga adaptations as well.

I'd be more worried about the old stuff. Like from 90's and earlier. That's where imo, most of the good untranslated stuff is. (Also I just really miss the art of that period.)

 

[Kvik]

With the recent Dead of the Brain release and Possessioner in the works, I'd say PC-98 scene is rising. Hopefully, someone will pick up more translation projects for it (and not another Chrono Trigger SNES rebalance mod or some shit).

Not that Chrono Trigger is a bad game but people sure love Nintendo games so much to keep modding it ad infinitum.

 

[sk2k]

Thanks for the suggestions Knurek and Exzyleph

 

[Exzyleph]

This looks pretty promising (VNDB):

Raging Loop is the story of a man who, after getting lost in a remote Japanese village, finds himself caught up in a bizarre event where the villagers have to engage in a real-life version of Mafia in order to survive. And to make things weirder? He loops back every time he dies.

Steiner, who previously worked on Dies Irae and Steins;Gate, is on translation duty, so the quality of the be good.
Sadly (for me) it looks like it'll only be released on PS4 and Switch at the moment, but hopefully it'll also make its way to PC at some point.

 

[「Echo」]

It has a Steam page. Just no English yet.


Hopefully Kemco retains the rights to TL and you guys can play in English the Steam version then.

 

[Alextended]

So what if Visual Novels had production values like 3D stuff, complex animations, voice overs, modern game tech, the works?

Oh right, they'd have one area, almost two characters and last about 20 minutes with absolutely no choices & consequences

 

[ZKenir]

Sankaku seems to be "selling well", so I guess it is nice for other asa project's titles

chuee answered So, what do you think of the Sankaku Renai ... | retrospring

 

[「Echo」]

Sankaku seems to be "selling well", so I guess it is nice for other asa project's titles

chuee answered So, what do you think of the Sankaku Renai ... | retrospring

Great news and I'm happy for NekoNyan, since I was quite worried about them after Valve started to deny their games...

 

[Rosenkrantz]

Any word on Kotodama's quality? Vndb score isn't great, but it has like 5 votes.

 

[ZKenir]

Warning: this is a "naughty" one

Spoiler

edit: there's nothing lewd there, but I'm putting it in a spoiler tag anyway to avoid accidentally clicking on JAST twitter page or entering their store for people who browse from work

 

[Grindwheel Games]

Hi all. Just a quick question; is this for purely visual-novel style games, or are you guys interested in text adventures too? I have an upcoming horror text adventure game that's going to be released soon, but if this is not the right thread I don't want to cause issues by spamming.

 

[ZKenir]

Ghostlight is working on a VN and asking feedback about mouse controls

 

[Ascheroth]

Hi all. Just a quick question; is this for purely visual-novel style games, or are you guys interested in text adventures too? I have an upcoming horror text adventure game that's going to be released soon, but if this is not the right thread I don't want to cause issues by spamming.

I don't know what the general consensus on this is, but personally I don't mind, go for it.
I saw the thread and the game looks really interesting

 

[「Echo」]

Ghostlight is working on a VN and asking feedback about mouse controls

Mhm, I wonder what it could be. Also what the heck do you use a mouse for in a VN other than left-click and right-click?

Mostly I played them with keyboards personally.

 

[Ascheroth]

Mhm, I wonder what it could be. Also what the heck do you use a mouse for in a VN other than left-click and right-click?

Mostly I played them with keyboards personally.

Scroll Wheel for going through the log

 

[Kvik]

Scroll Wheel for going through the log

This. And also:

• Middle mouse button to open menu.
• Scroll wheel click to pause/stop autoread.
• It would be nice to be able to map any extra mouse buttons for quicksave/quickload (although you can also do this with another utility)

But most nights I read VN in bed with my Steam Controller so compatibility with it is nice too.

 

[Grindwheel Games]

I don't know what the general consensus on this is, but personally I don't mind, go for it.
I saw the thread and the game looks really interesting

Thank's for clarifying!

As I mentioned in my post, I have an upcoming text-adventure horror game which will be released on Steam later this month. There is a thread about it and the subsequent titles in this forum, and I will include the link to the store page below.

 

[lashman]

There is a thread about it and the subsequent titles in this forum

for posterity:

|OT| - Grindwheel Games Titles

Hello there! I'm Tony Wilson, owner, designer, developer and writer for Grindweel Games. This thread is to discuss upcoming Grindwheel Games' titles as they get ready for release. The best place to start would be with our first game, Pale Harbour. The Hunters Journals series focuses on...

metacouncil.com

 

[Exzyleph]

Thank's for clarifying!

As I mentioned in my post, I have an upcoming text-adventure horror game which will be released on Steam later this month. There is a thread about it and the subsequent titles in this forum, and I will include the link to the store page below.

I am always up for more Lovecraftian horror, but I think that you've left out some crucial information: Can you date any eldritch abominations? This is the Visual Novel thread, after all

 

[ZKenir]

Mhm, I wonder what it could be. Also what the heck do you use a mouse for in a VN other than left-click and right-click?

Mostly I played them with keyboards personally.

I mostly played them with a controller and the Steam controller settings enabled, but the Steam Link on iOS is very good so I'm swapping to that on my ipad pro

 

[Grindwheel Games]

I am always up for more Lovecraftian horror, but I think that you've left out some crucial information: Can you date any eldritch abominations? This is the Visual Novel thread, after all

Ironically one of the first plans was for a Cthulhu visual novel. But sadly the UI artist couldn't commit to be able to do all the assets we'd need so we stripped it back to a text adventure.

 

[ZKenir]

NekoNyan monthly update, posting just the first tweet not the whole thread

summary:
Aokana - Four Rhythms Across the Blue! 95% Translated and 70% Edited
Making Lovers! 40% Translated and 40% Edited
Hello Lady! 40% Translated
Senren Banka 25% Translated 25% Edited

 

[Grindwheel Games]

So after discussing this whole 'dating the abominations' thing with marketing, they have decided that we can actually appeal to a wider audience by making the game more like a visual novel. We have therefore set the artists to working overtime to include the cutest sidekick we can think of in Pale Harbour. I give you...Lantern Chan!

(Please note, this is all meant in the spirit of good fun and not a dig at visual novels. )

 

[「Echo」]

NekoNyan monthly update, posting just the first tweet not the whole thread

summary:
Aokana - Four Rhythms Across the Blue! 95% Translated and 70% Edited
Making Lovers! 40% Translated and 40% Edited
Hello Lady! 40% Translated
Senren Banka 25% Translated 25% Edited

Hopefully these all make it to Steam. AoKana I played on Vita, I don't think it even has an AO version so Steam shouldn't clamp down on that one at least.

 

[ZKenir]

Hopefully these all make it to Steam. AoKana I played on Vita, I don't think it even has an AO version so Steam shouldn't clamp down on that one at least.

it does

Aokana

What exactly is Aokana about?

Aokana revolves around a fictional sport, Flying Circus, where players make use of Anti-Graviton Shoes, also known as Grav Shoes,
to compete in the open sky.

If you're familiar with the hype levels that great sports manga and anime can induce, then think of Aokana as the visual novel equivalent
which also comes with its share of heartwarming, sweet romance elements.

When is Aokana coming out?

Summer 2019.

Is there going to be a 18+ patch for the Steam version?

Yes.

Are H-Scenes going to be mosaic-free?

Unfortunately, no. This is simply because Sprite doesn't want it, so there is nothing we can do about that.

What version of the game will your release be based on?

The console version.

Is there going to be a physical release as well?

Yes.

What about a release on consoles?

We're not at liberty to say at present.

 

[「Echo」]

it does

Aokana

Wow I had no idea but I guess that's what I get for only playing the Vita version. Well at least that gives me a reason to get the PC version and ditch my Vita copy.

 

[ZKenir]

 

[Exzyleph]

Mild excitement. See you next year for the last chapter.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

OH MY GOD FINALLY

 

[Exzyleph]

Valve continues to baffle with their content moderation:

This is an all ages/15+ VN about learning Esperanto that according to VNDB doesn't have any sexual content:

Kotonoha Amrilato

High schooler Rin was just buying a snack in her hometown’s shopping district一but she gets a shock when her surroundings suddenly transform. "...Why is the sky pink...?" She should know this area well, but the unreadable letters on the signs and the strange language the people are speaking...

vndb.org

 

[Ascheroth]

Valve continues to baffle with their content moderation:

This is an all ages/15+ VN about learning Esperanto that according to VNDB doesn't have any sexual content:

Kotonoha Amrilato

High schooler Rin was just buying a snack in her hometown’s shopping district一but she gets a shock when her surroundings suddenly transform. "...Why is the sky pink...?" She should know this area well, but the unreadable letters on the signs and the strange language the people are speaking...

vndb.org

The hell.
If there's one thing I hate about Valve is their flip-flopping on VNs.
They let everything on Steam now, but VNs are still a coin toss.
Christ, even GOG approved this particular title.

 

[ZKenir]

It has been a while since we last made a proper blog post, so we figured it was time to give you a thorough update on everything that is coming up in the near future.
First of all, it has been two weeks now since the release of our latest title "Sankaku Renai: Love Triangle Trouble" and thanks to all of your support, the game is doing really well. We sincerely hope you enjoyed your time with this amazing title.
Now onto the main topic of this blog post:
We are happy to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for the Aokana physical release is launching next Tuesday at 12:00 EDT.
The campaign will run for 42 days until the 07.30.2019 and the game itself is going to be digitally released one month later. Just to be clear, as explained in our previous blog post, the purpose of this campaign is to sell limited physical copies of the game alongside merch.
The release of the game itself is independent of how successful the Kickstarter campaign will be, which is also reflected in a relatively low initial goal.
Alright, with that out of the way, here are a few updates on currently ongoing announced projects:

• We fell a little bit behind schedule with Hello Lady, so the release has been pushed back to late Q3 2019.
• Senren Banka has had a bit of a slow start, but progress is moving along faster now. The game is currently scheduled for a September release and we're confident we won't have any trouble making it.
• Making Lovers is also making steady progress and we don't expect any changes to the planned late early Q4 release window.
• We're going to have some updates regarding the status of Melty Moment soon
  

We would also like to use this opportunity to discuss how we're planning to handle new game announcements going forward.
So far, we have been announcing games 8-12 months before the planned release since this is how everyone else is doing it as well.
The problem with that is, that lesser known IPs get easily forgotten about when the time between announcement and release is too long. In addition, we also feel like the typical "Hey look everyone, we have all these amazing titles we haven't even started working on yet" kind of approach doesn't really make any sense and happens to be a practice you generally don't see outside of VNs.
That being the case, we have decided that we won't be announcing titles that early anymore and are instead going to hold off on announcements until games are roughly 50% completed.
Sadly, that means that you will have to wait until around December for the next batch of announcements. Trust us, we can't wait to announce more of our titles and share the hype with you all as some of those are really "big", but we truly believe this is simply the better way to handle it all around.
We do, however, also have one unannounced title that is scheduled for a December 2019 release, so you can expect an announcement for this particular title within the next few months!

 

[Exzyleph]

Remember when NekoNyan promised that they wouldn't do crowdfunding?
Not that I actually object to them doing this, I just find their 180 to be amusing after all the goodwill that they received for making that announcement,

Aokana itself looks pretty interesting, and the quality of their previous releases was quite good, so I might throw some coin after a physical copy.

 

[Guilty of Being]

Thanks for all these suggestions.

No, lashman, it’s not a porn.

 

[「Echo」]

Valve continues to baffle with their content moderation:

This is an all ages/15+ VN about learning Esperanto that according to VNDB doesn't have any sexual content:

Kotonoha Amrilato

High schooler Rin was just buying a snack in her hometown’s shopping district一but she gets a shock when her surroundings suddenly transform. "...Why is the sky pink...?" She should know this area well, but the unreadable letters on the signs and the strange language the people are speaking...

vndb.org

... Seriously annoying with Valve lately on this stuff.

The worst part is they STILL haven't clarified on why this happens, what's triggering it, and how the VN pubs can avoid it. Worse the Devs/pubs always mention how hard it is to contact Valve over this stuff which is also ridiculous.

 

[ZKenir]

Remember when NekoNyan promised that they wouldn't do crowdfunding?
Not that I actually object to them doing this, I just find their 180 to be amusing after all the goodwill that they received for making that announcement,

Aokana itself looks pretty interesting, and the quality of their previous releases was quite good, so I might throw some coin after a physical copy.

I think they meant they wouldn’t do it to fund the loc itself, the physical editions seem a bit tricky, MG does them only for successful games for that reason.

 

[Exzyleph]

Their problem is that they straight up said no crowdfunding and that they recognize that this is also crowdfunding, even if just for physical copies. That is also why they subsequently made a rather timid post that asked what the community felt about the possibility of them doing crowdfunding for physical copies:

We discussed this matter extensively within the company and arrived at the conclusion that there are only two available options to us here. We either wait until we have released one or two more big titles, or we could resort to a pre-sale/crowdfunding kind of deal for physical releases, much like Frontwing, for instance. We want to hear your opinion on this matter, though. If we find that a majority of the community is strictly against the idea, we won't do it.

(source)

But it is as you say and there are a number of risks involved when selling physical merchandise. Using crowdfunding allows them to mitigate those risks (along with other advantages), so I am not surprised that it was the path they ended up taking. And to reiterate, I am OK with this just a bit amused.

 

[ZKenir]

I'm surprised we haven't had a Majikoi announcement yet, that and Muramasa are the only VN I would buy a physical edition of.

 

[Li Kao]

I'm surprised we haven't had a Majikoi announcement yet, that and Muramasa are the only VN I would buy a physical edition of.

Didn’t we have a Majikoi announcement ? I could have sworn it was a project from some of the big pub.

 

[ZKenir]

Yes JAST announced they were worki on an official release and after a long silence they were heavily teasing it in the past months, hence I’m surprised they haven’t announced anything yet, maybe at ax

 

[「Echo」]

JAST is sooooooo slow... Probably the slowest of all the big-name VN pubs.

 

[Axisofweevils]

I got Fata Morgana from Limited Run today. Probably the last physical Vita game I own. I've heard stunning things about it so I'll add that to my increasingly unstable visual novel backlog.

 

[Exzyleph]

Updates from Sekai Project:

• "We have a ton of project updates to share with you today, so let’s get to it!" - tweet
• "First up, we’re pleased to let you know that Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters is coming to Steam a little early! We’re planning to release on June 24th now!" - tweet
• "Next we’ve received an updated build for Nanairo Reincarnation! Hopefully this build fixes all bugs and then we’re good to go! We’re aiming for a June/July release now! " - tweet
• "We also sent a few games into QA this week, first is 9-nine- Episode 2! Good luck QA team~" - tweet
• "We're also sending How to Raise a Wolf Girl into QA once we finish a build check! (Very soon!!)" - tweet
• "In case you're looking for more cute kemonomimi girls we're happy to let you know that translation and editing is now complete for NEKO-NIN exHeart 3! Now we're waiting for a build before we can start QA!" - tweet
• "And just a general update, but we’ve added the new E3 announcements to our project status list as well as updated our previously listed console progress statuses!" - tweet
• "That’s all for now! Keep an eye out for more updates at AX this July! Be there at our panel: Visual Novels with Sekai Project Thursday, July 04, 4:30pm - 5:30pm Workshop 2 - LACC 406 AB" - tweet

 

[Rosenkrantz]

It's good to see that Sekai isn't dead yet, I was afraid they'll be gone after layoffs.

 

[Exzyleph]

It's good to see that Sekai isn't dead yet, I was afraid they'll be gone after layoffs.

It is my understanding that they mostly laid off marketing staff in an effort to avoid having to pay for a physical office space, while the actual localisation tends to be done by freelancers hired per project. Be as it may, they've also released 9 titles since the layoffs and recently released another title in Early Access, so it has felt like business as usual to me.

 

[ZKenir]

————————————————————

I guess it’s july 4th for news regarding Baldr?

 

[Kvik]

New release.


A relatively low price of admission and there's a demo as well for discerning buyers.

steam://install/1023810

 

[Li Kao]

Is VA-11 Hall-A good ? Tempted to buy it during the summer sale or on switch if I re-buy one.

 

[Kvik]

Is VA-11 Hall-A good ? Tempted to buy it during the summer sale or on switch if I re-buy one.

It's really good, yeah. It has a low-key charming story with a cyberpunk backdrop. While the bartending mechanics is nothing to write home about, the aesthetics really speaks to me since I love its PC-88 sensibilities. You also can make your own mixtapes in game with the in-game jukebox so you can have different set of tunes for each night. It consists mostly of electronic tracks which I thoroughly loved.

Highly recommended, and please look forward to N1RV-Ann-A, its followup.

 

[Exzyleph]

Highly recommended, and please look forward to N1RV-Ann-A, its followup.

Oh, shit, I didn't realise that N1RV Ann-A was already on Steam.
I'm really looking forward to that one.