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About this blog

Twitter (for news and announcements)

Steam Curator Page

External Blog

This blog is devoted to popularization (and discussion about) western-produced VNs. My main goal is to present notable non-Japanese visual novels that didn’t receive attention in the Fuwa community and, whenever possible, giving voice to people behind them. Doing this, I hope I’ll be able to give these projects and their creators the appreciation they deserve and oppose some negative stereotypes about non-JP VNs that circulate within our community.

I’m also going to talk about failed VN projects and review newly-released titles of various quality, using this opportunity to discuss the most common flaws and problems characteristic for the western VN development scene and realities of the OELVN market. 

Entries in this blog

Plk Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Time Tenshi series

While not nearly as famous as Winged Cloud’s Sakura games, Silver Cow Studio’s Time Tenshi is one of the longest-running EVN series, following a single storyline and consistent cast of characters since late 2015. So far, its developers published three, fairly substantial entries in the franchise: Time Tenshi, Time Tenshi 2 (released in mid-2016 and later expanded significantly in the Special Edition version) and Time Tenshi Paradox – an episodic game, with two parts already available and most li

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Ebi-Hime's free VNs - part 1 (Western VN mini-reviews)

While this situation is changing significantly nowadays, as the Western visual novel market is professionalizing both when it goes to development and publishing, in the past EVN scene was primarily a world of extremely short, freeware titles, created by countless enthusiasts as minor passion projects or game jam entries. While these games, often very simple and minimalistic, rarely deliver sufficient material for full reviews, many of them are still worthwhile and artistically pleasing titles th

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: straight Sakura eroge, part 2

Winged Cloud’s early hentai VNs appeared at the moment of company’s greatest creativity (obviously, speaking in the relative terms) and during what could be described as a slow improvement in the overall quality of their titles. The two latest ones, however, came as a syndrome of an exact opposite tendency, one which becomes very clear when we look at pretty much any of the Sakura releases after Nova – the whole formula becoming increasingly stale and cynical, and WC’s games turning into little

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sable’s Grimoire (Western VN review + developer interview)

Zetsubou, a developer and writer involved in many popular EVN titles is someone whose work many fans of the genre might be very familiar with, but not necessarily even knowing about it. While have made a few relatively successful projects of his own, such as Sickness or Tomboys Need Love Too!, many of his commissioned works, such as Razzart’s Love Ribbon gained even more recognition. For this reason, among others, there was relatively little fanfare around the release of his latest project, Sabl

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: straight Sakura eroge, part 1

Before the era of Steam adult patches, Winged Cloud established their brand by creating ecchi VNs, full of partially-exposed anime boobs, panty shots and flirty female characters in highly inappropriate outfits, but nothing that could effectively earn them that appealing “sexual content” tag on VNDB. In late 2015, however, utilizing progressively more widespread techniques of circumventing Steam’s censorship, WC made their move towards becoming an actual eroge developer – and year after that, th

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Perceptions of the Dead 2 Review (Western VN)

Ithaqua Labs, named ominously after a Great Old One from the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos, is one of the more unique studios on the EVN scene, not following closely the tropes and aesthetic of the Japanese VNs. While their fantasy and horror games did not really break into the mainstream of the visual novel market, they definitely stand out among the generic romance and ecchi visual novels most often found on Steam. On June 14 this year, the two-man team added another interesting title to their c

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Yume Creations

Welcome to another episode of Shovelware Adventures! This time, we'll take a break from our favourite, the Sakura series, to take a look at a much more obscure corner of the OELVN scene. The venture into commercial visual novel development by the German fan translator working under the label Yume Creations effected in some of the strangest VNs available on Steam and beyond. Combining competent art and interesting ideas with trashy ecchi, pieces of absolutely disastrous, bizarre writing and strai

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sunrider Academy (dating sim review)

The Sunrider series is one of the most successful OELVN franchises – one which not only spawned two highly-appreciated VN/strategy game hybrid titles, but even made a rare attempt at expanding to the Japanese market (at least successful enough that the games’ developer, Love in Space, apparently works on making their upcoming title, JP-idol themed Shining Song Starnova, into another export product, with Japanese voice acting and other elements rarely seen in western-produced VNs). Both the freew

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Yuri Sakura Games, part 2

Hello again and welcome to the second part of our journey through the world of Winged Cloud's yuri shovelware! The release of the Legends of Talia’s was undoubtfully a small disaster for Winged Cloud, not only failing to kickstart the new non-ecchi franchise, but also being quite harshly rejected by WC’s already-existing fanbase. It didn’t, however, end the yurige streak which made the straight Sakura porn, once definitely the dominating format, surprisingly rare in last year and a half

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf (VN-hybrid game review)

While Loren: The Amazon Princess, which I reviewed two weeks ago, if fairly well-known among western VN fans and did a lot to establish WinterWolves studio as a respected OELVN developer, the second RPG placed in the fantasy world of Aravorn, Seasons of the Wolf, flew very much below the radar of most gamers and VN fans. Published on Steam in January 2015, this game pushed the series in a slightly different direction, with a smaller cast, more casual story and far fewer romance options, to a ver

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: Yuri Sakura Games, part 1

Yuri as a fully-fledged main theme came a bit late to the Sakura Gaming Universe (they’re all connected, I tell you!), but for the last year, it absolutely dominated Winged Cloud’s production, with their last het hentai game, Sakura Magical Girls, released in early 2017. That transition, however, was a long and inconsistent process, which produced both the absolute best among Sakura games (especially Sakura Dungeon with its never-ending stream of good-quality f/f porn and fanservice CGs) and som

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sunrider: Liberation Day (VN-hybrid game review)

After the impressive success of the freeware VN/strategy hybrid Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius the game’s developer, Love in Space, soon started working on a sequel, doubling down on their policy of directly imitating the Japanese visual novel formula and apparently devoting much of their newly-found resources and experience to exactly that end. When the highly-anticipated Sunrider: Liberation Day finally released, on March 2016, it came armed with Japanese voice-acting, Japanese theme song and extr

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: NewWestGames

An amazingly contradictory example of both ambition and trashiness, this Canadian company managed to create some of the most memorably-bad games available within the Western VN market. While they definitely never showed the kind of contempt for their audience and lack of dignity that emanates from pretty much every new Winged Cloud title or the Steam asset flip/achievement spam VNs (yes, those are a thing – I will get to them one day), their utter failures and misguided elements in their project

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Loren the Amazon Princess (VN hybrid game review)

Winter Wolves is one of the oldest continuously active OELVN studios, which since the mid-2000s became fairly well-known for their straight-up VNs and dating sims, such as Roommates, as well as for fairly unique RPG-VN hybrids. Among the latter, probably the best known is Loren the Amazon Princess. Published in 2012, it kickstarted a whole series of games set in the fantasy world of Aravorn (including even a BL title Heirs and Graces) and gathered mostly positive reactions from the Western VN co

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

On the Steam Creator Profiles (and who to follow)

After the last two/three years of Steam storefront being flooded with shovelware and Valve’s attempts to remedy the over-saturation and drastic drop in quality on their service by algorithmically-generated recommendation and the (rather bare-bones and underutilized) Curator system, we’ve receive a new tool to find games actually interesting to us and shape our Steam experience. The developer and publisher profiles, with the possibility to follow them and be updated about new releases and announc

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak’s Shovelware Adventures: free Sakura games

On a few occasions I’ve stated that I do now wish to give too much space to bad OELVNs, as it goes directly against the idea behind this blog: showing the real value within the Western VN industry and disproving negative stereotypes held by JP-oriented readers (and people less familiar with the formula altogether). There’s, however, no way to reasonably deny that the OELVN scene is full of games of questionable quality – many of which I, as someone exploring all corners and shady alleys of the V

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Rebranding annoucement: Welcome to EVN Chronicles!

Hello there and welcome to the new iteration of my humble blog! Pride of the West was created, apart from fueling my personal megalomania, for a very specific goal: promoting and demystifying OELVNs within the Fuwa community, fighting the negative stereotypes and ridicule attached to them in minds of the many more JP-centric VN fans. For the last six months, I've spent countless hours exploring the EVN scene and channelling my impressions into the blog (with what I personally see as a very

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sunrider: Mark of Arcadius (VN-hybrid game review)

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius is one of the best-known and probably most appreciated western visual novels. Developed by Love in Space and published for free by Sekai Project in July 2014, it was downloaded on Steam by around 600 thousand players and spawned a successful franchise, with its commercial sequel, Liberation Day and dating sim spin-off, Sunrider Academy, both reaching impressive sale numbers and mostly positive feedback from the community.             What’s interesting, Mask of Ar

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sakura Dungeon (VN-hybrid game review)

Warning: This is review is based on the Steam version of the game, without the 18+ content unlocked. The free uncensored patch unlocks two dozens of CG, including straight-up hentai scenes and adds more nudity to the "clothing damage" system. The "clean" version, however, is still very heavy on sexual themes and can be considered "complete" when it goes to the story. Among the dedicated fans of visual novels the infamous Sakura games by Winged Cloud are one of the most despised and ridic

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Ruler by Default (western VN review)

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this game by the developer. All opinions expressed here are solely my own. OELVN scene is, for many years now, heavily reliant on crowdfunding, with many small and high-profile projects made possible through Kickstarter and, more and more often, regular contributions of fans on Patreon. While these methods of financing VN development created opportunities that wouldn’t be available to the developers in the past and brought us many me

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Panzer Hearts (western VN review)

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this game by the developer. All opinions expressed here are solely my own. The themes of World War 2 and Nazi Germany aren’t completely foreign to VNs and manga/anime – some beloved and high-profile titles, such as Dies Irae or Hellsing take a very direct inspiration from Nazi imagery and legends about NSDAP elites’ dealings with the occult. More down-to-Earth war stories are however much rarer in this context – prominent franchises

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Wolf Tails (western VN review)

Visual novels with the possibility to choose the protagonist’s gender are fairly rare, and genre's focus on storytelling and romance makes such a gimmick especially hard to pull off properly. Creating games like Loren: The Amazon Princess, with an option to choose between two full-fledged leads, one male and one female, each with their own personality and a set of romance options, takes a lot of work and only fits certain kinds of stories. On the other hand, VNs in which gender choice only chang

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

VN Developer Spotlight: ds-sans

In March I've brought you two interviews with notable yuri and otome OELVN developers, talking with Nami and Reine Works' founder, Jackie M. Today, however, we're venturing into the world of very, very traditional romance (with equally high levels of cuteness), as my guest is ds-sans, the author of a lovely freeware VN Sounds of Her Love (be sure to check my review of that game) and the upcoming commercial title Chemically Bonded. I encourage you to join us as we discuss the place of all-ages ro

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sounds of Her love (free VN review)

Check out my interview with the developer of this game, ds-sans! Is there any merit to creating a tame, single-heroine romance VN in a market that seems to be flooded with cute love stories, often in much more "advanced" forms? Do a romance VN need to invent something fresh and original to be successful? Is it even possible to be innovative much in the world of cute romance tales, with the kind of saturation the genre offers? Sounds of Her Love, a small freeware title published over a ye

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

Sweet Volley High (failed VN)

Outside of new releases, I usually try to avoid reviewing bad OELVNs in-detail, unless they’re especially interesting or notable despite their failures – after all, in any semi-amateur game development scene, the poorly-made, misguided or horribly iterative titles will be far more numerous than those actually worthy of your attention. Writing that much about the former, especially when my goal is to promote OELVNs as a niche worth exploring, is arguably a waste of time and possibly even counter-

Plk_Lesiak

Plk_Lesiak

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