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I'm Josh, the founder of the Studio Élan. I'm also part of Alienworks, the group that released "Highway Blossoms" and is working on "The Human Reignition Project." With Studio Élan, we just released a demo for our first game, "Heart of the Woods." It's a yuri game through and through, although I primarily consider it to be a fantasy game with romance elements, rather than a romance game with fantasy elements. I've copy/pasted the synopsis for the game below. The demo is available on Steam for PC only, and it's on Itch.io for PC/Mac/Linux. It'll be on Denpasoft probably next week, and we'll also update the Steam version with Mac/Linux versions around then too. There's a free patch to add in the adult content - for the demo, this is just one scene. The character artist for the game is Rosuuri, whom I also worked with on HRP and HB, but who's best known for her gorgeous fanart, especially FGO. This will be her first ever time drawing adult content. Hope you like the game, please let us know any comments or feedback you have here or on the respective store pages. And please, before anyone else asks: no, we're not concerned by the recent Steam takedowns and don't think it'll affect us (backtracking or not). Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/844660/Heart_of_the_Woods/ Itch.io Link: https://vnstudioelan.itch.io/heart-of-the-woods-demo Adult Patch Link: https://vnstudioelan.com/hotw-r18patch/ This demo is a sample of the full game and contains a selection of scenes from across the whole story. We've hand selected the scenes in order to give a taste of the game without spoiling too many of the major plot points (we figured it's a given that Maddie and Abby end up together). To help fill in some of the blanks though, there are demo-exclusive chibi versions of Maddie and Tara who will help fill you in on what's happening along the way. Heart of the Woods is a fantasy yuri visual novel about paranormal investigation, ancient mysteries, and a love between two girls that transcends life and death. Maddie Raines, manager, editor, and general business-handler for her best friend Tara’s popular paranormal vlog series, is swept up in a dangerous supernatural crisis when she’s dragged against her will to the remote European village of Eysenfeld. A strange young woman named Morgan has promised them undeniable proof of real paranormal phenomena, and what she has to offer eclipses anything they’d ever seen before. However, out of all the strange occurrences the three of them bear witness to, one in particular captivates Maddie in a way she’s never been before: the ghost of a young woman. This woman is Abigail, the victim of a centuries-old injustice now bound eternally to the forest surrounding Eysenfeld. Drawn to Maddie in a way she can’t explain, Abigail reveals herself to another person for the first time in more than 200 years. While Tara and Morgan investigate the mysteries surrounding the village itself, Maddie begins to form a bond with Abigail that grows to be more intense than any bond she’s felt before. As she learns the truth about Abigail’s death and imprisonment, she realizes that it falls to her and her friends to break the curse that has ruled over Eysenfeld for centuries. But more importantly than that, it falls to her to finally free the woman she loves. Features: -Chibi characters to fill in the gaps between scenes -Incredible character and CG art from Rosuuri -Fully original backgrounds and soundtrack -Multiple accessibility options -Extra features including a music room, CG viewer, and guest art gallery -At least one really, really gay ghost

Thanks for the kind words! The demo actually does have some exclusive content (the very first scene, as well as the chibi stuff, although the first scene might be included in the full game from the extras menu or something.) Regarding HRP, we're still working on it, but it's mostly a matter of real-life issues causing a lot of delays and stuff. When we ran the Kickstarter most of us were in college or in one case even high school, so our availability has changed a lot since then. Most of us who have been working on other projects too are ones who do VN stuff full-time as a career (for instance, my day job is working for everyone's favorite localizer, Sekai Project) while some other members are doing dumb, boring stuff like medical research to cure cancer. Also, we were bad at estimating and planning schedules back then, so we dramatically underestimated how much time it would take (for most of us, HRP was our first ever project). So basically, we're still working on it at the same time as our other games, it's just taking longer than initially expected.

Of course I have the answer, and it is when I started playing them for the first time. That was the real golden age.

if anything i am dumber now and starting to enjoy seeing the same 3 stories told over and over

Not exactly on topic, but if I've learnt something about "golden ages", be in literature, cinematography, videogames, even life itself ffs... is that people tend to idealize the past and consider the current state to be on decline. Most often that not it's just a biased perception. Not to say that it's not possible to talk of some golden age in some way, but experience tells me to not pay much heed to those doomsayers that babble about how brilliant the past was and how bleak a future awaits us.

Peak, peek, and piqued I think that's too subjective to determine. When it comes to video games, for example, there are people that would say the 90s-early 2000s were the golden age of RPGs with their isometric views and complex gameplay. At the same time, others say they are complete dogshit and the modern vision of RPGs like Skyrim are much better. With visual novels specifically I don't think there's any "golden age", especially because technology does not affect VNs very much. Just like with RPGs, some people will idolise older VNs and claim newer stuff is brainless, and some people will prefer the modern art-focused moeges (unless their name is VirginSmasher). Nobody is right, nobody is correct. For the record, my personal opinion is that all visual novels have been trash thus far.

you were gone?

VNs have always been and will always be trash tbh

The male version of our sexual prediction quiz is now up here. Have fun~

Yes

I've been analysing the sexual content of VNs, what's become more common, what gets the best ratings, and what content tends to come together; and thought I'd present some of my results in a slightly different way: in a quiz! Using the extensive character database on vndb, I tracked which appearance and personality traits were more or less likely to engage in types of sexual activity, and put the results in a quiz format so you can enter the tropes and it'll tell you how the percentages diverge from the average. This is a slightly silly way to present the results, but I thought you guys might enjoy it. You can try the quiz here.

I'm, like, into visual novels and stuff. Enough so that I decided to learn the language! I will hang out like an awkward nerd and maybe help translate stuff if anyone needs a hand. Nice t' meet ya, or something. (I really have no idea what to put here. ;_;)

Yeah! Who says esoteric knowledge is useless? I can imagine it now, UltimateMoeWorks on an archaeological exhibition. UMW: "I did it! I found a fossilized Anomalocaris!" Archaeologist: "That's a fossilized signboard..." UMW: "No, it's a Anomalocaris from the Cambrian Period." Archaeologist: "It says 'Blockbuster' on it." UMW: "All the more evidence."

Either way, you instantly gave me a succinct neurological disorder. Color me impressed.

I think you have synesthesia

Whenever I read something like this, I always wonder about one major issue, which is unavoidable when investigating issues like this: cause and effect. Will reading make you smarter or are smart people more likely to read? New Zealand has tested a bunch of people for decades and now they can say the more TV a 10 year old child watches, the lower the grades.... or was it IQ... Either way the question is if the brain is damaged by TV or if it is because children, who are already bright have too much going on in their heads to accept passive entertainment for a long time. Another one is breast feeding (take that prude Americans). Substitute in a bottle is less perfect for brain development and the child will lose 3 IQ points on average as grown up if fed by bottle. Is it the food or is it because stupid parents are less likely to breastfeed, meaning children who are breastfed will statistically have genes for higher IQ? Answering such questions is not an easy task because how to tell those two apart and how can we be sure it's not a combined effect of both? The same is an issue in the first article. The second article seems to have the same issue with the Japanese study while the Pompeii counters this issue better by having a before and after test, which should help to filter out the differences between people and get more precise readings of the effect of the book reading. As such, that specific study is more trustworthy than the other studies in regard to the effect. I would say the premise for the studies are severely simplified and you can't say any TV show vs any book. For instance you will likely get completely different effect from a documentary than you will get for slapstick comedy. Likewise there are good books and then there are horrible books. I was forced to read one of the latter in school and the only thing I remember from it was the story was really boring and the author had spelling mistakes, which were not fixed prior to printing. I don't think there is any positive effect from reading such a book. Sounds to me like the issue here has less to do with TV vs book and more to do with parents using the TV as babysitter rather than spending time reading a book for the child. As for VNs vs amine. I would say it's likely that VNs are better for your brain than anime. Anime will likely have the same effect as TV shows. Generally speaking, anime is fast paced, has a tendency to be shallow and in any way acts like sitcoms. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they aren't brain challenging. If it is say a sengoku era anime and you pause whenever there is a name and try to remember what the real person did, then you become active and push/train your brain and as such train your memory. VNs on the other hand can be beneficial, but they don't have to be. It depends on how it's written and what goes on. If it's a machine translated nukige, then good luck trying to convince yourself you will benefit from it. If it is a well written story where you try to keep track of past events in order to understand what is going on and perhaps see if you can predict anything, then you train your brain and you could benefit from it. Another factor, which should not be overlooked is the reader. If you read a masterpiece and speedrun through it without digging into the story, pausing to recollect the scenes etc, then you will not get the benefits other people might get from reading the very same title. This is yet another layer, which makes the question even harder to answer. Your language skills comes into play as well. If you have language shortcomings and miss out on the details, you will not benefit as much if at all from having a well written VN. You might benefit from the training of a foreign language though.

Hmmm, "should" is a strange word here, because every person who reads VNs does it for different things. Many people who read VNs actually like sex-scenes and expect them. I personally don't mind them, as long as they actually don't seem completely out of place in the story (which basically happens in almost every plot-focused VN). What I actually want, on the other hand, is variety. I mean, if we have a typical eroge, it always means that a) we are going to have a story with a 1st person narrative; b) the protagonist is male and surrounded by a large group of attractive females. It's already a great constraint on the story! I mean, even VNs like Ever17 that don't have h-scenes still follow the same eroge formula, which is kind of frustrating. And, you know, there actually are quite a lot of doujin authors who don't care about these constraints at all and create quite good titles. Fata Morgana is a great example of a VN that literally has nothing of an eroge in it. I'd say, it's way more influenced by western literature than anything else. Umineko is another good example. On the other hand, as long as the budget of a work increases, the originality often drops. Which is actually pretty understandable: the developers need to make sure that all the extra money they added to the production comes back. And the experience shows quite well that people like sex, and the developers who try to experiment with going all-ages may fail. So, imo, expecting major changes in the Japanese VN industry right now is hopeless.

Confession: I thought those reactions were for when you whip your donger out

Confession: I'm not sure how to interpret any of the smileys we have, but I still use them a lot.

Confession: neither do we

@Happiness+ Oh, sorry, reading again through your original comment, it looks like I actually misread what your point was. Well, I'm being me again.

They don't Need proxy

It includes the OST

That is the whole game though, the amazon link lol

す、すみません！

We missed your spicy april fools jokes boss!

My readership is elite JOPs that refuse to admit they look at Fuwo but look at my blog

.

Looking good! Ah yes, every good story needs one of those

What

Welcome to our glorious forum full of awkward nerds. I'm sure you'll fit right in!

https://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/120116239001 https://www.amazon.co.jp/みなとカーニバルFD【予約キャンペーン-主題歌-サウンドトラックCD-Amazon-co-jpオリジナル特典-オリジナルポストカード付き】/product-reviews/B071KVBMPJ

No complains.

I ...... um....

Not at all disappointed with the results. Now I just need to figure out how to become an eroge protagonist. I love how 4 of my categories in the subjected to section are blowjob, handjob, footjob, and boobjob (I wouldn't mind being subjected to a vibrator, either).

Thank you for the warm welcome everyone. Thanks! I will definitely give it a read. Yeah, I can't imagine life without anime; the stories in anime have always sort of shaped my worldview and values growing up by exposing me to culturally relative concepts that I never would have encountered. Well, in response to @Pik_Lesiak and @tymmur, if it wasn't for fan translators, I don't think I would have been exposed to translated media and consequently decided to learn a second language and study translation in university, albeit in a different language pair. Ayo! Totally down man once I get further along. Gotta get that VN xp! I'm learning from this Living Language Japanese box set, but i'm still in the first book (beginner) of the three, lol.

Welcome to Fuwanovel, and feel free to ask if you need help here. Hope you'll enjoy yourself here.

Yo.

Welcome!

If you care enough about reading a VN to the point of personally contacting a fan-translator, you might as well use MTL software or just learn japanese.

fuckin plebs using MLA. Chicago/Turabian or gtfo

For a second I thought you meant porn involving books, instead of books containing porn.

Phew, it feels good finally being able to talk about this. Sisterly Bliss is definitely something to look forward to for yuri fans! And it will be uncensored, which I'm super excited about. The artist really put effort into all the art, even what was put under mosiacs, which is not always the case for eroge artists. If you haven't checked it out already, you can see some sample CGs and more on Mangagamer's blog. (Link contains NSFW pictures)

lol

Welcome to Fuwanovel, and sorry for the late greeting. If you need more VN Recommendation here, just ask us if possible and I hope you'll have fun here PS - In regard of hospitalization, I think it's depend on each people whether they'll spent time by playing VN, reading manga, or just doing nothing. Although if anything I guess the patient nowadays would be playing with their gadget because not doing anything while hospitalized would be boring. I'm sure that all of the hospitalized people would be more concerned to stay alive, and I'm certain that read manga/VN is allowed as long as there's no rule that forbid it (After all the patient need distraction from the boredom).

Japanese has a super rich vocabulary. Even the most confident translators would often look up words in translations, sometimes just for confirmation, but not infrequently simply because they've never encountered the word before or it's being used in a context that they've never seen it used before thus confirming what other possible uses of the word there may be. From what I've read, most tertiary educated native speakers know approximately 50,000 words. Literature, depending on complexity, often uses infrequently used words for colour, and even native speakers will encounter words they've never seen before - often they can surmise the meaning simply from context simply because it is their native language, but not always. Guessing at a word's meaning is not accurate enough for translation. By the time one is fluent in a second language, they usually know about 10,000 words. The likelihood of needing a dictionary is still high at that level, yet they clearly have the knowledge to translate. The most famous Japanese dictionaries have almost 500,000 words in them...

Thanks Funhaus for showing this abomination to me

Some veterans of reading untranslated VNs refer to the period between 2004 and 2010 as 'The Golden Age of Visual Novels'. However, you shouldn't really take that statement at face value, as the meaning is a bit more complex than you'd think. There are some significant differences between VNs today and VNs during that period that both made it the peak of the medium's sales in Japan and produced the greatest ratio of quality VNs to crap VNs. One of the primary differences was that, other than moege, there were no strict genre boundaries and genre conventions had yet to slide into place in the minds of fans and writers both. Companies were mostly experimenters during that time, sometimes basing their projects on previous works (Tsukihime and the Key games got a lot of knock-offs during this time, of varying levels of quality) and sometimes forging out on their own. Since there were few genre boundaries, companies were more likely to give the creative staff free reign as to what kind of story they could write, and - ironically - this actually helped define the various genres in the years to come, as people explored the boundaries of how they could stretch a concept or theme in a story. Some of these attempts were abortive (ie- thematic moege where all the heroines are of the same type, such as tsundere or yandere, generally didn't catch on) but others were immensely successful (ie- the definition of the chuunige genre and its gradual escape from gakuen battle mania). However, the point is that the writers, directors, and producers of the time were allowed to fiddle with the formula a lot more than they are now. Most major companies nowadays have a 'signature style', that was formed during that period, even if their greatest successes weren't during that period. This period also killed the 'pure moege' as a genre, ending the majority genre of the previous half-decade (moege having dominated during that period due to the Da Capo series and Key's games). The rise of the charage, a demi-moege genre that was much wider in scope and more adaptable, occurred during this period, mostly unrecognized until after the fact. At the same time, nakige, which had previously been enslaved to the moege genre through Key and others like them, came to define itself as a new, standalone genre that wasn't necessarily dependent on moe stylization. Even Key itself moved beyond pure moe, though it didn't entirely abandon some elements of it (as the existence of Kud testifies). However, this age was already ending in 2009, as clearly-delineated genre norms began to form, and charage became the driver for the industry, taking us back, in spirit, to the age before that. By 2011, the ratio of truly creative works to derivative works was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter, in comparison to the previous decade. That isn't to say that the years since haven't produced some great works. That is patently untrue in my experience... but the fact remains that fewer and fewer writers are able or willing to look outside the 'genre boxes' for answers as to what to write. I sometimes refer to our current age as the Age of Stagnation, where there is an overwhelming industry pressure to stick to genre norms and those that break the mold are so exceptional they stand out more than they should. It is possible to create a charage kamige... but it is much easier to make a kamige out of a game that breaks genre boundaries, lol.

First, I'll give you a quick run-down on this game... it is a game by 3rd Eye, a company known mostly for producing chuunige that are more moe-influenced than is the norm. This game is actually more of a mystery/chuuni/action/conspiracy type than a 'pure' chuunige. The world in which it is based is a future where, ten years before the story began, magic appeared on the scene. Large numbers of people became capable of using magic, and a new branch of science was built up solely for the purpose of utilizing magic as new energy source. The result of this is a society that is somewhat divided between the magical 'haves' and 'have-nots', though that isn't the focus of the story, despite what you might otherwise anticipate. The protagonists Senri Senri is your classic 'bad-ass antihero protagonist'. He is clever, intelligent, and overall highly capable, with a razor-sharp mind and battle instincts that would put a Navy Seal to shame and make Golgo 13 look incompetent. His cold-blooded pursuit of his own interests, which are very opaque through most of the VN, is his primary defining feature... Oh, and he lies... a lot. He makes the protagonist of Sharin no Kuni seem honest. Haruto Haruto is a somewhat less beloved type of protagonist in chuunige... basically a 'justice freak' combined with being 'a young man driven against his will by the tides of fate'. He is a natural optimist and a believer in fairness above all. Unfortunately, he also has that bad habit a lot of similar chuunige protagonists have... of sticking his nose into situations he doesn't really need to get involved in. He grows a great deal during the course of the VN (as is typical of this type, if the writers don't suck), and by the end his viewpoint on the world has... been sharpened a great deal by experience. He is more likeable than a lot of similar protagonists, but it still isn't a type I prefer. The Heroines Fiona Fiona, at first glance, seems to be your classic clutzy/innocent nun-type heroine. She works as a nun at a run-down church in the city's... less reputable area and is well-loved by the delinquents who frequent the church. However, she, like most of the characters in this game, is hiding a lot of secrets... She is one of Senri's two heroines. Noa An innocent, pure-hearted girl who is seen mostly as a ghost throughout the first part of the game. She has a really unique way of speaking, born partially from Senri's half-hearted efforts at education (mostly through handing her magazines and letting her watch AVs). To be honest, in the reading of this VN, interpreting her weird speech patterns was a bit difficult at first (she cuts apart words and puts them together in weird ways). She is the second of Senri's two heroines. Asahi Asahi is... a bit weird. Her personality itself is quite straightforward and honest, and she hates lies and general dishonesty with a passion. However, she is also compassionate to a fault and unwavering in the pursuit of her goals. Unfortunately - at least so it seems at first - there are a few loose screws rolling around in that head of hers. Even more so than Haruto, she is an eternal an unrepentant optimist and probably the single most trustworthy individual in the entire VN. Riku Riku is, throughout the VN, perhaps the least expressive individual other than Senri himself. She almost never displays her emotions on her face, and she has an almost unnatural tendency to think objectively about anything and everything, including herself. That the writer managed to grant her so much depth without making her a protagonist was an impressive feat in and of itself... and one of the reasons why her interactions with Haruto and Asahi are so amusing. She really is almost as detached as she seems most of the time, which is one of the reasons it hits so hard when she does become emotional. The VN Sorcery Jokers is definitely VN of the Month material. I'll say that right off the bat. The depth of the story and characters is incomparable with previous games by this company, and while it falls slightly short of a kamige, it is nonetheless something worth taking note of. Normally, I can't stand dual protagonists, as many have heard me mention. I hated Subahibi for that, amongst a number of other sins, and one of the biggest reasons it took me so long to play I/O was because I don't like going into VNs with multiple protags. Fortunately, I managed to get past that, simply because the differing approaches to the story were the only thing that made it possible to grasp something even approaching the whole of the story as it happened. A single perspective wouldn't have done a bit of good as an approach to this VN's story, simply because there are too many things happening at too many different points for a single perspective to handle. The VN's structure is basically that of a kinetic novel, with the illusion of choice through a flow chart (for the first chapter, at least) where you pick and choose which events you want to see next (though you have to see them all anyway). To be honest, I could have done without the flow chart entirely... flow charts in general are an irritation more than a help, especially if they are made a central part of progressing the story. That said, as the actual switching around mostly ends after the first chapter, it isn't really a big deal (though it does make me wonder why they had a flow chart at all). The story's mystery and conspiracy elements feel a lot like peeling an onion, as there are layers within layers within layers. What you thought was the root of things turns out to be just another layer, more than once. As things come together near the end, the knowledge you've gained through the character perspectives deepens the experience nicely, making this one of the few part-mystery VNs I've played in recent years that I didn't immediately have 'read' relatively early on. That isn't to say there aren't points where the VN stumbles. Haruto, because of his role as the 'kid chuunige protag', is the game's Achilles Heel, as all protagonists of the type with his kind of temperament tend to be. However, his growth is enough to offset the cookie-cutter aspects of his character enough that I approved of his role... in the end. Asahi also threatens to tilt the balance of the VN into the realm of the silly a lot early on, simply because of her 'weirdness'. However, because that silliness is a vital ingredient in her growth as a character, it can't really said to be a true weakness, though it can be irritating at times. The endings are all branches off of the true end, one for each heroine (Noa or Fiona with Senri, and Asahi or Riku with Haruto). I had no problems with the epilogues for Noa or Fiona... but I thought that Haruto had devolved a lot in his heroine epilogues, which kind of brought me back to why I didn't like him in the first place. Overall, I felt that this VN is one of the more solid chuunige made in the last few years, especially in the sense of 'balance'. Silverio Vendetta, while it is a lot more exhilarating, also had the difficulty of disproportionately focusing the writer's attention on Vendetta, which weakened the other two paths greatly. Bansenjin suffers from reusing an uninspiring cast and being relatively boring throughout most of its length. In terms of a constant sense of tension and in terms of pacing of events, this VN definitely is the winner of Chuunige VN of the Year so far, though it isn't chuuni-crack in the sense that Silverio was. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that this company has evolved so much since its somewhat... unimpressive beginnings (Bloody Rondo), and I'm glad I stuck with the company. It is always nice to be surprised pleasantly by a VN.