mjriedstra

If a game/product is well designed, in the modern era, a readme is probably redundant. That said, for very complex games, having an easy-access reference is indispensable. Nowadays it's usually in the form of some in-game reference screens or codex rather than an out-of-game file, but it should exist in some form somewhere.

Congrats. When I'm able to make some time, I'll check this out.

With it in mind that "cute" is different than "hot," it feels like it would be a criminal act not to vote for Kud here.

Hi Nao. It's great to see that Fruits-Jam is seeking input from the western community. If I had to choose one piece of information for you to convey back to Kobushi-san, it would be that the quality of the English translation matters more than anything else. It's a simple thing, but so easy to underestimate in terms of importance. Proper use of language is fundamentally linked to the level of professionalism the game will portray. No matter how excellent it may be in the original language, a poor translation will foster a poor reputation within the community not only for the game itself, but for the creator and publisher in general. Just from reading the Steam synopsis and watching the video demo, it's clear that Ona-Ken would benefit from even a basic level of editing by a native English speaker. Best of luck to you and Fruits-Jam. Hopefully more Japanese groups will start reaching out like this.

It's true that both the number of games and the ease of their access have ballooned off the charts in the last several years, thanks mainly to the proliferation of simple platforms for distribution. I think it's a little misleading to classify it as a bubble, however, since it isn't as if the cost of creating the games is vastly outpacing their potential for revenue. If anything the opposite is true, with the highest potential for revenue growth being realized in the mobile market where the average game is less complex to develop and play than an average game from ten years ago, yet has the potential to make more money due to the increased size of the video game audience. A small number of AAA titles with budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars exist, just as they have in the past. A large proportion of releases today (both indie and non-) are done on budgets of thousands of dollars (or zero dollars and just the investment of some time and talent). The very existence of the two extremes, plus everything in between, seems healthy overall, as compared to an exclusive club where you're either a huge publisher with millions to spend hiring teams of hundreds of people, or you're one of the people working for those publishers, or you're nothing. It's now highly possible to be small or independent and successful, something that hasn't been this true since the early to mid 90s during the original popularity explosion of PC gaming. Of course, it's equally possible to put in a lot of effort and time and fail utterly, but that's true of every healthy industry. Intense competition raises the level of the products and benefits the consumer.

Feel free to keep us updated on how it goes. I'd like to follow the progress of this project as it comes along.

These "problems", if that's what they are, aren't endemic just to indie game creation. Whether it's making games, writing novels, creating music, or just getting up in the morning to go to our day jobs, no amount of effort and investment can guarantee success. That said, working hard and doing a good job certainly improves your odds. Whatever you do, do it well, and keep doing it. Even if you continuously fail, you won't have less to show for it than someone who didn't try at all, and at least the possibility of success will exist.

There are a ton of good ones. Some of my favorites are: To Heart 2 Princess Evangile Hoshimemo Da Capo series (esp. Da Capo II) Konosora Ef series All the KEY games are also excellent, but most don't have any H scenes.

...struggled to overcome his basest urge, struggled mightily, and failed. And that was when his onlooking pet parakeet suddenly...

Neil deGrasse Tyson being summoned to defend the existence of psychic powers as described in the Daily Mail is something I didn't expect to see in this life. That aside, one of the interesting things about physics is that as mechanics and equations go, there's no hard rule that distinguishes past from future. The only thing we can confidently say is that the future (AKA the arrow of time) is the direction toward which entropy is increasing, and that for some reason entropy was much lower in the past — even though it shouldn't have been, according to our current understanding of fundamental physical laws. A fancier way of saying this, one that Mr. Tyson might enjoy, is that the theoretical incarnations of the laws of physics are temporally agnostic, even though that doesn't match the forward-marching nature of our observable reality.

*resists the urge to say I knew you were going to say that*

Well, I guess there are a few possibilities. In descending order of likelihood: 1) Memories are inherently unreliable and inexact, so when you see something in the real world and it seems familiar to you or you "remember" it happening before in a dream, that wasn't necessarily the case. Your brain is just filing the memory in a way that makes you think it was always there, even though it's new. 2) It's deja vu. This is basically saying the above, but using a term everyone's familiar with. 3) You're seeing the future in your dreams. From the way you describe it, it may not be provable, since you say you think nothing of what happens in your dream until you see it again in real life. That makes the "memories" retroactive rather than predictive and not useful even if they represent a real ability. If you manage to have a dream about some future event, predict when it will happen, and profit from it in some meaningful way, then you could be a character in your own VN with that ability. That would be cool. Statistically unlikely, given how many people have failed the James Randi challenge for example, but it's hard to ever say that something is truly impossible.

The actual Kirito could use his own eroge. If it ever exists, it may very well become the best selling VN ever made. Not saying I would play it.

I second Eien no Aselia as a good gameplay VN. Symphonic Rain is excellent, one of my favorites of all time both for story and for its small but enjoyable gameplay element. That said, it does have minor supernatural elements. Not crazy ones like Comyu, but they're there. For a VN with a solid story and nothing supernatural, give Deardrops a try. Or if you don't mind something disturbing, Kara no Shoujo fits the bill.

Hilarious show, although I'm a little surprised by the direction of the main romance. It would feel natural if the show was based in reality, but feels strangely unlikely to have culminated this way given the personalities and hangups of the characters. Back to re-re-watching Hataraku Maou-sama. I hope they do another season. It's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. Or maybe I'll start reading the LN.

Interesting concept. Dealing frankly and effectively with depression, apathy and fear of loss is something that many stories attempt, while few succeed. If it's done well here, it could be a great read. I'm having a little trouble reconciling the dark tone of the synopsis with how lighthearted the concept title screen is. Of course, a "concept" is just that, but it may be worth your while to take whichever representation more accurately represents the true tone of the story (the text or the visual) and align the other to it more closely. That should help ensure that any volunteer writers know what they're getting into and what you'll be expecting from them. Good luck. Looking forward to how this turns out.

This is one of the reasons why G-senjou no Maou is one of my top three VNs of all time. Whether the ending is "happy" or not depends a lot on your perspective, but it's certainly no fairy tale cop-out. That said, there are quite a few times where by the time I get to the end of a story, I'm attached enough to the characters that I don't really want to see them live (or not live) through something painful. I understand the urge to write in a happy ending even when it seems implausible. And having said that, it's strange in retrospect that my own novel doesn't do that. Hmm. I think I'm learning something about myself psychologically ... but I have no idea what.

I think so many members of the community having negative opinions of Little Busters! implies very strongly that we're spoiled in the west in terms of game quality. Since better games tend to get translated first, there aren't that many bad games out there to choose from if you can't read them in the original language. I agree with most of the negative points raised by the review and by the users here, but for me they didn't add up to a negative experience. I liked the game, even in the context of it being less transcendent than many other KEY games. To me it would be a shame if people avoided playing it because it scored this poorly on a review.

Looks interesting. Otome seems to be picking up steam, lots of projects in the works these days. Hope it works out for you.

I agree that Konosora has a very strong element of weather, given that much of the story relates to ideal conditions for gliders and a weather phenomenon that only happens every few decades. I don't agree that it's bad, though. I enjoyed it. Well, most of it. Kotori's route in particular.