mjriedstra

It's suitable that the Fuwa admin has the rollercoaster existence of a VN protagonist. Try not to accidentally pick up a harem of girls on the way back.

This question has no answer, since it's not necessary to "show" anything at all to tell a story. But then you don't have a visual novel, you have a novel. Unless you're making the argument that even novels with descriptions of sex are automatically porn just for acknowledging that sex exists.
 
To illustrate in a different way how extreme that opinion would be, think about how much of the average person's daily life involves sex. The human race historically couldn't have existed without it. That makes it pretty important. Now think about how much of our lives we spend consuming food or readying food for consumption. Many visual novels portray scenes based around eating or cooking because those are natural and integral parts of every day life. Is every visual novel food scene just "food porn" and unnecessary to storytelling?
 
For some reason many of us classify sex as something extraneous, unnecessary and distasteful that should be kept behind closed doors, even though there are only a few other things in our lives that are as important and natural. I find that distinction arbitrary.

This question has no answer, since it's not necessary to "show" anything at all to tell a story. But then you don't have a visual novel, you have a novel. Unless you're making the argument that even novels with descriptions of sex are automatically porn just for acknowledging that sex exists.
 
To illustrate in a different way how extreme that opinion would be, think about how much of the average person's daily life involves sex. The human race historically couldn't have existed without it. That makes it pretty important. Now think about how much of our lives we spend consuming food or readying food for consumption. Many visual novels portray scenes based around eating or cooking because those are natural and integral parts of every day life. Is every visual novel food scene just "food porn" and unnecessary to storytelling?
 
For some reason many of us classify sex as something extraneous, unnecessary and distasteful that should be kept behind closed doors, even though there are only a few other things in our lives that are as important and natural. I find that distinction arbitrary.

There's no option for "I don't even consider the existence of h-scenes, but only the overall quality of the game and story," but that's what I do. Sex is natural so it isn't strange if it's present in the game. But it's also not necessary to telling a good story. Games that have obviously gratuitous sex that has nothing to do with the message the story is trying to convey bug me.
 
That's not to say there's no place in the world for nukige. The purpose of nukige is clearly not storytelling, which is great; it's honest about what it is. What I dislike are games that are stuck somewhere between storytelling and porn without doing a proper job of either.
 
Sakura series, I'm looking at you.

Excellent art. But more than anything, I'm interested to see how your English voice acting turns out. Good luck!

I discussed this exact topic a couple of days ago in the A-1 translation thread. It's a bizarre example of a ludicrously unlikely nukige scene being snuck into the middle of what is otherwise a story-based, character-based game. As such, it's really jarring in my opinion. Even outside of the obvious illegalities, the way every character in the story (including Chris) acts as if it's pretty normal afterward is mind boggling, and not really in keeping with the tone of any other aspect of the game or the other routes. Almost all of the stories center around friendship, close bonds, and protecting those important to you, and this goes completely counter to those principles.
 
I like Yamato, who I think is generally a lot more interesting than most protagonists, but in order to maintain that mentality I've had to pretty much pretend that scene doesn't exist.

I discussed this exact topic a couple of days ago in the A-1 translation thread. It's a bizarre example of a ludicrously unlikely nukige scene being snuck into the middle of what is otherwise a story-based, character-based game. As such, it's really jarring in my opinion. Even outside of the obvious illegalities, the way every character in the story (including Chris) acts as if it's pretty normal afterward is mind boggling, and not really in keeping with the tone of any other aspect of the game or the other routes. Almost all of the stories center around friendship, close bonds, and protecting those important to you, and this goes completely counter to those principles.
 
I like Yamato, who I think is generally a lot more interesting than most protagonists, but in order to maintain that mentality I've had to pretty much pretend that scene doesn't exist.

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

It's fascinating to me how many people chose Kurugaya. Personally she was one of my favorite characters in the story, but the idea of classifying her as "cute" has never once occurred to me.
 
Subjective taste being what it is, I can't say it's "incorrect." But on my personal spectrum Kurugaya is about as far away from "cute" as someone can get and still be attractive rather than unattractive.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As mentioned above, there's no relation. True Heart 2 is excellent, definitely try it.
 
Da Capo I and II, Canvas 2 and Shuffle! may also appeal to you.
 
 
Edit: Didn't realize you had already said Shuffle! If you liked it, try some of the related titles like Really? Really! and Tick! Tack!

In a way, I get what he means about Sharin no Kuni. I love the game but the pacing is uneven. The dramatic start contrasts pretty hard with the extended school life antics immediately after.
 
That said, it's fully worth it to push through and get to the meat of the routes. Some of the twists later on hit me with an almost Sixth Sense level of "Oh snap."

>ABSTRACT SYMBOLISM
 

 
>CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
 

 
It's only ice cream ￣ー￣
 
Who cares Monmusu's ridiculously silly. It's entertaining as hell.
Papi is all I need.

The game I'm making is a fully western setting with western characters in an anime style. A number of other similar projects are also in the works, even just in the forum here.
 
That said, I agree that it seems like a lot of "western" VN projects are going the Japanese setting route. I don't disapprove by any means, but we already have a truckload of Japanese games with Japanese settings. I'd like to see more western games exploit the unique elements that exist outside Japan, of which there are plenty.

Well, that's why...