john 'mr. customer' smith

I'm going to hell for this.

I'm going to hell for this.

I'm going to hell for this.

Hello everyone, Aizen-Sama here. I’ve been only around this community and forums for around 6 months by now, and even though I may not be the most knowledgeable when it comes to VN’s in general, I think that I possess enough knowledge about the translation scene. That’s right, today I’m not writing a post about Luna Translations, but one about my opinion on the translation scene, translation groups, and the community revolving them.

Let us establish how this community and market actually exist in the first place. Piracy and fan translating, they are both mutually exclusive to each other and they are the foundations of what we consider as the “western visual novel community”.
After some years where piracy slowly started to decrease and official releases started to be a thing I can safely assume that there are three types of people now, one who will support every single game localization and buy the Visual Novels instead of pirating them, one who will pirate everything and anything, or one that will mix between these two because either there is no other access to the game in Japanese to apply the English patch (in other words, you can’t buy the game legally because the Japanese market is already a very difficult place to access with Western VPN’s, mostly because Japanese publishers block them to not let people outside Japan buy these games online, which is usually the only way to get them in the first place) or the individual simply doesn’t support some releases or companies that release VN’s in particular (I’ll set people that want to buy legally a game with a fan-translated patch but can’t do it, so they have to pirate the VN even if they don’t want to as an example).
This last example leads to another concerning issue, the relationship between translation groups and the community itself. It’s partly human nature; when a group establishes itself and releases a patch (no matter whether it’s full or partial) we automatically create what is called a “power level” between these two types of people, the users that translate and work on translating games in one way or another (editing, QC’ing, etc…) and the users that simply play the releases made by the first ones.
This so called “power level” is what should be avoided at all costs, sometimes the community must remember that the people that belong to translation groups (whether they are official or not) are part of the community as well, and have their own stances and way of doing things.
Those “power levels” are automatically made, and they are the primary reason of this community’s fragmentation into several “sub-communities”, which is a problem mainly for the translation groups. What I’m trying to say here is that what is constantly happening right now is that what this “power division” has made is to categorize groups by number of patches released (the more they have released the more praised they are) and that has ultimately lead to two things; groups distancing themselves from the community, which is a very bad thing for both of the parties involved, and groups distancing from each other.
What I mean by this last statement is that there is no communication between teams, which leads to what is happening in the actual society that we live in: the individualization of people (Tl-teams in this case). But regarding that aspect, some groups have managed to find a solution to this matter. Let’s put @Arcadeotic's (Euphemic Translation) and @oystein's (Elevator TL) groups for example; both of them have found a way to make the community feel closer to their groups thanks to their “Public Discord Server Policy” (that’s how I call it) and both of them are in the TL Leaders Discord Server (basically a group to try to unite translation teams more, an initiative from Arcadeotic and I). That group has opened my eyes in many aspects regarding team stances towards piracy as well as opinions about the community and it's relation with the Tl teams. This group has also helped me in getting to know people that otherwise I would have never met even if we were active members of this forum and interacted with each other sometimes, like for example Dergonu, Oystein, Kardororororo, and many more.
What I’m ultimately trying to say is that banding together is a rare thing for groups now, and this is the first step to create a community feel again, something that, in my opinion, is being lost little by little and needs to be stopped.
I’ll mention another issue that many people find itchy, and that is the topic of “the sense of entitlement of a loud minority”.
I’d like to make myself very clear about this; I know that there is a silent positive majority, and that compared to the amount of people that complain about things about projects and English patches this majority vastly overcomes the “minority”, but the matter of fact is that this “loud minority” is what gives people that are new to the community a bad impression about it from the start.
I’ll set two examples to demonstrate the last point I mentioned: firstly, I’d like to address the Koiken Otome Project, one that took approximately three years to finish. It’s a topic full of controversy, firstly because people firstly speculated that Flying Pantsu was going to “definitely sell out to the localization companies” and they made a ruckus about it.

First of all, what if they really “sold out” to one of them? That is, in my opinion, a good thing (primarily because I belong to the “buy everything” type of guy instead of pirating unless it can’t be avoided and tend to support official releases), but mostly because, the fact of the matter is that they spent working on an English patch of a game that contains more than 40K lines three years, and the entire effort is theirs, that means that even if they decided to not release the patch for whatever reason, I would have been totally in favor. Why? Because it’s THEIR work and THEY did it, not the people that feel entitled to have the English patch.
Same goes with the problem that revolved around the time of release. Again, I’ll repeat, the matter of fact is that they could’ve released that patch whenever they wanted because since THEY did the patch, they decide when to release it, simple.

The second example I’ll highlight in this post talks about Shinku Translations and the controversy that revolved around the SakuSaku patch. If you don’t know what happened regarding this project I’ll quickly sum it up: Shinku Translations made a deal with Sekai Project to release the game officially, what ultimately made people who were waiting for a fan-patch very pissed. The comments on their website were mostly full of “sellouts” and “I already bought the game in Japanese, now I’ll have to buy it again, gg boys” and many more that blew my mind. That was the perfect demonstration of the entitlement that people slowly begin to have when a project is close to being finished.
 I’ll repeat myself once again, just like Koiken Otome and Flying Pantsu, it was THEIR work, so they had the right to make a deal with Sekai Project and do whatever they wanted to the patch. And, as Akerou explained in one of the comments, it could lead to more titles being localized, which, in my opinion, are good news!
 People have to start realizing that sooner or later, the entire scope if not most of the translation scope will shift towards official releases instead of fan-patches.
As a last argument regarding this matter, I’ll mention a couple of YouTube comments that I found in the official OP video of SakuSaku published by Sekai Project’s YouTube channel, they basically said this:
“That's a low punch SP. That's just low. The guy translating it is almost done. If you buy the translation from him and release it in the next 2 months I might forgive you. If you do it less than a month you are forgiven.”
“Well just pirate the release when it comes out. This is one of the cases when piracy is completely justified.”
These two comments are part of the “entitlement problem” that I’ve addressed before, and I hope they highlight what I’ve been trying to tackle (take into account that these comments are just the surface, just look at the ones in Shinku’s page and you’ll get a grasp of what this community broods sometimes).

Last but not least, I’d like to address Fuwanovel as a platform for translation projects and my opinion about it as a Leader of a translation group (in this case, Luna Translations).
Don’t get me wrong when I say that. I love Fuwanovel as a site. It’s one of the principal, if not the main responsible for the appearance of a community that revolves around Visual Novels in general. I love this site, and I appreciate the people that back this site paying monthly (I hope I can do it as well when I get the chance) and the mods for doing their jobs correctly and every other person that supports this site. But, I’d like to tackle the issue of trying to host translation projects in a forum-based website.
 I’d like to point out that the system created in Fuwa worked very VERY well at the beginning stages of the creation of this community. Basically, the “Fan Translator Skills” thread and the “Translation Projects” thread were probably very useful and effective back when the community was niche and not a lot of projects and teams crowded the scene (I’m not directing this towards the “Fan TL Discussion” thread, by the way).
But, as a leader of a translation team (and I’m sure that many people will agree with me on this) I just think that Fuwa’s way of hosting projects is not as effective as it was probably two or three years ago.
What I’m trying to say here is that, just like VNDB exists, a platform that focuses solely on helping teams and individuals to work on projects will certainly appear at some point, or at least needs to appear at some point. Summing up, Fuwanovel as a forum focused on the discussion of Visual Novels and the fan translation scene is a very good and positive website, and it’s totally needed for the community to keep growing, but! Fuwanovel (the forums) used as a platform to support projects and teams may have been very effective in the past but not anymore, since now the scope is very broad and more complex compared to when all of this started.
Finally, to close this rant, I’d like to say that if I had to sum up things probably the most important issue would be that the community is losing the sense of being together, and groups, as well as individuals, are distancing themselves from each other, which is something that has to be avoided at all costs. I’ll personally try to do whatever I can about this matter and little by little this problem will hopefully be solved in the future, because together we can do great things.
Let’s try to make the translation world great again, as Trump as it sounds.
 
 
 

Tell me, how does this image make you feel?

This was the first thing I ever saw when hearing about Planetarian. I still vividly remember that moment, and how it made me feel. It made me feel like the world was at its literal and figurative end, civilization just a memory. A cold, empty, dangerous world. And somehow, at the peak of it all, this being, standing there. at once a tangible remnant of that civilization, stuck in a warm, cozy world of her own, and at the same time something much older, much wiser than that civilization. No work of fiction has ever drawn me in as strongly as this. Then, I read it.
TL;DR Planetarian is the best VN
The fact that this is a written article about why I don't care about writing should tell you that it's not going to be very well-written, just keep that in mind.
I was inspired to write this by this video by Digibro. I suggest you watch it (up to about 12:13), but to summarize, he says that most media critics value writing above all else, and treat aesthetic elements as secondary. He then claims that, since nearly all critics are also writers, that is not surprising, and then goes on to explain how aesthetic elements can indeed tell a story that no words will ever be able to.
And this made me realize: I simply don't care about writing and prose. I'm not saying that I can't appreciate it, or that I've never enjoyed purely written media, but when it comes to all the works of fiction that I truly love, aesthetic has always been the primary reason for that love.
To me, writing in a VN is just string. It's there to hold the story together (and doing it well is certainly important), but all of the emotion has to be conveyed through the visuals and music. Nearly all VN critics are writers, and therefore not likely to fully acknowledge the value of art and sound direction. Art, in this community, is seen as something that should be pretty (BiMan) and music as something that should sound good (Little Busters) and almost nothing more. Frankly, I think that's bullshit. Neither art nor sound should just be there to make everything feel right, or to 'fit the mood'. They should be there to create a mood of their own, tell a story of their own.
Now, let's look at Planetarian, and how I believe it still works well without a script. May contain vague rambling

This is a panning shot of a pre-apocalyptic street. I'm a big fan of imagery like this. There's something beautifully immersive about the lighting. Personally, whenever I feel stressed, there's nothing I like to do more than walk outside on a rainy evening, breathing deeply, letting my mind clear. It's a wonderful world. Shame it all had to end.
Now let's add music to it, shall we?
Just listen to this while looking at the next one.

To me, this is like a massive, fluffy bed of nostalgia. while Yumemi is talking about absolutely nothing, I am somehow right there, in that dusty old planetarium, and she is just sitting there, calmly. An artifact from a bygone age, something that could not be repaired or even maintained by anyone alive right now. When I read Planetarian, these scenes make it feel like Yumemi was part of some strange ritual, somehow kept in a perfect equilibrium all that time, despite everything that has happened, and the protagonist has brutally interrupted that ritual.
Now listen to this.

In the projection scenes, you are the audience and Yumemi will be your guide for the evening. This is where she really shines. This is exactly what she was made for, what all that (now pointless) chatter was intended for. All she wants is to show you and the protagonist the most beautiful thing she knows, and personally, I was just as moved by the whole thing as the Junker was, and was basically crying sweating from my eyes throughout both parts of the projection.
I think I'll stop here. I'm obviously not claiming writing isn't important, it clearly is, I'm just trying to illustrate (pun intended) that visuals and sound can tell (parts of) a good story all by themselves.
Be sure to look out for any ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ  you can find, will you?

Tell me, how does this image make you feel?

This was the first thing I ever saw when hearing about Planetarian. I still vividly remember that moment, and how it made me feel. It made me feel like the world was at its literal and figurative end, civilization just a memory. A cold, empty, dangerous world. And somehow, at the peak of it all, this being, standing there. at once a tangible remnant of that civilization, stuck in a warm, cozy world of her own, and at the same time something much older, much wiser than that civilization. No work of fiction has ever drawn me in as strongly as this. Then, I read it.
TL;DR Planetarian is the best VN
The fact that this is a written article about why I don't care about writing should tell you that it's not going to be very well-written, just keep that in mind.
I was inspired to write this by this video by Digibro. I suggest you watch it (up to about 12:13), but to summarize, he says that most media critics value writing above all else, and treat aesthetic elements as secondary. He then claims that, since nearly all critics are also writers, that is not surprising, and then goes on to explain how aesthetic elements can indeed tell a story that no words will ever be able to.
And this made me realize: I simply don't care about writing and prose. I'm not saying that I can't appreciate it, or that I've never enjoyed purely written media, but when it comes to all the works of fiction that I truly love, aesthetic has always been the primary reason for that love.
To me, writing in a VN is just string. It's there to hold the story together (and doing it well is certainly important), but all of the emotion has to be conveyed through the visuals and music. Nearly all VN critics are writers, and therefore not likely to fully acknowledge the value of art and sound direction. Art, in this community, is seen as something that should be pretty (BiMan) and music as something that should sound good (Little Busters) and almost nothing more. Frankly, I think that's bullshit. Neither art nor sound should just be there to make everything feel right, or to 'fit the mood'. They should be there to create a mood of their own, tell a story of their own.
Now, let's look at Planetarian, and how I believe it still works well without a script. May contain vague rambling

This is a panning shot of a pre-apocalyptic street. I'm a big fan of imagery like this. There's something beautifully immersive about the lighting. Personally, whenever I feel stressed, there's nothing I like to do more than walk outside on a rainy evening, breathing deeply, letting my mind clear. It's a wonderful world. Shame it all had to end.
Now let's add music to it, shall we?
Just listen to this while looking at the next one.

To me, this is like a massive, fluffy bed of nostalgia. while Yumemi is talking about absolutely nothing, I am somehow right there, in that dusty old planetarium, and she is just sitting there, calmly. An artifact from a bygone age, something that could not be repaired or even maintained by anyone alive right now. When I read Planetarian, these scenes make it feel like Yumemi was part of some strange ritual, somehow kept in a perfect equilibrium all that time, despite everything that has happened, and the protagonist has brutally interrupted that ritual.
Now listen to this.

In the projection scenes, you are the audience and Yumemi will be your guide for the evening. This is where she really shines. This is exactly what she was made for, what all that (now pointless) chatter was intended for. All she wants is to show you and the protagonist the most beautiful thing she knows, and personally, I was just as moved by the whole thing as the Junker was, and was basically crying sweating from my eyes throughout both parts of the projection.
I think I'll stop here. I'm obviously not claiming writing isn't important, it clearly is, I'm just trying to illustrate (pun intended) that visuals and sound can tell (parts of) a good story all by themselves.
Be sure to look out for any ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ  you can find, will you?

Tell me, how does this image make you feel?

This was the first thing I ever saw when hearing about Planetarian. I still vividly remember that moment, and how it made me feel. It made me feel like the world was at its literal and figurative end, civilization just a memory. A cold, empty, dangerous world. And somehow, at the peak of it all, this being, standing there. at once a tangible remnant of that civilization, stuck in a warm, cozy world of her own, and at the same time something much older, much wiser than that civilization. No work of fiction has ever drawn me in as strongly as this. Then, I read it.
TL;DR Planetarian is the best VN
The fact that this is a written article about why I don't care about writing should tell you that it's not going to be very well-written, just keep that in mind.
I was inspired to write this by this video by Digibro. I suggest you watch it (up to about 12:13), but to summarize, he says that most media critics value writing above all else, and treat aesthetic elements as secondary. He then claims that, since nearly all critics are also writers, that is not surprising, and then goes on to explain how aesthetic elements can indeed tell a story that no words will ever be able to.
And this made me realize: I simply don't care about writing and prose. I'm not saying that I can't appreciate it, or that I've never enjoyed purely written media, but when it comes to all the works of fiction that I truly love, aesthetic has always been the primary reason for that love.
To me, writing in a VN is just string. It's there to hold the story together (and doing it well is certainly important), but all of the emotion has to be conveyed through the visuals and music. Nearly all VN critics are writers, and therefore not likely to fully acknowledge the value of art and sound direction. Art, in this community, is seen as something that should be pretty (BiMan) and music as something that should sound good (Little Busters) and almost nothing more. Frankly, I think that's bullshit. Neither art nor sound should just be there to make everything feel right, or to 'fit the mood'. They should be there to create a mood of their own, tell a story of their own.
Now, let's look at Planetarian, and how I believe it still works well without a script. May contain vague rambling

This is a panning shot of a pre-apocalyptic street. I'm a big fan of imagery like this. There's something beautifully immersive about the lighting. Personally, whenever I feel stressed, there's nothing I like to do more than walk outside on a rainy evening, breathing deeply, letting my mind clear. It's a wonderful world. Shame it all had to end.
Now let's add music to it, shall we?
Just listen to this while looking at the next one.

To me, this is like a massive, fluffy bed of nostalgia. while Yumemi is talking about absolutely nothing, I am somehow right there, in that dusty old planetarium, and she is just sitting there, calmly. An artifact from a bygone age, something that could not be repaired or even maintained by anyone alive right now. When I read Planetarian, these scenes make it feel like Yumemi was part of some strange ritual, somehow kept in a perfect equilibrium all that time, despite everything that has happened, and the protagonist has brutally interrupted that ritual.
Now listen to this.

In the projection scenes, you are the audience and Yumemi will be your guide for the evening. This is where she really shines. This is exactly what she was made for, what all that (now pointless) chatter was intended for. All she wants is to show you and the protagonist the most beautiful thing she knows, and personally, I was just as moved by the whole thing as the Junker was, and was basically crying sweating from my eyes throughout both parts of the projection.
I think I'll stop here. I'm obviously not claiming writing isn't important, it clearly is, I'm just trying to illustrate (pun intended) that visuals and sound can tell (parts of) a good story all by themselves.
Be sure to look out for any ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ  you can find, will you?

Tell me, how does this image make you feel?

This was the first thing I ever saw when hearing about Planetarian. I still vividly remember that moment, and how it made me feel. It made me feel like the world was at its literal and figurative end, civilization just a memory. A cold, empty, dangerous world. And somehow, at the peak of it all, this being, standing there. at once a tangible remnant of that civilization, stuck in a warm, cozy world of her own, and at the same time something much older, much wiser than that civilization. No work of fiction has ever drawn me in as strongly as this. Then, I read it.
TL;DR Planetarian is the best VN
The fact that this is a written article about why I don't care about writing should tell you that it's not going to be very well-written, just keep that in mind.
I was inspired to write this by this video by Digibro. I suggest you watch it (up to about 12:13), but to summarize, he says that most media critics value writing above all else, and treat aesthetic elements as secondary. He then claims that, since nearly all critics are also writers, that is not surprising, and then goes on to explain how aesthetic elements can indeed tell a story that no words will ever be able to.
And this made me realize: I simply don't care about writing and prose. I'm not saying that I can't appreciate it, or that I've never enjoyed purely written media, but when it comes to all the works of fiction that I truly love, aesthetic has always been the primary reason for that love.
To me, writing in a VN is just string. It's there to hold the story together (and doing it well is certainly important), but all of the emotion has to be conveyed through the visuals and music. Nearly all VN critics are writers, and therefore not likely to fully acknowledge the value of art and sound direction. Art, in this community, is seen as something that should be pretty (BiMan) and music as something that should sound good (Little Busters) and almost nothing more. Frankly, I think that's bullshit. Neither art nor sound should just be there to make everything feel right, or to 'fit the mood'. They should be there to create a mood of their own, tell a story of their own.
Now, let's look at Planetarian, and how I believe it still works well without a script. May contain vague rambling

This is a panning shot of a pre-apocalyptic street. I'm a big fan of imagery like this. There's something beautifully immersive about the lighting. Personally, whenever I feel stressed, there's nothing I like to do more than walk outside on a rainy evening, breathing deeply, letting my mind clear. It's a wonderful world. Shame it all had to end.
Now let's add music to it, shall we?
Just listen to this while looking at the next one.

To me, this is like a massive, fluffy bed of nostalgia. while Yumemi is talking about absolutely nothing, I am somehow right there, in that dusty old planetarium, and she is just sitting there, calmly. An artifact from a bygone age, something that could not be repaired or even maintained by anyone alive right now. When I read Planetarian, these scenes make it feel like Yumemi was part of some strange ritual, somehow kept in a perfect equilibrium all that time, despite everything that has happened, and the protagonist has brutally interrupted that ritual.
Now listen to this.

In the projection scenes, you are the audience and Yumemi will be your guide for the evening. This is where she really shines. This is exactly what she was made for, what all that (now pointless) chatter was intended for. All she wants is to show you and the protagonist the most beautiful thing she knows, and personally, I was just as moved by the whole thing as the Junker was, and was basically crying sweating from my eyes throughout both parts of the projection.
I think I'll stop here. I'm obviously not claiming writing isn't important, it clearly is, I'm just trying to illustrate (pun intended) that visuals and sound can tell (parts of) a good story all by themselves.
Be sure to look out for any ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ  you can find, will you?

This past weekend marked the unofficial start of summer here in the States, and to celebrate, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster threw down the gauntlet in a major way. The hot dog, it declared, is a sandwich. It consists of bread (the bun) holding some filling (a plump, juicy hot dog). It meets the textbook definition of a sandwich. Therefore, it’s a sandwich.
The reaction from Team Hot Dog was swift. “Nooo! That’s not true!” they Luke Skywalkered across the Twiterverse. “Hot dogs are hot dogs! Shuttuuuuuhp!” Whereas Team Sandwich raised nary a peep. “Cool,” they said. “We like sandwiches. Welcome to the club.”
And why was that? Maybe a look at similar sort of statement can help us try to figure it out:
Gone Home is a visual novel.

Nooo! That’s not true! Gone Home isn’t a VN! Shuttuuuuhp!
Very light spoilers to follow.
If you don’t know, Gone Home is a game that came out in 2013, created by a handful of former BioShock devs. In it, you assume the role of an American college student who comes home from a year abroad only to find her parents’ house deserted, a cryptic note from her sister taped to the front door. The rest of the game is spent finding out just what happened.
Except it’s not a “game” as such. And you don’t really “play.” You simply wander the house using FPS controls, going from room to room and reading/hearing scattered bits of documentary evidence – letters, journal entries, crumpled-up notes, etc. – that help you unravel the mystery. That’s it. Some gamers have dismissively called it a “walking simulator,” but there’s clearly more to it than that. Gone Home is a digital experience that exists primarily to convey an authored text, one that shares structural similarities with traditional novels/short stories. That text is then given strong support by on-screen visual elements to form a cohesive whole.
While there’s no hard and fast definition of “visual novel” that I’m aware of, the above seems to do the job pretty well. And by that definition, Gone Home is a visual novel.
Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t take the form of a written novel!
Sure it does – an epistolary novel, to be specific. Here, I’ll even save you the trip to Wikipedia:
Some well-known entries in this genre include Frankenstein, Dracula, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and World War Z. In Gone Home’s case, the main narrative thread is told via your sister’s journal entries, which are penned as letters in absentia to you. Additional plot is introduced via other letters, newspaper clippings, and historical documents. Sound familiar? Yup. In fact, if you printed the collected documents of Gone Home in paperback, it would hold up extremely well as an example of the epistolary form.
Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.

Nooo! It’s not a VN! You walk around in a 3D environment!
So what? Macbeth is a play; we can all agree on that. Sleep No More is a highly regarded re-contextualizing of that play as performance spaces meant to be walked through and experienced. The fact that you sit on your ass through one and physically traverse the other doesn’t change the fact that both are plays. They both have actors, scenes, and staging.
And besides, several other VN titles use the exploration of 3D environments to frame their textual elements – Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, Danganronpa, etc.
Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.
Nooo! It’s not a VN! It’s a game that just happens to have text!
There’s almost zero “gameplay” in Gone Home. Seriously. Most of one’s time in so-called “narrative-driven” games like BioShock or Final Fantasy [n] or Persona is spent doing non-narrative things – fighting, more often than not. In Gone Home, if you’re not reading/listening to documents, you’re usually (a) walking, (b) turning on lamps, or (c) opening cupboards and looking at cans of soup. The “game,” such as it is, exists solely to deliver the narrative.
Baldr Sky, Aselia, the Rance VNs – all have far more gameplay than Gone Home could ever dream of.
Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.

Nooo! It’s not a VN! You can finish the game without reading most of it!
While Gone Home definitely gives you a great deal of leeway in what you choose to read, and in what order, there are still certain key documents that act as plot gateways. These help ensure there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end with an identifiable narrative arc in between.
Anyway, I can also “finish” a more traditional VN without reading most of it. Maybe I get an early bad ending. Or I can read one route to completion and decide to stop, missing most of the content.
Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.
Nooo! It’s not a VN! If it is, then any game can claim the same!
Nope. Slippery slope denied. Just because Gone Home can be considered a VN, that doesn’t mean Tetris or Call of Duty: Jackalope can; it’s still a fairly high bar. Take The Walking Dead series by Telltale, for example. A number of people have argued that these games could (and should) be considered VNs, but I’d disagree. That could be a whole blog post by itself, but suffice to say their narrative form is much closer to that of a TV script than a novel or story.
All kings are men, but not all men are kings. Just because VNs prioritize narrative doesn’t mean all games that prioritize narrative are VNs.

Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have sprites against a background!
So what? Go tell that to Narcissu.
Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have hand-drawn art!
So what? Go tell that to any recent VN using 3D character models/backdrops.
Nooo! It’s not a VN! It doesn’t have routes! And heroines!
Are we seriously having this conversation?
Nooo! It’s not a VN! Its creators don’t even call it that!
So what? Authorial intent means nothing. All the audience can judge is what’s on the page/screen. And what’s there is a visual novel. (For the record, the devs call it a "story exploration" game.)
Okay, class. What have we learned?
Our Gone Home experiment, interestingly enough, is the reverse of the hot dog situation. Visual novel fans (a.k.a., Team Sandwich) tend to be the ones arguing against Gone Home (a.k.a., Team Hot Dog) being considered part of the genre, rather than the other way around. Larger resists smaller, rather than smaller resisting larger. And why is that?
For Team Hot Dog, the object of its affection is more than a tube-shaped piece of meat on a bun. It’s the whole emotional experience surrounding the idea of “hot dog” – the childhood ballgames, the smell of charcoal in the backyard grill. There’s a good reason I can watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on TV next month, but not the Boar’s Head Ham and Cheese on Rye Eating Contest. To admit that a hot dog is just a sandwich is to risk making it less special somehow, to blur the lines of its magic.
And for members of Team VN, a “visual novel” is more than just any old game that combines textual narrative with computer graphics. It’s also the emotional experience of all the VNs they’ve played until now – experiences that are often colored by very specific art styles and narrative conceits. To admit that a “game” like Gone Home can be a visual novel is to risk making the genre seem less special somehow, to blur the lines of its magic.
In both cases, the emotional experience of a thing proves to be just as true and just as powerful as the dictionary definition of that thing. And unless your name happens to be Merriam or Webster, there’s very little to be done about the latter. But the former is a matter of personal interpretation; personal interpretation remains a hill that one can choose to defend and, indeed, die upon.
In other words, it’s possible for the statements “Gone Home is a visual novel,” and “I don’t consider Gone Home to be a visual novel,” to both be true simultaneously. But if you put ketchup on your hot dog sandwich, you’re just a bloody idiot.
Update #1: Now watch as I argue that Gone Home really isn't a visual novel. Proof you can have your cake and piss on it too.

For my first ever attempt at a review, I did not want to try anything too ambitious. So it is that I present you Secret Agenda, a (very) short but sweet kinetic novel/nukige by GDIdoujins

This game has a rather unusual premise; It is told from the second-person perspective of a mysterious woman addressing you/the nameless male, whom she is seducing
I personally felt that this writing style works really well with the central theme of femdom, but I can imagine it feeling strange to a lot of people. The same applies to the extremely thick and descriptive prose, which spends most of the VN talking about things like the smell, attitude and (misplaced) expectations of her partner and how satisfied she is knowing that she has complete control over him. This kind of writing created some rather extreme expectations for me. the sex scene, unfortunately, did not really meet those expectations, as it felt rather tame and consensual for femdom. overall though, it'll still make for a great fap, even if you're only a little into femdom
The only two real downsides of this VN to me were the rather forgettable music (though it was not really grinding or distracting for me either) and the lack of sound effects. now generally, sound effects in nukiges are not that good anyway, so I didn't exactly miss them here, but some moans would certainly have been nice.
The two things that really make this game worthwhile though, are it's art and voice acting.

Artwise, I love it. The CGs (there are no sprites or backgrounds) are rough, yet elegant and colourful. it's what really drew me in to try this game out and it created a great atmoshpere, which I always care a great deal about. The H is pretty decent as well, though it's nothing really amazing.
The English voice acting, albeit as thick and exaggerated as the writing, is very good, very sensual, and overall, just HNNNNNNGGGG all the way.
while this game is extremely short (30 minutes max) the quality is undeniable and you can get it for the price of 2 dollars through the dev's patreon, with a release planned on nutaku as well
My verdict: don't hesitate to try it. If it sounds fun to you, it won't dissapoint