Plk_Lesiak

For me it would still be Analogue: A Hate Story, just because of the lasting impression it left me with. I was also thinking about Flowers, which I loved through and through and which cementing my love for yuri - but not being able to read more yuri after that would just be torture. That's how it looks now at least, I still haven't played through most of the kamige people would usually point to in this context, so I might change my mind in the future.

Thank you. What I write here, apart from serving my own fun and my own vanity, is definitely targeted towards the VN audience. I have very superficial knowledge about video game development and I'm also a pretty poor author, when it goes to creative writing, so the advice I could offer to developers is pretty limited. With the amount of time and energy I can spent here, I feel it's appropriate to tackle bad games only when I have something important to tell about them - here it was the pitfalls of common writing mistakes, next week it will be predatory mobile game mechanics. My real focus, for the foreseeable future, is exploring OELVNs and presenting valuable ones to people here, as many hardcore VN fans simply avoid them. As I've discovered the whole genre and got hooked on it through Western stuff, I want to make people aware that the VN world doesn't end in JP anymore.

Yeah, it was also in the middle of a casual SoL section, so the absurdity went through the roof. What's worse, that whole subplot played no real part in the story other than explaining why the protagonist in a shut-in and why government knows about his project. Obviously, there could be no better explanation for that than Illuminati and some illogical, world-ending conspiracies. If you write something, you can at least write big! But, after all, that's how you make EFFECTIVE PLOT TWISTS. No one can predict your next move if you defy all logic, including that of the setting you've created.

Hello there, Earthling! I have to say that for an inhabitant of this planet your punctuation still feels a bit alien, you should be a bit more mindful about that in future posts. ;p Anyways, I hope you'll have fun around here.

Well, I would usually avoid calling RPGs visual novels, as the gameplay/story ratio is usually heavily skewed in the direction of gameplay. That's why I've stopped playing RPGs, I've realized that I've played things like DA Inquisition or Star Wars: The Old Republic mostly for the story, while burning dozens of hours on mindless grind I didn't really care about. For me, VN is every medium where the text-based story content reigns supreme while any gameplay it offers is supplementary to that. In this way it's very hard for me to accept this kind of purist definitions that Palas creates, where VN is created only by stripping the game from any visible, number-based gameplay mechanics. What do I care that my story route in Long Live the Queen is some ways guided by the stats? The core content is still that of a visual novel, in a very literal understanding of the term. Same goes for most VN-hybrid games and dating sims - in most of them, the story content is the central part of the experience. Closer to the original topic, I think that gameplay can both make a VN better and break it. If gameplay elements are well-connected with the story and support its main themes, I can appreciate them even if they're mediocre by themselves - they simply work as that additional flavour that adds to the immersion. But I also hate then the gameplay lacks proper difficulty settings or skip option, so it could stall experiencing the story. For me, it's all about how it's implemented and how much time it takes - I really didn't switch from playing sandbox games to reading VNs just to play with mindless minigames for hours on end, but anything less extreme and somewhat approachable is ok with me, as long as it fits the story.

Hello Ladies & Gentlemen! So, yesterday I've published a review of a very disappointing VN - I'm always a bit wary about giving time and publicity to bad games, when you can give the spotlight to good ones that desperately need it, but I think there's some value in dissecting failed projects and talking about why they couldn't deliver, often despite the author's honest attempts. Obviously, bad games that are just lazy aren't that interesting, but bad games that tried hard and failed are often fascinating to me. Also, it seems that my review discouraged at least two people from buying the title in question, so it's already worth it. Either way, I hope you'll have fun reading it! In other news, as my activities on the blog focuses mostly around Steam, I thought it would be a logical extension to create a Curator Page connected to it. I don't expect anything out of it, but it's something I can expand while writing the blog in a somewhat seamless way, so I have few reasons not to do it. Obviously, if anyone wants to follow my recommendations there (or join the group linked to it), I will be very thankful. Have a great week everyone!

Yeah... Although as Maggie pointed out, in a porn game it would be at least undestandable. Ai even gets a period somewhere around the halfpoint of the game, so every piece of the puzzle is there, just not the h-scenes and dozens of android babies.

Unknown. She ordered a few boxes of mysterious stuff and put it together with robot arms. Under a blanket. In what I presume is contemporary setting. Nothing is ever explained. The machinery she used is "thrown away" by her soon after she wakes up in her human form, relieving the writer from the burden of coming up with an actual account of how she did it. Why he didn't make her a human-looking robot is beyond me. There's an idea that Ai wanted to be a human and becuase of that created an exact replica when she could've made something much more efficient and durable, but it's not explored in a way that would compensate for the absurdity and lazy writing in that first chapter.

Well, there's this one nude CG I've included in the review. Also she didn't buy it. She made it. Under a desk, using two wobbly robot arms. #suspensionofdisbelief Aye, I was seriously angry when I finished reading it, didn't think it can be done so badly after a seriously promising start - I mean, that little prequel game wasn't anything special, but showed that the author knows how to write some amusing dialogue and had at least one good idea. And the end product wasn't even awful in any amusing way, just made me wonder how could someone look at that script and think it's in any way acceptable for a semi-serious project like this.

Someone can make me a mod, I'm sitting here 24/7 like some no life and have no compassion or mercy.

I suck at writing fiction so I'm usually cautious about criticizing others, but yeah, this whole game just screamed "bad fanfiction" - this situation when someone doesn't know how this whole "writing" business works but desperately wants to be original and stand out in some way. And the whole "true ending" thing was beyond my comprehension - I somewhat understand including it, but why make it the "official" conclusion, rather than leaving it up for the players, so they can choose which they find more compelling? My only guess is what I wrote in the review, that this was meant as a starting point for a sequel - definitely something on my "Top 10 games in the universe that I least want to play" list. ;p And well, I'm at least happy I was able to save someone from buying this. ^^

Warning: Heavy spoilers ahead! If you want to play this VN yourself, stop reading now. I don’t really recommend playing it though… As much as I’m a fan of independent VNs and appreciate the possibilities that crowdfunding opened for the western visual novel market, it’s not completely rare for these projects to end with spectacular disappointment, for various reasons. Carpe Diem: Reboot is an especially interesting example of a visual novel that ultimately failed to live up to the expectations, but not because of lack of effort or poor production values, but through the sheer “virtue” of horrible writing. As I’ll be treating this as a case study of how to screw up a good concept and waste a lot of work, unlike my normal reviews, I’ll be revealing many major plot-points, including some details of the games’ endings. As Reboot mostly relies on its plot twists and mystery elements to keep the player interested, if you want to play it yourself, ignore this review or read it after you’ve completed the game. While the title we’re talking about was released on Steam in September 2017, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, its history starts a bit earlier, with a free VN from late 2015 simply titled Carpe Diem. This very short, but nicely written visual novel served both as a prologue of sorts and an advertisement for the crowdfunding effort which later spawned Reboot. In it, a simple story about two friends (lovers?), Jung and Ai, deciding how to use a rare opportunity to spend a full afternoon together, ended with a twist – the girl was actually a computer program, an object of delusional love of a shut-in trying to escape from his real life. The Steam achievement for reaching the end of the game, “What are you doing with your life?”, served as a somewhat ironic punchline, making clear the main themes the author tried to tackle. Good dialogues and decent execution of Carpe Diem, while in no way breath-taking, definitely showed promise and made many people (including me, although I've discovered it after the Kickstarter campaign was already over) somewhat enthusiastic about its continuation. So, what went wrong? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Isn't it like that with most books though, and most kind of narrative fiction in general? I rarely feel the need to re-read/re-watch books or movies and the more they rely on mysteries and try to surprise you with plot twists, the less appealing they usually become by the second approach (unless you focus on re-reading certain plot points with new knowledge and look for the various details foreshadowing the twists - I think my experience with Grisaia no Kajitsu, which I started reading after watching the anime, was just as interesting if I was going in blind, because I've noticed a lot of details that I would normally ignore but were made meaningful thanks to the fact I knew the rough outline of character routes and endings). It's pretty much unavoidable. Also, I have so many VNs to read so the lack of replayability is not a thing I would really be sad about. It's actually a positive for me - when I'm done with a VN I can move it to appropriate folder in my Steam library, write a review and can move, highly replayable games ate like 1/3 of my life.

Oh. Ok. Anyway, welcome back to Fuwa! :3 The mods should probaby be able to help you with your old account, but considering that they're all slightly "ded" and it's hard to predict when they will respond to you, I guess using the new one is not a bad choice. I hope you'll have fun around here in your new incarnation.

I've never noticed that *mind blown* Anyone can tell where this image is from BTW? It looks super-cute. :3

So meta

Can you say anything about the protagonist and the amount of NSFW scenes when compared to the story content? The shop thing suggests to me that the game is meant to be porn-heavy, but I'm still not sure what to expect after reading this.

I think you're going to like the petting feature in Vol. 0, 2 & 3.

Oooooh, ok, I guess I had even less faith in the publishers than they deserved. I would really love to see Libra fixed, really want to play it and Dergonu's warnings drove me away from buying it.

"The lowest-quality professional translation I saw this year" - Fred the Barber, 3th of January 2018 I will take this as a warning to not buy the game. Even though I'm not convinced I would not like the story and SP seemed to notice this quality just won't do, I don't think I've ever heard about a VN translation being seriously fixed after this kind of shitty launch. Even if they correct the untranslated lines and some most obviously messed up ones, it will still be crappy forever...

Well, it was super-informative and made me want to play a game in the genre that is pretty much at the very bottom of my preferred romance scenarios, just above futa and trap, so I would call it a success. :3 I guess all fan projects have the tendency to die like that, I know much more about the modding scene than TLs, but in both cases I'm impressed that anyone even attempts doing something which involves such obscene amounts of work. :s Well, one more reason to take certain common advice around here to heart. I think I will have to slow down on writing stuff to actually get back on track with my Japanese lessons though. "Remember, you have posts prepared for the next month and a half, you don't need to make a new one every week. No need to get fixated on that. You can do it all slowly and steadily. Be cool." *hyperventilating into a bag*

Great review. I've seen on VNDB that someone is possibly working on fan translation of this? Although I might just leave this one for that time three-four years from now, when I know Japanese somewhat decently and have already played through every worthwhile yuri VN there is, and I can finally delve into BL with no regrets.

Pretty much Steam and Itch.io. I didn't buy a physical copy of any game in years, pretty much for as long as Steam grew into the main PC storefront and my internet connection became bearable when donwloading full games. At some point in the future I'll be buying the translated SonoHana titles, which don't have all-ages versions and thus are not on Steam, so I'll have to add Mangagamer store to the list. I generally focus on translated, all-ages titles and OELVNs though so my perspective is super-skewed when compared to more experienced/hardcore VN fans.

Sure, there's some of that, but I've seen many quality VNs, such as Cupid and One Thousand Lies that never go anywhere close to those numbers you've mentioned, as they're niche, demanding products, even though they're just as free. In reality it's much more complicated and at least just as much about accessibility as it is about price. Nekopara won big exactly because of its obvious appeal and optional porn scenes, buying Clannad is pretty much equivalent of being ready to read a very long, sad novel and I don't imagine that many gamers or even anime fans being super-excited about 100 hours of reading a single story. Tricolour Lovestory is also a galgame with obvious appeal, apart from being super-cheap. It's something like a Transformers movie - might be shit, but that doesn't really matter as long as it has cool special effects (or in this case - pretty CGs and big anime boobs) and doesn't force you to think much. Also notice that DDLC is both a solid VN (even if gimmicky) and a profitable one thanks to its success. There's 700 reviews of the "fan pack" DLC, which means that many people appreciated this free game enough to actually buy it. That DLC is just that - donation to the author. So I don't see a reason they wouldn't be willing to pay for other VNs. Everlasting Summer is a good VN btw and I don't mind it getting a lot of attention, also it's on Steam for a pretty long time. Free stuff will always get more attention, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Demanding, mature audience will always be in minority, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and can't be expanded in some ways - DDLC, for anyone smart enough to see past the obnoxious meme culture, is a great ad for VNs as a medium.