Plk_Lesiak

Looks quite cool, even though you didn't show much about the VN part really. Also the female merchant and female actress in Classical era Greece seem a bit ahistorical, but you're probably well aware. :3 Edit: I also wonder, will the game's plot mention slavery in any way? I think majority of Athens population at that time were slaves. :>

Happy Birthday to @Down! I mean, it's always better to be on good terms with global mods, right?

I haven't played Fault yet (it's sitting there in my enormous Steam backlog) and heard some mixed opinions about it when it goes to writing, but one thing is pretty clear to me - art direction in Alice in Dissonance's games is amazing and just looking at screens from them make me feel good.

I wonder, having a list like this seems interesting, but most of these would be kickstarter rewards or limited edition stuff that is literally impossible to find nowadays, right?

You're learning so fast Newbie! *pat pat*

Considering that all the "attacks" come from a clique of bored old-timers that either always did it or can't be bothered to post seriously anymore, it's at least very easily controllable as long as there are admins present on the Forums from time to time. I really disliked when a few months ago the site was literally dominated by shitposts and barely anything posted was worth reading. I'm pretty sure it also looked terrible from the outside, when guests and newcomers tried to see what's going on around here or to evaluate the site. It was exceeding any reasonable limits. And yes, the spamming crew mostly had fun in their own little circle while everyone else seemed to observe it with annoyance or apathy. Thank God (or maybe rather Kaguya) that we're past that era. And with shitposts in general... I shipost/derail stuff somewhat regularly, but didn't even get a warning so far. This means that either there's some horrible bias involved, or there are some common-sense distinctions between having fun from time to time and making a total mess. Forum without shitposts is boring. Forum with mostly shiposts is unproductive and unreadable for anyone not intimately involved with the "meta" side of things. And I rather like where the line is drawn right now.

Man, I didn't get anything this painful when I asked people to insult me... Well, I guess I'm not Mitch.

You mean... There's Life after Weeb? I don't believe it.

Well, the problem is that the "waifu mode" (sic!, they even kept that name for the lowest difficulty in Liberation Day, while the game basically had no romance - such a brutal lie :C ), while it makes the game more or less unlosable, leaves you with tons of mindless clicking through activities. That's probably even more boring than the normal routine TBH. And after the second playthrough, there's very little chance to stumble upon some non-route-specific event or anything interesting in general... So, yeah, I'm definitely not putting myself through more than two runs. :>

Is double-posting stuff here and on Reddit in bad taste? I don't really know how to look at it... Anyways, I'll do it this time: I'm playing through Sunrider Academy (what am I doing with my life? :s) and so far it's... Not that bad, to be honest. It has exactly the trashy feel you would expect from an ecchi spin-off, but the dialogues and character development are done better than in the main Sunrider games. I've always thought that the heroines, other than Ava, were the weakest part of the whole series but here devs skipped the more irritating parts of the cast altogether and made the rest fairly appealing (apart from Asaga who I will never like because I hate the hyperactive/baka archetype). I've only started Ava route so far and I can't say I hate it - it's not at all serious, just like the whole game isn't, but it's fun to read and I like where the romance is going. Also, surprisingly enough, the game doesn't only rely on throwing blunt references to main games in your face, much of it is quite subtle and (borderline) smart. ;] The dating sim mechanics are extensive and time-consuming at first, but they go much quicker when you get the hang of it (and even quicker once you max out the affection meters and don't get random encounters anymore). You probably spare more time on managing numbers than with the actual story content, but the amount of story the game offers is actually pretty impressive. The one problem I have with it (but it's the case with most DSims) is that there's no way to completely skip the busywork when replaying for other routes, I will probably just end it at two playthroughs, finishing Ava's and Sola's arcs - I don't care about Chigara and Asaga anyways, neither here nor in the main games.

Kami Nomi: Godessess (the third season) For the first two seasons The World Only God Knows seems like a very chill, mostly comedic anime spoofing romance anime tropes etc., but the third season basically turns everything upside-down, with a life-or-death situation as the main axis of the story and quite a lot of tension. There's also that one scene... That scene made me cry and after that, made me feel sick for two days straight. I know I wasn't the only one, as I've seen people writing very similar things on Crunchyroll and in other places... While I think quite a few anime series made me emotional - Elfen Lied a long time ago, lately things like Konohana Kitan or Ancient Magus' Bride - and some of them maybe even got a few tears out of me, that's the only case I can remember when I cried for like 10 minutes non-stop and felt genuinely devastated.

Yeah, I've noticed that "Grandmama" thing too. :s Ok, I guess my denial phase is officially over. @bakauchuujin, is your "Moenovel Must Burn" club recruiting?

Yup, from what I've seen even the Cross Channel translation is serviceable (just way below what people wanted for a novel apparently known for beautiful prose), but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Indeed, a Pulltop title and a rare all-ages one on top of that. At least there won't be any censorship drama this time - we'll see what the translation will be like.

Not sure about that really. I might might focus on different things than most, but I don't think this project can capture the imagination of the Winged Cloud/Nekopara crowd, or any other low-demanding audience, even with improved art. ;p

I would agree and disagree. I can live through mediocre graphics but I've stopped treating the whole thing seriously at "An Japanese style visual novel consist of a romantic story between a despaired boy and a mysterious girl". Even if it was written in proper English, the cliches... Just nope. Although I agree that the visuals are poor in relation to the campaign goal. Kickstarter this big just isn't going to happen with such a poor preparation and apparently no past projects to the dev's name - thus my unpleasant initial reaction, it's just a waste of time on the part of the author. And crowdfunding in general is an ethically complicated issue, asking people to fund your game should only be done if you really know what you're doing IMO.

Welcome to Fuwa! Hopefully, we'll get you involved with VNs deeply enough that you'll have to petition for a nick change in a few months.

Well, I meant free VNs in general AND deep sales on Steam. You can play things such as Katawa Shoujo, Cinderella Phenomenon, Digital: A Love Story or CUPID outside of Steam. Even some fairly high-profile Japanese VNs such as Phenomeno (a tiny one, but highly regarded). And I wouldn't put the whole blame for the censorship on Steam directly, there's a lot of all-ages titles there that never had any content removed and when things gets censored, they get censored by the publishers - and MangaGamer for example always offer free uncensoring patches.

Welcome, welcome! You've got your share of recommendations already, so I'll just express my hope that you'll have fun on the forums.

If they can get the technical problems with the app sorted out I don't really see a way in which it would be a bad thing - the early version might be a mess, but it doesn't have to stay this way and I really like having VNs on my tablet . Mobile devices are a convenient platform and might open some new possibilities for MG (let's not forget, there's literally hundreds of millions of Android devices out there), I also wouldn't expect costs of porting the games being high enough to make it an huge risk financially - even if it flops, it won't be some kind of life-threatening disaster for the company. For the time being, I just wish them luck, it will take some time before we can reasonably evaluate whether it's in any way successful.

Sorry to say it, but the "Grammer" is indeed a bit of a problem, nothing here or on the Kickstarter page makes me feel confident enough to invest money in your project. Plus £7500 is a pretty high goal, for something that feels like an unfortunate lovechild of poor English and corny writing.

There's so many good, free ones though and super-deep sales on Steam come regularly...

In my case it would be... Midlife crisis. In early 2017 I was super-frustrated with my video game addiction and noticed that I often don't even had that much fun playing many of them, just did it out of habit. And even more than that, it was super-alienating and intellectually numbing. By some very twisted logic I banned myself from playing most video games and made a transition into watching anime (which was always very fun and stimulating for me) and reading VNs. I've started writing reviews on Crunchyroll, began learning Japanese, got invited to write a few articles for an obscure website, found Fuwanovel, started a blog... And now VNs are my main past-time. And I'm really happy about this change TBH.

Maybe kickstarter goals can be some indicator on how much companies feel they have to earn to cover the license and translation costs? If I remember well, Sekai Project's campaings for bigger titles have goals between 100 and 150k dollars, it was also 150k for MiKandi's Libra localization and I think even more for MuvLuv and Dies Irae. Frontwing, which obviously don't have to buy its own licences, set up a 35k dollar goal for Momoiro Closet, a medium-size game. If this is indeed any kind of clue, VN localization seems fairly expensive relatively to the size of the western VN market.

Yeah... *Plk_Lesiak's backlog, already on the brink of imploding under its own weight, screams in agony at the addition of another title*