Plk_Lesiak

I wrote about it a lot in the past, but definitely, EVNs have a much wider range of approaches to LGBT issues and tons of yuri EVNs are actually made by minority creators. Of course, sometimes you have a lesbian creator making fluffy GxG porn because they enjoy that stuff, but generally, you'll have a lot more games implementing a semi-realistic approach and trying to build a believable dynamic for the GxG romance. Even something like Love Ribbon, which might look super-fetishistic at first glance (sister incest), has some very interesting scenes of one of the sisters discovering her sexuality and trying to make sense of it. It feels way more authentic than how Japanese writers usually do it (if they even bother to touch the topic), and that's at least to some extent because Razzart, the author of that game, actually knows what she's writing about. :>
To be fair, this game's writer is a guy, but did a very good job here – and that is despite using a cliched "all-girls school when everyone is assumed to be a lesbian" setting for the first game... In a way, this series is a really cool example of Western influences and influences of otaku media clashing and melding into this weird amalgamation of themes that do not always agree with each other, particularly in Academy, where the fluffy romance formula did not synergize with the horror plot at all. Maybe playing just the sequel is the way to go after all... '^^
Edit: And only now I realized how sad it is that games conditioned me to consider "main plot" and "romance" as separate entities and be genuinely surprised when the two are connected in a truly meaningful way. Video games suck.

That sound quite interesting. I maybe wrong since I am completely ignorant about Yuri VNs, but I always felt like yuri JVNs were pretty much just fetishization. It seems that EVNs have a stronger tendency to show the more realistic nuances of homosexual relationships. 
 Also, and this is just a side note. Eldritch University is a really good title name.  

Although this is about Nothing & Nowhere you've ended up convincing me to read Lynne!  To be honest I haven't heard of it before, but I'm a sucker for good psychological horror, and I actually really like the artistic design of it based off of the vndb sample photos. 

> a teenager crumbling under pressure from her toxic and demanding family
I feel like this is a poor description because it misses the class aspect of Lynne I thought was somewhat obvious (and calling her family toxic feels overly reductive). It feels clear to me that she's written to be lower class and part of her struggle is dealing with a sense of low worth that brings (cf. her comparisons to Lynne), apart from her generally grimy (in all senses) surroundings.
anyway I guess maybe I'll read this ge later if I can acquire it, idk tho

One thing I've noticed about the best Japanese VN companies is that they manage to keep all elements of their VNs at a high level or at least an aesthetically pleasing level.  Visual elements are pleasing (though the Japanese baseline is much, much higher due to a near-standardization of the art quality in commercial vns, than the Western one), music direction is still a thing (you know, the thing that vanished after the PSX era from regular games, due to the arrival of voice acting), and voice-acting is even more refined (for the most part, though there are exceptions) than what you see in anime.  
The area where the Japanese stumble is writing.  Due to the 'crutch' of voiced dialogue, there is a tendency for many writers to try to tell most of the story with dialogue and sprite poses.  However, that is like using only black and white when you have a full color palette available.  If there was one thing that struck me immediately playing my first VNs, it was the sheer impact of combining first-class narration with the other elements of a visual novel (as well as coordinating those elements).  Heck, I've even encountered games where the appropriate use of music, narrative, and voices have carried the game past lower quality artwork to startling heights (Devils Devel Concept being a premier example) that only get better the more times you play it.  
When everything is high level, however, you wouldn't believe the degree to which it blows you away... the first time I played Dies Irae (In Japanese) it destroyed me completely.  Everything about it quite simply was so different from what I'd experienced previously, while using many of the same elements.  Bradyon Veda did something similar to me, as did Sakura, Moyu and Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo,.  To put it simply, there are works out there that utilize the full 'palette' of what the medium is capable of.  However, I can tell you that very few companies would have the wherewithal to gather the talent that can create such games.  
First, writers with that kind of sheer brilliance are rare.  Second, companies that might gather such writers would not be able to handle them, because each one needs different things to work at 100%.  Third, maintaining all the other parts of a game (Art, VA, Music, and direction) at the same high level even if you have the writing staff has got to be a serious pain in the rear.  
To be blunt, Visual novels have a lot of moving parts, and just throwing extra people at it doesn't usually work (very few games with multiple main scenario writers or artists have turned out well, though assistants sometimes work out fine).  In retrospect, is is amazing that I can name double digits worth of games that have drawn on every element of the medium to its fullest, considering what a pain it must have been to put it all together.

That is a completely different definition from the one Zalor presented though, touching on a seperate issue. It kind of makes both claims true... But when it goes to the mode of engagement, I'm definitely with Zalor on this. In my experience, reading VNs is close to reading a novel or watching an engaging show, when it goes to mental effort. I can watch YouTube or play traditional PC games for hours/days on end, but VNs are way more emotionally stimulating and I need proper mood and mental energy to tackle them.
...and that's why also get burned out on them and anime pretty regularly, even though I still consider those my favourite forms of entertainment. :C

The art really was the draw for me, but after reading around 10 - 15 minutes of it I have to say I was kind of confused as well. Glad I wasn't the only one since I thought maybe I was just stupid. I think it has a problem where the art is nice, and for a different story it could have worked perfectly, but in Unfamiliar Work it felt like the art and writing were in conflict with each other. Not helping each other out which is the relationship art, writing and audio should have in a VN. 
I guess I'll have to try Eislyn's Apocalypse next. 

Indeed, Unfamiliar Work looks very different, which is something to appreciate, but I'm still not sure what that story was about.
I'll be curious about your impressions of Eislyn's Apocalypse when you get to it. Zakamutt lately accused me of overhyping stuff in my game jam articles and I can't say he's totally wrong. Just the fact that you confront it with very amateurish entries can make a game that is just decent look like something really impressive or make you ignore some flaws... Which I don't think is a massive problem, as these posts are more about selecting noteworthy games from the sea of random weirdness, but if someone has really high standards they might expect a lot more than a game jam title can reasonably deliver. :>

I love it when a VN actually make proper usage of having multiple endings by expanding on different things with each different route. That sentence alone convinced me to check out Eislyn’s Apocalypse. 
Also the honorable mention, Unfamiliar Work, looks to have quite an interesting art style. At least based off of the sample art on the itch.io page. 

Looks interesting. Wishlisted.
Thank you for the review!

Oh boy...
Now I'm really curious what their other titles are like.

Hah, how interesting! I actually found Nise meandering and (relatively) boring. Basically everything between Bake and Second Season felt like filler, not bad really, but nowhere near as captivating. I'm always amazed with how people's opinions differ.
That EVN though, looks quite interesting. Might check it out this weekend, considering how short it is... My reading output is at disastrous levels though. I should start working on NaNoRenO coverage soon and if this quarantine apathy doesn't leave me I think I'll be working on it for the next three months.

huh, i may read this sooner than later now.

Looks pretty interesting, added it to my wishlist. Thank you for the review.

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way.
That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method.
...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way.
That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method.
...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

If it flaws properly with the story, I wouldn't even call it an infodump. I think when people talk about those, they mostly mean the first kind you mentioned: just walls of information bringing the story to a hold for a significant amount of time. But for this reason, I kind of feel an infodumping prologue is underutilized in VNs. You can quite easily avoid putting clunky exposition in the middle of your game by explaining the basics of the universe at the beginning. Maybe devs avoid it because it's cliched to do a narrated introductions like that, but particularly in EVNs, I feel like a lot of storytelling issues and confusion could be avoided that way... 

Yeah, I think there are worse ways to do exposition than dumping it right at the start, and I know quite a few TV shows and movies that do this and are still quite good. It's just very hard to do in a way that keeps the reader invested enough that they remember the important information. As for the encyclopedia thing, I don't think reading an encyclopedia entry is worse than a wall-of-text dump or some character monologueing exposition, at least as long as it's not information that's new to the protagonist. Of course none of these options should be the primary way of expositioning, as imo a story should always try to tie every important piece of information to its characters' motivations or its themes or whatever makes sense through a scene where something actually happens imo, but if that's not possible or highly inconvenient, putting it outside the main text often is a better choice imo.
Do you think this particular VN could have gotten a good prologue when the writers weren't able to write an encyclopedia that actually explains things?

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way.
That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method.
...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way.
That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method.
...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

There's a like of mine here. Is this the original post except you edited it? I had no idea it had been updated!
If the (updated) were at the start of the title then one would be more likely to realise something has changed when they see it in the recent blogposts box (for long titles the second half does not appear in the box).

So I already knew about about the Manami one since I'm actually keeping up with the author myself, and it's something I'll get to someday.
Of the rest of the original post I became particularly interested in Package Chat and I think I went as far as downloading it? Anyhow, today I'm actually quite likely to try it out, since I've somehow motivated myself to try shorter things, so much so as to risk venturing onto the realm of fan games, for example.
(Have you played Life is Strange? Did you know it has a fan VN 'Love is Strange'? I played a route and it was the sweetest thing.
As a result I've been inspired to infiltrate the den of wolves that is the Doki Doki Fan Game/Mod community and I've found a couple of things I might try there. Edit: Not the one you reviewed because I trust your judgement and out-of-characterness kills me inside.)

Holy Mother of Horrible Translations, this is kind of hilarious, but mostly I'm just baffled trying to imagine what the original line looked like. I don't think it went according to keikaku.
Wow, it's the 90s all over again, with Japanese devs having no idea how to localize stuff... "How can we appeal to this mysterious Western audience? Maybe with CHEAP TRANSLATION and EVEN CHEAPER DUBBING! That sounds perfect."

this person (not me) goes through one of the routes, I won't take responsability for any hearing damage.
although those videos don't go through the worst meme in the old translation.

Holy damn, a crappily-dubbed Engrish localisation? That's kind of amazing in its stupidity. Will have to look for some playthrough of that, but also happy the game received a second chance after being mistreated like that. :]