bakauchuujin

Here is a list of all the VNs that have officially released in english sorted based on numbers of votes on vndb and the average vote of the titles.
While it is not really a recommandation it should get you quickly cought up on the official releases you missed while you were gone
As for what I recommend well atm I am having a really fun time playing through Princess Evangile so I would recommend that.

The VN community made some insane effort to make the medium more accessible - I'm not sure if we would ever get where we are now without the huge fan translation community that put an incomprehensible amount of work into making this absolutely obscure, mostly unknown genre available in English. We talk about 200+ games translated mostly for free, among them Clannad (reminder - a game with a script longer than all Harry Potter books combined). Aeru's anarchistic vision for Fuwanovel was to make VNs popular by spreading pirated copies with fan translations. This vision was abandoned when the Western VN market started professionalizing and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the initiative is now on the side of those who inherited the manpower and passion of the VN fan translation industry (that is, the publishers, who now employ pretty much all the most talented and dedicated people from the VN FTL community). And the developers, whose expansion to the West was made possible mostly thanks to the huge grassroots effort in the years prior. If they don't do a better job at expanding the niche, I don't think anyone can.
But as fans... Well, this:
Saying this might be getting boring by now, but when you type "visual novel" in google Fuwanovel is one of the first things you find. A community effort at making information about VNs more accessible, helping people get into the medium through initiatives such as the recommendation quiz... These are the things we could definitely do more of and I think they mean a lot. The problem is, Fuwa is in a perpetual state of paralyses, so we can't really use it as an effective platform - this might change though and concentrating on such community sites and contributing to them is the best approach IMHO. There's no "magical" way to make VNs suddenly grow to the popularity levels of Manga and Anime, they'll never get that far, but we can cultivate our little niche and strive to make it more inviting. Anything beyond that is in the hands of people that are actually paid to do something about it.

Agreed. People want instant entertainment and a win here and now. We see a move from movies and certain computer game genres towards casual gaming on mobile devices. A game like StarCraft 2 is no longer as popular as it once was. It shifted towards games like League of Legends. At first glance something of the same nature, but it's fast phased and games ends quickly. You aren't stuck on the same map for hours and you don't save and return the next day. This move towards short and fast interactive entertainment means people click fast rather than stop and think. Visual Novels are the polar opposite. Nothing happens. It takes days to complete and you have to remember what happened to fully understand what goes on later in the story and well written stories will force you to stop and just think about the story without progressing.
Apart from having missed the chance to be big (if it ever existed), I would say the genre is doing better than it used to. It has more mainstream awareness compared to just a few years ago. It used to be something obscure nobody heard about, yet now they are on steam and at least it has public awareness. A lot of people might not like VNs, but at least now millions of people will have an idea of what it is when you mention "Visual Novel". Steam recently made an announcement of policy change and visual novels were mentioned explicitly. Also VNs shows up in places you don't expect, like here (talking about new steam policy):
In other words the public awareness is much bigger than ever before. Availability is like never before because now shops let's you download and the titles will never go out of stock. Multiple stores carries VNs (steam being the dominant one in the public eye). VNs will never be big like FPS or MMO, but relative to what VNs used to be, right now seems like much more public exposure than even the wildest dreams 5-10 years ago.

I have now decided to add openings to the VNs on the list, atm I am only adding openings on youtube from the channel of either the publisher or developer though I might add others later, though if I don't find the opening on youtube at all I probably won't add it.

I don't really find it to be that good. Sekai Project/Denpasoft already have too many licenses and have as of late made it pretty clear that they are unable to ensure the quality of the titles they release when they have so many titles to work on. Honestly I would rather have them take a break with new licenses and catch up on the titles they are already working on.

btw any news on Majikoi? Based on their twitter it seems like they handed out demos, anything else like a rough release date?
 
Btw on http://discuss.jastusa.com/discussion/255270/so-outlaw-django-is-officially-cancelled-now/p1?new=1 the comment Nandemonai got back was "That's a misunderstanding. It's still in the works."

I think the problem for most western fans is that companies going bankrupt means that it is really unlikely that their existing VNs are ever going to get an official english release. 

Ninetail Director Keimaru responded to feedback on the Prefundia on Twitter, which I translated on my Twitter account with retweets linking back to the originals.  I've aggregated the Tweets here, starting with this one.
"Reception [of the Venus Blood Frontier Prefundia] has been generally favorable, but one request that has stood out is to add an editor to the team.  We're currently examining this.
"Ninetail's games truly have a ton of text and the cost of translation is no joke, making this a difficult situation.
"Though I think the situation has changed considerably, a previous translation estimate for a certain Venus Blood title rang up at $300,000--just for the translation--and we gave up.  For this campaign, that would work out to 75% of a $400k goal, and [would be] completely infeasible.
"Like magic, we managed to reduce the cost by 2/3, so it's painful to start piling on more costs again.  If the goal were $200k that would be one thing, but that seems like a pretty infeasible target.
"But I do want to respond to users' expectations as much as possible.  I think we've responded to almost every other request fans made of us with the Prefundia announcement.  Adding this as a stretch goal is certainly one possibility, but right now I'm not sure [about contractual feasibility?].  We'll look into it."
 

Just hope mainstream media don't find out about this title and try to use it as justification to ban all VNs.

Because sex is boring?  Because I'd rather stare at other people's relationships than form one myself?  Because I stopped being able to see real people as objects of sexual attraction?  All of those are true.

I have now made my first proper review which also includes pictures from the physical edition. The review is of Starless since that was the VN I most recently finished. You should be able to find it under blog.

Hi everybody,
It's been a while. I'll make a personal update post at some point, but for the moment I'm posting to ask our users to take the first of what may be a series of surveys we put out this Summer. This first survey is essentially an open invitation to tell me exactly what problems are bothering you about the site, anonymously. My site work this Summer will be heavily influenced by this survey, so if you care about Fuwa and want to see site improvements, please participate.
Survey Link: https://goo.gl/forms/DHWvWdmusKKXZBh43
I want to thank @Emi for a recent email, @Clephas for some recent posts in the forums I've read which gave me encouragement, all our moderators, @Decay for his patience with my crazy schedule and a soft VNTS pause, and all of our users for keeping Fuwanovel alive. Much love to all of you.
Tay

Can't see main site at all, but I can bring some neat forum stats!
We've been really about the exact same for the past year and a half. After we killed torrents there was a big decline, then a soft one until mid 2016 where we reached what we have right now, where it has been more or less stuck since forever. We get about as many new users as we lose old ones, and so the balance remains stable (note that we're approaching what has historically been out lowest period of activity in the year, as you can see by all the declines around this time.)  
We can still consistently reach over 150 topics almost every month, which is already more than when I joined the forums. 
The community right now is pretty stable, though we can't really match up to our relevance in the old days.
But that's torrents for you. 

 
 

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/frontwing

I think you should also add Frontwing.
Nekonyansoft has published one quality title on steam so far and is working on more at the moment so they might be worth adding.
Sol Press is also working on quality titles though they haven't released anything yet.
Also if you want to find the different publishers in the west you can use my list of all VNs officially released in the west since I have the publishers there as well and most of them have at least published something on steam. Of course you would have to check the quality of their VNs before adding the company, but at least it should be somewhat usefull to make sure you don't forget a company.
 

The list in this thread is no longer being updated - any future updates will appear on my blog, in this article.
The Steam Creator feature is quite a neat thing and I think it can be used to promote quality VNs and good brands on Steam, which are now always at risk of drowning in the sea of crap that gets published on the platform on a daily basis. The devs and publishers are really jumping in to make use of the new tools, so I thought it could be a good idea to already start working on a comprehensive list of creators that are worth following from a VN fan's perspective. When I think it's comprehensive enough, I will publish it on the blog, but for now, I will appreciate all the feedback on the format, descriptions I use or the profiles I might've missed. I've only started going through the profiles and I know new creator pages will be popping up every day in the coming weeks, so this will be a prolonged process.
For the descriptions, I include only titles available on Steam in them and state some pretty obvious facts, but I would like this to be somewhat useful even for people that know relatively little about VNs and want to find good sources of those on Steam.
 
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EVN developer and publisher profiles
Sekai Project (localization and publishing company, mostly focused on visual novels; World End Economica, Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius).
Ebi-hime (critically-acclaimed Western VN developer, most well-known for her yuri and horror titles; Sweetest Monster, Asphyxia).
Christine Love (writer and EVN developer, one of the early starts of the Western VN scene; Analogue: A Hate Story, Ladykiller in a Bind).
Hanako Games (EVN publisher and developer specialized in yuri and otome games; A Little Lily Princess, Long Live the Queen).
WinterWolves (Western developer creating RPGs with visual novel-style storytelling, dating sims and romance VNs; Loren the Amazon Princess, Roommates).
Razzart Visual (EVN developer most well-known for her yuri titles; Love Ribbon, Starlight Vega).
InvertMouse (Australian EVN developer, known for unusual, mostly non-romantic stories; Without Within, The Last Birdling)
Lupiesoft (EVN development team best known for creating futa eroge; The Menagerie, Mutiny!!).
MoaCube (EVN developer known for distinct, non-anime artstyle and characterization; Cinders, Solstice).
Zetsubou Games (writer and developer involved in many well-known EVN projects; Sable's Grimoire, Sickness).
Afterthought Studio (EVN developer and publisher; Forgotten, Not Lost; CUPID).
Dharker Studios (EVN developer and publisher, best known for ecchi titles; Army Gals, Negligee).
Sukeban Games (Venezuelan game developer, authors of VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action).
 
Other VN-related profiles
MangaGamer (the biggest VN localization company in the West; Sorcery Jokers, Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome).
VisualArts/Key (one of the oldest and most respected VN developers, now localizing and publishing their own games in-house; Little Busters, Planetarian).
Frontwing USA (Western publishing arm of Frontwing, a major JP VN developer; Wonderful Everyday Down the Rabbit-Hole, Grisaia series).
JAST USA (the oldest VN/dating sim localization company in the West; Eiyuu Senki, Flowers series).
Spike Chuunsoft (Japanese developer and publisher; Steins;Gate, Danganronpa).
Degica Games (Japanese game publisher, occasionally delving into the VN niche; Symphonic Rain, Love Nurse Addiction).
Fruitbat Factory (localization company focused on doujin Japanese games, including VNs; Seabed, Chuusotsu! 1st Graduation).
Idea Factory (Japanese developer and publisher, most known for the Hyperdimension Neptunia games, but also for popular otome VNs; Amnesia: Memories, Hakuoki).
Sol Press (Japanese media localization company that recently expanded into the VN market; Sakura Sakura, Newton and the Apple Tree).
NekoNyan (VN localization company specialized in moege; Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~; Sanoba Witch).
Alice in Dissonance (Japanese doujin circle; Fault series, Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell).
NEKO WORKs (Japanese developer, creators of the Nekopara series; Nekopara, Tropical Liquor).
SakuraGame (Chinese publisher infamous for their low-quality, machine-translated English releases; Tricolour Lovestory; Fortissimo FA).
 
Small developers and publishers
Culture Select (doujin game localization company; Dead End Junction, One Small Fire at a Time).
Top Hat Studios (EVN developer and publisher; Episicava, The Wilting Amaranth).
DigitalEZ (publishing company best known for Western releases of Chinese VNs - sadly, with inconsistent translation quality; Notch - The Innocent LunA, Oblivious Garden).
roseVeRte (Japanese doujin circle specialized in otome VNs; How to Take Off Your Mask; Cafe 0).
NoBreadStudio (EVN developer from Poland, authors of mystery/romance VN SoulSet).
Neoclassic Games (Italian EVN developer, authors of Elisa: the Innkeeper).
Sierra Lee Games (EVN developer, author of the yandere horror title Crimson Gray).
Gosatsu Visual Novels (EVN developer, authors of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair).
NVLMaker (Chinese VN publisher; Gaokao.Love.100Days, Season of 12 Colors).
Nyu Media (doujin game localization company, publishers of the English version of Cherry Tree High Comedy Club).
Hikari Field (VN localization company from China, occasionally producing English releases; Tayutama 2, Magical Charming!).
Träumendes Mädchen (EVN developer; Ambre, Garden of Oblivion).
Tranquil Studios (EVN developer, authors of Oakwood Academy of Spells and Sorcery).
Goldbar Games (EVN developer, authors of the freeware title Detective Butler: Maiden Voyage Murder).
Deadline Softs (EVN developer, authors of Blue Bird).
Kurenaibook (JP developer, author of futa VN Ayakashigami)
Mystery Corgi (EVN programmer and GUI designer, co-developer of AIdol).
Mikołaj Spychał (VN developer from Poland, author of Jake's Love Story).

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

I am thinking of doing more similar stuff where I show some of the different physical copies of the VNs I own, though I think that I will also have a proper review of the VN as well rather than the short opinion I had at the end of this post. So it will be something like a VN review and a showcase of the physical edition. 

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

Recently I looked at Mangagamer's store and found that the limited edition of Princess Evangile only had 35 copies left. While it also is available at other stores like Jlist I would assume that there aren't that many copies left. Because of this I wanted to share some pictures of the physical edition in case there are anyone who is on the fence about buying the physical copy or if there are anyone who might have not known about it having a physical release who is interested in the VN. This also comes with a steam key so that anyone who buys it also gets the steam edition as well as the 18+ editon which is on disc.
This is the slipcase

 
This is the front of the game case

 
Here is the game disc itself

Here is the back of the game case

Here is the front of the original sound track

Here is the disc of the original sound track 

Here is a small sample of what is inside the artbook that is included with the limited edition

I would also end this by saying that I am really loving this VN so far, I have not yet completed all of it but I am pretty close to the Rise ending. I would recommend the VN itself to anyone who would like to play through a lighthearted VN with a little bit of drama to spice things up.

I changed the requirements for titles not from Japan, it is now 6.00+ score on titles between 50 and 199 votes while all over 200 votes are added.