arosia

Oh hey, I've made it to 500 likes, let's start again!!!!
 
 
...yeah, no, even I'm not that obnoxious. I'll wait at least to 2000 posts before I start shouting for attention again.
As the thread died out, I've just wanted to thank you all guys for participating in this twisted masochism session, but above all for those last few months of fun that Fuwa gave me. I've spent absolutely unreasonable amounts of time here, got scolded a few times by my GF for constantly checking the Forums, suffered sleep deprivation from trying to fit regular VN sessions and writing blog posts into my schedule... But mostly, had an absolute blast, more than in any place over the internet in the last two decades and in ways that helped me get through some serious RL setbacks without ever feeling broken or alone.
Apart from the people that already got a shout-out in the previous post, it would be unfair for me to not mention @MaggieROBOT for sparking my interest in the Otome and BL niches, @Narcosis for being the person I most enjoy disagreeing with and @Zander, for the reasons he knows about (just get your shit together and start logging in again, you shitposter ). And @arosia for inspiring me to aim higher and be more confident about my writing. I surely missed a few people I'm ought to thank more directly, but it's the whole community that makes this place what it is, so I can't possibly mention everyone that deserves it.
I hope you guys will be able to bear my presence in the future, because it will be hard for me to stop hanging out around here at this point - especially when my mission of helping OELVNs conquer the world is far from over.

A lot of developers don't really see the value of getting involved in a community. A lot of them don't do much in the way of marketing, even.
It takes a few games--if you last that long--before you realize that it's a privilege to be able to create and have people give you their attention.
People respond well to mutual respect and grace.
Poor thing really did mess up here. Not only did they get a lot of negative attention, but they also missed out on one of the great VN communities available to them.

I don't think it's anywhere near 15% TBH.
Also, when it comes to what @EastCoastDrifter said, devs rarely getting involved around here nowadays just goes to how limited the benefits of that would be - our community is not that fond of OELVNs in the first place and without chance of being featured on the frontpage, which still receives decent traffic, going beyond posting basic info about your game and maybe following with a few updates is not worth the effort, if you think about potential sales gain. Just dumping one post and never coming back might be a fairly mean thing to do, but it doesn't surprise me or seem unreasonable from the pragmatic point of view.
Which doesn't change the fact that posting this kind of an unreadable mess and not even bothering to do anything about it is on another level of not giving a fuck.

I've noticed that this has been an ongoing thing on Fuwa. Out of all the users registered here, only about 15% are active and engaging in the community, and about 3% of them are developers that actually form relationships with other users like @arosia. The remaining 85% are sadly abandoned accounts that have only made one or a couple of posts. They join Fuwa, and then disappear just as quickly. They're like ghosts.

Hello everyone!

Today I wanted to share with you the VN I've been working on with some friends. After that, i wanted to share the peculiar history behind the development, as we've had many questions that can only be answered by asking you directly. It is important to us that you give us your feedback, whether you like the project or not (especially if you don't!):

“Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for The Answer has been proclaimed. Blessed be those who know how to listen.”
                                                                                         -Nova City foundation chronicles
In a world torn apart by crisis, war and hunger, our old leaders faced a dilemma: either find an answer to the conflict or leave humanity to its imminent destruction. They chose the answer. But this answer was not found, it was built.
 
Nova City, humanity´s new hope

Nova City is a vibrant symbol of hope and progress. It stands over the ruins of the war-torn world we left behind. Bursting with life and commerce, it seems unthinkable that the city itself is also a massive computer built to house “The Answer”: a system created to govern in the most rational and optimized way, excluding humanity from the exercise of political power. The Answer has brought prosperity to Nova City, and its citizens have lived devoid of major conflicts for over two centuries.
 
Inside an apartment of this city, you wake up to find a tarot card that someone must have slipped under your door. The message is clear: The Fortune Teller has chosen you as the next victim. Afraid to leave your apartment, you rush to your computer to make a call that will change the lives of many people (or even end them) as the delicate balance of power in the city begins to shift.
Embark on this noir tale of mystery and intrigue that will pit humanity’s reason against our own inevitable emotional nature.
 
 
Game & Features

From the start, you have locked yourself in your apartment to hide from the serial killer called "The Fortune Teller". In such a predicament, you’ll be interacting with Nova City and its people through your computer’s screen. From your computer, you’ll be able to make calls, tap into people’s phones and gain access to confidential information. You’ll also be able to hack into security systems in order to, for example, tail someone through traffic light’s camera feeds.
During the course of the story, you’ll be able to create alliances with Nova City’s most important factions, gaining powerful friends (and enemies) in the process.
Hacklist is currently being developed for PC/Mac.
 
Features:
Emotion Compass: Allows you to see how people feel, and how their emotional state changes as you touch certain topics. This will allow you to call bluffs, understand people better, push them to act in certain ways or set the mood for intimate conversations.

Profiler: You'll have access to police reports for everyone you speak to. The profiler updates itself as new events unfold, and will give you some insights and hints about your contact's personality, letting you know how people may react differently to the same emotions.

Hacklist also presents some new mechanics to the usual VN structure in the form of Apps you can use at any time during your experience:

Skall: A videochat app where most dialogues/scenes will happen.

Watermelon News: A social network where you'll be able to read people's posts and Nova City News.

Remote.hack: Access networks, hack into security cameras, tap phones, and get into other people's computers to reveal their darkest secrets.
 
The story behind the story...
(and how your opinion will decide the changes we'll make)
So! We're a team of 6 living and working in Caracas, Venezuela. This is a project born a couple of years ago in a itch.io game jam, back when it looked like this:

(and yep... that's me!)
 
After the jam, the project leads wanted to continue the project. I couldn't at that time because of my job, so they formed Caustic Games to do it. That's how the second version of Hacklist was born. It was a much more polished product, and it had a new cyberpunk/vaporwave style. This version was approved on Square Enix Collective, where you can still play the demo.



(That's Kentai on the center. They grow up so fast! *sniff*)

(A screenshot of our pseudo-antagonist Clive Jackson. Remember the name, we'll come back to him in a bit!)
 
The campaign was successful, and we received a lot of feedback that helped us detect some flaws we had. Around this time, 2 of the main artists left the project, and the remaining artist and myself (i had just joined the team) couldn't accurately replicate the previous artist's style, so we were forced to abandon a style we liked in favor of making a new one that we could handle better.
 
Eventually, we rewrote the whole story, keeping the same characters and archetypes mostly intact. But this story was to be set in a futuristic utopia, rather than the bleak future from the previous cyberpunk setting. After some time, we decided that a futuristic Art Deco setting was perfect for the mood of future, progress and empowerment we wanted Nova City to irradiate.

...And then we hit a pretty hard roadblock: none of the characters we were designing were aesthetically cohesive with either the tone and setting, or the environment itself. So we started to make some tests on styles for the characters...

...then we made some more...

...and MORE...

 
We finally set out to define the style and technique we would have for the in-game art, and it went down to these three versions of Clive Jackson (the guy i told you to remember from the previous version!):

 
Aaaand that's where we stand now! we decided internally to go with the third option, as we felt the technique blended better with the background and the character was designed to resemble an Art Deco statue, from the volumetrization to the edgy style from illustrations of the 1920's, 30's and 40's.
The thing is, we kind of went open minded about changing the anime style to something that better reflected the world where the story is taking place, but none of us has seen more than a handful of non-anime visual novels, and have no idea if this art style is actually appealing or if it is, on the contrary, something that would disuade readers. 
 
Here's where you come into play! We need your feedback and opinion about the project, as asking you guys directly is the only possible way for us to know we're on the right track. We would love it if you took the time to watch the concepts, mockups and screens and tell us, honestly, which images do you find more appealing, and if the current state of art style is something you might want to see in a VN. Do you think non-anime style in VNs is something detrimental? or do you think it-s a welcome change of routine? Please let us know what you think!

Thank you for reading through the end! Anything you can comment on the project is a HUGE help for us!  

-Jorge Veloso AKA "Vel", Artist at Caustic Games

Our Team     Hacklist on Facebook    VNDB entry still in progress...

I think it's pretty clear what you were trying to say.
Moderation is what separates 4chan from Reddit from Fuwa.

I think everything sounds really good so far.
 
Quick summary of current ideas
- Post your favorite VN character/couple (no OCs)
- Include reference pictures and why you like them
 

 
Picking the winner
- We'll do a max post count (200?) and a time limit (1 month?); the moment either of those is reached, we'll end the contest
- We'll do some form of random selection for the winner; probably using post numbers
- All replies count as an extra entry for the OP of a character/couple; please quote the author in your replies/discussion and try not to excessively bump your own entries
- The winner can use the image as an avatar/signature or on their website(s)
- Everyone else gets to enjoy some free fan art and gets to meet some cool new VN characters!
 
Other thoughts
- We should keep this Fuwa-only, at least for the first contest (to work out kinks)
- If everyone enjoys this, we'll do more rounds of the contest down the line (maybe every 2 months or so?); if you don't win the first time, you'll eventually get another chance
- We'll throw a quick link to our game in the OP, but once the thread gets started, we'd like to become a bit more invisible; we want this to feel intimate and fun; make this about your favorite VNs and the characters you love!
- If anyone has any more thoughts or suggestions on how to do this, please share them! We to make this very community-centric.
 
Unless something comes up, we'll start this up on March 5th (next Monday)!

Hi everyone! n_n 

i find it really warm and cozy that you guys have a board for this!

So, I'm Vel from Venezuela. Designer, Illustrator, Game developer and procrastinator extraordinaire!

Good vibes for everyone!

こちらこそ！
"For this"? It's for many things, I guess. For some it even seems to have little to do with VN.
Anyways, Welcome to Fuwa, I hope you'll have fun here! 

K
The fanbase is very young, Fuwanovel, Reddit, and Lemma have all done surveys where the average age of the community is 21ish. Compare this to the average age of a video gamer who's easily in their 30s. There are certain side effects to this dominance of youth, imo.

Thank you so much! Please look forward to our future updates!
Thank you for noticing! Yes, we tried to tackle quite a theme for a debut project. Gotta make that impact lmao
Genres don't count as spoilers if you haven't seen the 'crying' part xD Thank you very much!
Sweet! 
Thank you so much!
can't help it  
 
oh, by the way, it's here. Catch the date.

 

Welcome to the forums and good luck with your Kickstarter. This is one of my favorite places anywhere. <3

I'd welcome it but I think including VN characters would be nice to fit the community.

Plk stands for pathetic loser know. It was meant to be "I know I am a pathetic loser", but he screwed up trying to figure out the grammar.

You've wasted 4 months of your miserable life here and you even messed up your 500th post. I think your doing a nice job roasting yourself sir, to the point where I genuinely feel bad for putting the finger on the sore spot. 
Now that the roasting is done. Glad to have you around Plk_Lesiak, it's always interesting to read your posts. Grats on the millstone! 

Let me try this one, even though it's quite strange to me here when I supposed to say congratulation to you 499th post lol.
Well, just stopped posting in this community will ya? Your post was mostly shitpost and spam that I didn't care of. What are you want to even say in this thread, are you a masochist or something like that? You even mistook 499 as 500. I guess you're pretty hopeless on this one.

Congratulations at Plok Lesbianic for his 500th post!
Maybe you should reward yourself with a real name, Mr. OELVN!
What does Plk_Lesiak stand for, anyway?
Is that like something you randomly translated from Japanese?
Hmmph! And congrats, love! <3

I had this same exact experience when I started with unTld. Reading VNs that were around my level bored me to tears and felt like studying. Except, even with studying I had more fun. Then I found a VN way out of my level but that really interested me. And although my progress was kind of slow, it was really fun.  

I think it's pretty clear what you were trying to say.
Moderation is what separates 4chan from Reddit from Fuwa.

I think it's pretty clear what you were trying to say.
Moderation is what separates 4chan from Reddit from Fuwa.

Your casual linking of homosexuality to degeneracy is not welcome on the forums. Either you were memeing like Kaguya says, or you were serious and broke rule 6 of the Fuwa guidelines. Kaguya's being nice and giving you the benefit of the doubt, I however don't and think the forums can cut you and not lose a second of sleep over it.
Lucky for you I'm not a mod.

Hey there~

Lily (aka Arosia) told me that I should come check out Fuwa. 
This sounds so fun! I can't wait to know who your favorite characters are. 
What do you love/hate about them? 
Why do they make you giggle or melt? 
I love VNs-- Hey Lily, @arosia am I allowed to post my favorite characters on here? 

I do the same thing. I spend a lot of time working, so I don't get a chance to play or watch things all that often. Maybe 2-3 hours a day max.
I actually love to dance, so I tend to dance and do a lot of other maintenance type of things while watching videos; sometimes they're games and I've been watching a lot more let's plays of VNs lately.
I like buying and supporting developers (especially smaller devs and indie devs), but for me it's so much nicer to be able to experience most of the game without having to tie up my fingers and hands.
It makes exercise something to look forward to; a time to relax and indulge in fun experiences.
Thanks again for the excellent topic/discussion. Going to read through all the other replies now.

As I'm out of likes, I'll just verbally support this statement. Considering the idea behind the contest and the reward in offer it should get some attention. I'm into many fairly obscure VNs and I'm a sucker for fan-art, I'd probably be willing to write a whole thesis to see some of these characters drawn by someone this talented... If I wasn't broke all the time I would probably commission people on deviantART to draw my favourite yuri couples on a regular basis.
Right... @arosia, would you consider allowing couples beside single characters? I think it would also fit the theme of your game quite well.

I like the idea! Ultra thanks to Ivy for contributing with art!