babiker

Holy shit we recorded this back when Summer Pockets had just come out.
Anyway, in this lovely podcast me, @babiker, @Zander, and @Barry Benson (rip in permaban) talk about fan TL today (spoiler: it's dead, or maybe it's not dead, or maybe it's complicated). Then we talk about the past and present of today's Fuwanovel. Turn up the volume when bee speaks, he can't into audio editing.

Well, I said I was gonna post my image if they made an actual thread... Thinking you guys never would... (why Nayleen, why?!?!?!)
 
But anyways, this is me when I'm in my sexy graduation outfit:


 
Who looks like his avatar now, eh? 
 
 

Might these be airbags? 

Where did you hear such rumors? I'll have you know that all my posts should be taken seriously.

What has Fuwa become

You know, I used to think you were a nice guy. Or at least a /funny/ dick. But after seeing your true face this night playing Uno, I can no longer bear your presence upon these forums, nay, the Internet, nay, the world itself. In the voice call you destroyed me utterly, scheming my demise together with your so-called "waifu" @HMN as well as that dastardly brit and the "SECRET" SHITPOSTER YOU LITERALLY INVITED PURELY TO INCREASE YOUR SERVER'S SHITPOSTING POWER. It started out innocent enough when you made a fucking meme because I said "childhood" like "childhoods". I mean fine, it was funny, for the first three fucking seconds. TOO BAD YOU KEPT IT UP ALL NIGHT. But you weren't satisfied with that, were you? You just had to fucking kill my dog too.
Okay let's back up here. You know how Zaka writes about his cooking sometimes? https://disearnestlydisearnest.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/cooking-with-zaka-a-super-legit-tomato-sauce-narrative/ I used to think it was funny, too. But what you don't realize is how he uses these concoctions. Well, he gave a batch of that awful salsa to us, and just as fucking expected it was bland as shit. We ended up giving half of it to the family dog, and now you realize his ingenious plan - yeah, he was actually trying to poison poor Mahmood to death. YOU INSULTED ME ALL NIGHT AND KILLED MY DOG.
You know what I want now, don't you? It's time for a battle at the crack of dawn, 1v1, random starting order, ACKNOWLEDGE ALL DRAW CARDS, no stacking, Final Destination: Egypt. I'm going to destroy you at uno so hard you won't know what hit you, until you realize that addition by four is triggering your PTSD. Have fun passing your math classes, you god damn conniving wannabe cat.
1v1 me in uno tonight
or I will give you a taste of your own FUCKING SALSA AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROAT.

Pretty sure there are little to no restrictions over here on advertising your own game. We've had VN devs in the past loading this place with discussion about their VNs. I remember blacksands entertainment in particular making a thread every week or so at some point about their game.
But that's really what a lot of us are here for: To talk about VNs. As long as you're not overspamming the forums, any advertising from your part will be more than welcome. I'm sure I'm speaking for a lot of us here when I say we'd like to see you talk a bit more about your games Inverse. I think you only post about your games when they release/ are near release. 
Questions like: What inspired you to make this particular VN? Are ones I'd be very interested to have you and other developers answer, even if it may seem like ya'll are just promoting yourselves when you do.
It could just be that I'm a fan of yours and that I have no qualms with shamelessly promoting my own stuff

Man, such a click-baity title .

As some of you know, I released Unhack 2 recently. People who gave the game a chance mostly enjoyed it, but I had a hard time with discoverability. I hate shameless plugs, and I wanted to do the show-don't-tell thing, so maybe I was naive.

Currently, I am working on The Last Birdling. I pour my life into these games (the earliest ones embarrassingly bad), so I don't want to pretend they're just for fun anymore. Still, I don't want to cross the line. Different forums have different rules, after all. The Fuwanovel forums are pretty kind and generous in terms of guidelines. Can I throw a couple of questions out and see what you think?

1) If we have a new project to announce, should we restrict it to the Original VN Projects section, or can we post about it on Visual Novels Discussion? Is it a case where if it is a Western VN, it can only sit in the Original VN Projects section? Big Japanese releases clearly are allowed in Visual Novels Discussion. I am happy to follow the rules if everybody else does the same, but yeah, I would like to know what the situation is.

2) Do we have issues with creators plugging projects as their very first post on these forums? There are places where that will constitute an instant warning or even ban. Actually, I guess this one doesn't apply in my case since I've loitered here for a while now.

3) I want to write up some articles related to my upcoming games, which also links to bigger discussions. Is it okay with you guys if I shared them on this board? Hopefully I'll come up with something worthwhile (while sneakily talking about myself which shames me so much) along the way.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be honest guys. Hopefully you won't find this annoying. I've cared deeply about my work for many years and really want my situation to improve .

Yo. You might recognize me as one of your old followers. I was really looking forward to this VN, and I recall you being quite active over here, sharing the development of your characters and everything. When you suddenly disappeared for a while I feared the worst, that this project had failed that you abandoned it all together. I'm glad to see that you managed to salvage something from all your work, and I hope you find success in your new endeavor. After hardship comes ease friend

Yo. You might recognize me as one of your old followers. I was really looking forward to this VN, and I recall you being quite active over here, sharing the development of your characters and everything. When you suddenly disappeared for a while I feared the worst, that this project had failed that you abandoned it all together. I'm glad to see that you managed to salvage something from all your work, and I hope you find success in your new endeavor. After hardship comes ease friend

The Best Eroge Ever. 5 minutes of shitty references to games that no longer exist. I'd like to imagine it'd be an internet mystery, something which no one could quite make sense of. 

Hey guys. Remember me? Well I killed Black Sands about 5 months ago due to production costs being too high but I shifted my efforts to a much more cost efficient comic series in the same universe.
I wanted to share with you my personal story because I feel it is a very interesting perspective from an EVN developer.
 
The PAST
I worked on Black Sands, Legends of Kemet for a little over a year.. I had updated my project page here close to 50 times and I had this very unusual story. In 2015 I launched my first kickstarter and failed miserably. Most people when they fail, they blame others for not reading their story and getting immersed. 
I didn't believe this at all. 
I felt I failed because my art was subpar and thus people never got the chance to read my story. I then recruited an amazing artist by the name of hydriss to create my VN. We worked for a year to get it ready for a kickstarter relaunch and overhauled the story to be more engaging.
We had success finding major investors but they never had time for our production so after waiting months for a cash injection, we cut ties. We were then 10k in the hole.
I killed production of Black Sands then and there and decided to do a much easier comic book series that was targeted at kids and their parents who were fans of DBZ and what not.
I named it Kids 2 Kings. Not because it was a good name, but because it was a memorable name. It's really hard to forget.
 
We created our first issue and released it on the madefire app and had great reviews. We then launched our kickstarter, which is in its last days now.
The funny thing is we recently made a trailer for kids 2 kings and it went viral and facebook and twitter.
Now sitting at 190 retweets and 235k views on facebook, Kids 2 Kings, is becoming my dream come true.
Now it is extremely unusual for people to completely turn around and do something else but it is a very UNIQUE experience that you might want to learn more about so I AM OPEN FOR ANY AND ALL QUESTIONS.
BTW, thanks Fuwa for keeping me motivated all these years when i was developing black sands. I couldn't have gotten to this point without you guys.
 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165752716/kids-2-kings-comics-about-4-kids-7-kingdoms-and-1
 
 
 

Introductions:-
You can skip this part, it's a personal rant on reviews, so it has nothing to do with the VN in question
About za game:-
Among the more respectable VN forums, Monster Girl Quest is looked down upon as a joke of a game that can't be taken seriously, but that's mostly because what it seems like at first sight. MGQ is a "nukige": A game that's allegedly designed to make you... Well, fap. (Or at least that's what people tell me it is, as VNDB doesn't really tell you if it's a nukige or not... But eh, I trust in the people!) If you add to that the fact that it's a nukige were you get raped by monster girls... Well, let's just say that alone is enough to turn away most people, and to be quite frank I myself would never have touched this game if that was my first impression of it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the first time I heard about this game was through a review made by an amazing reviewer by the name of Aaox. I'll leave a link to his video at the end of this review.
Anywho, from my own experience the "nukige" element in this game is questionable at best, and nonexistent at worst. The art, which I'll expand on later, isn't really something most people would call "h-scene material", nor is their much build up to those scenes. So if you're looking for a nukige, Monster Girl Quest is probably not the best option.
"Whom is it for then, sir Babiker?" 
Well, that's what you're supposed to figure out by the end of this review, no? Have some patience, dear reader. I'll go over what this game is all about from the story and characters to the art and music. So enough intros, let's do dis!
Story and Characters:-
MGQ is set in a fantasy-ish world, mainly populated by monsters and humans. The monsters are introduced as the bad guys, and the humans as the good guys. However, monsters don't actually kill humans, they just... well, rape them. From a normal human perspective this doesn't sound that bad, right? Particularly if you have a thing for monster girls... However the goddess of humans, Ilias, forbids having sex with monsters.We start with our young hero luka, a seemingly cheerful young boy who has a strong belief that monsters and humans should "coexist". On the day when he's supposed to receive the baptism of heroes, he hears news of a monster attacking his village so he goes out to protect his land. Luka successfully defeats the monster (unless you really want to get raped), and on his way back he finds an unconscious strong looking monster. Rather than killing the monster like a normal human, Luka tries to wake her up and tell her to leave before the humans get here, which she eventually does. However, Luka returns to the village too late for his baptism. Afterwards he meets up with the monster girl he had found sleeping earlier who goes by the name of Alice and they decide to go on an adventure, despite Luka not receiving the baptism that is required for being a hero.
From there on, Luka goes on many adventures through out the world, meeting all kinds of monsters and humans. As he comes to understand the monster side of the world more he begins to question his own beliefs that he had been taught since birth. Monsters can only ever be female, so isn't the law of the goddess Ilias forcing monsters to resort to rape in order to stay alive? Think about it for a sec: Female monsters can only reproduce by sleeping with males, who are human, and yet male humans are forbidden to do so from the goddess Ilias.
As silly as that setup sounds, this is, in my opinion, where MGQ shines best: Luka's struggle for world peace and coexistence isn't the kind of childish struggle of beating the bad guy that we've gotten so use to in most media. It's a realistic, heart breaking and very relatable battle that Luka wages against everyone around him as much himself. We see him struggle with his contradicting beliefs, his own personal biases towards monsters. While he starts his journey as a typical hero who "wants to defeat the monster lord", it becomes very clear very fast that things aren't that simple, and we see him develop into a very understanding and broad minded gentlemen.
I know I'm already taking too long with this, and I can't go on more without delving into spoilers, but I'm just so bewildered by how amazingly good the story of MGQ is. It's not just good, it's really, really good. Definitely not something you'd expect from the silly nukige it appears to be on the surface. You have terrorist organizations, human and monster kings and queens and the elite 4 whom you must defeat to finish the game-Ehrm, I mean the four heavenly knights... But yeah, you get the point. Fantastic characters with flaws and motivations, an epic plot with political and religious themes, and it still manages to be equally ridiculous and comedic... Not a single fault can I find with it.
But that's enough of that, onto the not-so-gud parts of this game...
Gameplay:-
MGQ is also an RPG along with everything else, as if it needed any more categorizing complications... Anyways, the gameplay in this game is over all very basic rpg stuff. You have your basic attack, special moves that take SP, and a few other choices you can see right here:

 There's a considerable amount of strategy involved that must not be overlooked, some opponents require you to guard at a specific time, in other encounters you must use a particular special move, etc. While the strategy does increase in complexity the more you go into the game, at some point towards the end you're mostly going to be pushing aside enemies with little to no effort, since you know what moves work against what, and enemies that require even the smallest bit of thinking will be very few and far between.
On the other hand, there are a few battles, particularly at the start that are pretty damn hard to beat unless you just talk to Ilias. Oh btw, did I mention that at death, you have the option to ask your goddess how to beat the enemy? Yeah, it's technically cheating, but useful against super hard opponents or when you're just not in the mood for a fight. Fights also have a considerable luck element in a few, especially if you choose a higher difficulty. Then there's the fact that if you lose you'll be... 
Yeah
Art:-
In my opinion, the art is by far the worst part of MGQ. Since I'd rather refrain from sharing most of them with ya'll (for your eyes), here's a tutorial on how to draw your average monster girl: 
First, pick a random animal, fruit or vegetable.
Add a vaguely female looking face somewhere on it.
Add female body parts randomly across the body, and remember: There's no limit to the amount of boobs you can add
Congratulations! You now have your very own unique and probably disgusting monster girl.
Yeah... Unfortunately a very good amount of the art is either that or just outright bad quality, like. Some of these sprites seem to be drawn by children... There is some good art here and there, in fact the difference in quality is very off putting at times, especially when the sprites are talking right next to each other. But in general, you're going to find yourself looking away from the monster girl you're facing. I would talk about backgrounds but honestly who cares about those.  Now, let us move on:-
Music:-
The music is a ok I guess. You have a considerable amount of meh, just your average game music, and a few really bad tracks, but on the other hand you have quite a lot of really good tracks, with a few being noticeably outstanding. Do note that this game is very long, even tho VNDB says its length is average that's only one part of MGQ, which has 3 parts, so in total it's around 70-90 hours-ish. With that considered, this VN surprisingly has the largest amount of tracks I've ever seen, 90 in total, so you're never really bored of listening to one track over and over again. Achieving that alone in such a long VN is enough for the music to get a pass from me.

 
Conclusion:-
This is where a reviewer usually either puts a misleading number that's supposed to show how he or she evaluates the game, or decides for you if the VN in question is worth your time or not. However, in my honest opinion that kind of takes away the value of the review itself: I've given you what I think are this VN's main strengths and weaknesses, it's for you to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons. If your art standards are well, even a little high, then you probably won't go for MGQ(Except you Ten, go read it nao). Then you have the h-scenes... And yeah, I'd understand where you're coming if you don't even consider touching MGQ solely because of those... However, if those two aren't a big deal for you, then there's a lot to be had in MGQ. This is the only VN where I almost never felt bored, for God's sake there's technically no common route at all, which for me is fantastic.
I did say that by the end of this review you should figure out who this VN is for, and I hope you have because I quite honestly have not...
I find MGQ's choice of story to be ironic, to say the least. It's about a young man fighting the prejudice against monsters, yet this very game will probably never get over people's prejudice against itself, nukige, and eroge in general for the matter. I can't really recommend it to most people myself. If MGQ where to ever receive something akin to F/SN's realta nua version, improving the art and removing the h-scenes, something like a steam release, then I'd be more than willing to support and spread it. But as it is right now... It's, just as the great commentator of the visual arts Aaox put it, "We have a game that is, despite itself, surprisingly, well crafted. It is surprisingly, emotional. It is, surprisingly, good. And that's... Well, surprisingly sad."
Aaox's review:
For those OELVN devs out there, please learn from Monster Girl Quest's example. If you have an epic story with epic characters and all that good stuff, invest in everything else that makes a Visual Novel what it is. Try to make it as accessible to everyone as possible. I can't stand to see another epic tale that denies itself from getting the recognition it deserves... Well, that took quite a while, if you read all of that than you have my dearest thanks, and I beg you to share you opinion on this VN.
TL;DR:
 

Hey guys! We're happy to present our key visual! Please let us know what you think.
We're with how it turned out. Here's a portrait version. This will also be the box art for physical editions! 

 
Our demo is also being tested right now. Official release will be soon!
 
 

If anyone wants an hour of high-noise discussion on common routes go ahead and listen to this w
 

Hi everyone . Thank you for helping me cope with my dad's funeral earlier.
About a month has passed since his death. I am back at work and things are generally okay. Our family stuck together during Christmas and had a great time, though there is a sadness in the background because we all know someone is missing. Work helped to distract me from these thoughts, but I felt sad again during the Christmas break. Still a bit up and down.
We have been given a recording of my dad's cremation ceremony. Turned out I didn't have to press that button to send him into the fire. I actually wanted to, but they closed the curtains after the ceremony ended, and I never got to see the casket again. Next time I dropped by, they handed me the urn with my dad's ashes in it. I guess they believe it's too cruel to make loved ones press that button.
No one in my family wants anything to do with that video, but I copied the file onto my laptop, and I'd click through it once in a while. I'm not sure if that's healthy, but I can't help it. It's not like I watch it 24 hours a day. Maybe a skim once every week or two. The video doesn't make me sad, but just kind of empty.
Another confession is, I regret not taking a photo of my dad in his casket. The casket is closed the whole time during that video, so I'll never again get to see him in his final state. I know it'd be so inappropriate to take a picture during a funeral, but I got to spend some time alone with his body in the hospital, so I could've done it then, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
If I had taken a photo, I'd open my phone once in a while to stare longingly at a picture of a dead guy. Not sure if that's messed up. I admit sometimes I open his photos on my laptop, and I touch my screen as if I can somehow remember what it feels like to touch him. A lot of things that might seem cringe worthy, but I can't deny I'm doing them.
I put all the old videos of my dad into a folder as well. When he first died, I watched through all the clips almost right away, yet now, even though I feel like I've recovered, I can't bring myself to click on those videos. Somehow, I can watch that film of him in a casket, but not ones where he's still alive and moving. If I hear his voice again, I'll mistakenly think he's come back to life, and that will just hurt far too much.
I had a dream about my dad recently. It's Chinese New Year, and my relatives came into the house to spend time with us. My dad followed them in when I opened the door. I freaked out, but no one else seemed to notice his presence. He was all smiles and well dressed. Since he spent his final years quite ill, I had not seem him this happy in a long time. When our eyes met, he gave me a winking, "don't tell anyone" sort of look. After that, he didn't look my way again, and he didn't say a word throughout. Instead, he just looked around the house, acting excited, a bit childlike.
I woke up straight after that. The Chinese people believe spirits can communicate with us through dreams. I have no idea if that's real, but the dream brightened my day. Chinese New Year is coming in a few weeks, and our family agreed that when our relatives visit, we will leave the door open for an extra second or two.
Thank you everyone .

Hi everyone! I want to let you know that Unhack 2 is finally out:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/444170
Unhack 2 turned out to be the most challenging project I have ever produced. I ran into production issues that caused delay after delay. Several of them were my fault, but I learned a lot from them and will carry these lessons forward. The game has mixed reviews so far, so we will see if it turns out to be well or poorly received.
Thank you !

I'll second the languages thing.
You also might want to consider something like "VN dev position"?
Something like "VN developer", "VN artist", "VN music composer" or something. Or maybe just give it to the devs cuz who cares about the rest of the team amiright.
Feels a little over the top, and people do sometimes put it in their "rank". But it would be helpful for those who want to ask questions directly to professionals or ask for help in creating their own VN.
This way devs (like say, InvertMouse) don't have to remind everyone that they're VN devs every time they want to post something relevant.
It would also be pretty cool B) 

Maybe a field in which you can see what languages someone speaks and at what kind of level? This might be useful for people who are trying to find Japanese speakers/readers for help? Considering that we're dealing with that quite often here.
That's all I could come up with for now. I hope it's something worthwhile.

Review: solidbatman
Pricing: free, regrettably Amount: way, way too much sometimes Ingredients: Salt, Quinine, Space Anime, Chili Extract, Hatred Nutritional information: not conventionally present, but stamped with unhealthy all over Additional packaging info: Made in the United Salt of America Environmental factors: Tried in multiple settings, like fuwa forums and his own discord chat. The solidbatman experience is not entirely unpleasant, but I can only recommend it to those with specialist tastes. Even then, you will spend an uncomfortable amount of time cringing whenever he does something stupid. At his best, solidbatman can be entertaining, with scintillating wit; however, most of the time he just comes off as salty and unable to handle people liking what he does not. All in all I will rate solidbatman a 7/10, polarity -3 / +2. He does not, IMHO, deserve a position in the hallmark of great people, but he's cool enough to be around that I usually don't regret it.

How vulgar.
 

Uh, I really don't get the extreme pessimism over here... Key just released Harmonia a while ago, a Japanese VN that was released in English before Japanese. If you don't call that making something new, I don't know what is. Why is everyone pretending Key doesn't make anything original at all anymore

Uh, I really don't get the extreme pessimism over here... Key just released Harmonia a while ago, a Japanese VN that was released in English before Japanese. If you don't call that making something new, I don't know what is. Why is everyone pretending Key doesn't make anything original at all anymore

Uh, I really don't get the extreme pessimism over here... Key just released Harmonia a while ago, a Japanese VN that was released in English before Japanese. If you don't call that making something new, I don't know what is. Why is everyone pretending Key doesn't make anything original at all anymore

Uh, I really don't get the extreme pessimism over here... Key just released Harmonia a while ago, a Japanese VN that was released in English before Japanese. If you don't call that making something new, I don't know what is. Why is everyone pretending Key doesn't make anything original at all anymore