Zalor

Okay, but seriously, next year for sure it'll be Ami's year

One thing that has always baffled me is why Discord is more popular than traditional forums. As a medium of communication I much prefer the forum format. Not to mention that information is much better stored and searchable via web browsers when it's on a forum as opposed to a Discord server. There are also certain topics and conversations that work better when you can write out a thought out reply rather than a series of instant messages

I suppose now's as good a time as any to share an article/blog post I did on Aaeru for a completely different site and thus a totally different audience. I was afraid the article might have been viewed as controversial here since it seems like modern Fuwanovel really likes to pretend it never was a piracy site, and my sympathies with Aaeru and her vision perhaps leak a bit strongly. So I was hesitant to share it here for a while. But at least for me personally, Aaeru left a weirdly significant impact on me despite never really talking to her, so I'll leave this here for anyone curious: A story from my hometown on the net: Aaeru, the piracy advocate who vanished

Interesting that you say that most VNs are too short. I feel like VNs are awfully padded out a lot of the time. Instead of showing us what's necessary, they'll beat us with the same SOL dynamics for ages and consider that "character development." That said, I completely agree with you on Dies Irae. I feel like Ange doesn't like the work (which in and of itself is fine), but used the video as an excuse to bash on it without sticking to the topic at hand. I should also add that the writing in Dies Irae's fight scenes is superb and I couldn't disagree more with this take from the video. It's about one of the few VNs where I actually go back time to time and reread the fights.

Welcome back! By any chance do you remember what your old username was?

That's a cool find, thanks for sharing. Just curious, why do you want to leave Renpy?

Nah, only Marin. She was my anime waifu for 2022. I want a crossover with her and Yumeko from Kakegurui where they lezz out

Would

Looks really cool Thanatos, just the kind of thing up my alley. Also, I liked the look of the ONScripter short VN you posted about on your twitter. Are you planning to release that as well sometime?

Both True Remembrance and The Dandelion Girl are wholesome enough for kids. Neither has an Arabic translation, but they are both reasonably short (VNs tend to be long). But whereas True Remembrance is around 6 hours long, The Dandelion Girl is only around 1, so it might be easier to start with that one. The Dandelion Girl is also an adaptation of a this short story, so it could also be used as a gateway into reading literature if that's your intention.

Sounds like you're working on some cool projects Emily! I sent you a pm responding to your questions.

Holy shit the bots/shills are getting smarter. The first two sentences were actually relevant to the thread... but nothing past that

Glad you revived this sort of thing. Anything to connect the gap between the EVN and JVN crowd I think is a good thing. I don't have too much to add, but here are some I quite like that I haven't seen mentioned here yet: Juniper's Knot: A short, well written story that nearly a decade later still leaves quite a good impression. Focused on the interactions between a lost boy and a demon confined within a magic circle, it has some folklore-ish vibes to it. However, the bouncing between the two perspectives of the boy and the demon girl adds a modern flare to a story that otherwise does feel like it could be within a Grimm Fairy Tales book. This is all not to mention the beautiful art. For more info here's a review. Digital: A Love Story : "It's not what you say, it's how you say it that matters", is the first thing that comes to mind with this VN. The story itself is quite simple, but the presentation is so excellent that it makes up for where the story might slack. Especially as somebody who is quite fascinated with old computers, I loved how the whole story is told through BBS messages. BBS standing for Bulletin Board System, and was essentially the internet before the internet. Its presentation mimics said environment very convincingly as well. The Dandelion Girl: Another entry in that short and sweet department. Although often overshadowed by it's more successful sibling (the other 4chan visual novel, Katawa Shoujo), I think its charm shines through. And that's really the appeal I find with this VN. It's nothing amazing, but has a soulful charm to it. I guess I'm just preserving the classics with this post, but I'm sure if @Plk_Lesiak sees this, he will have some more up to date VNs to mention. Btw, glad to see that mine got a mentioned. Even if it's just to be polite.

It does seem that for indie VN devs (practically everyone in the EVN sphere), we're kind of left to fend for ourselves. Even with Sekai Project, from what I've heard they still expect you to do a fair amount of the marketing yourself. I suspect a major reason for this is that there isn't enough money in the EVN niche to support a publisher that wished to deal exclusively with EVNs. I haven't looked carefully into it though, so I'd be curious to see what others have to say

Ah, yes. The age old philosophical question in Otakudom. "What is moe?"

Bowl of Lentils is amazing. Been a fan of his work for a while. He definitely deserves the shoutout here

I'm quite aware of that, and I realize that if your aim is profit and/or popularity my stance is an absurd one. But not everyone creates for that reason. That is not to say that recognition or profit is a bad thing, but for me they are secondary. I should say though, going with my flier analogy that there are two ways to distribute fliers, and my problem is only with one method. You can stand on a street and shove them in peoples faces, or you can put them up as posters around town. In both cases people can see them, but one is forceful and creates an obnoxious first impression. Even if it grants better results, it's that forceful type of marketing I find distasteful.

Hey, first of all congratulations on getting Siren's Call out. I haven't read it yet, but it looks quite interesting and I can tell a lot of heart went into it. You mentioned that marketing along with management were you're weakest skills. I can't comment on my management skills since my own VN (link in my sig) was small scale and aside from the editing, which was done by a long time acquaintance on this forum, the only other person I worked with was someone I'm very close to irl. But I definitely know that I also suck at marketing. Would you mind talking about that a bit? What have you learned about marketing, and what were the difficulties for you? Personally marketing makes me feel like a prostitute. Instead of letting people discover my work organically, I'm suppose to shill it and implicitly promise people that they'll love it. Like handing out fliers, we all know that 99% will end up stepped on and in the gutter. Something about putting my work in that situation seems like it's cheapening it. Also, I heard that social media is a big part of marketing, does your experience agree with that assessment? I'm toiling away at a much larger scale VN project now, so I appreciate you sharing your perspectives!

Agreed, except those were all the reasons why I hated it. You might like Symphonic Rain, but it's kind of clear our tastes are different. Symphonic Rain definitely has emotional twists involving the relationships between the characters though. Which sounds like what you're looking for. But the characters aren't nearly as stupid about why they do the things they do

You weren't kidding! Apparently it's called Air Pocket Advance. There's also a Game Boy Color version called Air Pocket: The GBC version looks surprisingly good all things considered (it sounds like shit though). The GBA version actually looks (and sounds) pretty good and seems to be a decent port. Even the opening theme sounds pretty good on the GBA version. And to believe there are people out there that shit on the GBA sound chip... All the information about it is in Japanese, but you can read up more about it here. Apparently the way the port works is that they developed special software that would convert the files of the game from your computer into a GBA compatible version. So unfortunately they don't provide a simple ROM for download, you need to have the game and figure out how to convert it yourself with this very outdated software. Although I guess theoretically, their converter might be compatible with a translation patched copy of the AIR. If you go to the link I provided, you can find a picture of them paying the port on a Nintendo DS, which is where I think the misconception that it's a NDS port came from. As Yuuko mentioned, it's a gba port being played on the NDS.

There is certainly no official port of Air on the Nintendo DS. It's possible that if you know what your doing with DS hacking and homebrew stuff, there is a way to get it to work, but that's obviously more of an engineering project than any practical way to read Air on the go.

Kind of relevant, but Tsui no Sora (the 1999 precursor to Subahibi) has an animated OVA, and it's considered by some to be the worst anime to ever exist. I'm sure there's worse, but damn is it near the bottom of the barrel.

That has more to do with this site being a ghost town within cyberspace. We're just the old farts who refuse to leave

I want to help you out, but from my perspective they all look equally trashy (I hate moe and loli designs with a passion). But going by your descriptions the first one seems most interesting, which is ironic because its cover art left the worst impression on me of the three. I'm going to trust in your impression though and say go for the first one.