[Merry Christmas, Fuwa!]

8 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

 

 

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

 

[So now Fuwa is really dead?]

On 10/13/2023 at 12:23 AM, Zakamutt said:

well, there's a discord...

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

[In Memory of Aaeru (2013-2023)]

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

[Angepinion: Some Visual Novels Are TOO LONG]

14 hours ago, Clephas said:

To be honest, this isn't one of your better videos...  Length preferences are entirely a matter of taste and most VNs are too short, not too long.  A lot of VNs cut out stuff so that they have excuses to make fandiscs, after all.   

To some extent, I can agree that Hoshi Ori is too long, but for a certain crowd (who want to follow the romance until they are in the grave) it is an attractive game.

Your comments on Dies Irae were malicious and excessive.  It was like listening to a 4chan troll's rant.  I also found it amusing you were comparing it to Fate/Stay Night, when the experiences are completely different except for the beginning.  Instead of pointing out things that could have been cut out to shorten the game (which was supposedly the premise of the video), you immediately decided to bash it in general, which kinda defeats the point of including it in the first place. 

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.

[Been here before]

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

[Found this upcoming engine to create VN games!]

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

[Retrocausality [Now out on steam!]]

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?

[about translating a visual novel to kids]

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.

[Drop your VN project links here! Visual Novel Creators I want to Interview you!]

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

[When does something become more than just a hobby?]

On 2/6/2023 at 5:20 AM, feronicadaw said:

Somewhere I heard that if you do something for more than 21 days, it becomes a habit. If you enjoy doing it for that long, then it's your hobby. This isn't a pretty tale, but it's good that the guy had the foresight to install a hidden cam. Theft of personal belongings in a resort is not an uncommon occurrence. Even the best and most eventful adventure can be spoilt by such unpleasant nuances as loss of property, theft or fraud. You can be the victim of theft or robbery anywhere, whether it's on the street, in a hotel or on transport. To be on the safe side, I check the cities I go to for security CLICK TO BOOK. This information may also be of interest to you.

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

[The Fuwanovel List of Cool EVNs]

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. 

[Indie visual novel publishers? What are my options? What are your experiences with them?]

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

[Discourse on Moe and Moege]

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

 

[Moege is the True Kamige of Visual Novels]

 

[Bowl of Lentils published a 1-hour long documentary about the "History of Leaf"!]

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

[I've had a many fears and troubles publishing my first VN. And so, I want to answer people's questions and talk about the process.]

15 hours ago, HataVNI said:

You don't have to agree with it but in our content-laden society, it is like playing an entirely different game if you don't market.

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. 

[I've had a many fears and troubles publishing my first VN. And so, I want to answer people's questions and talk about the process.]

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!

[Post-White Album 2 salvation]

2 hours ago, mokuroh said:

So I read White Album 2 (all of it). There were so many instances where the characters would just not say anything during a crucial moment and it was just so drawn out and frustrating and haruki manages to get on my nerves every time and the repeating problems were just so annoying and right when they get back together haruki manages to fuck it up again and it feels like everything is back to square one but its not just him the other characters are just as bad if not worse to the point I am actually in disbelief that this sequence of events is happening and it feels like the writer has a sadist fetish for torturing and playing with the readers emotions… 

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

 

[It says air is on ds/3ds but i cant find it]

9 hours ago, Yuuko said:

air is """available""" on gba and older ds can play gba games natively

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. 

[It says air is on ds/3ds but i cant find it]

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. 

[The unforgettable glory of early Idea Factory anime adaptation]

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. 

[Retro visual novels that have english translations?]

I'm not exactly sure what your cut off point is for mid-2000s, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to judge that to be 2005. With that in mind, here are my recommendations:

Saya no Uta (Released 2003)

Symphonic Rain (Released 2004)

Ever17 (Released 2002)

Kana Little Sister (Released 1999)

Crescendo (Released 2001)

The early Key VNs, Kanon and Air (Released 1999 and 2000 respectively)

YU-NO (Released 1996)

Policenauts (Released 1994)

Snatcher (Released 1988)

 

 

 

[Snow by Studio Mebius]

On 6/26/2022 at 1:30 AM, Novel21 said:

Don't worry I like your opinions and I'm going to play lite bit more before I can say, I like it or not.  

I certainly recommend checking it out for yourself. One thing I should mention is that I think the VN's Opening is classic (it's part of the reason I had such high expectations)

 

[Snow by Studio Mebius]

Eh, I mean I don't mean to be a downer but I'm not one to censor my opinions either. When I first felt comfortable enough with my Japanese, I read Snow since I'm a huge fan of Kanon and I heard its Japanese isn't very difficult. Short end of the story, I ended up dropping it because I found it very boring and not nearly as charming as Kanon. Admittedly, apparently relative to other VN fans my standards are rather high. But, I did find Snow to be a tremendous disappointment. And this is coming from somebody who really wanted to like it (since I both love nakiges and snow-settings)

[My VN review/video essay series]

On 5/20/2022 at 2:06 PM, adamstan said:

Yes, that's right. Starting in '90s, adventure games started to have more and more developed stories, and puzzles ceased to be the main point

 

I think one of the reasons for going different ways might be influence of dating sims - which also gave birth to the concept of "routes". Western adventure games just kind of evolved on their own, and stayed linear most of the time, while VNs started as a hybrid between adventure and a dating sim.

I agree, the merging of dating sims with adventure games was an interesting development that was central in creating VNs. If you go back to the Sound Novel era with stuff like Kamaitachi no Yoru, it's not immediately obvious that the two genres (sound novels and dating sims) would work so well together. But because of that hybrid, VNs went in the direction where choices effect the direction the narrative goes, choose your adventure book style. Currently I'm playing some retro point and click games, and its interesting how open to exploration they are, but the structure of the story is more linear as you pointed out.