Zalor

I'm going to necro this thread since I stumbled upon it and think it's a good topic. In University I wrote two theses and one of them was on the topic of Visual Novels. Specifically it was on the topic of the death of the novel and decline in reading in the digital age, and how I think VNs as a medium can counter this problem. I actually boiled down my core points and recently turned it into a documentary/video-essay:
 

I'm going to necro this thread since I stumbled upon it and think it's a good topic. In University I wrote two theses and one of them was on the topic of Visual Novels. Specifically it was on the topic of the death of the novel and decline in reading in the digital age, and how I think VNs as a medium can counter this problem. I actually boiled down my core points and recently turned it into a documentary/video-essay:
 

How has that VN gone under my radar for so long lol. Appreciate the recommendation even though it wasn't directed at me 

Planetarian and Narcissu are usually the ones people recommend to beginners. Also Saya no Uta, if they're into this kind of stuff.
If they are more into the literature side of the genre, I would strongly recommend Adabana Odd Tales. And if they are into yuri, The expression Amrilato is also pretty nice.

If you don't mind horror, you should definitely check out Saya no Uta. Other short VNs I highly recommend are Planetarian and Narcissu. Be warned though, both are really sad. And Saya no Uta isn't exactly a mood lifter either. But they are definitely 3 excellent VNs
Regarding stuff that's less on the depressing side I would recommend Juniper's Knot and The Dandelion Girl. Both of these are really short though. Each only take slightly more than an hour to read. I also would recommend checking out Katawa Shoujo, as while it isn't exactly a "short" VN (it isn't a long one either), it's split up into parts. Act 1, which is the first part only takes like 3 or 4 hours to read. If you complete Act 1 and you're liking it you should continue with it, and if not, feel free to drop it.
Lastly, while I can't personally recommend it since I haven't read it myself (honestly, shame on me). Phenomeno is a short VN that a lot of people I know liked. 

If you don't mind horror, you should definitely check out Saya no Uta. Other short VNs I highly recommend are Planetarian and Narcissu. Be warned though, both are really sad. And Saya no Uta isn't exactly a mood lifter either. But they are definitely 3 excellent VNs
Regarding stuff that's less on the depressing side I would recommend Juniper's Knot and The Dandelion Girl. Both of these are really short though. Each only take slightly more than an hour to read. I also would recommend checking out Katawa Shoujo, as while it isn't exactly a "short" VN (it isn't a long one either), it's split up into parts. Act 1, which is the first part only takes like 3 or 4 hours to read. If you complete Act 1 and you're liking it you should continue with it, and if not, feel free to drop it.
Lastly, while I can't personally recommend it since I haven't read it myself (honestly, shame on me). Phenomeno is a short VN that a lot of people I know liked. 

So, the recent release of The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass went pretty unnoticed so far, but currently seems to get some attention thanks to a comment on VNDB. It actually has a rating above 8.5 with over 60 votes there, which is unusually high for an OELVN. There aren't even that many JVN's that high. It's a scifi mystery thriller that actually looks pretty professional. It uses NVL style, which I personally don't like that much, but if the story is good it might not matter that much.
So, for everyone who isn't already jumping on Muramasa and looking more for a SciFi mystery VN in the spirit of the infinity series titles like Ever 17, this might actually be worth a look.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432500/The_Sekimeiya_Spun_Glass/?utm_source=vndb

I find a lot of EVN romance goes 0 to 60 in 3.5. Like, they'll have a few normal, mundane conversations and then suddenly *BAM* they're soulmates. I realize the EVN scene is relatively young and as such tends towards shorter script lengths, and so the real estate available to develop a romance is limited. Even so, I think it's very doable to have a short but well-paced romance arc. But there's gotta actually be an arc, not this spike in the graph thing.

This is fascinating

Always like to hear about how people get into VNs, I'll give this a watch later today

There's something fascinating with how this thread is evolving with every iteration though. Like, he never directly responds to feedback or discusses stuff in the way forums users usually do, but you can see the effects of our responses every time this pops up. The framing is always slightly different and new arguments are replacing the ones that were most violently rebuked.
It's as if this was some kind of spell, with the author looking for that one exact set of words that will magically conjure his dream project into existence. I haven't seen anything like it before.
And @Nenor5VB, maaaaaan... Above all, this is not really a dev forums. You can somewhat hope to find translators here, but there's very little chance that someone even capable of furthering you cause will ever read what you publish around here. I've said this before, but there are outlets out there that are way more fit to host this topic – particularly after it has been utterly depleted around here. Lemma Soft, VN Dev subreddit, maybe CloudNovel forums or other platform-related sites. You're just talking at void at this point and if you keep it up, I'll seriously consider removing all future threads for redundancy.

Apologies, I should have been a little more specific. I'm not saying VNs should completely move away from adult content, and there are certainly genres and individual works that benefit from such content. Rather, I'm just advocating that more VNs that focus on stories where adult content isn't necessary would be an overall positive thing. Similar to how outright censorship stifles creativity in the way you detailed, the still prevalent expectation of sexual content in many commercial VNs reinforce the opposite problem. Where romantic and sexual scenes get forced in for the marketing of an 18+ tag promising sexual content, but where it clashes with the overall focus of the story. For example, Steins;Gate, Umineko, Higurashi, etc would be objectively worse works if they had forced sexual content. There is no serious need for it in those stories. Likewise, to go with an example I used in my video, Sayooshi would be an objectively worse work without the sexual content.  
So I'm not fundamentally anti-sexual content. But I think if VNs lost the reputation of "VN = porn game", it would be overall beneficial for the medium and could attract more people (both creatives looking to work with VNs, as well as a broader audience for VNs) if that reputation for adult content weakened. 

Very salient insights. I enjoyed watching the video.
Couple of thoughts maybe to add:
--> What about the relationship of VNs to anime, considering most people came from the latter.
--> What is the future of VNs, given the continued decline in reading literature?
--> The relationship of adult content to the literary value of VNs

Yeah its a interesting and unique Visual Novel,Thanks for the words and of the game o/
 
I am discovering very Visual Novels because of this game.Oh i understand.i guess i will use more here sometimes 

Hey, I'm really happy to hear you liked Digital Seclusion and that it led you here. This forum isn't as active as it used to be, but it's far from dead and still a really good place to discuss VNs! 

Hello Everyone,you can call me rax.
I'm new here and i really likes Visual Novel.I found this forum because of the user called Zalor playing his novel called Digital Seclusion and  ended up making me want to create an account on this forum.
i am playing Visual Novels since 2017 and these days i can say that i really like Visual Novels a lot.
i hope i can enjoy in this forum because i am very reserved and not very talkative.
My Favorite Visual Novels are Muv Luv Alternative (i read all trilogy and some spin-offs but i prefer Muv Luv Alternative),Fate/Stay Night,Clannad,Steins;Gate,Tsukihime,Sengoku Rance and some other Visual Novels.
i like the Visual Novels of Key too.
Well i guess thats it.Good day to all ^^/
 

Ever since I read If My Heart Had Wings/Konosora, I've always wanted to try out at Glider ride at least once. I was able to accomplish that, and even make a short vlog about it. You can view my experience in this video:
 

Good morning good people of Fuwa! As the person that is keeping the main site slightly less dead than it could've been, I decided I could use a space to post about new content without making new threads every time. Here I (or possibly other authors) will post updates whenever something goes up on Fuwa's frontpage – feel free to comment & discuss.
This weekend I published a review of ebi hime's The Mermaid of Zennor, a very interesting and very angsty psychological drama VN. Consider checking it out and leaving your impressions here or in the comments under the article!

Todokanai Translations Presents
White Album 2

https://vndb.org/v2920 & https://vndb.org/v7771
Description
Howdy 🤠
The patch will include translations for the entirety of White Album 2. That includes Introductory Chapter, Closing Chapter & Coda.
Beyond that, the patch also revises the contents of the questionable partial patch we released before, including retranslations of whole parts that were beyond saving.
Further beyond that, our lovely programmers have managed to fiddle around with the script to include 14 new PS3 exclusive CGs to our patch. 
That's 1 new CG for introductory Chapter, 11 new CGs for Closing Chapter, and 2 new CGs for Coda. 
Example
Old (boring) https://i.imgur.com/1eImCMQ.png
New (cute) https://i.imgur.com/rQIbc5k.png
 
Todokanai Translation Team
Project Lead Gauche Suede
Translators Frogstat, Gauche Suede
Editors Krizs, Gauche Suede, Oddflex
TLC Frogstat
Programmers Avuxo, Jonathansdf
Typesetter Observer of Time
Graphics Diamondketo
Playtesters Shinyyyjoke, Epika07, Slaanesh, Evil Pony
 
Download
https://todokanaitl.github.io/patch/
Also consider joining our discord server https://discord.gg/5rrxEUN
 

Third topic now about the same thing. 

Hey there developers, and potential developers, of Fuwanovel. I have been interested in visual novels for quite some time and have come across so many posts by people who are saying that they want to develop a visual novel but can't due to their lack of ability in programming.
Therefore I thought it might be interesting to have a programming-free solution for it and looked into it and found quite a few engines which allow creating Visual Novels without code. But almost all of them cost money, which most starting developers do not want to pay, or they are heavily outdated/abandoned.
I have been working with Unity for quite some time and was looking into making a package for Unity that would allow you to create visual novels without coding. Of course I want to create it in a way that you can add on to it if you do have the ability to code in C#.
Long story short, my actual question is the following:
How much interest would there actually be in a FREE Unity package that would allow you to make a visual novel without coding?
One of the main reasons I feel that Unity is a great choice is due to the sheer amount of resources out there for it. So if you wanted to add anything to your project or the framework, there would most likely be a tutorial or code snippet for it somewhere.
Anyways, I just wanted to know if there would be any interest in it. I have already started working on a prototype and already have most of the initial dialogue system setup.
If there would be any interest, feel free to reply post your opinion and questions.
PS, I hope this was the right thread to post this question in. If not, feel free to move it mods.
Regards
VNX

From a marketing standpoint (A) is probably always better. But from my perspective as a consumer, I always prefer (B). It respects consumers more by being straight to the point, where as (A) is focused more on creating hype above all else (just look at the gap between the expectations movie trailers create, and then the actual movies themselves). (B) also allows more creative freedom, since you can change your work as many times as you want until you release it. But with (A), especially if you raised money via Kickstarter, you have to commit to the originally advertised mission. Else you risk pissing off your backers and followers. 
Overall, (A) seems more corporate, restrictive, and sometimes even fake. Whereas (B) feels more personal, honest, and open to creativity since it's not as focused on winning over the crowd. 

Feel free to skip this if you are not interested in the history. I won't be offended lol.
There's a sequence of sound changes that made the "c" character sound like an /s/ in the word Narcissus and other Latin borrowed words. The gist of it is that before a front vowel, namely /e/ and /i/, the /k/ became palatalized into a /t͡ʃ/ (sounding like the "ch" in church), which later became simply /ʃ/ (sounding like the "sh" in sharp) and then lost its palatalization again to become /s/. Since this didn't happen with all vowels but front vowels only, we get that weird alternation where sometimes the "c" sounds like "k" and sometimes like "s". English borrowed the problems along with Latin and especially French loanwords.
I had read the VN and for some reason that never occurred to me! That answers the question then, thank you!
Since I'm not a native English speaker I wouldn't dare suggest a most "natural" pronunciation, so I just tried to offer you some options with their corresponding justifications. But for what it's worth, I agree, it's probably best to not overcomplicate things. If everyone seems to pronounce it like you did in your 3rd recording, Narsissu, and considering the -su stands for "suicide" and those sounds are preserved very clearly in that pronunciation, I'd definitely be leaning towards this one.