Zalor

I would like to say before anything else, that this project is first and foremost an open love-letter to the visual novel medium. I've officially been reading visual novels (granted, on an on-and-off basis) for 10 years now. Hell, I've been posting on these forums for over 7 years. It's safe to say that visual novels are an ingrained part of me at this point. Whether across discussion threads here or blog posts, I've written a lot about my thoughts on visual novels, especially about those that I like. However, even with blog posts that I took lots of time to carefully write up and polish, I never felt like I was able to truly convey my genuine love for the medium. I think with this visual novel, Digital Seclusion, I've finally been able to do that to some respect.

 
Plot Synopsis: Isolated in a room repurposed into a personal shrine to esoteric Japanese media. Our nameless protagonist has dedicated himself to a collection of retro Japanese computer games, with a particular fondness for early visual novels. Although decaying in a slovenly existence to the untrained eye, his retreat into digital life is enriched by the scripted interactions with various charming 2D girls. His one purpose in life is to chronicle his thoughts and reflections on each of the digital worlds he immerses himself in. However, one day while pulling out another visual novel to review, a girl leaps straight out of the cover art and begins interacting with him, face to face. But perhaps most shocking of all, in a completely unscripted manner.
Information: Digital Seclusion is completely free. In terms of its length, I would estimate it to be between 1.5 ~ 2 hours long. The current and most likely final version of this VN is version 1.20.
Download: https://thezalor.itch.io/digital-seclusion

When it comes to presentation in VNs, one discussion that i've seen is that VNs are more like plays than novels. I'd agree with this take because authors that become overly descriptive with every action as if writing a novel makes the reading more tiresome than if a visual or sound effect was used. Thinking about it a bit more, i went a step further and now i think that sprite presentation in VNs may be akin to puppet plays, because the art limitations make it to that the characters can't have the same amount of expressions as regular plays do. Add that to my tiny experience with messing with VN engines where if you're making a conceptual script beforehand, making it in a play format feels more confortable than in a novel format. Finally, the way CGs and sprites are combined work similarly to comic books, where the cooldown moments make more use of certain angles and tricks that the present medium has to make the scenes more interesting while the big key moments have more complex imagery, with the definition of a big key moment being up to the narrative genre.
I'd like to know more thoughts about it. What storytelling media would you compare VNs to from a presentation standpoint?

I would like to say before anything else, that this project is first and foremost an open love-letter to the visual novel medium. I've officially been reading visual novels (granted, on an on-and-off basis) for 10 years now. Hell, I've been posting on these forums for over 7 years. It's safe to say that visual novels are an ingrained part of me at this point. Whether across discussion threads here or blog posts, I've written a lot about my thoughts on visual novels, especially about those that I like. However, even with blog posts that I took lots of time to carefully write up and polish, I never felt like I was able to truly convey my genuine love for the medium. I think with this visual novel, Digital Seclusion, I've finally been able to do that to some respect.

 
Plot Synopsis: Isolated in a room repurposed into a personal shrine to esoteric Japanese media. Our nameless protagonist has dedicated himself to a collection of retro Japanese computer games, with a particular fondness for early visual novels. Although decaying in a slovenly existence to the untrained eye, his retreat into digital life is enriched by the scripted interactions with various charming 2D girls. His one purpose in life is to chronicle his thoughts and reflections on each of the digital worlds he immerses himself in. However, one day while pulling out another visual novel to review, a girl leaps straight out of the cover art and begins interacting with him, face to face. But perhaps most shocking of all, in a completely unscripted manner.
Information: Digital Seclusion is completely free. In terms of its length, I would estimate it to be between 1.5 ~ 2 hours long. The current and most likely final version of this VN is version 1.20.
Download: https://thezalor.itch.io/digital-seclusion

I would like to say before anything else, that this project is first and foremost an open love-letter to the visual novel medium. I've officially been reading visual novels (granted, on an on-and-off basis) for 10 years now. Hell, I've been posting on these forums for over 7 years. It's safe to say that visual novels are an ingrained part of me at this point. Whether across discussion threads here or blog posts, I've written a lot about my thoughts on visual novels, especially about those that I like. However, even with blog posts that I took lots of time to carefully write up and polish, I never felt like I was able to truly convey my genuine love for the medium. I think with this visual novel, Digital Seclusion, I've finally been able to do that to some respect.

 
Plot Synopsis: Isolated in a room repurposed into a personal shrine to esoteric Japanese media. Our nameless protagonist has dedicated himself to a collection of retro Japanese computer games, with a particular fondness for early visual novels. Although decaying in a slovenly existence to the untrained eye, his retreat into digital life is enriched by the scripted interactions with various charming 2D girls. His one purpose in life is to chronicle his thoughts and reflections on each of the digital worlds he immerses himself in. However, one day while pulling out another visual novel to review, a girl leaps straight out of the cover art and begins interacting with him, face to face. But perhaps most shocking of all, in a completely unscripted manner.
Information: Digital Seclusion is completely free. In terms of its length, I would estimate it to be between 1.5 ~ 2 hours long. The current and most likely final version of this VN is version 1.20.
Download: https://thezalor.itch.io/digital-seclusion

I would like to say before anything else, that this project is first and foremost an open love-letter to the visual novel medium. I've officially been reading visual novels (granted, on an on-and-off basis) for 10 years now. Hell, I've been posting on these forums for over 7 years. It's safe to say that visual novels are an ingrained part of me at this point. Whether across discussion threads here or blog posts, I've written a lot about my thoughts on visual novels, especially about those that I like. However, even with blog posts that I took lots of time to carefully write up and polish, I never felt like I was able to truly convey my genuine love for the medium. I think with this visual novel, Digital Seclusion, I've finally been able to do that to some respect.

 
Plot Synopsis: Isolated in a room repurposed into a personal shrine to esoteric Japanese media. Our nameless protagonist has dedicated himself to a collection of retro Japanese computer games, with a particular fondness for early visual novels. Although decaying in a slovenly existence to the untrained eye, his retreat into digital life is enriched by the scripted interactions with various charming 2D girls. His one purpose in life is to chronicle his thoughts and reflections on each of the digital worlds he immerses himself in. However, one day while pulling out another visual novel to review, a girl leaps straight out of the cover art and begins interacting with him, face to face. But perhaps most shocking of all, in a completely unscripted manner.
Information: Digital Seclusion is completely free. In terms of its length, I would estimate it to be between 1.5 ~ 2 hours long. The current and most likely final version of this VN is version 1.20.
Download: https://thezalor.itch.io/digital-seclusion

I see a lot of people advertise their visual novels here, and this is the first one in a LONG time that actually has piqued my interest and impressed me. You seem to have genuine passion for not just your idea, but for visual novels as a medium. The premise for your VN is also quite interesting. Please keep us posted as you make progress! 

Team Beyond has started developing its Fading Sky pilot project!
Fading Sky is a visual novel storytelling game. This is a tragic and sad story set in a fantasy world after a global magical catastrophe. We were inspired by a series of games like Fate (Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero), Science Adventure (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head), and of course Utawarerumono.
GAMEPLAY
The main features of the Fading Sky gameplay:
- narration in the style of a visual novel with full voice acting (in English and Russian).
- two main characters, the player's choice.
- non-linear story with a choice.
- the ability to influence the fate of two worlds at once.
- Thoughtful and detailed dark fantasy setting.
- study of the history of the world and characters.
- torn pages of the book "The myths of Arret" describing the history of the world of Arret, which can be found in the most unexpected places in the game world.
- more than 10 story endings.
- eroge-element for PC versions of the game as a separate patch.
GRAPHIC ARTS
Fading Sky is a 2.5D RPG with fully animated scenes and characters. FullHD native resolution (1920 x 1080). A team of talented artists is working on this.
PLOT AND CHARACTERS
Fading Sky will tell you a tragic tale of the last moments of Arret's world. A story about those who will witness this, together with whom you will learn the history of the rise and fall of this once beautiful world.
The tension of our story will strike from the very beginning of the narrative and will increase as the reason for which three of our contemporaries ended up in this dying world is clarified. In an attempt to understand what is happening, they will somehow close the last chapter of this mysterious story.

LORE
Inspired by various fantasy stories and a little bit of Celtic mythology, we created our own universe, which we called Fading Dimension or simply FD. This is elaborate lore, at many the era before the events of this game.
We hope that Fading Sky will become just a small island in the Sea of Void of our history and a starting point for the implementation of all our ideas. We are also working on a card game in the FD universe rewound several eras before the start of the disaster.
TECHNICAL PART
The game is being developed on the studio's own engine FadingEngine, which is built on C++, OpenGL, and FMOD technologies, which allows the project to be ported to almost any of the well-known gaming platforms, from Windows/Linux to iOS/Android and even PS/XBOX.
AS AN INTRODUCTION TO STORY
History turns into legends, legends into myths, myths into fairy tales that are quickly forgotten. Perhaps once the world was different, lived according to different laws and unspoken rules, carried other creatures and other plants on its body. Served as a book for thousands of forgotten but massive stories.
One of these stories has not yet received a full ending. Although its beginning has long been forgotten, the trace still stretches from the depths of eras and grows with a heavy echo with each shift of hands of the world clock.
The beginning of the story has long been forgotten... but its end is near, and it will touch the three inhabitants of the city of Bristol, which is located somewhere in the British Isles.
2026, May 13th. From the very morning, it was raining, and the sky did not clear up that day again...
NEAREST PLANS
Soon, we plan to release a demo version of the game (Fading Sky: One dream before), which will become the zero chapter of the whole story, i.e. it will be a separate short backstory a few hours before the main plot of Fading Sky. We are also planning to release a trailer, where we are ready to show both an animated introduction to the game and some of the gameplay itself (where we will try to do without story spoilers).
After that, we hope to launch the company on Kickstarter or Pathreon (we haven't decided exactly yet, but we already have interesting material rewards for our future bakers).
We are glad that we have begun work on this project and sincerely hope that you will like it.
Subscribe to us on social networks:
www.facebook.com/groups/fadingskygame
www.vk.com/fading_sky_game
Follow us on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/tea_beyond
Leave your feedback - we welcome any opinion from our future audience, especially if it helps us expand our universe and, as a result, will interest you!
See you soon in the spaces of FD!
With you was a game designer and programmer, composer and screenwriter, and a little more the head and producer of the Fading Sky project German Espoir.

Hey Novellers!
I'm a newbie here, but with decent knowledge of indie game development. I always liked visual novels, and especially FF series' storytelling concepts.
I wanted to make my own visual novel (mixed with RPG elements), but was too bored to learn Ren'Py, and couldn't afford Visual Novel Maker.
So I started to build my own visual novel engine, and I think it turned out pretty good. I though it could be useful for others too, so I just released it - for FREE!
The game engine's URL:
https://talefab.com/
My main focus points were:
No coding required Short learning curve, but deep enough to make a decent game Items with interactions and conditioning Easy branching The product is released now, and I just made some test games:
A short visual novel: https://talefab.com/game-preview/the-lost-amulet-g1.html
An escape room: https://talefab.com/game-preview/escape-from-my-home-g11.html
A word learning educational game: https://talefab.com/game-preview/find-lucifer-g2.html
A demo game, which can be imported in a new project: https://talefab.com/game-preview/find-lucifer-g2.html
Feel free to register, create and play games, and share your opinion.
Your voice matters!
PS: some screenshots

Good morning everybody,
Tonight I'm planning on finishing the update process for the forums (including all themes) as well as finalizing some back-end sharing necessary for Emi to take over my admin duties. I'm still alive and around, paying for the site (etc.), but enough is enough and this is what needs to happen. 
I'll post later today with more definite hours/timezones for the update, and will hop on Discord closer to the appointed FuwApocalypse hour.
Much < 3,
Tay

A VN isn't coming immediately to mind other than Umineko, which @Silvz already recommended.
If you don't mind reading a manga or watching an anime, Monster by Naoki Urasawa might be just what you are looking for. The main character goes on a huge quest after discovering that a boy whose life he saved years ago grew up to be a serial killer. There is also a character later on in the series who was responsible for several tragedies, but who retires from public life and is living the remainder of his life in guilt of what he's done. Both the anime and manga of Monster are excellent, so you can't go wrong with either. 

U-MI-NE-KO
 

Burn which capitol, the capitol of Fuwanation? As a die hard patriot of these forums, I have remained loyal to Fuwastan from the beginning. Even now I refuse to step foot on enemy territory, notably r/vns. Even our colonies, the Fuwa discord, I can count on one hand all the times I've ventured over there. And while I'm on the topic, it should be said that the Fuwa discord is a renegade state. They have no true reverence for our homeland, I heard they even have their own memes! It won't be too long before the secede from us like the traitorous Americans did to Britain. Fuwanese may be my 2nd language, but it's the one I choose to use on a daily basis. Burning down the capitol would be to burn down our history. To dishonor Aaeru who first built this place up, and then Tay who has maintained it since her untimely disappearance. If you want to burn down the capitol of Fuwaland, you will have to go through me first!

Burn which capitol, the capitol of Fuwanation? As a die hard patriot of these forums, I have remained loyal to Fuwastan from the beginning. Even now I refuse to step foot on enemy territory, notably r/vns. Even our colonies, the Fuwa discord, I can count on one hand all the times I've ventured over there. And while I'm on the topic, it should be said that the Fuwa discord is a renegade state. They have no true reverence for our homeland, I heard they even have their own memes! It won't be too long before the secede from us like the traitorous Americans did to Britain. Fuwanese may be my 2nd language, but it's the one I choose to use on a daily basis. Burning down the capitol would be to burn down our history. To dishonor Aaeru who first built this place up, and then Tay who has maintained it since her untimely disappearance. If you want to burn down the capitol of Fuwaland, you will have to go through me first!

I was in honest to God disbelief when I first heard about this. I thought a Tsukihime remake was just a meme at this point. I hope they are actually serious this time

Watched a few videos of it and just comes off as a plain version of Deus Ex to me.

I feel you about wanting to join a community to grow with other VN developers. I'm in a somewhat similar boat, however part of my problem is that my vision for visual novels is quite different from the standard established genres. So finding people that share my vision is exceptionally hard. If you're working on an Otome VN, I think there are a fair amount of other Otome VN developers you should be able to find and hopefully befriend. @Plk_Lesiak gave great suggestions. Lemmasoft in particular is THE place where you will find other EVN devs. 

Functionally, the new Microsoft console probably has the best hardware for VNs.  Sadly, the lack of a foothold in Japan will hinder them - just like it has with each iteration of the xbox - in actually getting any games out of Japan on their system.  
Consoles have pretty much become a stand-in for people who can't afford gaming PCs over here.  A gaming PC generally bottoms out at $1000 and there is no limit to how much one can cost, if you go all-out.  Even the current generation of consoles is half that, which means the trade-off in flexibility is attractive for people who just want to game.
VNs have minimal requirements - relatively speaking - but high-end VNs sometimes have ridiculous ones for the content (I mean, why should any VN have a 3GB RAM requirement?  It isn't like there is all that much in the way of gameplay).  
The fact that most VNs are based off the PC produces the need for ports, which cost a surprising amount of money to produce sometimes (depending on the original engine and the system they are porting it to).  Like any port, the benefit vs cost analysis is everything to most companies.  If people buy the VNs that get ported enough to justify the cost, then we'll see more get ported and sent over here.  
Personally, if I was going to play a console VN, I'd want it on the Switch.  The Switch is more convenient than either of the other two systems, with the ability to easily connect it to a TV, its light weight, and its portability.  I really wish the PSP version of Ayakashibito would get ported to Switch, lol.  
As for popularity?  That's more questionable.  It's going to be years before we see any real results from the console market for VNs.  There just aren't a lot of JVNs that aren't otomege on consoles just yet, even over there.  Without the content, there is nothing to lust after, after all.
Note: Understand that when I say there is a 'limited' number of JVNs on console, I mean this in a relative sense.  One reason that VNs have managed to create a niche over here is the sheer number localization companies have to select from with JVNs.  The number of 'classics' and high-quality VNs in general makes it possible to cherry-pick, whereas consoles don't, as of yet, have the numbers to allow for that.

I think the Switch is a great platform for VNs for 2 reasons. You can read on the big screen, and you can read in a more portable manner (like lying in bed with the switch in your hands). In a sense, it kind of baffles me that in the west at least, VNs have pretty much been exclusively a computer thing. Whereas in Japan, the PSP and Vita were a major platform that a lot of VNs got released on. But the Switch is the perfect in between by being both portable and a console. Idk where this will take us in terms of future releases, but I am quite hyped for the Umineko port for the Switch. 

I think the Switch is a great platform for VNs for 2 reasons. You can read on the big screen, and you can read in a more portable manner (like lying in bed with the switch in your hands). In a sense, it kind of baffles me that in the west at least, VNs have pretty much been exclusively a computer thing. Whereas in Japan, the PSP and Vita were a major platform that a lot of VNs got released on. But the Switch is the perfect in between by being both portable and a console. Idk where this will take us in terms of future releases, but I am quite hyped for the Umineko port for the Switch. 

That's funny, my first response to seeing this thread was "Definitely not Dies Irae". Different strokes for different folks I guess lol

Hello there, after many hours I compiled this playlist of free visual novels that are available on steam, the playlist consists of full game playthrough that means you can easily view them entirely! :)
 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-hO6ds-2J4B5WlaYLt5A0TBljLxibSRu
 
The fallowing visual novels are available in the playlist:
Kidnapped Girl;
A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986;
One Thousands Lies;
Fallstreak;
Lynne;
Ambre;
Palinurus;
Dissolving;
Trick and Treat;
Blooming Nightshade;
Cirno's Perfect Summer Vacation;
Kill or Love;
The Witch in the Forest;
Without Romance.

Hey all, I just wanted to drop by to let you know that a VN I translated has just been released~
You can buy it at the following sites:
JAST USA
Mangagamer
DLsite
Enjoy! And let me know if you have any questions :3

Nyaners takes me way back. I remember her well before she ever did the whole V-tuber thing. Her review of KissxPiss KissxSis was... something: