The House In Fata Morgana demo is out!

[Vorathiel]

The House in Fata Morgana: Demo Now Available!

http://blog.mangagamer.org/2016/04/05/the-house-in-fata-morgana-demo-now-available/

https://vndb.org/v12402

From Black Dragon Hunt ask.fm, guy who was doing programming on this translation:

Quote

What already translated visual novel would you say Fata Morgana is most similar to?
That's a very, very difficult question. Partly because I haven't played a lot of translated visual novels, and partly because I'm not sure there IS anything quite like it out there.
On a rather superficial level, you can draw a lot of comparisons between Fata Morgana and Umineko. There are eight chapters (and an epilogue and two interludes), each of which tells a self-contained story, and it can be broadly divided into two "parts" of four chapters each. (Thematically, you could also make an argument for dividing it into three parts of 3/3/2 chapters, but that doesn't do much for the comparison.)
There's a witch, but no logic battles or murder mysteries. It's set in a mansion, but rather than being on an island at a set point in time, it exists in multiple different locations at various points in time. It uses filtered photographic backgrounds with hand-drawn sprites, but the art's actually (extremely) good, and it has a healthy number of CGs as well. Uh, there's a butterfly. And people die. But really, that's about where the similarities end.
On a less superficial level, the individual stories draw on and have parallels to fairy tales and other classic literature--Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, bits and pieces of Shakespeare, and more. It's heavily allegorical, deeply human, and digs into themes of self-acceptance, the importance of communication, and a lot more.
But who knows, maybe there IS some other VN out there like Fata Morgana, and I'm just not aware of it.

I don't know much about this VN, but I felt in love with it from the first moment I saw screens and few tags on vndb months ago. Hopefully it is as good as I want it to be.
Demo have only 246 MB, but it's supposed to be "beefy".

[XReaper]

about time & i truly hope for mg advertising this kamige to the absolute fullest to their abillities as it would undoubtably throw my frail little heart into the depts of the abyss if handled otherwise.
either way, enjoy i guess...!

[Kawasumi]

definetly interested in this, I have yet to read stuff that isnt "moe" artstyle wise (if you can even call it that lol)

[littleshogun]

My comment on this VN, well the graphic was less bright than normal VN which is anime like and the art style for the character wasn't exactly my style, but if someone like this art style that's okay too. For VNDB score, it's quite interesting that average score was around 8.6 while Bayesian score was at 6.7, which mean this game wasn't quite popular and well-known before translation. Maybe the way to know if this game was good or not was through playing it. And one more thing, this game didn't had voice so obviously I couldn't talk about seiyuu who play a role here. Maybe I'll try this VN later, and to vorathiel, my request is that could you change the title of the thread to 'Fata Morgana Discussion' or something like that after May 13th. The reason should be obvious and thanks in advance to hear my request.

[SenpaiFingers]

No h, not my type of graphics, forced plot, no voices, that maid character looks ugly as hell. 

My opinion: total waste of time 

[littleshogun]

Although it'll be released next week, I'd found it quite interesting that EGS was scored this game quite highly compared to VNDB (Although if we ignored Bayesian rating it was almost the same though). Here's the EGS page for the proof. The score was at 90 with 117 vote, although if I want to play it later or not in the future would be another matter here. Well, if I could get past the art style though.

[Scorp]

VN is nice, I am reading demo right now, and I like it.

Good easy to read text, creepy atmosphere of mysterious old castle, actually quite unique sprite graphics (alas resulted in male character look too girly). So will tell, what I think after I finish the demo, but so far very good vibes from this one.

[ChaosRaven]

I think the actual sprites don't look so bad, they are just more western style and not manga style at all. Though the female ones will hardly win a beauty contest.

The bigger problem are the backgrounds which look pretty awful because the artist was apparently too lazy to draw them himself and used photographs with a simple blur filter instead. I really hate that.

I still have some interest in the title despite that because I like gothic scenarios, but I had a bit too many disappointments with story VN's lately, so I'll pass on this one at least for now. The ratings might be high, but there aren't many of them which is always a bad sign. They might be just from people with 'excentric' tastes.

[Scorp]

I finished demo, and it was quite long, actually. Overall - it is surprisingly good, I definitely look forward for next week release.

First, about backgrounds - actually the game gfx is quite surreal, and photos are not just "photos", but were processed the way I would not really tell if this was photo or a drawing. So it did not bothered me the way it was in Tsukihime or in Higurashi, it blended with sprites quite good further in the story.

About sprites - I do not know, why you think they are ugly, I liked them.

But back to the story, what is good and why. There are two scenarios in demo, so I could only base my opinion on them. 

Basically premise is that you are master of the house (more like castle), at least Maid insists that you are, but you cannot remember anything. To deal with this amnesia Maid decided to show you some episodes, related to house, to make you remember something... But as this house is cursed - you got the idea what stories would be? Prepare for twisted tragedies, gruesome murders, insanity and inner ways of human nature.

This demo somehow reminded me Valkyrie Profile:Lenneth stories, which all ended in death. Here it is more like tragedy, but it is really heavy - well, this should be expected from a gothic tales.

First story is about... love in the noble society, I guess? Androgynous-looking boy Mell is coming of age, meet a strange girl and fell for her, but as she is of different social state and moreover - he have a little sister Nellie, with whom he was unseparable since childhood... Probably would be a happy ending?

Then second story... That's is really quite graphical, not like you will see lot of corpses on the screen, but intense text and sound effects could make you shiver. A bit disturbing, but as it is told in omake, this is the most violent story, so do not expect it to go Kara no Shoujo style. Story is somewhat like perversed "Beauty and the Beast", mixed with "Phantom of the Opera" (the book I mean, not the musical). A beast somehow manages to become master of the house, and, I forgot to mention - house grants his master's wishes. So insane beast who only wants bloodshed gets what he wants. But then two girls come to our sight - one was blind and seek shelter in the house, other was searching for her belowed, killed by the beast... You will see the conclusion yourself

This concludes the demo, but ritobito wrote a review for a whole game, so you can check his views - he seems sort of fan of this game, at least I never before saw him writing articles about games he edited  http://blog.mangagamer.org/2016/05/06/a-look-into-the-house-in-fata-morgana/#more-12791

I would like to see, how they are supposed to tie in all the stories, including beast and wheeping whelp Mell. Should be fun  

So, I will definitely read full version. Game is somewhat unique, at least I never read anything like this in VNs (probably only old titles like Nocturnal Illusion and Divi-Dead had similar vibes, but they were less depressing), so I believe ratings are trustworthy. Of course, if you are not in the mood for the above, it would not get any big impact - as you probably drop the game in first chapter. But I would recommend to give game a try, as indeed it was something else.

[XReaper]

just in case of someone finding him/herself in need of some unbiased & constructive advise, here you go:

@Conjueror was kind enough to write down his honest thoughts regarding said upcoming title in question

https://vnrw.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/vn-the-house-in-fata-morgana/