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Crystal Rinal - Ouma No Meikyuu , DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen and Policenauts are the masterpieces of the month, but in my heart nothing can substitute DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen. 1. Ash. Ash. [940708] Himeya Soft Hero is a warrior who enters a normal fantasy setting town and ... player choices determine the rest. There are about 40 endings in the game, so routes take mere minutes. It can be quite enjoyable if looked upon as a collection of short fantasy stories. Such works are rare since many readers would miss large chunks of content. But Ash is the origin of such genre and will be referenced a lot upon stumbling upon such games in future. 2. Ginga Tetsudou no Tabi 銀河鉄道の旅 [940708] Tonkin House Based on novel by Kenji Miyazawa. I could not get through the bridge and there was nothing of interest in the houses so I did not grasp the meaning of the game. 3. Dreamy 夢現 Ｄｒｅａｍｙ －ゆめうつつ－ [940709] Megami One day Naoki picks up a mysterious pendant hanging on a telephone pole on the way back from school. On that night two fairies came to his dream saying that an angel could return to the original world if Naoki could make some girls happy during the next ten days. He decides to sleep as much as possible during next ten days and girls start to come to his dreams... There are options during meeting girls in the dream and wrong options make the dream repeat the next day approaching the deadline. The CG are very beautiful in the game. 4. Crystal Rinal - Ouma No Meikyuu - クリスタルリナール －逢魔の迷宮－ [940712] D.O. 1 2 3 4 5 Youhei is a Japanese teenager who is bored with his life, unable to find excitement anywhere. Even sexual escapades with various women don't satisfy him: he craves for real adventures. But on that particular day, his wishes were fulfilled in a very unexpected way. He was talking to a schoolmate named Mahiro, a girl he didn't even like particularly, when something like an earthquake shattered the school. Youhei and Mahiro hurried to the nearby classroom, only to find a strange mirror-like object - which in fact was a portal to a dungeon in another world. Now the two teenagers have to find a way to escape from the dungeon - and eventually to return home. Crystal Rinal is an adult dungeon crawler along the lines of Words Worth or Raidy games; but instead of a lonely hero/heroine, the player controls a party of two, Youhei and Mahiro, who fight randomly appearing monsters in turn-based combat. There is also a "talk" command that lets the two heroes chat with each other and comment on the situation. Some gameplay segments follow the template of a Japanese adventure, with menu-based commands and multiple choices during dialogues. It's more like ADV with RPG elements since there are only couple weapons given in the events, nothing but hp and mp rises with lvl, magic is cast by consummation of monster drop items. No money. No town. No automapping. But the charm of the work lies in fact that protagonist is no here, he's a very mediocre high school student with weak physical and mental state. There are many interesting events and characters to meet on the way, so overall the game is quite a treat, probably even of masterpiece level. 5. Cross Changer クロスチェンジャー [940714] Ucom A scout ship "Flam" of the evil alien association "Space Syndicate" landed on the Earth and started kidnappings of people. The Planet Minority Galactic Federation Organization warned the Earth government and suggested creating anti-alien defense force. "Cross Changer" organization was created, but it was destroyed by "Flam". Surviving members have to sell information to evil organizations, but three girls Marie, June and May decide to fight on their own. Synopsis seems to prepare for a big game ahead, but actually it's a very compact story that takes place at cafes and schools mostly. There are four episodes and each episode ends up with a battle. Another feature of the game is square small windows with faces that make the scene more lively. 6. Blue Garnet ブルー・ガーネット [940715] Trush Shiro Kirishini is a private detective. One day he receives a request on the phone and moves to an abandoned building as the meeting place. There was a mini size girl Myan. According to her story, she is the princess of the Kingdom of Garnet, which was protected by seven hidden treasures till someone stole the gems. She would not regain the height till the gems are returned, so hero agrees to help. The help that's required is to seduce different girls, naturally! There are seven days and seven girls, but it takes time and patience to gain money in panty guessing games and janken. 7. Kyouko no Ijiwaru!! ~Hachamecha Daishingeki~ 恭子のいぢわる!! ～ハチャメチャ大進撃～ [940715] Ponytail Soft Heroine Tokugawa Koyko owns Tokushima Takabee group and trillions of yen. One day she misinterpreted her brother's flu symptoms for an incurable disease and went to search for the medicine component of virgin's grey tiny hair in St.Rodrigues Academy. To obtain the virgin's grey hair Kyoko attacks both students and teachers without constraint. This is a bakage through and through. Kyoko is nuts herself, but situations she gets into are even funnier. As usual, there's hardly any story and the game can be pleasing only if you like its humor. 8. Shinwaden: Hatou no Shou 真倭伝 覇刀の章 [940715] Great 1 2 The game has a RPG-like story-line, but it has so many details about some fantasized gods and devils that it might be hard to understand. Yet, the game is just about saving your girl friend from the demonized enemies. The year is 2189. The city of Osaka has been redeveloped starting from 30 years ago, and there are 5 projects that are particularly prominent. You in the game happen to be a god living in human form, yet without knowing it, you live in a rotten building and there is this girl you really like. One day, she comes to you crying and asking for help to find her friend, who disappears with a man right before her eyes like a mist. There's an ok'ish English review on this game. 9. H+ エッチプラス [940720] Desire 1 The title H+ is rather self-explanatory to those who understand the meaning of the letter "H" to the Japanese (pronounced "ecchi", it basically refers to all things sexual). The game consists of three unrelated stories, all of which can be played directly from the main menu: The first story is a rather mundane tale of a boy and a girl who meet outside and head to the girl's apartment; thanks to the hero's irresistible charm (with a bit of help from alcoholic beverages), the two are able to engage in a variety of sexual acts. The protagonist of the second story is an aspiring journalist, who is given the task to interview a famous female movie star. The interview begins with taking pictures of the celebrity wearing different costumes, and ends with her removing those costumes and performing activities which turn into a blockbuster porn movie. The third story is dedicated to the obligatory "little girl", a female high-school student. There are two possible scenarios, both involving seduction of the poor girl: one involves a sexy female teacher, the other an older male schoolmate. Ero-centered straightforward work. 10. DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen DESIRE 背徳の螺旋 [940722] C's Ware 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 In the southern ocean on a remote island is a huge research institute called "Desire". An institute built by the large, world renowned financial group, Grandchester Foundation. It's rumored they are involved in military-related research, but what it is exactly is kept a carefully guarded secret. For this reason, a journalist for SNT (Social News Time Network), Albert Macdgul (or Al for short) visits "Desire" in order to collect information for a story. He's one of the rare few who have been granted access to "Desire". So it's in high spirits that he sets forth to complete his story. While at "Desire" he meets a girl named Tina, who is suffering from memory loss. She is destined to change his fate forever. Murder, bomb threats, mysteries shadowing her existence... How far will the chaos go? On the other hand, Makoto Izumi, technical manager at "Desire", finds out how dangerous their research is, and asks her boss, Dr. Stella, to stop all the experiments. Then she finds out that someone on the outside is going to interfere with the research... You'll either love this game or hate it. I absolutely love it. And it's easy to check out since there is a great English version of it. With this game I stopped treating visual novels as eroge. The story, composition, characters, emotions - everything is perfect. 11. Madou Gakuin R 魔導学院Ｒ [940728] Foresight 1 2 3 The kingdom of Digal was the only peaceful country amidst chaos, ruled by the benevolent king Deneos and his wisest advisor, the High Priest. But the time of peace has come to an end when something strange happened to the king: seemingly controlled by an evil power, he banished the High Priest from the country. Digal plunged into chaos, crime began to flourish, bandits roamed the countryside uncontrolled. At this tough time, a young man named Rezas joined the Magic School, where the most beautiful and skillful female magicians were training at that time. But the next day, the school was attacked by a gang of criminals, and most of the people there killed. Rezas and his pretty schoolmates swear to avenge this crime and bring peace back to the kingdom. Little is known to evaluate properly. What's clear is that enemies loose one by one pieces of clothes. There seems to a H-scene after each two battles. Strategy part is quite simple, so it's not really a serious SRPG. Pictures quality is uneven, many CG have distortions. 12. Dengeki Nurse 2 ~More Sexy~ 電撃ナース２ ～モアセクシー～ [940729] Cocktail Soft 1 2 Dengeki Nurse 2 begins where the previous game ended. The heroes of the story, the young doctor Tanchi and his sweetheart, the lovely Kirara, are enjoying a peaceful moment... when an explosion reminds them that the evil organization Black Cross has not yet been defeated. One by one, the powerful "nurses" - agents with super-powers - are sent to deal with Tanchi, Kirara, and their friends, and the only way to stop them is to use Kirara's own super-power - turning into the "electric nurse"!.. This game had a smaller impact than its prequel, but its essence is the same, bakage with constant parodies on everything with enemies to appear and be defeated. There's English review. 13. Giga Motion 戯画もーしょん [940729] Interheart 1 Jackie was having an ordinary life which seemed to culminate with an intimate intercourse with his sweetheart Mika. However, shortly afterwards he met a mysterious old woman who prophesied his imminent death. He was then transferred to the magical Realm Above the Clouds populated by humans and demons alike. Jackie has to find a way to return to our world and save Mika, who is considered a powerful goddess of love among the indigenous people. A simplistic RPG with animated H-scenes. 14. Himitsu Shirei 1919 秘密指令1919 [940729] Fairytale A group of detectives investigates various incidents using unorthodox methods if needed. The game starts as a serious thing, but soon becomes ero-centered. There are also parameters to maintain, but I did not get far enough to understand the significance of those. No Japanese reviews of the game found. 15. Policenauts ポリスノーツ [940729] Konami 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 The game centers on Jonathan Ingram, one of the five "Policenauts", astronauts with police training, assigned to ensure the safety of Beyond Coast, mankind's first fully-functional space colony in the year 2013. A freak accident occurs while testing a new space walking suit and Jonathan is drifted away into space and is presumed dead by his colleagues. He is found alive and well nearly 25 years later thanks to the cold-sleep module connected to the suit. Three years later, Jonathan (now a private investigator working in the former Los Angeles) is visited by his former wife, Lorraine. She asks for Jonathan's help in solving the disappearance of her current husband, Kenzo Hojo, the only clues he left behind being a torn leaf, a set of capsules, and the word "Plato". Jonathan is reluctant to take her case at first. However, after Lorraine leaves his office, she is attacked and murdered by a man in a black motorcycle suit. Jonathan, unable to catch the culprit, decides to fulfill his ex-wife's final request and travels to Beyond. There he is reunited with his former partner from his LAPD days, Ed Brown, who agrees to help Jonathan investigate the circumstances surrounding Hojo's disappearance and Lorraine's murder. There is an overwhelming number of English reviews. It's available in English. It was made by Kojima. And it's just a good game.

As you may (or may not, at least yet) know, ChuableSoft has filed for bankruptcy on 7th of July. In his Twitter, Ishida P - ChuableSoft's director - stated they had no other choice than to close, simply because it was not possible for them to continue with the company in it's current state. This may come of as slightly surprising, considering their previous game - Watashi ga Suki nara "Suki" tte Itte! (SukiSuki for short) won the 2015's Moege Awards and was met with warm praise - both from the fans, as well as community. The rights to the game were also acquired by MG and it's slated for an english release in late 2017/early 2018. How was it possible, that a rather well known japanese studio known for it's high quality charages went bust like that? As a fan and avid reader myself, I've been keeping an eye on the japanese vn industry for the past 15 years; More than a decade, with all it's ups and downs and various events, that shaped and changed it's face overtime. It's not hard to summarize, that even if the start of the new millenium had proven to be a highly productive period for japanese developers, things don't look as bright when you start to look past 2010. To put things short - it's golden age is already long over and creators are currently facing numerous issues, which had been slowly but steadily piling up within the last years. Market oversaturation is often being considered as one of the biggest culprits behind the increasingly difficult task for japanese developers to stay afloat as working businesses. The competition is fierce and industry itself is partially at fault for that; The ammount of new game makers rose expotentially after 2000's, while majority of them stemmed from the same exact community of fans. People, whom - as they grew up - changed from consumers into creators themselves. The otaku market is incredibly closed off and as such, consumes almost everything it produces by itself. It's a self-regulating social wonder of sorts that slowly grew for as long as 80's. Sadly, things finally came to a halt where it produces far more it's capable to consume. As such, to keep up with market's rising competition and social changes, creators had to start minimizing risks, often by lowering standards or switching entirely to budget works; if successful, such couple shorter games could support their more important, high quality productions, at worst make them stay afloat. This system worked for a couple of past years, but the more aware fans often kept pointing at the detoriating quality of games and nonsensical stories, which more than often subdued to popular tropes and cliches. Certain companies found delicate safety within particular niches, protected by circles of avid fans and doujinshi works. It's really difficult to presume, how long will they manage to keep up with the rising requirements, especially when trends change and people swap their interests. "A lot" does not necesarilly equate "good", neither will the fans remain forever loyal. The constantly lowering standards also caused a response within the market itself - people slowly got used to cheaper, lower quality games and as such, their needs grew smaller as well. This came to a turning point, where a lot of people began to feel content with low quality works and won't bother with better releases, mainly because they are a lot more expensive, far longer and usually harder to approach. Instead producing high quality games, companies turned to churning out budget-type games, often serialized or episodic in nature, but how are you supposed to keep up with a market, that literally has thousands of competing companies, each producing exactly the same type of games? Formulas that used to be highly succesful in the past are now often a nail to the coffin for many starting studios. This is especially prevalent for moeges and charages, often built around slice of life genre; the "coming of age" stories, that used to be so popular are now considered completely cliched and overused to the point, where multiple games released often feel alike; there's little to no distinction between them at first glance and this causes the fans to feel resigned and makes them lose their motivation to get involved with anything further. At the same time, thousands of games are being sold to thousands of consumers; each company has to make a living and that wouldn't be a problem, when the population of fans would be kept at a steady number. Unfortunately, the japanese demographics are clear on that - the population is aging very quickly, with losses greatly superseeding gains. The same can be said about the market itself - the ex-fans, who are currently producing their own games have less and less potential customers, as their generation became incapable to supply the population with a steady birthrate. It's a tale of an aging market, with people who slowly drift away from being fans, as the modern, day-to-day japanese life consumes them almost entirely. In the end, this means less and less total available revenue to creators. Less money available within the market means less available budget to create future games. This means everyone has to settle for less and cut costs, which further lowers the quality of the final product. It's a vicious cycle and one that is increasingly difficult to break from, once you get caught. In a world of merciless competition for disappearing population of consumers and aging fans, this means pretty much a single flop - especially an incredibly expensive, high quality game - can lead to a complete downfall. Growing risks prevent creators from retries and keep them pinned down to a life, where they barely scrape by from production cycle to another. As the costs grow, they finally find themselves in a difficult situation - often indebted and without funds, because their games didn't bring the expected revenue - where they simply have nothing else to do, than declare bankruptcy. This is more, or less what causes many studios - such as ChuableSoft - to finally close down. Sadly, I presume this is just the beginning and we'll see many more of our beloved companies closing down in the near future. The only hope now currently lies within the western market - a body of almost infinite possibilities, with a massive and constantly growing fanbase, always thirsty for new games. Perhaps it's time for the japanese developers to finally embrace that possibility and move on.

Tips for drawing better: put hours into it. It takes years to learn how to draw. I guess is the same for programming and everything else, it just takes time. If you dont enjoy it while doing it I would try to look for something else to do, as I said it can take a lot of time to learn so the best thing you can do is try to enjoy the journey instaid of just wanting results right away.

interesting introduction

Slept over at a friend with a PS4 between Thursday afternoon and Sunday morning. I'd lent him my copy of Persona 5 (I don't have a PS4 ;_;) so I had a chance to finally continue playing the game (last played it a month or so ago, up to the end of the first dungeon). Reached the middle of the fourth Palace on Hard (clocked 50 hours total). The game's style is absolutely lovely, and the soundtrack (bar a few underwhelming daytime themes) is sublime. I can listen to Life Goes On for hours on end. I quite like the Confidants as well, they're unique and interesting characters. I really liked what I saw of the plot, but I'm worried I am going too fast (averaged something like 11 hours and 20 minutes daily). This is especially because I've yet to form a connection to the cast and the setting. Somehow playing 3-4 hours a day and finishing a Persona game in 2-3 weeks feels like the better way to go. Also, we were staying as four friends at the sleepover so others were always watching. Perhaps that's why I haven't been able to hook myself into the atmosphere, also. I've also been obsessed with the game for 1.5 years (found out about Persona by buying 4 Golden on a whim in November '15). Been listening to the released soundtracks since then, and practically all my wallpapers etc. have been Persona related. So I might have burned myself the fuck out on the game without even playing it. The cast... is amazing individually (although Ryuji gets on my fucking nerves), but the group simply does not work. The cast doesn't interact in any interesting way. There's a lingering awkwardness whenever the Phantom Thieves convene, we see no intimacy or closeness or friendship. They haven't had almost any events between April through July. I have other pet peeves too- Makoto is bossing everyone around (which is fine, I love her self-discipline, but she just comes across as really cold) and Ann being the butt of pervy treatment is really, really tone deaf. Persona 4's characters weren't as well realized individually, but they worked incredibly well as a group and their mannerisms played off of each other. P5's cast just talks among itself whenever plot stuff comes up and we never see them acting like friends. I find that incredibly disappointing. P3 did something similar but that was because SEES was a group that was forced together by circumstance and that dynamic changed by the end, and it was obviously deliberate. In P5, it comes off as a spectacular failure in developing the group's relationship. P.S: I love Futaba's characterization so far. Love it. The most interesting character by far. P. P. S: Tae or Makoto? Need to pick one ;_; P. P. P. S.: Morgana not letting you do shit at night is utter bullshit indeed, especially since there are Confidants and activities exclusive to evenings now. Also played the demo of NieR Automata like, five times. It might have my favorite combat in literally any game. 2B and 9S are amazing, and the story is wonderful as well. I'd played it at 20-25 FPS for 10 hours or so myself, Favorite-game-ever material, but I cannot do to it the insult of playing at sub-60 FPS. Into the PS4 bucket list it goes... Besides that, working my way through Dark Souls II: Scholar Of The First Sin. Nowhere as good as DS1, but something is really drawing me towards it anyway. Currently in the Iron Keep.

isn't it harder to find VNs without Tsundere?

She's the main reason I'm actually interested in Dal Segno. I did recently beat Sonohana New Gen, but I still have six other games I'm working on, so I'm not quite ready to queue up a new one. I'm still working on Princess Evangile (at least the common route so I can play W Happiness), Chaos;Head, Tokyo Babel, Shadows of Pygmalion, Majikoi (I want to at least finish the common route before deciding whether I want to wait to see if Jast's translation is better), and Gahkthun.

Pokemon 20 movie and Digimon Tri I'm going to watch

While I agree with some of the things you've wrote, to be honest ChuableSoft's bankruptcy wasnt unexpected at all and I dont think they fall into that category. Yeah their games were not bad, but you just cant win with making decent games, you have to sell them as well. With a "hey as long as we make okayish games we dont need to do anything else!" mind unfortunately the bankruptcy was inevitable. First of all, They always had a very bad advertising policy and didnt put enough money to advertisement of their games at all. The biggest example of this was Ano Harewataru Sora yori Takaku's sales, their probably most succesful game in the last 6-7 years. Many people have liked it and wrote great reviews about it, Also have won a couple awards etc etc, in short it was a great game. But how about its sales? Unfortunately it was "Way less than 1/7 of Yakimochi Stream", a kinda worse than average nukigeish game which got released at the same month with Haretaka. What I'm trying to say is, writing a "masterpiece" is not enough at all. You have to catch customers’ attention as well or some random game will just take the all delicious part with proper advertisement, specially if you released very bad 3 games in a row before the current game. Stuff like getting some popular seiyuus, making people talk about your game at the radio programs etc. would rise their sales for sure, but they didn't bother at all. Yeah going bankruptcy is kinda sad, but if chuablesoft can only take 133 points from the total 3861 September sales with their best title, maybe they did something wrong after all. Also for some reason they always released their game at the wrong time as well. For example the SukiSuki you've talked about. Yeah it was good and enjoyable, but if you release it at the same month with Primal x Heart & Sakuuta & Koikake, it'll just get crushed, specially with their bad advertisement thing.

Thank you all for welcoming me! Hmm, I don't really have a favorite company. I also like Mangagamer for their translations, but I also like to play lesser-known games from Narrator and NVLMaker. I like games that have interesting stories. Thank you! I'm sure I will as well!

If you think you're going to have to censor something, you shouldn't be releasing the game in the first place. Not because the it's bad, but because it should be left for those who would release it uncensored. IOW, SubaHibi should've gone to MangaGamer.

I like my characters amoral or immoral. It just makes everything more fun. The whole justice, love peace and order thingy is just annoying. While I was reading Comyu, Benio seriously annoyed me. I was thinking "can someone please blow her head up" whenever she talked. Utsuge is my second favorite game tag. I love bad endings, and having heroines die is just interesting. I also hold the view that human relationships are just trades, so loveless sex is not a big deal at all. Both parties want pleasure, so they have sex. What's weird, bad or wrong about it? My favorite girl in comyu was Yoruko. The reason? Blind loyalty. She follows Gasai's orders and would gladly die for his sake as his sword or shield. I just love heroines like that, too. Imagine all sorts of things you could do with a servant like that <3

lol... first of all, for those who have yet to finish, I want to say a few words. Kagome is my waifu. I've been wanting to say that for years now. I won't allow anyone else to take her from me, not even Akihito!!! Anyway, this is one of my old favorites, so I'm happy and excited that other people have a chance to play it. This was the eighth untranslated VN I played. To be honest, while I have played VNs that are better, I've never loved a heroine more than Hinaori Kagome. There is no other heroine quite like her (though Ami from the recently released Semiramis no Tenbin has some of the same qualities, without the buffer of having a childhood friend to soften her attitude, lol). She formed my taste in heroines, and she is the reason why so many heroines leave me unsatisfied. If you are ever unfortunate enough to really meet your ideal heroine, you will know what I've experienced for the last four years, lol.