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Anyone else noticed how messed up the anatomy is on that promo picture? Maybe it's secretly a guro title and those are parts of a few mutilated corpses?

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this game by the developer. All opinions expressed here are solely my own. OELVN scene is, for many years now, heavily reliant on crowdfunding, with many small and high-profile projects made possible through Kickstarter and, more and more often, regular contributions of fans on Patreon. While these methods of financing VN development created opportunities that wouldn’t be available to the developers in the past and brought us many memorable titles, they go with their share if risk and problems – weak safeguards guaranteeing the final product delivering on its promises or even being completed at all, being the most crucial one. Crowdfunded projects disappointing their audience, getting stuck in development hell or simply never coming to fruition are at least just as much a reality as they are in the “normal” game development scene. However, in these cases, the consequences are falling mostly on the average backer, who took the double role of the consumer and the investor, hoping for nothing more than a compelling piece of entertainment in return. For this reasons, I very much enjoy seeing crowdfunded projects overcoming extreme difficulties and delivering even when everyone pretty much forgot about them or stopped hoping for a positive resolution. Lately, we’ve seen the release and warm reception of AIdol – a game that spent more than half a decade in development, went through both a failed Kickstarter campaign and changes in staff, eventually being claimed by Ebi-Hime, originally only the writer for the project, and released under her name. Today, I’ll look at another long-forgotten project, Pistachi Studio’s Ruler by Default, successfully crowdfunded in 2014 and released on Steam on May 4th this year, exactly 3 years after the initial goal. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

¡LOCO LOVE!

I was already hyped, because Frontwing, but if it turns out to be what you said, consider me SUPER HYPED!!!

Oh no! The curse of the bland protagonist strikes again!

It's up to you in the end, you know the situation better than any of us. I don't think you should worry about leaving the therapy "incomplete" though, if you can get to the point where she knows you regret hurting her in the past and wish her well, it might help her a lot. You probably both could use some closure before you leave, and "some" might be better than none, even if you can't hope for truly reparing your relationship (especially for her, if she really thinks you pretty much hate her and wish she never existed).

You don't really have to make a choice between the two. Skype is a viable option, though the time zones might be a little bit of a challenge. It's what I used with my local counselor when I went off to uni.

I understand, but I don't think anything that might work would be comfortable/easy at this point. I went through a lot of family drama and I know how hard is to get through this kind of accumulated emotion and animosity. At this point, I don't think you can do much without some kind of outside help/mediation (especially within the timeframe available to you). It's just my opinion though, shaped by my positive experience with therapy, maybe others will have other perspectives or ideas.

Maybe the promo picture actually includes two girls. The one in the front with her legs hidden behind the pillow and a girl in the back hiding her upper part under the same pillow. I would then assume this is a yuri title and that they are actually having sex in the picture Btw this is meant as a joke, but if it somehow turns out to be right I will still say I totally knew it 100%.

Don't worry about it, all that matters are at you stil translating this VN, take the time you need

This is probably the only thread on this forum which I am still 'following' from back when I used that feature (which would be around 4 years ago?). I receive a notification every time there's a post and it's so nice to see.

Foreword: Game's obscure, but it has one absolutely overwhelming Japanese review (giving 8/10 score btw) which claims that the game has references to dozens of media sources. I'm not good with media of 1996 year and earlier, but even I could discern 5 sources. Visual novel is easy to read and it's a great laugh at times while preserving a solid and intriguing plot with lovable characters, tonns of CG and almost full voicing. I say it's a neglected masterpiece. Title: Bounty Hunter Rudy Developer: Scoop Date: 1996-10-25 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v7168 Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUUFqi-M6JU&t=0s&list=PLENAECnNmAq_3TQ0rXcu0n95aygm3PPQU&index=46 Synopsis: Rudy is a famous space bounty hunter with top notch skills. But she's famous mostly for her ability to fall into troubles because of uncontrolled destruction power. In order to deal with the debts she goes to casino, but drenches down into even deeper debt. She undertakes a top secret military case as her last resort to get big money fast. Structure: One route Length: 4.5 hours Game type: AVG with dialogue choices Difficulty: Game does not have branches, but getting 100% CG is not easy. Character Design rating: 7/10 Protagonist rating: 8/10 Story rating: 8/10 Game quality: 7/10 Overall rating: 7/10 Rating comments: Can't really call it the game for 8/10, but it's decent enough to be called a masterpiece. Main heroine is impressive, characters charming (yet not developed), space opera story grappling and numerous CG and almost full voicing make up in the quality department. It has flaws, but I shall elaborate later. Protagonist: Rudy is our hermaphrodite strongest in the universe space bounty hunter. She blames in her failures anyone else but her and picks fights in dialogues with everyone. Being of simple and cheerful mind, Rudy enjoys drinking, money, a good company and space adventures. Characters: The only other significant heroine apart of Rudy is Anna who is an alien taking human girl form and who is waiting patiently for Rudy to drop her home. But Anna appears quite late in the story, after a third of it passed already. She's helpless and exists mostly as a comic relief - she always acts straightforward and answers honestly ruining Rudy's sly schemes. Other characters only make episodic appearance, although all of them are a colorful bunch and fun to have around. Story: Much of it is in the synopsis. Rudy gets into a huge debt after a passionate mafia boss chase around the city and being outwit at the casino house. She's only offered poor jobs by the bounty hunter guild leader, so she decides to steal the big job from another guild member Reike. That involves investigating anti-planetary missile weapon. And while on the task, Rudy comes upon an alien in cryogenic chamber who takes the form of human girl Anna. The whole game adventures actually only start from here, but as game adapts to the role of bakage events start to lose ultimate aim. That's the best part in the game - you don't wait for the ending, but just enjoy crazy funny dialogues. And my deepest regret is only that I failed to trigger all the foolish CG and all the extra dialogue lines. CG: Game lasts around 5 hours and does not use sprites for the characters... yes - it's all done in CG only. Hundreds of CG! Sometimes such CG would only last for a few seconds! I was really favorably surprised by the effort. Sound: Protagonist is a woman and all women in this game are voiced. That actually means that almost everyone is voiced considered that game only has bounty hunter guild boss and robot Freddy as male characters as well as some nameless episodic characters. At times I forgot it was partially voiced since only scenes with girls proceeded. Voicing is done here very well and helps a lot the playful mood of the game. Humor: It's just everywhere. Mostly in form of verbal insults and crazy dialogue lines. But I really like it when the game breaks the 4th wall and Rudy does it quite often in hilarious ways. Here's one moment where I laughed out loud and could not stop laughing. Rudy faces a military robot and is presented with three choices. I choose third one with ridiculous phrase "Once upon a time there lived a grandfather and grandmother". Next lines showed on the screen: "Grandfather went to a sauna, grandmother went to a host club". Next we see Rudy getting punched and she shouts "Do not pick this choice"! Then I picked the same choice again. What I got was "Then grandfather went to refresh". And next we see Rudy punched and she shouts "Reality is severe"! Overall comments: I have not enjoyed a bakage that much for a long time. The best thing is that you don't need to care for the plot much or for branches or saves - just enjoy what's happening on the screen at this very moment and that's it. It's a game for relaxation. I feel like some of the spice is lost in machine translation and some cultural layers lost since I am not a Japanese native of the 1990s. Also I appreciated that H events are playful, short and totally forgotten a second after. Well, H events aren't usual as well - they are fun and memorably inventive. It's rare to see a game that puts a player first and everything else second. It's a game that leaves a lasting warm impression and is worthy to be called a masterpiece and a hidden gem.

I don't break promises. Sorry for the slow pace!

Seems like porn

Been watching some of of his game reviews from awhile ago which is pretty comprehensive to say the least. It's such a sad moment that one of the finest game reviewers passed away... I hope he'll find peace in the afterlife...

I watched him from time to time whenever his videos had something interesting to me. I'd heard he stopped posting for medical reasons, but I didn't know it was that bad. May he rest in peace and all the support and comfort to his family and friends.

I pet my anti-christ......

Wow, fuck. RIP.

To be honest I just know him now, but nevertheless a death is a death so my condolence to Total Biscuit there.

For once it's a celebrity that I've actually heard of... and that only makes it worse RIP TB, the world has become a slightly shittier place today

Yeah I never really watched his stuff all that much but fuck it is really sad that he's dead I mostly knew him for his tangles with shitty developers and their shitty, shitty games. Cancer is a mean motherfucker man.

Oh, hey, you are quick. I mean, I know that VNs you read are generally pretty short, but still.

For what it's worth, I found Da Capo 2 to be WAY better than the first one.

Ehhh.... when people say they want to eat out a heroine, they don't actually mean they want to consume her like she is food, even if she might be sugar sweet.

Still reading F/SN Heaven's feel after taking a break for studying

Whenever I read something like this, I always wonder about one major issue, which is unavoidable when investigating issues like this: cause and effect. Will reading make you smarter or are smart people more likely to read? New Zealand has tested a bunch of people for decades and now they can say the more TV a 10 year old child watches, the lower the grades.... or was it IQ... Either way the question is if the brain is damaged by TV or if it is because children, who are already bright have too much going on in their heads to accept passive entertainment for a long time. Another one is breast feeding (take that prude Americans). Substitute in a bottle is less perfect for brain development and the child will lose 3 IQ points on average as grown up if fed by bottle. Is it the food or is it because stupid parents are less likely to breastfeed, meaning children who are breastfed will statistically have genes for higher IQ? Answering such questions is not an easy task because how to tell those two apart and how can we be sure it's not a combined effect of both? The same is an issue in the first article. The second article seems to have the same issue with the Japanese study while the Pompeii counters this issue better by having a before and after test, which should help to filter out the differences between people and get more precise readings of the effect of the book reading. As such, that specific study is more trustworthy than the other studies in regard to the effect. I would say the premise for the studies are severely simplified and you can't say any TV show vs any book. For instance you will likely get completely different effect from a documentary than you will get for slapstick comedy. Likewise there are good books and then there are horrible books. I was forced to read one of the latter in school and the only thing I remember from it was the story was really boring and the author had spelling mistakes, which were not fixed prior to printing. I don't think there is any positive effect from reading such a book. Sounds to me like the issue here has less to do with TV vs book and more to do with parents using the TV as babysitter rather than spending time reading a book for the child. As for VNs vs amine. I would say it's likely that VNs are better for your brain than anime. Anime will likely have the same effect as TV shows. Generally speaking, anime is fast paced, has a tendency to be shallow and in any way acts like sitcoms. There are exceptions, but generally speaking they aren't brain challenging. If it is say a sengoku era anime and you pause whenever there is a name and try to remember what the real person did, then you become active and push/train your brain and as such train your memory. VNs on the other hand can be beneficial, but they don't have to be. It depends on how it's written and what goes on. If it's a machine translated nukige, then good luck trying to convince yourself you will benefit from it. If it is a well written story where you try to keep track of past events in order to understand what is going on and perhaps see if you can predict anything, then you train your brain and you could benefit from it. Another factor, which should not be overlooked is the reader. If you read a masterpiece and speedrun through it without digging into the story, pausing to recollect the scenes etc, then you will not get the benefits other people might get from reading the very same title. This is yet another layer, which makes the question even harder to answer. Your language skills comes into play as well. If you have language shortcomings and miss out on the details, you will not benefit as much if at all from having a well written VN. You might benefit from the training of a foreign language though.

That's the plan. We're planning to release the partial patch containing both Fione and Eris' chapters (minus their side stories). No confirmation date on the partial patch release yet (there's still some stuff that needs to be done on the editing, TLC and QC side), but look forward to it when it's announced!

The Cynical Brit, TotalBiscuit, John Bain. 4 years he fought hard against cancer and unfortunately lost that fight. His video game reviews are portrayed as very objective, giving the viewers the facts and quick rundown of various games. So objective that he refused to release a review of a game after a short twitter fight with one of the devs as people may view his negative critiques on the game as just personal bashing. He retired from totalbiscuit on April 30th after treatment for his cancer had made it too difficult for him to think clearly. July 8, 1984-May 24th, 2018. 33 years old. https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/999787845127634944

Confession: I have a dysfunctional relationship with my sister and it makes me hate being at home sometimes. And it's at least partly my fault. My little sister feels that I've emotionally abused and hurt her, always. She's also depressed (which is likely connected to this). We've always argued often, and I've often said that I wished she hadn't been born (she say's she's been traumatized by this). She loves me and she wants to be loved by me. Thing is, I am really not sure if I can say the same. Almost everything she does aggravates or annoys me. It's not always her fault to say the least, but sometimes she's either incredibly selfish or exceedingly stupid. She often acts like a hypocrite too. But she's also lonely (no one at home nor at school understands her and she can meet her only close friend like once every other month) and stressed immensely by the school (she's barely passing classes while I have always performed much better with less effort, the difference hurts her self-esteem). It's been weighing on my mind for the last month or two. I'm moving away for university this September to Canada, which I've wanted to do all my life. I've been halfheartedly trying to be more receptive to her wants and needs, but she believes I don't love her at all (tells me as much, and I fear perhaps she's right). I have surprisingly little problem with the thought that I'm an emotionally abusive person. I've always held some subconscious resentment perhaps. I kind of wish we could get to the point where we just don't talk or just not see each other daily. I feel that that'd be the best for her, primarily because I don't see myself doing whatever it is I need to do (no fucking idea what it is) to assist her recovery. I... (almost?) want no part of it besides what I'm driven to do by guilt and obligation. I just don't feel willing to rebuild a sensible and helpful brother-sister relationship. I can act chipper with other people and tolerate their flaws (I have close friends who use the N-word for fuck's sake). It's only with my sister that I'm resentful, extremely short-tempered, and distrustful. I don't know why. It just is that way, feels like has been that way forever. Makes me wonder if my niceness towards other people is a façade. So my question's this: How the fuck do I hurt my sister the least from this point forward? Probably I'm just asking this to soothe my ego and fulfil a societal obligation. As a brother I guess it's the least I can do to ensure I don't hurt her as much from this point forward. If she ever commits suicide, her blood will be on my hands. I think I'd rather mitigate that fact as much as possible.

I've been in tears all day This man meant everything to me for so long. His content was always amazing, sticking up for the consumer 100% of the time. He introduced me to so many great youtubers. He died like a true warrior, fighting this horrible sickness until the end. R.I.P. you massive legend, you'll be missed.

He was my favorite game critic. I'm so sorry that he had to die in such a young age. It's hard to believe that all our modern medicine couldn't help him.

He was basically the person behind my YouTube addiction, I've watched his stuff regularly for years and I still remember how the news about his desease hit me. People mostly found this weird, how much I cared about an online celebrity, but when you hear that person's voice nearly every day and rely on them for information and entertainment like I did, it all feels very personal. I've expected this news for some time, especially after the latest update that his treatment has ended, but damn this still sucks. Such a young guy, so much talent and potential. He'll be missed. [']