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Before I go visit my remaining grandparents this weekend (my grandmother on my father's side and grandfather on my mother's side are both in extremely frail condition right now, so we are taking time to show my sister's kid to them), I thought I would give my thoughts on modern VN trends. Charage aren't going anywhere Though I frequently bash the industry for over-saturating the market with moege/charage/SOL, the fact is that the demand for this type of VN is never going to go away as long as the Japanese eroge VN market exists. Why? Because it is the single easiest way to present the formation of relationships of young people into a sexual one. While the genre isn't that attractive for people in their late teens or early to mid-twenties (incidentally the reason this market is declining), the majority of any older generation is always going to prefer this. The lesser numbers of young people in Japan compared to my generation and the lower relative amounts of income are the main reasons for the current contraction of the genre. Good Writers don't go into VNs anymore This is a truth that few of the plotge addicts like me want to admit. Most of the best writers in the VN industry are getting into middle age or later now (or have already left it), and the new and upcoming writers are mostly up and coming LN writers who have a far looser grasp on how to write/narrate and (more importantly) complete a story. This doesn't mean they won't evolve their styles to match the new medium eventually, but whenever I've read a VN written by one of these newbies, the plot holes and poor handling of the endings of their games stand out painfully. Chuunige are in decline I absolutely hate to say this. However, it needs to be said. Trends in the last nine years in chuunige have tended to result in far too much side-story exploitation and sequelitis. There is also a distinct lack of innovation, and when innovation does come, it tends to come with a huge drop in quality in the final product (Sora no Baroque). Fans of the genre are getting older, and some companies (such as Light) have been putting their games in non-ero form on consoles to try to grasp the hearts of younger VN lovers (this has actually succeeded to an extent), but the fact is that it takes a much longer time for a chuunige company to make back its investment after a release. This is exacerbated by economic issues in Japan, and the fact that these companies mostly suck at advertising (like many niche genre companies, they only put it up in places where those already 'in the know' will find them). VN Trends are always years behind the rest of Otaku-dom VN communities in Japan are insular. Even moreso than they are in the US. When rom-com anime vanished for the most part at the end of the last decade, it was replaced with cheap action-fantasy (shallow, weaker stories for the most part, with more emphasis put on 'cool' elements) and moeblob. The glut of such anime is reaching its peak right now... and that influence is starting to overflow (interpreted through the lens of the hyper-conservative VN community, of course) into our side of things. That said, this is a trend that is unlikely to take hold, because it requires a modicum of writing skill that doesn't involve dialogue, and most VN writers just don't have that. Instead, VN companies that have been around for a while have been 'testing the waters' by making games that step out of their usual niches, hoping to diversify to deal with the changing trends. Light went with going down a much darker path than usual with its most recent game, and Navel actually put up a half-assed plotge last month. These, along with many other incidences in the last two years, make me wonder just what the market will look like five years from now.

An amazingly contradictory example of both ambition and trashiness, this Canadian company managed to create some of the most memorably-bad games available within the Western VN market. While they definitely never showed the kind of contempt for their audience and lack of dignity that emanates from pretty much every new Winged Cloud title or the Steam asset flip/achievement spam VNs (yes, those are a thing – I will get to them one day), their utter failures and misguided elements in their projects are not something you see every day – and, as they belong to commercial products that ask money from their readers, they’re open even for the more cruel kinds of scrutiny. And that’s exactly what I’m going to deliver upon them today. -------------------------------- A Wild Catgirl Appears Yuri Game Jam entries usually are published for free, even though some of them offer quite impressive production values and interesting stories. A Wild Catgirl Appears is a double exception in this regard, as, sadly, it's neither free nor in any way compelling to play through. With extremely basic and mostly nonsensical plot, clunky dialogue and a plethora of technical issues, it's one of the least competent commercial VNs available on Steam (at least among actual games and disregarding the aforementioned asset flips and achievement spams). It might also be the only VN in which I count inclusion of catgirls as a negative, considering how superficial the reason behind their appearance is and how they take the focus from the only somewhat-interesting characters in the game. Even yuri romance couldn’t redeem this title to me, considering it’s generally miserable state – sadly not worth your time, and especially your money. Final rating: Smelly Poo Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Hi all! I just wanted to spread the word that our Adult Otome Visual Novel - Yakuza Kiss - is now on Steam early access. You can find all the relevant information and links below, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask me anything! TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izpeklRaVHQ GAMEPLAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ_cNGNEDnM SCREENSHOTS & GIFS PRESS RELEASE Pink Potion Games is releasing its debut game, "Yakuza Kiss", an adult visual novel made especially for players who love sweet romance, but also want the hot and steamy parts! Join Jeong Moon on her descent through Cyan City - a sprawling neon metropolis ruled by the criminal underworld. Completely disillusioned by the city and life in general - desperate for a way out - she ends up in the wrong place, at the wrong time and finds herself working for the yakuza. She quickly catches the attention of Yuki Yamaguchi, a yakuza leader hellbent on rebuilding his father's criminal empire. To survive in this strange new world she will have to face her deepest fears and give in to her darkest desires. "Yakuza Kiss" features all the classic visual novel elements players know and love, but gives them a refreshing twist. For example, the game characters are animated with Live2D and the location art features sprite and particle animations. All important story scenes are accompanied by illustrations that appear on the screen frame by frame, as if the player is reading a comic book. Throughout "Yakuza Kiss" the player is confronted by choices that will form the personality of the main character and change the final outcome. The original soundtrack is influenced by synthwave and - just as the ambience, SFX and visual effects - it is designed to bring the dark atmosphere of Cyan City to life. The 1st chapter of "Yakuza Kiss" is available on Steam Early Access where consequent chapters will also be released as they are completed. All the chapters should be available by Q4 2019, but interested players should grab this Visual Novel right now since as we add more content, the price will go up. For more images, videos and information you can visit www.pinkpotiongames.com/yakuza-kiss. "Yakuza Kiss" has been developed with Unity3D and will require Windows 7/8/10, a 1,5GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM and DirectX 10. Pink Potion Games was formed in 2016 by an experienced indie developer duo. Our mission is to offer the female adult visual novel fans something new and exciting! You can visit us online at www.pinkpotiongames.com. LINKS Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/847950/Yakuza_Kiss/ VNDB page: https://vndb.org/v23139 Pink potion website: http://www.pinkpotiongames.com Pink Potion Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PinkPotion Pink Potion twitter: https://twitter.com/PinkPotionGames

First, I should note that this is a series that is right up the alley of people like Dergonu... it were a VN. This series, Under Jurisdiction by Susan R Matthews, mostly follows Andrej Koscuisko, a Drakonij Prince and would-be (though not by his own will) Inquisitor. Setting The Under Jurisdiction series is based in a sci-fi future where humanity, at some point, diversified so greatly that sub-specification has occurred (though most aren't quite separate species entirely. In this future, humanity (such as it is) is ruled by the judiciary, in the form of the Bench. All humans are subject to the law as proclaimed by the judicial forces, and punishments are mostly corporal... horribly so in some cases. In this setting, torture is not only allowed, it is actually carried out by licensed medical professionals trained to inflict the maximum amount of pain to gain confessions of crimes (regardless of how heavy the evidence is), and, where it is justified, to torture them to death in the most horrible of fashions. This legal use of torture as a deterrent to criminals has led to a gradual decay in the morale of the planets ruled by the Judges on the Bench, and rebellions have begun to occur on a regular basis by the time the protagonist, Andrej, takes his first steps into the world of the Fleet. Andrej Koscuisko Andrej is an extremely complex man... a man raised in a noble family of oligarchs who believe intensely and with absolute conviction in the duties of noblesse oblige and the duties to those under a lord's protection. He is also a young medical professional, a genius surgeon and chemist with a the kind of skill in actual surgical procedures that is seen so rarely as to be unheard of. He understands the human body (all races) to a degree that is often terrifying, and this is part of what becomes his plague... for when he begins his training, he discovers that, to his horror, the process of Inquisition brings out an intense, sick hunger to inflict pain upon and dominate the subjects that come under his hands. Coupled with his natural understanding of the body and human psychology, he comes out of his training as the most horrifyingly skilled Inquisitor in Bench history, an artist of pain eternally on the verge of madness due to the conflicting imperatives within him. He is only held back from the edge of the cliff by the efforts of his Bond Involuntaries, former criminals implanted with behavioral governors that force them to absolute obedience, so they can serve as his aides, and they are thus under his protection. Their care for him, for his sanity, for his health, and for his honor, is all that keeps the sadistic madness at bay as it fights with his honor and inherent compassion... The Story The story follows Andrej from his training as an Inquisitor and first encounter with a Bond Involuntary, to his first duty as a Fleet Inquisitor and beyond... His fight with madness as he tries to glean mercy and justice from the horrors he is forced to perform on others, his fight to keep his honor, to protect his Bond Involuntaries from others who would use them poorly, and his fight with his own, culturally-ingrained sense of filial duty are intense to read. For all the foreignness of his culture, Andrej's journeys through life leave behind an impact far out of proportion for the actual deeds he performs. Unfortunately, if you have a weak stomach, I can't recommend this story at all. The galaxy Under Jurisdiction is one of the most horrifying dystopian sci-fi systems I've ever seen... all the worse when you realize that it all began out of a desire for justice and fair play in a universe where human racism has, if anything, gotten worse thousands of years after leaving Earth.

Triggered.

So, Sekai being incompetent again. Nothing new.

Sry, i don't see the food chain title the first time that i read the diagram, sometimes my selective reading just stop working, the pyramid make sense now. Nukiges are undoubtedly the big base, but they are a strange base, in a future erogedoom i could see them surviving without much damage, but being unable to save more than themselves, they are like a big non-structural base. And them, with the next levels being moege and charage, you reach the actual situation where they almost don't support their own weight and risk everything above to ruin with them. About ratings, nowadays i just say i like, it's meh or i dislike, but obviously never made sense to give the history of a charage the same importance as in a chunnige. One curious thing about the vn community is how much discrepancy we could have between "veterans" ratings, it's not uncommon to see two veterans with similar tastes having a difference of three or four points in the same vn in vndb.

You're really reckless)) I have my doubt you'll endure almost 30 volumes of that)

There is lots of censoring in Fakku version still currently like hiding Hachiroku's pantsu and some other character's pantsu who I dont remember the name of. Currently it looks like that the 18+ version is the Steam version with only the H-scenes added to the menu so someone probably fucked up and put wrong version out or something lol

I'm not sure why you claim that this problem is especially important in VNs, numerical scores are always deeply flawed - they're, however, quite convenient and can be still useful if you make clear how you use them and keep some levels of consistency. They may reflect something very specific (your level of enjoyment with the game) or many things at once (many people on the Forums described their elaborate systems of rating VNs, with various amount of points attached to different aspects of them) - the real problem is that people both treat them way too seriously and compare them in ways that are grossly misleading. I think you could easily replace those basic ratings you've laid out with numbers without losing much of their meaning, the argumentation you add to your reviews and the additional tags that explain what kind of enjoyment these games might offer and who they're targeted towards are much more important. EDIT: Also, I wonder, would that second category be closer to "Deeply flawed"? I know it doesn't sound as good, but I think "imperfect" is too mild of a term to communicate a game being one tier above pure trash.

I'm 20.

I don't know if someone was already posted this here, but I'll post this anyway. Here's the opening of Amayui, and hope you'll enjoy it.

I think the problem for most western fans is that companies going bankrupt means that it is really unlikely that their existing VNs are ever going to get an official english release.

Sprite is making excuses. Their problem is that their parent company hasn't produced anything new since the original Aokana (as opposed to the follow-ups/FDs). Their other subsidiaries are completely dead, and FDs rarely sell as well as original material (exceptions exist, but they are just that... exceptions). To be fair, there definitely is some contraction. Japan's economy isn't looking good (looking at yet another recession), and the otakus of my generation, the generation that mostly created the 'moege boom' (no, I didn't coin it, I translated it from a friend's sarcastic comment a few years back) by becoming obsessed with SOL have less money to play around with, as they start thinking about retirement. The generation below us (in Japan) is a lot less laser-focused on SOL (fantasy being the big thing right now), and as a result, more money is going into easily available (and cheap) webnovels and LNs. Nukige still retain their relevance (there will probably still be nukige until the fall of civilization or the generation of sex VR using neural links), but visual novels increasingly don't have the material the younger generations want for the rest of it. There will always be a 'core market' for SOL (because nostalgia for youth is an eternal theme), but it is definitely going to shrink. The simple reality is that a lot of companies are already trying to adjust to the new reality by testing the waters in new genres (just look at Navel, for instance), but I really have no idea where things are going to go from here beyond a feeling that the current way of things isn't going to last a whole lot longer (relatively speaking, for someone approaching middle age). Edit: Incidentally, this is just my opinion, based on what I've seen being put out over the last year and a half... the amount of VNs trying - usually in a really half-assed manner - to break out of the charage/moege mold have been increasing in proportion to the rest. There are still a hugely disproportionate number of SOL-focused games, but more and more it looks like the producers are trying to grab the attention of a different generation. My generation in Japan had a toxic level of SOL obsession, and now that they have less money to play with... SOL eroge just aren't as much of a priority. Of course, chuunige (my favorites) aren't in great shape, either (since chuunige companies are historically reliant on the sale of goods and long-term sales over initial game sales). However, in absolute terms, this is a much bigger blow to SOL (though in relative terms a bigger blow to my favorite genre).