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Well, I see where you're coming from, but consider that in Japan most VNs are eroge for which the main selling point is the combination of compelling stories and sexual content... And they sell well enough through those two features. VNs with significant gameplay are kind of their own, much more mainstream market and that's fine. That is, if we're talking about adventure game-style gameplay. There's a shitton of VNs that implement RPG and Strategy game mechanics – fairly few get translated to English, but Rance games, Eiyuu Senki, Evenicle and Venus Blood -Frontier- are notable examples of gameplay eroge. You also have a decent number VNs with raising sim and dating sim elements, like Littlewitch Romanesque or Gaokao.Love.100Days. Obviously, there was in the past a huge market for heavily gameplay oriented dating/raising sims in Japan – I honestly have no idea how much alive it is nowadays. To be honest, though, I went into VNs exactly to escape from gameplay, which in narrative games can often just become pointless padding distracting from the parts I actually care about. Of course, that doesn't have to be the case if the gameplay is well implemented and I'm sure it can make stuff more appealing to an average gamer, but I'd hate for gameplay elements to be shoved everywhere just for that reason. And if that means VNs are cursed to stay obscure forever? I can live with that.

Gameplay elements are a lot harder to design and test and get working. That means they cost a lot more money. These games are made on shoestring budgets. There are companies that specialize in 'gameplay titles' out there. And most of the time, those titles are not known for having a strong story. In other words, it's pouring a lot more dev resources into something that's not the core selling point of your game (which is, pretty much like you said, a novel with added production value). These guys make money by being happy to be the niche players. Or to put it another way - your point is essentially the same reasoning publishers use when they say 'Graft a multiplayer mode onto game X! Just freaking do it, we don't even care if it makes sense, gamers like it!' Sometimes that works out (Mass Effect 3) and other times, not so much (Resident Evil 3). These companies are like Atlus (well, before Sega bought them). They know how to survive in a low-volume market. If they wanted to make mass-market-appeal games, they'd be making a different kind of game entirely. Not every game has to be mass market. If you want to know 'why aren't there more releases in English', here's your problem. There are a decent number of games. Heck, there's some you haven't even listed (like Koihime Musou, or Aselia the Eternal, or - and I'm being serious here - Persona 4 Arena). I've been around since the early 2000's, and I converted into a paying customer when I found out a VN was lucky to sell a few hundred copies. The numbers I hear nowadays are they're lucky to sell two thousand. These games are absolutely popular enough already in English. Just not with people who actually pay. I'll put it this way: The raw untranslated script for SKM is about 6 megabytes. Rounded down to 5 to account for repeated text and punctuation, etc - at 5 cents per character (very low end of the going rate) and 2 bytes per character that's $250K. How many copies do you need to sell to make that back at $40? 6250. Then there's licensing fees, and we know that MangaGamer said 'if the original KM doesn't sell 2000 copies, we can't pay for the voice so we'll have to remove it'. There's more voice, so bump that up a little. You're probably looking at 8500-9000 copies just to break even. And now you know why MangaGamer hasn't done it. They can't pay the translator a decent rate. They'd have to find someone willing to be significantly underpaid. But suppose for a minute Koihime had sold - instead of the probably 2500-3500 copies it likely sold (it sold > 2K, they added the voices back) - 6 or 7 times that number. Then licensing the sequel would be a no-brainer. It would have been out years ago, probably. Furthermore, every game that was remotely worth releasing would be getting licensed and released. It's the same story with other text-heavy Japanese products. RPGs were a niche product. Every time an RPG was released in English, the company releasing it was taking a risk. And then FF7 came out, and it was one of the first videogames to do cinematic awesome cutscenes well, and it was absolutely in the right place at the right time to do gangbusters. Prior to FF7, RPGs had been building in popularity slowly, but post-FF7, an audience was there and realized 'maybe I should pay more attention, this looks nifty'. Post-FF7, most major JRPGs got translated (but not all). The same thing happened again a few years later, when the quirky-and-cutesy-Japanesey style games caught on. First was Disgaea, which was an amazing game and sold out instantly and Atlus reprinted it and then NIS (the makers) founded NIS America, which has gone on to do very well. Then Recettear sold hundreds of thousands of copies on Steam, proving to everyone 'no really, people will buy the weeb shit'. VNs don't need to be made into something they're not in order to start selling. In fact I'd wager they're already starting to sell. Look at the huge uptick in otome releases, and console releases.

Kanojo-tachi no Ryuugi is a game made by 130cm back in 2006, during the 'golden age of VN innovation'. Like many of the games made during this period, it is far less bound by convention than you see in modern VNs, which has its ups and downs (as most games from this era do). In this case, the most striking element for modern VN readers would probably be the fact that the protagonist is fully voiced. The second is that, in most of the H-scenes (of which there are plenty), the females are the dominant side and the protagonist isn't a bed yakuza even when he is dominant, for the most part. Essentially, this game's story begins when Kotaro, the protagonist, is called back to his estranged family's home after his mother dies of illness. There, his twin older sisters, Tobari and Akane are waiting for him... but their attitudes are odd. Akane, the older sister, has become active, mischievous, and selfish, and Tobari, the younger, has become a cold, expressionless young woman. There is no sense that he is welcomed into his old home, despite the fact that he and his sisters were once very close. Things become a bit clearer when he discovers his sisters are vampires (and bisexual), and he ends up having sexual relations with both of them (Tobari reverse-rape and Akane essentially psychologically cornering him into doing it). Worse, there is no sense of actual affection from either of his sisters, who apparently can draw sustenance from the acts. Now, the reason why I drew out these initial scenes is because they aren't really spoilers (my rule limiting spoilers to the prologue at max), is because you need to understand that this, typically of most of 130cm's games, is a heavily incestuous story (literally and metaphorically) with some seriously twisted relationships resulting. There is love, but it is often only referenced laterally or after a great deal of pain on all sides. Kotaro has serious hangups that keep him from forming healthy relationships with anyone (mostly because of his weird relations with his sisters, Tobari in particular), and the girls aren't that much better. Tobari Really, it is recommended that Suzuki and Seseri be handled first by most people who read this VN, but I always end up going for Tobari first... mostly because figuring out all that is going on in her head is seriously hard the first time around. Tobari is a genius in general but also a genius when it comes to acting in particular. The drama club and its play, which serve a central role in all the paths to one degree or another, is her idea, as is drawing in Kotaro as the heroine (yes, he does dress up). While there is another club president, she is the obvious leader of the club. Moreover, her forceful personality and overwhelming acting talent pretty much keep anyone else from really even considering disobedience toward her. Her relationship with Kotaro, in their childhood, was that of really close siblings, but the changes she began to experience (vampires in this setting are atavistic throwbacks to previous generations who lose the ability to have children, live eternally, and must consume blood or life energy through sexual intercourse in order to survive) shattered their family without Kotaro every knowing why. Her attitude toward Kotaro is cold and distant, except when she suddenly draws him into sexual relations or the drama club in general. She loves Akane and will show emotion toward her easily, but in most other matters, her expression remains flat. Her path is a journey of unwinding the twisted ball of yarn that is her emotions toward Kotaro and the circumstances that make everything about their relationship difficult. Akane Akane is technically the older sister, but at first glance, you would guess her to be the younger. She is more active, she is less mature, and she has no intention of controlling any of her impulses. Anything that feels good (drinking blood, having sex with Kotaro, eating food, etc) is good for her, and she has no interest in struggling to do anything she doesn't feel like doing. As a child, Akane was sickly to the extreme, rarely leaving her bed and unable to do even the simplest of activities for the most part. For her, vampirism was salvation, though it cost her five years with her younger brother (she does care, but her hedonistic nature dominates mostly). While she isn't precisely affectionate toward Kotaro (there is some affection, but, again, her hedonism tends to hide it), she is affectionate and loving toward Tobari. Despite this, Tobari can be considered to be the 'dependent twin' of the two. Akane's path is more about dealing with Akane's own inability to understand certain aspects of her sister's feelings toward Kotaro, the harmful aspects of her impulsiveness, and Kotaro himself. It is more straightforward than Tobari's path, but it also has some serious issues, some of them leftover from before she became a vampire. Suzuki Suzuki is a misanthrope who only trusts Seseri. She is described as 'excruciatingly beautiful', but her manner, especially toward Kotaro, tends toward the acidic in the best of times. She has a rather extreme version of the aversion many women of her age have for sexuality in general, though it does have a good reason. Her path is more about Kotaro getting past his siscon and her getting past her dislike of him (and herself) than anything else. Of the heroines, she is by far the most psychologically fragile, despite her thorny persona. She understands Kotaro the best of the heroines, when it comes down to it on a fundamental level, and this becomes rather evident toward the conclusion of the path. Seseri Seseri is your standard deredere kouhai and Suzuki's best friend. Seseri is a really straightforward and innocent girl who hits everything head on, yet she is also sensitive enough to get down in the dumps at times, though she usually gets right back up. The very first scene of the game has her confessing her love to Kotaro and him refusing her. Her path on the surface seems to be an odd couple romance, but in fact it is a bit different. Seseri's feelings toward Kotaro never change, she loves him and she is really open about this fact. Honoka Honoka's path splits off pretty late from Akane's path, before things get all twisted up with Tobari and requires that you have played Akane's path to pursue. Honoka is the retainer (not maid) for the Shirogane family (Tobari and Akane) and a sort of blood bag for the two vampires. On the surface she is a mature older woman, but underneath she is pretty girly. Her path is the most straightforward romance in the game, with an incident bringing her feelings for Kotaro into the open and forcing her to confront them. She has some real-life hangups that make for some mild drama toward the end, but her path ends on a pretty familiar (for charage readers) note. Chisato Chisato is the game's tsundere osananajimi, and she is also perhaps the most template of the heroines. For this reason alone, I would have wanted to avoid her path, but since I'd already gone through all the other paths, I felt I had to finish hers as well. This is perhaps the only path in the game where the protagonist's past is revealed in something other than the words of the protagonist and heroines. There are a few flashback scenes that are pretty revealing about a young Tobari and Chisato, and it does add to the story in general... but it also felt like the writer was favoring the least interesting heroine in the game a bit excessively. Like all the heroines except Seseri, she has issues. Chisato has an inferiority complex toward Tobari, whom she considers a friend (Kotaro also has one toward Tobari), and she is by nature a hard worker who makes up for a lack of talent by putting more effort and time into things. The path is pretty revealing about Tobari as well... however, it feels like Tobari's path should have been the one route-locked, not Chisato's, in the end. Black Moon There is no need to hide this, but this is the game's true ending. This ending serves as an alternate ending to Tobari's path and is fairly dramatic. To be honest, I found this about ten times more interesting than most of the other paths in this game, save for Tobari's original one... which is probably the point. the first half of this path is the Tobari path told entirely from Tobari's point of view up until a certain turning point, where Kotaro takes an action that is different from the original. Conclusion This game has a number of flaws, not the least of which that there really only needed to be three heroines (Honoka, Tobari, and Akane) and the fact that the actual paths feel abrupt at points, showing the peculiarly odd pacing that was common to a lot of games from the time. However, it is also a nice game for people who like messed up and twisted relationships that don't stray into NTR or rape-related stuff.

i dont know if japanese game, i only play english patched. Yourou Tsumugu from Ikinari anata koishiteiru she is strange girl who talk weird stuff, friendly as maid Kouzuki IO from D.S. -Dal Segno- strange and friendly, but most like a Chuni Kusakabe Haru from Komyu she is strange and pevert but only said sex jokes Chrono clock also have dorothy but not funny girl. If i rememmber just strage, otaku and friendly girl

There are a number of companies that specialize in gameplay hybrids or have at least one series of such games. Eushully (variations on rpg, strategy, and srpg systems with alchemy sometimes thrown in) SofthouseChara (involved, unique game systems) Xuse Honjouzou (Aselia series) Eternal (the Yumina series) Ninetail/Dualtail (Venus Blood, various dungeon crawlers) Giga (Baldr series under Team Baldrhead) Alice Soft (various games and series) Astronauts (various rpgs, dungeon crawlers, and tower defense under a subsidiary) Generally speaking, it takes a great deal more money and personnel to make gameplay hybrids, so companies pretty much have no choice but to specialize in such games if they do make them at all. Programming staff capable of creating credible gameplay systems generally demand more money than the guys who use existing engines to make visual novels work (most companies use a pre-existing engine rather than a proprietary one), and so a single failure can often sink a company outright. You'll notice that you'll see almost no companies less than five years old even trying to make such VNs in Japan... well there is a good reason for that. The initial investment is just too large. Think about it... just to make a decent game that doesn't look like it came straight out of RPGmaker or a mobile app can eat up millions here. A VN using a pre-existing engine can get in under a hundred thousand (charage) if they don't ask for too much. The only reason most VN companies stay afloat at all is because they sell merchandise or do everything they can to cut costs while inflating the price of the games. Edit: Incidentally, the best old-fashioned JRPG I've played in the last fifteen years (not replayed, but actually played for the first time) was Ikusa Megami Zero, a hybrid by Eushully. So I'm not a hater, lol.

@MaggieROBOT WHERE IS MY "Maggie's #1 fan" PROFILE BADGE

I do that all the time except when the VN is fairly short. I always download new stuff and start it before finishing what I was reading first, that's why it takes me months to finish some VNs even though I consider myself a fast reader.

Luckily I have no NDAs binding me, so I can post various VN TL rates I may or may not have been told about: First of all we have Arunaru when quitting MG who says the max rate at MG is now 1.75 cents per moji. I've heard 1 cent per moji quoted a lot as the lowest MG rate, but it's possiblE they've went up to 1.25 or something. https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr1tu4. I believe editing rates are generally ~1/4 of tl rates at MG while they might be 1/2 at other companies, but this might have changed. Sol Press pays 1 cent per moji as far as I know. If you ever needed another reason not to work for them... JAST is afaik at least 2 but might be 3. Could go to 4? Frontwing used to pay a whopping 6 afaik, but I'm not sure if this is still true. Sekai is 2 or 3 I believe. Again, could go to 4? —but you'd be working for sekai project. I don't think any vn tl company bar frontwing pays 5 cents or above on any kind of regular basis. Maybe Aksys? not sure. I think Aksys has unusually high editor pay to go with their "have translators translate literally (badly) and punch it up later" approach where they expect semi-heroic editor efforts. But I haven't heard a number for Aksys I don't think.

This is extremely inaccurate. If 5 cents per moji was standard in VN translations you’d hear a lot less complaints about bad pay, lol. NDAs are a thing, so I can’t mention specifics, but uh, think like... a lot less than that. If you want the low end think a LOT lower than that. Like, jesus, where did that number even come from. I want in on that shit.