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As the title says, I'm Adze. Unlike most of you, I'm actually pretty new to weebery and I'd never actually watched any kind of anime (except for Pokemon because what 90s kid hasn't?) until I was in my 20s. In fact, it was visual novels that got me into Japanese media altogether, and I only got into VNs because someone convinced me to try out "the cripple dating sim made by 4Chan." So yeah, my entire involvement with this community is essentially a happy accident resulting from a misunderstanding. I'm also a small-time Youtuber who focuses on critical analysis of video games and VNs, though I don't want my presence on this site to be just shameless self-promotion. If you've seen anything of mine, it's probably either my Touhou video that went viral or my Muv-Luv video that made the rounds on VN Twitter. I feel like it'd be in poor taste to drop links here, but you can find a link to my work in my profile if you'd like. Aside from that, I like video games, reading actual books (most recently, I read through the Lightbringer series and aside from some weirdness towards the end, I absolutely loved it. Highly reccomended), and interacting with like-minded people online. Just today, I was involved in an impromptu group discussion on worldbuilding on Discord and it was absolutely incredible. Hopefully I can become friendly with some of you here and have some good fun with this niche interest of ours. Despite my staggering backlog, I'm always happy for more recommendations.

Huge shout out to @TheLocalWeeb7 for doing the editing for this review. Amatsutsumi is a visual novel released by Sekai Project in English, originally developed by Purple Soft. It's a very interesting mix of romance and plot. My longest VN review yet.

The Steam Deck is a handheld console based on SteamOS from Valve. As the system does not run on Windows not every game will work directly out of the box, for that reason I try to aggregate as much information as possible in this thread Games get added after I played them for a time to look out for issues and fixes. Please also add your experience with VNs on Steam Deck in the comments so I can add them to the list I recommend using an external keyboard when setting up Lutris, Protontricks and Proton GE. The on screen keyboard can be opened with "STEAM" + "X" and closed again with "B". NEW GUIDE AVAILABLE UNDER VisualNovelWiki Website also has specific instructions for games like Dead End Aegis, Full Metal Daemon Muramasa and more. Steam Launch Options Some games require you to set custom launch options in Steam, if required the launch options will be listed with the game. How to set custom launch options Protontricks Protontricks is a software which lets you easily install adult patches and additional required software, you can check out the project on GitHub here. Installation Guide Using Protontricks Proton Versions: Click Proton comes in different versions, normally you'll be okay with using the default version, sometimes you can encounter issues though which can be fixed with Proton GE, Proton Experimental or an older version of Proton. Proton GE: Click Proton GE is a community fork of Proton which adds additional support for mediaplayback, you can check out the project GitHub here. Installation Guide How to install Lutris: Click How to setup Wine prefixes: Click How to enable Japanese Locales: Click How to get custom artworks to Steam (for Steam games and non steam games): Click Controller Layout for most Visual Novels A, L1, R1, L4, R4 & R2 -> Left mouseclick B, Start -> Escape X & L2 -> Right mouseclick Sticks & Tackpads -> Mouse with clicking down being left mouseclick Battery Saving Settings The Steam Deck is a portable system and runs on a battery, because of that I changed some options on my device in order to extend the playtime. You can use the "..." button to open the quick access menu and change the settings under the battery icon. All the settings can be made either per game or global for the full system. For my Steam Deck I usally limit the refresh rate of the pannel to 40hz & limit the FPS to 40, 20 or 10 depending on how motion heavy the VN is A TDP limit of 5-8w should be enough for most VNs too, but you can adjust this to your needs. For some older games (and RPG Maker ones) you can enable FSR to get a sharper image. Additional Tips When possible chose windows mode instead of fullscreen for the best performance. Gamemode will make those games fullscreen anyways. Only chose fullscreen for RPG Maker games or other which show content outside of the visible screen. Some more tips thanks to barjed on Reddit: All Unity based VNs should work without Problem (excl. Video). If a game crashes due to a video, a possible fix is the deletion of the video in the game files You can also prepear the games on Windows and use Warpinator to push the game on Deck. Videoguide Addtional Resources ProtonDB Sekai Project's Compatibility List (thanks to hubb2001 on Reddit) WineHQ Lutris Steam Deck Reddit Linux Gaming Reddit Discord Server for help with Lutris and Proton

Well, I am. Anyway, I've watched the current episodes of Bocchi the Rock, and it was pretty good. I've never really watched any music-based anime, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but so far it's been pretty enjoyable, and the comedy is gold. As someone who also suffers from pretty strong social anxiety, I like how they presented the protagonist. It's overly exaggerated, of course, but I did find myself in many of her antics, and it didn't feel particularly offensive like how often Japanese comedy tends to be. On the other hand, she does grow throughout the show, but obviously she still has a long way to go.

Hello, I'm a developer looking for ideas for tools I could work on that could fill a hole in the VN ecosystem. Has there ever been any tool you'd wish you had while working on your VN, or even before starting work on it, or when it's finished? It might be anything from a software, a script, a website (ex: a site to find other team members, a script to check grammar, a software to outline your scenario, etc.), for artists, programmers, testers, or any member of the team. I'm interested in hearing your ideas as detailed as you can, what use case would it fill, how much time it would save you, etc.

Greener Pastures is a schlocky monster girl harem dating sim... that's surprisingly well-written. You can get the game itself here (for free!)

I think that really is the key factor-- the finished mixing with the unfinished. Not only that, but because itch is a marketplace, everything about the interface is funneled towards the idea of making a sale. Because the goal with this website would be feedback, you potentially have a little bit more freedom in website construction because the goals are inherently different.

I'm not sure I get your idea. I'm looking at writing prompt generator and I can find all kind of theme, from romance to horror. Why doesn't they fit a VN in your opinion? Same for the asset part, would it automatically create scenes using those assets for you? That's one of the ideas I had actually, but I wasn't sure because itch is already so big in the scene. What kinds of feature do you think itch is missing specifically to fit this role? Or is it just because finished games are mixed with unfinished ones, so the unfinished ones have lower visibility? This could be a really interesting idea to develop further, but I need to understand what the added value would be over something like itch, as it would be impossible to compete on the same feature set since the userbase is already so big.

I think some sort of proving ground similar to itch.io, but exclusively for visual novel alphas and betas to help smooth out the rough edges of a project (before moving your game past the point of no return by publishing it on Steam) would be amazing. The playtesting/feedback phase of VNs seems to be incredibly overlooked on the whole, but having a really brutal writer's room/environment specifically devoted to playtesting new VNs would help people prioritize it more and lead to higher quality works as a whole.

I wish there was a place that could offer you VN specific writing prompts, and you could construct scenes using whatever art assets you already have. IE sprites and whatnot. Sometimes, writing prompts can help get you out of a writer's block but most of the time, those prompts have little to nothing to do with writing a VN. Well, unless your VN is about a time travelling robot lizard fighting a cat demon.

It's been exactly a month since the first post announcing the project, although you may have noticed I've been updating the translation counts weekly. And so I'm here to give the first major update: Hayami's arc is now fully translated! Her total arc has over 20,000 lines and is the longest by far in the entire game, so getting over that hurdle is very gratifying and makes the rest of the project seem slightly less daunting. But only slightly, since with just under 46,000 lines left to translate, that's almost exactly the entire length of my previous fan translation project, Imaimo. Not that the two are really comparable in any way beyond that coincidental statistic. The fact is that Imaimo was generally easier to translate. That's not to say H2O has a difficult writing style, because it really doesn't. Most of it is very straightforward, but it does tend to be very wordy. That might have something to do with how this is a NVL game and not an ADV game, so the lines can be longer without having to worry about a text box. Or maybe the writers of H2O were just generally more verbose than what I encountered in Imaimo. Either way, I've noticed that it generally takes longer to translate H2O on the whole, but I'm still going at a pretty decent pace. There's also the fact that starting the translation of any decently sized project feels slower at the start because there's so much more left to translate, but that picks up over time, especially after getting over the 50% milestone, which at least for this project is still a little bit ways away. Now for a few other things that I feel require clarification about the nature of the game. As it says in the first post, this version of H2O combines the content from the original game and the sequel that came later, Root after and another. But Root isn't just a fan disc. It essentially doubled the size of the available content from the original game. In fact, the two are virtually the same size in terms of their line counts: H2O content covers 36,901 lines, and the new content from Root covers 36,646 lines. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but it's an interesting coincidence either way. Additionally, if you remove the roughly 7,000 lines from the common route from the original game, that means Root actually has more content in the character routes than in the original game. The game's overall structure is also interesting in how it's laid out. There are 13 possible endings, which covers 5 normal routes (Hayami, Hinata, Otoha, Yui, Hamaji/Yukiji) and 8 after story routes (3 for Hayami, 2 for Hinata, and one each for Otoha, Yui and Hamaji/Yukiji (this last one is also Maki's route)). In the original game, you had to first play through Hayami's arc to get to Hinata, and then getting done with Hinata let you access Otoha's route. That's not exactly the case anymore in this version, although Otoha's route is still only unlocked after going through Hayami's, Hinata's, and Yui's normal routes. But you can do those in any order, or even do Hamaji's route first. As for the after stories, they're obviously only unlocked if you go through the normal routes first, in addition to 3 of the 8 after stories only being unlocked when you finish other after stories. That, in addition to the somewhat confusing choice progression, means that a full walkthrough will be provided for this game once the patch is released. But back to the translation. Completing Hayami's arc brings the total content translated up to 37.5%. Not bad for about 3 months of work considering how long this game is. By comparison, the Imaimo translation took me just under 3 months to complete from start to finish. So yeah, I have my work cut out for me. But I've enjoyed it immensely thus far. This is a really solid story with plenty of feels, comedy and...oh yeah, H scenes. There are 26 H scenes, 9 of which are in Hayami's arc. By line count, the 24 scenario files that contain the H scenes (because 2 files contain 2 H scenes) take up 14,479 lines, 19.7% of all content. That's not to say that every line in those 24 files is part of an H scene, but the vast majority of it is. As for the other girls, 6 H scenes are in Hinata's arc, 4 are in both Otoha's and Maki's arcs, and there are 3 in Yui's arc. Next up, I'll be translating Hinata's arc, the second longest after Hayami's, but considerably shorter at just over 14,000 lines. So for now, I'll get back to work.

Another update, and it's in regard of what PyroCyan said on Reddit. I'll quote his statements fully below. So yeah our PyroCyan here has the full translation patch that also have the TLC change up to Chapter 3, and in case there's a heavy emergency such as the team decided to abandoned this then he'll drop the patch as the leak. As for whether we can see this on Spring or Autumn next year, we'll see. If anything else, at least we already have someone who will leak the patch later if things goes awry, although of course the leak should be treated as the last resort only and so we should wait to finally have the programming be done. PS - Oh yes in case anyone wonder on how much final TLC on Chapter 4 (Licia's chapter) ongoing, currently it's been at 92.24% done (By the way I mentioned this as 'in programming' in my VNTS Review because there's some earlier mention that the TLC is already done for all chapters).

Our next monthly update brings with it an extended and slightly edited script for the Reversal ending that was released last time, complete with a beautiful CG to close it out. And with that I'm finally happy to call it done with Reversal for now. There's another path to come, which I think folks will be excited for, but I'm eager to shift my focus elsewhere as there's still so much else to do. Soooo, so much else ^^; Things like Hiroko's Gullible (formerly Trickster) storyline, which is another script I abandoned halfway due to a lack of inspiration. I've picked it up again and made some good progress with it here, with some more script written and a solid outline made up for a good chunk of the remaining scenes. If you want check out the new writing and you've forgotten how to get on this path (understandable), start Hiroko's route then select "convince her she's ticklish", followed by "Don't help her" and then "Take advantage of the situation". As usual, you can find this month's release in PC, Linux, Mac and Android versions on my Patreon, itch.io or SubscribeStar pages. I've also linked the most recent flowchart guide on the latest public news post on Patreon. Hope you enjoy the new release! Next month I hope to make much more progress on Gullible with a view to finishing a significant chunk of it. Expect the next CGs to have a Hiroko focus as well as I concentrate on illustrating the new content as it comes. What's New WRITING: Some minor script updates to Nozomi's Reversal storyline, including a slightly extended endingWRITING: Added additional script for Hiroko's Gullible storyline, up to the eighth day, and outline up to the tenth dayART: New CG for the Reversal storyline endingART: One new CG for Sayori's storylines, near the start of her routesWord count is now around 362,000LOCALIZATION: Various edits and corrections to the existing Spanish scriptMinor typo corrections