Plk_Lesiak

I have a lot of sentiment for this An Cafe song due to it being my favourite opening theme to Darker than Black (which is also one of my favourite anime), but I never actually knew what the band looked like... This is not how I imagined it.

I feel like not liking h-scenes is more of shameful thing in the VN community? Anyway, you could say this is not my topic, but not fully. I actually really enjoy softcore stuff and it's a huge shame there's not more of that in visuals novels. I'd love more mildly erotic scenes like those in Kindred Spirits, and they're nearly non-existant outside of that game and some yuri EVNs. If you say that sex scenes are a logical extension of the romance plots and can have a lot of story relevance, I completely agree. There's just so little substance to h-scenes as they're usually done in JVNs and they so often go against what the core story represents, that they're just tedious if you don't look for fapping material. I know there are exceptions, but it would be awesome if more VNs tilted to the side of erotica and not plain porn. I mean, I understand that many people really enjoy the latter, but it'd be way more interesting if we could get a decent amount of both.

So, I think I'm done with Venus Blood -Frontier- (All Ages Version). Being ill for the past few days created the perfect conditions to marathon through it and my experience was pretty positive. To large degree thanks to the protagonist, Loki, who has some very interesting features – he's full of contradictions, having a lot of compassion deep inside but being shaped by the brutal years of humiliation in the demon empire and his lust for vengeance. It's exactly the kind of character that can become either a pure villain or a sympathetic anti-hero. And no matter in which direction you steer him in, he's still a very rational, cunning individual that will do whatever is necessary to achieve his goals, but not violent or cruel for no reason. Interestingly enough, the corruption mechanic, where you taint and mind-break the Goddesses, is completely separate from the Law/Chaos choices – narratively speaking, it makes no sense to keep then uncorrupted in the chaos route, but other than that, it's reasonable to mix and match. Speaking of Goddesses, they were cool as characters, but I probably liked Loki's cousins even more, with their wild personalities and rivalries with the protagonist. It's a shame they don't get individual endings, but only a harem one. In general, I think endings mostly do not give justice to the heroines, especially the strongest ones like the cousins. The story is full of twists, but doesn't feel contrived – I really liked most of it, despite some problems with tone. The SRPG mechanics are really in-depth and offer tons of variety, but also are a bit hard to grasp at first – there's a criminal lack of tooltips and proper tutorial – and can get really grindy at times. In general, I think it was a very solid experience, 8/10. And this is completely ignoring the porn aspect – I don't think I lost much of story by skipping on it, everything was pretty well laid-out and flowed nicely despite obvious cuts on the fanservice scenes.

Welcome, welcome! Just saw your VN's tread, looks quite interesting. I'll give it a try soon.

Welcome to Fuwa!

Note: I was provided a review copy of Rituals in the Dark by Marantana, author of the game's German translation. Rituals in the Dark, published on Steam November last year, is the latest yuri release by ebi-hime, one of the most highly-regarded EVN developers. Those familiar with ebi’s work probably know that her history with yuri is as long as it is unique. Most of her games add unusual spins to the formula, or at the very least showcase her distinct writing style, very introspective and painfully realistic in its portrayal of human nature. This makes even the more conventional of her w/w love stories, such as Blackberry Honey (check out my review of it here) stand out through their pacing and often uncompromisingly painful plotlines. All this is usually coupled with strong attention to quality and general writing prowess, making her EVNs some of the best on the market when it goes to literary qualities. This newest project shares many staple elements of ebi’s style. Mixing long sections of NVL-style narration and retrospection with more typical segments of character interactions, it creates a slow-paced experience, focused a lot on the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. At the same time, it might be one of the first cases where, in my experience, some parts of ebi's formula felt a bit bothersome, particularly because what kind of people the major characters turned out to be. It’s also the shortest and most minimalistic commercial game ebi has released since 2017's Sweetest Monster, in a way bridging the gap between her larger projects and the freeware games she was creating in the past. So, what are Ritual in the Dark’s main problems and do they fully spoil the compelling experience you’d expect from a VN by ebi? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

I think this one's barely 20th century (like 15 years old), but I guess it counts. And it's hard to argue, particularily with this live performance it's quite lovely. I, on the other hand, have more fun than I've expected with Sakura Fujiwara's bootleg American folk. It somehow cracks me up that this kind of music is made in Japan. ^^

I'm reading Legend of Everything by Kidalang, the An Octave Higher people (you might want to check this one out at some point @Zakamutt). It starts like a silly isekai story observed from the perspective of a gameworld inhabitant, but then is basically turns into a giant lecture on the "universe is a simulation" thesis. By this virtue, it becomes a giant mindfuck and by the point I'm at now, it's scary with how logical its arguments are. I pretty much hate the 3D graphics in it, but reading it is still tons of fun if you enjoy this kind of infodumping and science discussion. It probably won't offer much new to anyone who is super into this topic, but for me it proved to be pretty captivating, and actually managed to tie together the scattered pieces of physics knowledge I've possessed before... More educational than Go! Go! Nippon/10

Happy Birthday! Treat yourself to something good. :3

Sorry for OT, but how are you doing with all that subreddit drama lately? Do you think that the war with Discord server and the bitter old-timers will cool down soon? Edit: And is it true that Nai wanted to carb the loli and extreme 18+ content from the subreddit? Maybe you should appoint him to create & run a SFW affiliate one? I think that could a good space for EVN content to thrive in the long run, without the baggage of Japanese fetish porn and old-guard VN purists. :>

Confession: I just randomly remembered that in my pre-weeb days, many years ago, I had a brief, random fascination with Japanese pop and listened to quite a lot of that time's recently-released Amuro Namie songs. Today I checked her music on Spotify (I was quite sure she wasn't there before? When did her full discography appear there? ) and nearly died of cringe. So, it seems my music taste used to be even more horrible than it is now? Didn't think that'd be possible. Edit: To be fair to myself (how nice of me!), I listened to Ayumi Hamasaki even more and I still consider her pretty awesome – she's a real musician and not an idol too.

There's no full version of this anywhere outside of Spotify and embedding songs from there is broken lately, so I guess this will have to do. Another Spitz song a cover of which charmed me lately. I can't really get into the originals, in decent part because of the vocalist, but there's this very positive, gentle vibe in their music that I enjoy. Sakura Fujiwara's version really brought out all the positive qualities of this particular song (I kind of like her in general, although most of her songs are quite forgettable).

So, I've actually been reading stuff lately... I'm pretty shocked myself, to be honest! And surprise surprise, Sakura Fox Adventure is short, derivative, unpolished garbage put together from unused assets made years ago! Who would've thought? Anyway, it seems I've stopped finding these games amusing lately even in an ironic way. They turned mundane from their sheer number, to the point even their failures are exactly the same every time and it's not fun to pick on them. As a change of pace, I've also read Sweetest Monster and despite the fact I spoiled it to myself a while ago, I'm still sick to my stomach after finishing it. Quite literally. It's not the gore'y kind of horror, but a psychological one and it does A LOT to make the reader uncomfortable. I love how ebi-hime writes this kind of stories and the impact of this one is quite similar to that of Lynne... But this might be even more impactful, thanks to the art and that one demon catgirl who I'm quite likely to see my in nightmares for the next few days. And staying with ebi-hime's work, her newest VN, Rituals in the Dark is... Not very impactful, to be honest. It's a fine story, but in the end it leaves the romance kind of unresolved and doesn't do anything that would stick with me, like most other ebi's titles did. In its minimalism, in a strange way, it reminds me of Lucky Me, Lucky You, but I didn't feel the similar charisma from the characters or a thought-provoking message. Maybe I was expecting a bit too much, but I think among all of ebi's stories, this is the one I'll remember the least in the long run, despite it theoretically combining things I very much enjoy (creepy climate and yuri). I've also started reading Katawa Shoujo, now getting to the end of the common route and it's extremely charming. The heroines are immediately likeable and I really enjoy how the story is developing. I'm also really curious how some of the routes will look like, including those less liked (I mean, I have a hard time imagining Shizune romance...). I might be super-late to this party, but I'm definitely going to enjoy it a lot. :3

Steam being a more reliable platform for otaku media. Streaming services for anime not being completely useless in my region (Eastern Europe). That's pretty much it. I don't have many complaints with how things were the last decade, to be honest. I guess the AAA gaming market was a massive shitshow, but I don't think I care at this point. Most of the stuff I still have any kind of emotional connection to is indie, or old enough that it came out before the unreasonable monetisation and other mainstream-publisher abominations came to be. *shrug*

Well, play School Days or Shiny Days, you'll get a lot of random pregnancies there. But it's exactly a game messing around with reader's expectations and eroge tropes. Generally, if you get a pregnancy in visual novels, it's for fetish and not for storytelling/realism. It's dumb but I kind of don't mind, I don't want to make virtual children any more than I want to make real ones (that is, not at all). EDIT: Now that I think about it, if School Days/Shiny Days have a serious theme outside of trying to infuriate the player, it's that sex has consequences. It's one of those rare eroge when I can fully agree that sex scenes are meaningful – nearly every one of them has real consequences for the plot and pregnancies are one of the possible outcomes if you fail to keep Makoto's pants up. ;p

You probably saw many cataclysms in stories you’ve read or watched in the past. Disasters that were natural, technological or magical in nature, limited in scale or apocalyptic, resulting in short-lived crises or civilisation-ending. From Muv-Luv through Swan Song to I Walk Among Zombies, plot-oriented visual novels never shied away from presenting these kinds of scenarios, and along with literature, they’re uniquely positioned to explore deeper consequences they could have for both individuals and whole societies. Fallstreak, a free game released on Steam on October 2018 as a debut title of a small studio under the name Centicerise Productions, is one less-common EVNs tackling this topic. It does so by focusing heavily on a group of people affected by such a catastrophic event – mostly average folk, crippled physically and emotionally by the mysterious Fire of Collapse that ravaged their isolated country without a warning or identifiable source. It’s also, generally speaking, a wonderfully-produced piece of VN that I’m wary of recommending to people due to its surprisingly extreme content and open-ended story, quite clearly meant as an introduction to its world and a prologue to future games utilizing the same setting. So, what are the main reasons to check it out, or to skip on visiting the fantasy realm of Socotrine at least until Fallstreak’s continuation shows up? The amount of stories-within-a-story and subplots that are never elaborated upon makes Fallstreak feel more like a prologue leading to a proper story than a standalone experience Fallstreak’s Steam page claims that the game’s protagonist is Adelise Cotard, the daughter of Socotrine’s ruler and a little girl with a mind of an adult. Atypically mature due to the time she spends in the Golden Dream, a lucid dreamworld full of knowledge which she enters nearly every night, Ade is indeed the character through which we initially experience the story. These introductory chapters, rather relaxed and light-hearted, mostly follow her and her group of friends through some everyday situations – a normal life in which only physical scars some of them bear and occasional reminiscence hint at the dramatic past. However, she’s neither sole focus nor the only protagonist of the game. In its second half, when we start learning about other characters’ backstories and the details of Fire of Collapse though flashbacks, she’s not only pushed to the background but mostly absent, with crucial events taking place before she was even born. At this point, the game switches perspectives on a regular basis, focusing mostly on various members of the Lirit family, whose children are Adelise’s classmates in a private school for those orphaned or otherwise affected by the cataclysm. In the meantime, we’re also introduced to a ton of information about Socotrine itself, a land isolated from the outside world by the apparently impassable, magical mist. Its impoverished, but stable history was shaken up by the arrival of a refugee convoy from beyond the barrier, around 20 years before the game’s main events. Bringing with them advanced technology and knowledge of the outside world, refugees affected drastically both the land’s political balance and the way of life of its people. Eventually, the convoy’s “Lost Children” revolted against the ruling aristocracy of Socotrine and brought in an era of prosperity. At the same time, the game opens many questions about their origins, actions after traversing the mist and their connection to the Fire of Collapse which nearly destroyed the whole realm. Adelise’s personal story is also apparently related to much of this, with the Golden Dream, her father’s dethronement of the Lost Children’s leader and her mother’s death all signalized as mysteries crucial to understanding Socotrine’s predicaments, although without many hints on how they’re actually significant. Fallstreak’s story turns bleak without much warning and introduces scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in the darkest of horror stories – it’s not a VN for those faint of heart If this sounds like a lot to fit into a relatively short, 80k-word VN, it definitely is. I also skipped a number of lore details and subplots that could be considered spoilers, and as you can imagine, very few of those receive any kind of answer or satisfying conclusion. The game does not shy away from extensive infodumps and introducing character after character, many of them either signalizing stories that might be told in the future or being little more than exposition props. It also includes allegorical stories told by various characters, which further draw the readers attention away from its actual plot-points and protagonists. At times the memorable, high-quality visual design and solid characterisation are main things preventing it from devolving into an incomprehensible mess. The unique characters and the sheer beauty of all visual assets make it easier to get immersed in the world and look past the absolute overload of story threads the game bombards you with, without ever tying most of them together. While the pacing is definitely an issue in Fallstreak, the most problematic part might still be its tone: it often jumps from rather relaxing slice-of-life moments to unsettling mysteries, and then to over-the-top tragedy and absolutely grotesque violence. The aforementioned backstory of the Lirits is full of gut-wrenching moments, drastic enough to disturb even a relatively experienced and desensitized reader like me. I’m not sure all of them belonged in this story – some very much balanced on the border of absurdity and if they had a real narrative function beyond the sheer shock factor, it’s not clear at this point. It’s not a massive problem if you can handle that kind of content, but it definitely makes Fallstreak not an experience for everyone, especially because the intensity of these segments was not properly signalized by previous events and very much caught me by surprise. The visual design of Fallstreak is impeccable and helps a lot in fleshing out its characters and world, making them surprisingly memorable If what I wrote so far paints a pretty bleak picture, it’s because Fallstreak’s problems could’ve been fatal if not for how just this polished and well-put-together it is. The prose and dialogue, despite the heavy exposition and anachronistic jokes that I’m not sure make sense in the setting, are very solid. Elements such as character’s speech patterns and personality quirks save them from being forgettable in the overcrowded storyline. And in the end, it’s the beautiful visuals and music that really make it stand out. The characters look distinct and expressive, while backgrounds and CGs are hard to take your eyes off. The assets are also pretty abundant for a free VN, with just enough environments, sprite variants and full illustrations to consistently keep things fresh. The original soundtrack is very climatic, with mostly sombre piano tunes underlining the sad reality of the game’s world. It all comes together in a way that I’m not sure I’ve seen in another free VN. So, ultimately, what do I make out of Fallstreak? It’s definitely not a bad game and the main problems it suffers from came rather from the developers being overly ambitious than a lack of effort. They definitely tried to fit too much into one package and didn’t follow up properly with new chapters. If I read it right and it is a starting point for a commercial franchise, we should already be seeing much more concrete signals about its continuation than the sporadic teasers present on the developer's social media. It’s not an abandoned project, considering I was directly approached by the studio behind it not a long time ago and the latest updates on the continuation are fairly recent, but whether you should read it depends mostly on whether you’re ok with reading a story that is essentially unfinished (and is going stay like that for a while), and whether you're willing to deal with its grimdark elements. For me, it was definitely worth the time I’ve spent reading it and as a free VN, that time is all it will ever ask from you. Final Score: 3/5 Pros: + Beautiful visuals + Climatic soundtrack + Memorable main characters Cons: – Frequent infodumps and clunky exposition – Gets over-the-top with the brutality of the backstories – Feels more like a prologue than a full story VNDB Page Play Fallstreak for free on Steam

Welcome to Fuwa! Be sure to share a bit about your project when it's ready to be shown to the world.

No, but I think Key VNs would generally be among those that threat their high school setting more seriously than most. They're also distinctly devoid of sex-appeal, so ultimately everything is in order.

Hey, your VNDB list is... Quite something. Anyway, I think I have a different problem, because as I'm getting old(er) and becoming more of certified failure at life, reading coming-of-age high school stories becomes kind of taxing. The heroines themselves though, they only rarely feel like actual highschoolers. For example, if I remember well, the main cast of Flowers are all high school freshmen, so 15-years-olds. However, they neither look nor act the part. The notion of age is all so abstract in both VNs and much of anime that I'll probably have to get much older to start feeling that dissonance. On the other hand, I don't really get off to otaku media in the first place, so the "cute little animal" kind of appeal shouldn't spoil my enjoyment. I'll skip the h-scenes either way and the romance should still be satisfying enough.

Welcome to Fuwa! Cool to see someone from China in our humble community, that seems even rarer than Japanese VN fans visiting us. Hope you'll find it interesting.

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way. That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method. ...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

If it flaws properly with the story, I wouldn't even call it an infodump. I think when people talk about those, they mostly mean the first kind you mentioned: just walls of information bringing the story to a hold for a significant amount of time. But for this reason, I kind of feel an infodumping prologue is underutilized in VNs. You can quite easily avoid putting clunky exposition in the middle of your game by explaining the basics of the universe at the beginning. Maybe devs avoid it because it's cliched to do a narrated introductions like that, but particularly in EVNs, I feel like a lot of storytelling issues and confusion could be avoided that way...

Well, this thread went places. Anyway, welcome to Fuwa! I'm just finishing Lyn;Lin and I like what it was going for at first, but... Why the infodumps? That's not how lovecraftian horror works. The moment the game starts explaining everything through plain narration, all the tension and mystery evaporates from it. :C