Narcosis

What's wrong with them. Didn't they had enough already?

It's worth to note, it's best to treat writing skill as a "tool of trade", of sorts. To be honest, I did chose "the writing" as a more important part within the pool, but in reality, without an intriguing and well constructed story, even the best kind of writing won't be ever able to shine. It's how things roll; those two things are mutually irreplaceable and one cannot truly exist without another. The end result of how good a vn (or any story-driven game) ends as is the sum of both of those parts. True masterpieces scale on a level, that is typically unreachable to a vast majority of writers - one, that requires both immense talent, skill, knowledge and imagination. Only a couple handfulls of people in history reached that kind of prowess, but I'm glad new ones pop up every once in a while. In all honesty, though. A lot of writers - professionals - will tell you that; As much as imagination is a world of your own, that cannot be replicated, nor replaced, writing is something everyone can learn as a skill. It all boils down to a proper set of tools and space to keep them in, as much as your own willingness to keep them in proper working order. If you ever thought about pursuing that kind of career, you have to only keep two things in mind. That is, read a lot and write a lot. That's about it. The rest is up to you.

Are you daft?

That would be Dies Irae, wouldn't it? But that's just a good example, of how high quality writing can make even the most stereotypic and cliched plots into magnificent stories.

Let's deconstruct the terms. What does "plot" mean? It's basically the story idea, given a structural form. Writing is the process of bringing that idea into fruition by putting it into the right words. Ideas are many and they are disposable. You can have the greatest ideas ever, but if you're unable to physically manifest them into reality, they will remain what they were - just some thoughts swimming inside your head. On the other hand, good plot tends to achieve far greater impact with equally great writing. I agree with @fun2novel on that point, but the truth is you can't really have a good story without a good plot, or even lack of thereof. Still, you can even turn the most generic and casual of daily activities into incredibly interesting situations with good writing. You can even write sex scenes, that won't look like porn at all.

I'd highly advise people to use the original music from the doujin version, instead of the remastered soundtrack. It's way better than the new songs made for the remake and the difference is overwheling; the new music sounds incredibly bland and generic, even though it's based on the same exact compositions. On the other hand, the doujin soundtrack really sets the mood for whatever's going on the screen. This will display the game in forced 960x544 fullscreen mode on higher resolution screens; not really a workaround, since you're sacrificing the rescaling to get rid of the text artifacting, which is most propably caused by the renderer itself. In other words, it won't be any different than playing it in windowed mode, except the image will be stretched on your entire screen. The whole point of rescaling on fly is to allow people with far larger resolutions to have a decent looking art without sacrificing it's quality too much. I also won't really agree that it's crappy; it's actually surprisingly decent. Most propably because the game relies more on digitally painted assets, rather than ultra crisp, cell shaded cg's and those tend to look bad with upscales. Actually, I think what causes the artifacting is the sloppy resolution itself, so there's no real way to actually get rid of it except for turning off all the graphic filtering, or remaking the whole game in more compatible formats. To be honest, I already got used to it and it doesn't bother me at all. I was quite worried how the graphics will look onscreen with such resolution, but now I'm preety content. It's not bad and game still looks gorgeous, but I play on a 5:4 1024p 19" screen, so yeah. It might make a difference. People with large screens might suffer from it the most. I have to admit the lack of "Quit" option in the main menu is mindboogling, though

IT'S HERE. Grab it while it's hot

Literally, the game is in early pre-production state and they already release a teaser, lol. Based Key. Key fans, man.

It's better to not reveal such information publicly at all; you're giving people ideas. Send a PM to @Tay or @Nayleen instead.

That's not utsuge, mate.

Why not utsuge, though? Key has been making nakige based on the same exact, rehashed formula for years. It's time to finally move on. Also, implicit sequels from Key are the last thing we need

Splendid, I daresay.

So far, the higher tiers are only worth it, if you are either a die-hard fan and value physical goods, or have a lot of money to spare. 300$ is the highest tier with a reasonable price tag, but there's really no ground to argue about tiers above, as they are aimed at those, who don't mind forking off additional bucks to support the project; rewards are preety much second of importance.

Looks good, although a single character concept does not ring much. That said, if you can pull it off, by all means, you should. I will gladly welcome a western vn with western-based themes and japanese styled anime art. It's actually something I'm hoping for more nowadays. It's worth to note, that even though art remains important, what really pulls people into a vn is the writing and worldbuilding. Neglect those and even the best art won't help your game.

SO IT BEGINS

That's something difficult to achieve, in all honesty. The only thing when it happens, is when a team is based either on a circle of friends - each of them skilled in one or more particular aspects of game development, or when people you hire take the project seriously and wholeheartedly and aren't just doing it to "get the job done" and receive the payment (as in, treating it purely as work), but want to get involved in it as much as possible, because they fucking like it. Part of the trick is finding people who share your dreams an passions, assesing who's readily able to put actual effort into the development and leave something behind, instead of only doing their part. It's eaier said, than done, unfortunately. A lot of people contributing to various projects are - in fact - not skilled, nor mature enough, nor have the required patience to tackle whatever they are tasked with. A lot of people think only about money. A lot of people only want to get the job done and move on; they aren't really interested, they don't share the lead developer's vision, they are in only to gain the experience or start their own careers, treat projects as personal milestones. This is why a lot of the games on the market actually lack that something special, which makes them unique. The kind of a game you take and say "Wow, the team that worked on it really put everything into it, it's so incredibly distinct and you can litally sense the devteam's passion burning throughout it". Such games rarely feel just like a bunch of different elements and assests hastily cobbled together, but a consistent production, where every single of it's part complements the rest.

Kanokon. There are only two kinds of people - those who liked it and those who pretend to hate it with a burning passion

Regardless how you look at it, Lump of Sugar is the hitler of eroge industry

Preety much. It's like they were in a pinch or something, trying to squeeze additional money from their old, well established brands, ruining them in the process.

Mashiro appears in the sequel, lol. It literally spoils you a lot of things, that were prevalent in or important within the story of the original. Not only that, to truly enjoy the sequel, it expects you to know the first game to a degree. the appearance of characters that were in the first game literally kills all the nostalgia - all the affection - you had from the original and voids any choices you've made, as the ones in second game make no sense in relation to Mashiro. I'm not sure what LoS is doing, but they've been fucking up all their new games; it's just not even remotely funny anymore. For me, placing characters from a first game into a sequel with no apparent reason, other than to cater to the original fans is just a blatant bait to raise the sales, instead luring in people with a honestly enjoyable story. That aside, the game isn't >that< bad, but it falls flat in comparison to the prequel + all the shit I mentioned above. Original game wasn't exceptionally good as a vn in overall, either. It's just a decent charage with a preety well woven tale that fits the characters and tropes. But definitely something worth reading, if you like such games.

Most propably. IIRC Tayutama had a chinese fan TL already; it's not uncommon, especially for games of this type.

Interesting. Although... why on earth are they releasing a game, that requires readers to know the prequel to actually appreciate it? I've no idea why are they even releasing it instead; sequel isn't even that good and preety much kills anything first game managed to build up so well. Tayutama is an extremely well executed charage.

If Steam allows games like Hatred or GTA, I don't see any issues with Dies Irae.

Just don't. No one should ever try reading Dies or any other works from Masada, until he's proficient with japanese. You're doing yourself a great disservice otherwise. I myself decided I'd rather wait and hope for an english release, than try reading it in japanese. This dream came true and I'm even getting the best translation possible I could ever get. I still can't believe it

Thanks for popping in anyway. How are you feeling?