Narcosis

Sent some grumbling love.

I presume a lot might actually depend on how each author describes "vampirism" in itself. Is it supernatural, or strictly scientific? An ancient curse, some sort of an unknown disease or a symbiotic virus? That sort of context alone has huge impact one many different smaller details, including how other people might perceive vampires and as such, how vampires see themselves.

I'm still here, though.

Maybe a better description would be a straight out "monster girl" game, to be honest. I don't think there are any >actual< humans portrayed in the game. In regards to running the game - I did check the DxWnd and it does work with the game, indeed. I'd highly recommend using that one, as it not only allows full control over the rendering processes, but includes a bunch of very useful hooks that allow you more flexibility and control over the software you're running (such as disabling keyboard, when the window is out of focus). Glad you liked it. I'm planning to write reviews more often, although I'm still looking into a more compact way of summarizing the games I play; this one took me too much time to write. I'd still highly recommend to play this one, if you're a fan of older eroge. Compared to other titles, including earlier sex romps, Yougen Tennyo is very high quality and even the h-contents can be considered relatively mild, unless fictional "bestiality" gives you a heart attack. Funnily enough, I learned all the greek/roman/ancient legends in primary school and every second one involves demi-gods banging women under some form of animalistic disguise. No one ever complained about those It's a really enjoyable h-game, in fact.

Warning: This review isn't necessarily safe for work, but all the nsfw content remains hidden within the spoiler tags. Read at your own discretion. Title: 妖幻天女 (The Bewitching Celestial Maiden) Developer: Scoop Release: 2001/01/25 Genre: Fantasy Rating: AO/18+ Trailer: After way too many vns in our existence all the plots slowly run together into one and character development stops being important. It is when we want to take a break and get our hands on something extra crispy - as long as it allows us to indulge in the deepest of desires, there's no place for needless banter. We are merely simple beings with simple needs... and being a simple guy, I couldn't neglect a game, one of my friends recommended me long ago. "Play this japanese erogi", he said. "You will reach true happiness.", he said. At that point I barely knew moon runes, so I couldn't care less. Now when things changed, I accidentally stumbled upon this magnificent piece of software, while browsing through more forgotten corners of the japanese net. Was it worth it? If you're interested, please continue. Story It's common for sons of well-established leaders to be mostly useless, good-for-nothing gallants. Raziel isn't an exception. Prince Raziel is the successor to the demon throne, but his interests vary wildly from whatever his father keeps in stock, not to mention actual marriage. When his soon-to-be fiancée turns out to be an angel - a mortal enemy of the demon kind - Raziel takes a liking for the girl and decides to make her his bride, much to Demon King's disapproval. After a heated argument, king promises to approve of their relationship, but only if Raziel manages to bring her back to the demon realm. Clueless on how to begin, prince Raziel joins forces with his ever profit-hungry childhood friend Rosetta and together they embark on a fantastic journey through mystical realms, full of glorious dickings and endless hopes for treasure troves ready to be taken. In this realm, your future half is revealed through divination, the rest does not seem to matter that much. In order to reach the heavens above, our duo has to traverse through 魔界 ("Hell" for you, uneducated peasants) and obtain four elemental stones, which will allow them to open a magical portal leading to the mortal plane. From there onwards, they will have to pass through the Machine Country and Country of the Beasts, before they reach entrance to heavens. A seemingly simple task, if not for the fact the stones are being kept away within four great towers and each of them is supposedly protected by a powerful guardian. Obviously, the stones themselves contain tremendous powers that allow it's bearer to control the elemental energies and as such, shouldn't ever fall into anyone's hands, especially demon. What a cutie. I'm obviously talking about Rosette. No one really knows what lies beyond the mortal gates, but they're confident to push onwards. Such is their fate. TL&DR version: It's a game about a demon prince, boning any females that stand on his way to achieve true happiness. Also, snakes. Lots of 'em. Gameplay Thanks for stating the obvious, Rosette. Yougen Tennyo is a classic eroge, deeply rooted within the galgame realm of late 80's and early 90's. Game itself is divided into two parts - the usual story mode, presented in ADV fashion and a Qix-esque mini game, where your take control of our dark-winged protagonist trying to slash through maps compromised of tiles, avoiding and fighting against a variety of opponents. The capricious all-female guardians force him into a game of wits and wagers to prove his worthiness on being the next owner of the stones... and perhaps something else. As you slowly progress through the game, you quickly find out the damn stones are as relevant as Raziel's fidelity. While each failure results in a classic "game over" screen, after which the game restarts, actual victories net you - the player - not only story progression, but the main reward - h-scenes, in which our protagonist has his way with the defeated ladies (sometimes likewise). And boy, oh boy - if you enjoy stories, where protagonists are either rogues or straight out bastards, while females constantly switch from prideful to poor, oppressed beings into lust-filled demons demanding your se- I mean, your unyielding attention - you'll love every minute of it. It's not a mystery to behold our dear ladies are of supernatural origin and being forever bound to a single place with no one to accompany them, they grew both very lonely and bored over the passing centuries. Surely - they might be ill-tempered and/or cautious (PMS, perhaps), but it's in your task to soften them up and judging from devs, the best possible way to do so is by being rough. Push onwards, traveller. Open all the gates! The whole story is divided into seven arcs, not counting prologue and epilogue. There are four different towers and three realms our heroes will have to pass in order to reach ending. Each of the areas is a home to one of the game's heroines. The Earth Tower, inhabited by our shy nymph Raka (guarding the Earth Stone) Kingdom of Winds, home to the capricious sylph Sherra (guarding the Wind Stone) Tower of the Flames, guarded by the tsun fire sprite, Narsemi (guarding the Fire Stone) Rainy Kingdom, home to the tempting undine, Arga (guarding the Water Stone) Machine Country (human world), managed by the automaton Queen, Lia Country of the Beasts, supervised by proud centauress, Eija. Finally, the Heavenly Realm, where Raziel's fated bride - Oferina - resides. As a reader, you will spend most of the time following Raziel and Rosetta from place to place and engage in battles with it's guardians; either chasing after the more timid gals, or confronting the powerful vixens directly, ultimately falling into their playful clutches. It's worthy to note despite game's initial simplicity, girls themselves prove to be pleasantly developed, both in terms of personalities and the less, but not less important bits (when it applied). Each of the encounters is different and has something else in stock - there's a nut for every bolt, as they say. Not all of them run away scared or remain hostile to the protagonist. Some - in fact - welcome him as a pleasant surprise in their realms, offering to exchange their stones (wew) for a friendly game of cat and mouse. Those games - often being contests of strength, wits and spirit - ultimately turn to time, where they slowly get to know each other and sadly - the only time where we can learn something more about them. Fans of Rance series might find themselves at home, as most of the events in the story are described in an ultimately comedic fashion, rather than being serious and you can't deny that Raziel - even for being a villainous sort of a protagonist - isn't inherently bad, or evil as his only ultimate goal is to find a way to heavens and meet with his fated fiancée. In other words, you quickly let certain things go past the radar, even when most of the acts committed by Raziel could easily be described as nothing else but forcey fun time. Things get more hectic in the end, when you finally reach the Celestial Kingdom, that turns out to be less celestial, than you thought at first. A rather tiny, but surprising plot twist occurs, where you confront an unexpected guest and have to rescue Oferina from a fate far worse than death... I'd rather omit the details to avoid potential spoiling, but the whole final confrontation left me as much distressed and angry, as hilariously grinning for the remaining portion of the game. And they all lived happily ever after... or did they? I found the whole concept of the game symbolic at times. Embarking from the depths of the netherworld, collecting elements that form the basis of universe, passing through the human realm, reaching the kingdom representing nature itself (one that will always remain above humanity) and finally reaching heavens, representing self-understanding all create a somewhat mystic feeling. Each of the realms seems to be a self-sufficient, closed-off state - more of a dream, where our heroines reside, mostly alone, if not counting their faithful servitors. The lack of humans within their own world is thought-provoking and you start to wonder, what happened. Did we lost ourselves in our never-ending pursuit of perfection or perhaps the mechanical puppets themselves are what remained of our own kind? In contrast to this, the Country of the Beasts seems like a bliss, akin to ancient descriptions of Promised Land, or Eden. We see all the animals in the backgrounds - both herbivores and carnivores - living in perfect harmony. A place of eternal happiness and ultimately something we cannot return to. The Celestial world above seems very cold and empty, with ancient ruins older than the universe itself. It reflects in Oferina's eyes - distant, melancholic and filled with solitude. All those states form what could be seemingly described as our own consciousness. Quite artsy, to be honest. This is what happens, when you allow greedy lolis to do as they please. In overall, I found the whole story to be pleasant and really enjoyable, if not a bit repetitive. Despite being plain and very much straightforward, the entire voyage got me hooked until the very end. For that I have to thank the game's heroines and Rosetta's constant antics. Minigame Though the developers consider Yougen Tennyo a mix between ADV and Qix, the mini-game portion itself feels closer to Bomberman, rather than similar puzzle/arcade titles. The mechanics are very simple. Your primary task is to clear each stage from all the tiles scattered on the floor. There's a timer running, so you have to hurry up, because when it reaches zero it's instant game over. Raziel moves across the tiles, leaving a flaming trail behind him which can be used to close them in simple geometric patterns. When you succeed, all tiles contained inside turn into elemental bullets and shoot in a direction our character was last facing. Those can be used to damage and kill the servitors sent by the guardians to hinder our progress. Killed enemies will sometimes leave power-ups. Those are divided into few different types - offensive, defensive and utility, ranging from instant bombs and bonus lives to additional time or stop it for a while, prevent opponents from spawning on the map or summon Rosette's lovely pet companion - Grimarkin (actually, it's a female as well... hopefully) - to either destroy tiles or launch attacks at the opponents. Again, despite it's simplicity, the mini game turned out to be a lot more engaging than I expected. It's feels very balanced and provides constant challenge, while not being an overly frustrating addition. If you will play straight from the beginning and have some skill with arcade games, you shouldn't have any problems in reaching the end, considering how generous stages can be at times, raining you with constant stream of 1-UP's. You're also gifted with Rosetta's presence in the bottom-left window, cheerfully commenting on your achievements and mishaps, because all we need is more sarcasm. My only note is that the game could still use a bit more variety in map design and puzzle elements. If not for the slight changes in terrain graphics and opponents, you could be as well playing the same exact thing, over and over again. The whole game is divided into 7 different worlds and each of them contains four stages. The first one is considered more or less an introduction. The second one adds more opponents. Sub-bosses appear in third stage. Those are usually powerful beings and each of them comes with a fairly different set of skills, requiring different approach to clean stages. They can be killed, but attempting to do so can be quite tricky, considering their toughness. In the final stage, you will confront the guardian heroines themselves. Similar to sub-bosses, ladies have different skills and attacks, becoming progressively more dangerous and difficult to beat as the game progresses. Personally, I found Eija to be the most challenging opponent, truly worthy of her character. Heroines can be defeated as well, but they are one of the toughest opponents existing, requiring a lot of effort. Regadless, as your main task is to clear all the tiles, beating them is not required, but purely optional. Regarding boss fights, it's worth to remember about Rosetta's treasure hunting requests, if you want to earn her gratitude. As to why, I will leave it for players to deduce themselves Art & Music There is "music" in this game. Jokes, aside - it's all simple FM-midi tunes. Those might have been good around thirty years ago, but not anymore. Regardless, they are fitting and create a good background noise for all the action. Queen Eija is a lovely lady, but the bottom part seems incompatible. What really does shine, though is the art. For a game of it's time, Yougen Tennyo managed to reach a peculiar mix between simplicity and utmost artistry. The majority of art, including character concepts was done by Minoru Murao (of Knights, Last Exile, Burst Angel and 707R fame, amongst other works), remaining nothing less than gorgeous. It's obvious Minoru was heavily inspired by Arabian Nights (visible in character designs and setting) and Art Nouveau with it's flowery patterns, thick outlines, minimal shading, subtly drawn faces and beautiful anatomy. All of this is a true feast for eyes to look upon. The unique mix between erotica and high art - the subtle embrace of delicate female beauty portrayed against the flowery plains, contrasting with the primal joviality of our dark-winged demon protagonist turned out to be a really tasteful and unique approach for a visual novel of this kind. It's a shame the game is so old and as such, former hardware limitations prevented higher resolution graphics. Ero Because our protagonist is a an awful, awful person. The cherry on the top. If you're a fan of 100% consensual vanilla H, stay the hell away from this game, as some of the scenes might end in complete disgust to all things japanese, possibly combined with police knocking on your doors. If otherwise, this - my friend - will be one of the most memorable experiences in your life, you might feel ashamed of but won't ever regret. Not only you get beautiful gals, as they pant and tussle in ecstasy, there's a lot more in store for all the fans of dirty erotica. Our protagonist is a shape shifting dweller of the netherworld himself, capable to turn into a gigantic snake and command a whole flock of scale-covered familiars, ready to pursue his every single order. He is not afraid to use them to the fullest potential (don't click that link at work, seriously). The game offers a wide variety of heroines with different personalities, sexual experience and level of kinkiness, which results in a lot of funny situations (mostly for us, less for them), not to mention preceding sexual innuendos and dirty talking. As an seemingly inconspicuous but powerful apex predator - demonic avatar of lust and depravity - you will slowly drive your unsuspecting victims into a corner, devoid them of their dignity and work them up to new heights of carnal pleasure, they never experienced before. Even tentacles in this game come as one of the most beautiful I've ever came across and quite cuddly in their own way If you ever thought how females felt during the age of myth, play this game. Being forcefully taken against your own will is just the very beginning of a never-ending circle of perversion, our ancestors excelled at. Not only we loved to imagine how things are done within the celestial realm, but the cleverness behind the sex acts themselves could only equal to cunning tactics, our demigod brethren (and possibly sisters) employed to seduce their targets. Bulls, swans, sneks, golden rain, fog, treasure chests, spiders, mirrors, more sneks, wine, eagles, even more sneks, larks, mysterious objects(?) were all just a tip of an iceberg floating within a sea of wriggling snakes. This game just loves snakes. I won't be surprised you too might start to like them afterwards. Technicalities I can't forget to mention how hard Yougen Tennyo is to obtain nowadays (if you're a collector) and how even more difficult is to make it run on any modern PC at all. Since the game is basically a self-extracting software CD from circa 2001, it does not recognize modern display standards. I had to hack the executable in order to make it work on a 16:9 screen, although it did manage to open properly on another machine running Windows 7 on a 5:4 monitor, in 1280x1024 resolution. I suspect a windows hooker, such as DxWnd might be able to run it as well. If you own the original CD, an optical drive is surely required. End thoughts If you're a fan of oldschool eroge, looking for something nice and not overly long nor difficult to play, this game - despite it's complete obscurity - is a true gem in the rough and shouldn't be omitted. Pros: Gorgeous, highly stylized art Six different heroines standing on your path, plus Rosetta and your would-be fiancée Despite the themes, story is mostly light and comedic, akin to Rance games Plenty of well drawn and varied h-cgs with pretty, fairy-like gals You get to bang a haughty centauress Rosetta is cute af and she gets her screen time as well (provided you know what to do) You get cucked Cons: No catgirls (sub-boss in the penultimate map doesn't count) The story can be considered shallow and characters could include more depth The mini-game could use more variety in terms of mechanics The game is a pain in the ass to run on modern systems, unless you own a retro pc Lack of possibility to save, skip and fast-forward the text the old style censorship with it's invisible weenies and huge mosaics gets really annoying at times If resident lolis weren't enough, Narsemi's arc might be an actual deal breaker for a lot of people (YMMV) You get cucked

Now... if you'd only ask that question around year and a half ago, you'd have one hell of an experience.

>community voted VN recommendation chart >only /r/ users can vote Reddit being autistic again.

This is an experiment I did for a C64 a while ago. It showcases a vn-like game format with a text window large enough to fit in a character name and two lines for characters, as well as a command prompt below, all of that along with graphics. All of this is running in 320x200 (actually 160x200, since the program runs in multicolor mode which doubles the size of each pixel horizontally in order to fit in more colours, in this case 16 displayed on-screen at once from 8). NVL is clearly possible and will fit even more text at the cost of background visibility (translucency is something which is too much for C64 to handle realistically). This runs on a hardware that has a 1mhz CPU and 64 kilobytes of shared RAM. Even certain very old feature phones are capable of more. Fite me.

No one ever said anything about removal of 18+ guidelines and clearly Steam wrote they are still in effect. What this does change though, is that it might potentially allow uncut 18+ products on Steam in the nearest future, as long as they abide by the guidelines. Steam is based in Washington, so all the games released on Steam with 18+ content will still have to abide by their laws. This means - amongst other things - no loli/shota porn or other borderline content, like bestiality etc. They will probably continue to monitor and ensure some sort of quality in terms of games allowed to go, but they won't put any restrictions on available content, as long as it doesn't break laws. I presume Steam will still want to include some sort of tags or centralized space to actually include all the 18+ products, if that happens, out for clarity's sake.

Why is my name not on that list...

I don't think it's really possible nowadays, depending on what and how much do you want to add. Old games arten't any comparison of sorts - they didn't weight much mostly because they operated in ultra low resolutions and very limited color pallettes, had no voice overs and music was limited to a couple midi/fm/mod tunes at most. As much as those games could easily fit onto a couple old floppy disks, modern games work on much higher parameters and as such, their requirements grew exponentially. Obviously, you will want that, because it's considered a standard for nowadays software (32bit graphics with at least 720p resolution output + full mouse and keyboard support), that allows decent enough experience and ease of use. It is still possible to create lightweight games, albeit that would require some knowledge on how to optimally reduce the filesizes of your games assets and/or utilize techniques, that allow massive reduction of space and little to no cost in terms of quality degradation. You might be interested to check out Ren'Py. As much as it probably won't be possible to fit a game under 5 megabytes (due to it's shared libraries, that are required to run games), you can still make games, that won't weight more than 25-50 megabytes at most (depending on how much content you'd like to fit). Creating retro-esque games are one such possibility. such games (or software in general) mimic the old hardware limitations from an aesthetic/visual standpoint, which in end makes them much more lightweight and less demanding in terms of required computing power (as such, they can potentially work on much older/slower computers without any discernible performance loss). Anything below would probably require you to switch to either one of self-sufficient web-based engines (as Palas mentioned above), or resign from advanced sound environment and modern, high-res graphics. In other words - a text based game.

Hello. I doubt we will be able to help you without some sort of precise guidelines. Visual novels in general are entertainment first and foremost; albeit many of them might often delve into sort of educational topics or infodump about a particular subject, you rarely stumble upon games that were made precisely with educational purpose in mind. To be honest, there's a bunch of them available, but the only one that comes to my mind at the moment, whilst being english language is probably Go! Go! Nippon! (the 2016 version, to be precise). It's one of the very few visual novels, that were created precisely in an effort to teach gaijins a little bit about Japan from a traveller's perspective. It tries to be quite informative, while not being solely a boring, educational guide of some sorts. For what it is, I think it did it's job well. By all means, it's definitely not a 100% educational work, though. I know there are some free amateur evn's that dabbled in educational purposes, but I haven't really checked any of them, nor do I think their quality level warrants for a good experience. In fact - most of them do suck.

The ones Kiri doesn't play and Zaka hasn't played yet.

I doubt they are looking for these. And if so, they are prolly looking in the wrong place to start with.

Sneks, you mean?

That's how Steam works, tho. Hence everyone is trying to get games that are approachable to the widest audience possible, but those might not be enough for more demanding consumers, seeking for higher forms of entertainment within their games.

>students >poor Are we back to 90's? Regarding your questions: There are better games out there. You could even give a try some of the english vns instead, rather than supporting butchered japanese localizations. Either start making your own games or become a translator yourself... or learn japanese and don't bother. Not really, unless you're a desperate masochist or a hardcore japanese popculture fan. Not at all. To keep it short: EVNS: VA-11 Hall-A (not really a 100% vn, but I'd recommend eitherway) Along the Edge (be on the lookout for their new game - Seers Isle - as well) Anything from Ebi-Hime Anything fom nomNomNami (free, mostly yuri-themed, but her games are really good) Everlasting Summer (free) Lucy -The Etenity She wished For- The Last Birdling Lynne (free) Ori, Ochi, Onoe (free; that one's really old and you may have trouble finding/running it, but it's worth giving a try) JVNS: Himawari Enigma Dead End Junction Fault Those should keep you occupied for a while.

Either that, or when people stop being clueless and become more demanding consumers instead. Sadly, this requires too much effort and actual care for the products they buy. Consumerism, ho.

If you have any character or background concept art, those are always interesting to see.

Lets just be honest and say these series actually began as porn in terms of the vn adaptation and got boosted afterwards That kinda makes reading reviews in general pointless, isn't it? I actually found out knowing certain people and their tastes is much more helpful in terms of finding out where my preferences are exactly at. It's like a star map of eroge to guide you through that lonely and often angsty sea of shitty fandoms.

I don't think vn's will ever have a chance to be treated seriously due to the social stigma they bear. Perhaps the western market might change that with their "interactive fiction" approach, we'll see. That aside, I read "grey" as "gay"

I guess it's something potentially worth reading this year. It sounds very cliche to me, though. I hope there's something more within how they execute things, but the amount of explicit h-scenes already tells me I shouldn't expect much.

It was definitely their best "anything", they ever made. A the same time, it didn't really receive any love and ended up neglected pretty quickly, which just shows how much they care about their products.

The first thing that comes the closest in terms of setting and stylistic similarity is definitely Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. As Sanahtlig said - you should consider marketing your game as an interactive fiction. A lot of people like to use the classic term, but in my opinion visual novels at this point are mostly considered "porn" games for horny teenagers and deciding to stick to this might bring some unwanted results in case of your project. Unless your project has appropriate size and quality, calling it a vn will instantly alienate a large portion of the player base, who would be otherwise supportive of your game. It's also worth to point out, visual novels are often considered games based on distinctively japanese art stylistics your game definitely does not have, either. If played well, your game might actually attract both fans of low fantasy, as well as fans of anthropomorphic characters (the furry fandom, in others words). I can already see potential, considering the story is very much Bethesda-esque in terms of plot devices and crude, out-of-the-box humour. Keep it up and you'll make it worthwhile. As an interesting remark, I'd highly encourage you to play the Along the Edge and it's spiritual sequel - Seers Isle (that one actually should be closer to your heart), which should be coming out soon. I consider Along the Edge one of the best interactive fiction experiences of the past few years, that clearly shows there's potential in these kinds of storytelling devices along with a community, that follows.