Decay

I am sorry.

It could be like a dungeon sim? Something like Dungeon Keeper. I'd like that more, if it was good. But yeah, I'd put my money on some kind of RPG. Incidentally, the artist for the Sakura games worked on Demon Master Chris, a dungeon crawling RPG. Apparently it wasn't very good, but I'm assuming the artist is the only constant here so that doesn't actually mean anything.

This thread should have probably been posted in the recommendations forum. Anyways, of those three Comyu is probably the best. But if you're looking for more straightforward romance with some good old fashioned summer vacation adventure (a theme under-explored in Japanese VNs), and if you already know you enjoy Overdrive's style, then Kira Kira will probably be pretty good for you. I feel like I'm one of the few people here who will go to bat for that game. Do note that despite its usually light-hearted tone, it gets pretty serious at points. (edit: lol, apparently more people here like it than I expected) Comyu is much more somber experience all throughout the work, it's much darker and grittier overall. It takes a more realistic approach to human relations. The action is alright but the CGs and special effects were lacking, in my opinion. I still liked the VN a fair amount, probably more than Kira Kira but it's reasonably close. It depends on what you want. Cartagra is okay, but it's not nearly as good as the KnS games. You should probably play it at some point to finish that series off, although it would have been much better if you started with it instead.

Because I don't want to post this shit to the fuwazette. *ahem* http://blog.mangagamer.org/2015/11/25/mangagamer-partners-with-winged-cloud/#more-10063 A few months ago, Sekai Project dumped Winged Cloud. Or was it Winged Cloud who dumped SP? Who can say. What matters is that MangaGamer is all about these sloppy seconds. Or more accurately, they're more willing to go in the directions Winged Cloud wants to move toward than SP is, that being adult games. What does this partnership mean? First of all, the 18+ version of Sakura Swim Club was put on the MangaGamer store, and this version apparently has an edited and QAed script. Hopefully by someone whose first language is English, for a refreshing change of pace. Secondly, MangaGamer has announced two new games from Winged Cloud, Sakura Santa which will be all-ages only, and a new 18+/all-ages gameplay-oriented title, Sakura Dungeon. Judging by the name, it will probably be a dungeon crawling game, but there are no real details yet. It seems that MangaGamer wants to sink some money into these games to improve the script quality and that kind of thing. I guess that's a good thing? Honestly, I would think there are better things for them to spend their money on, but the Sakura games have proven themselves to be reliable money makers so this will probably work out. Hopefully. Sales have been declining for each subsequent title. Anyways, get your hilarious reaction gifs and memes ready. And then throw them in a dumpster because we've seen them all already. Nosebleed can post one of his rare pepes here, though.

The casualties of this inane debate have been numerous. I may be at fault for sparking it, I have no regrets. #desugate Anyways, the Mikandi Japan guys have started an AMA on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3u63a1/hi_im_james_project_manager_for_the_translation/

"Mature" in the case of the first two suggestions means "extreme sexual content." Just take a look at the sexual content tags on VNDB for an indication of what kind of content Starless has. Many VNs try to be mature but are only superficially so. Like a middle-schooler trying too hard to be cool and edgy. I think Deep Blue had some very good suggestions, though, those are all very good VNs with mature themes. Look up their names on VNDB to get an idea on what kind of VNs they are.

Personally, I got mad before even clicking on the link. Good review! You thought more highly of it than I expected. To be perfectly honest, the text of the review reads even a little bit more positively than the score might indicate, but this could be due to a difference in scoring philosophies. Anyways, good work bats.

Undertale is selling around 10-15k copies daily right now, and it's below Clannad. Steam ranks games based on revenue, not total copies sold. This means Clannad's price point being over 4x as much would still mean it sold at least a few thousand copies... probably. It's hard to say for sure. Anyways, we aren't thinking this is some major blockbuster success, but putting this into context with the VN industry is necessary, and for a VN this is really quite big. You never see VNs get this kind of ranking, the only reason people are reacting is because it's unprecedented. Well, it did happen once before. With Nekopara I believe, lol.

Majikoi is simply the best of those three. Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort is the most relaxing. edit: Majikoi is super long, though. Osananajimi is... mediumish? I read it at a really fragmented pace so it's hard for me to say. I want to say Koisuru Natsu is the shortest of the three.

Another OELVN: The first episode of Ace Academy (formerly Kendo Crush) - Because I want to know whether or not it's shit. edit: And obviously you'll have to find time to stream this, if your streaming schedule allows it: http://www.mangagamer.com/detail.php?goods_type=0&product_code=158 (releases Dec. 21st)

Look, I like me my tsunderes. Komomo fills that role very well and I enjoyed her route. Aoi, though, is a whole other story. I hate her, lol.

Another thing to consider regarding the whole steam key thing: At the time of the kickstarter campaign, the estimated delivery dates for the physical and digital versions of the game were the same: October 2015. Delays are to be expected, but a three month gap between physical and digital releases is way bigger than anyone would expect, and this makes the lack of steam keys sting all the more. It's one thing if you can expect to get your copy in the mail within a week or two, but another thing entirely if it's three whole months. As of like five years ago, they did. Steam has tinkered a lot with the way the top sellers list works since then, though, so I don't know if that's still the case. Still, many keys were redeemed days ago and ultimately only 2500-3000 or so were given out to kickstarter backers, so there's still probably thousands of additional sales. This is likely already a very profitable venture for SP. edit: I seem to remember reading a few years ago about how they changed the way the top sellers list works due to the rise of bundles screwing everything up, so I think it's reasonably likely that redeemed keys no longer affect your position in the rankings. Also, I went ahead and wrote up a quick Fuwazette report on this, because why not? http://blog.fuwanovel.net/2015/11/clannad-is-released-climbs-to-a-top-5-sellers-spot/

While yes, this is possible, most game companies assume that this isn't a significant risk. Their physical copies are DRM Free and they also give away steam keys ahead of time because they assume that people aren't going to want to wait two to three months to play the game just so they can flip it. The practice of flipping keys does happen but it's really not that big of a deal. I assume that the 95%+ of game devs using kickstarter who do this are in the right here. If nothing else, avoiding burning a significant percentage of your backers is usually considered a higher priority than maybe losing a handful of sales, because those backers who realize a year later that maybe they got a raw deal might not come back for more later down the road.

Hopefully, but we'll need to see how it fares over the next few weeks. Initial release usually sees the biggest sales total for most things. If it doesn't dip dramatically but only has a slow decline over the weeks, that would be considered successful (or if it sees in increase, of course). If it dramatically dives after the initial offering, we'll probably have seen the big sales as those who already knew and were waiting for it. Oh, it's certainly going to dip, that's how it always goes. The only exception is for games that go viral, like Undertale or plenty of those indie open world survival games popular on youtube. You can still be considered successful after the sales dip if the initial sales were strong and if you can expect good sale figures when you discount the game in the future. You're missing the point. Most games that come out as physical versions that are also on Steam also include a Steam key if you buy a physical copy, without you having to pay $40 extra. I know perfectly well which option I picked, I'm complaining about the options themselves. I guess I'm still missing the point, because there was an option to get both a digital copy and a physical copy. So what, exactly, is the complaint? The only thing left I can think of would be the price (which was substantially higher), I guess. But if that's it, tough shit; physical goods are expensive, and at the amount you must have backed, it wasn't economically reasonable for them to give you both a physical copy and a Steam copy. The point is indeed the price. I don't understand how it's not economically feasible for them to give you both at a reasonable price. Every single other video game Kickstarter does it. How do they get away with it? The thing is, it costs them absolutely nothing to give you a steam key.

KnS is all about finding cool and fun ways to break the player.

This is why I didn't have a major problem with the $50 price point. I was a little surprised, but it seems to be working out for them. And they'll get even more sales once they discount it by 33 or 50% for the first time. That's how these things go. This will probably cement Key's involvement in the western market, and will hopefully make more VN companies willing to take the plunge.

Well I was saying just the after story, for the purposes of his review. I'm aware the entire work is quite long, although still not as long as many people have been saying.

Thank you. The game looks a lot better when you use your GPU's upscaling than whatever shitty in-game filters Grisaia uses.

The length of this VN is overblown, anyways. There's a lot of misinformation swirling around (70-100 hours? lol, no). It's shorter overall than other popular long VNs like Grisaia and even Rewrite. You can probably churn through the after story in an evening.

They seriously don't give steam keys for physical backers? I never noticed that before. I don't know if SP was just unaware of this, but it is common practice in video game kickstarters to give a steam key to physical backers. Now that you've backed them for more money, you have to wait two or three extra months to be able to play the game? lmao.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

Unfortunately the way GnK's engine handles things makes my gpu driver settings largely irrelevant. Like I said, though, the problem is largely resolved. There's still some weirdness with certain letters if you scrutinize but when I lean back and read like usual, I don't really notice it anymore. Now for an unrelated question that isn't even tech help! Does anyone know if there's a patch to implement the CGs unique to the all-ages version into the 18+ version? Most of these CGs happen in scenes that are in both versions, but they were left out of the 18+ version for some reason.

There are quite a few people who don't know what desu means. Rooke, for an example. Me, to be honest, until I looked it up today. And probably there's probably a whole lot more who haven't been watching anime for 15-20 years like me and Rooke. You should translate as much as you possibly can. And if something can't be translated, then I don't believe it should be kept in completely untranslated. Honorifics you can get away with if you can expect the audience to understand them, but this isn't one of those situations. In my eyes, the annoyance of having untranslated words appended to many sentence and the confusion you could cause for a lot of people would far outweigh the positive of transferring a verbal tic over to the english script. Also, manga scanlations are usually horrible and I'm not sure what to think of one leaving in desuwa because some hardcore fans demanded it. Anyways, they were asking for examples. Grisaia no Kajitsu's Makina has a couple odd verbal habits, one of which is the desu thing. I believe she also sometimes has pretty childish speech patterns in general. In the translation for the VN, her speech was translated in a very unique way. I can't say if it was fully accurate, in fact some people have voiced complaints that the translator has taken too many liberties, but I absolutely love the end result. Her speech was truly different from everyone else's. That's on the mild end of the spectrum as far as her dialog goes. I don't have time to grab screenshots of some of her more extreme lines.

Yuuji is definitely a dumbass, in many ways. It's one of his charms.