Decay

For those of you new to the series, MangaGamer posted a brief overview of the setting: http://blog.mangagamer.org/2015/11/13/gahkthun-of-the-golden-lightning-and-the-steampunk-series-a-brief-introduction/

I read the first three books and found them to be great fantasy novels. Then for some reason I dropped off on House of Chains. I think it was because it mainly followed new characters. It kind of killed my excitement a little, I decided to take a short break, and I ended up never going back. Now whenever I think about starting up again, I realize I forgot everything about the earlier books and I already leant them out to someone else who I haven't talked to in over a year. So... yeah. :/ Still, they're very good. Me not staying on them was all on me, not the books. I recommend them to anyone who wants to get into darker fantasy stories. I especially liked the brutal depiction of war in Deadhouse Gates. That got pretty dark.

Planescape Torment is a true classic. Many people have jokingly called it a visual novel due to the sheer amount of text within it. And the fact that the actual RPG gameplay is kind of subpar. Just pretend that it's a '90s version of modern telltale-style adventure games, or something like that. It's fantasy, but it's not stupid typical western high fantasy. It's a low-concept, heavily character-driven story that goes into some pretty deep philosophical themes (well, deep for video games). The fantasy aspects are merely a vessel used to delve into topics that are harder to do in a real world setting.

I beat OoT the year it came out. It was an amazing game for me at the time. I remember me and my brother playing chunks of it together. For some reason the part I remember the most was when a bird flew into our house and was chilling out in our christmas tree, while I was trying to corral chickens in Kakariko Village. Wow what the fuck, that was 17 years ago? Anyways, I think I'm going to give Fallout 4 a spin sometime soon. I don't have particularly high hopes for it, to be honest.

Someone better go back in time and tell Terry Pratchett before he started writing. edit: That was a joke, btw. You don't actually have to build a time machine and go back in time. Unless you really want to.

Now now kids, stop fighting. Both these games will be shit.

The best version of Clannad isn't releasing until later this month. You can perhaps finish something shorter like G-Senjou before then.

http://mangagamer.org/gahkthun/ Woot! I thought for sure that this would slip into 2016, but MangaGamer is managing to squeeze it in just before the year's end, getting it out there December 23rd! For those who don't know, this is the latest entry in Liarsoft's acclaimed Steampunk franchise, which also contains the popular fan translated titles Sekien no Inganock and Shikkoku no Sharnoth. They're a unique setting in VNs. Some of the games are set in fictional locations within the world, but some like Gahkthun, are set in early 20th century Europe, fusing together steampunk, fantasy, and science fiction themes with a hint of lovecraftian horror. The sky overhead is under a permanent blanket of smog, while the seas have been dyed black by pollution. Gahkthun takes place in Marseille, France in 1908, starring one Nikola Tesla. This shit couldn't possibly be more nerdy and I love it. Each game in the series is written by Sakurai Hikaru, notable for her poetic prose. This prose is something that was pretty much lost entirely in the Amaterasu translations of Inganock and Sharnoth, but Gahkthun's translation is being handled by Koestl instead. Koestl, known for his absolutely excellent Grisaia translation, is trying to preserve as much of the feel of the original work as possible. In case you can't tell, I'm super excited for this. I was a fan of the previous games and this one looks awesome. I really want it to do well so MangaGamer and Liar-soft wants to release the rest of the series and possibly other Liar-soft VNs as well. Anyone else excited for this?

As far as Seinarukana goes, from what I can gather, the LE materials production is seriously the only thing holding release back. And I'm also pretty sure Tim mentioning once that it was his responsibility, but he was also super busy with Shiny Days stuff at the time. Who knows what's happening these days, but it really does seem like SD is at least pushing Seinarukana back.

I get the feeling that stuff like Sumaga and Seinarukana are completely on the backburner until they get Shiny Days sorted out, but Shiny Days is taking way longer than it should. Meanwhile, Flowers is also no longer slated for Fall. This suuucks.

Japanese music has a style of its own, so perhaps you just like that style more. Personally, I tend to dislike it, to be honest. I much prefer western music. This thread reminds me of a gag some local shock jocks did on their radio show. They'd construct songs with horribly offensive lyrics to soft and pleasant melodies, and then play them to old ladies. They almost always liked the music and never commented on the lyrical content, lol. When I listen to music, for the first few listens I rarely actually take in the lyrical content. Sometimes it makes for some surprises when I do some digging in order to find out what some Passion Pit song is really saying, for example.

It's not horror, though. There are some mild horror elements but I think they're a pretty minor part of the experience and are only there to set the mood for a few select scenes.

Ehhhhh, the h-scenes are very clearly meant to be erotic. But it's true that they often go into far more depth regarding the emotions of the characters involved and possess far more meaningless moaning and panting than most other h-scenes. edit: One of the interesting things about Sakurai's h-scenes is that they're always written from the female perspective, and since Sakurai is a woman it isn't done as embarrassingly as most eroge that do so.

My shoddy memory. I thought I saw a 2016 somewhere in a magazine but I was wrong.

Still listening to this, and now I can properly embed it for the one person who watches these:

Firecat reminds me of that guy from the Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme team who posted on /jp/. He insisted that Steam was an elaborate scheme to scam indies out of all of their game revenue, and that nobody ever saw any money from steam sales. All of the reports of people profiting from Steam were fabricated to keep the scam going. His source? He didn't get paid by the project leader. Hmm, yes, surely that's what was going on.

Kara no Shoujo 3 is in development and coming out in 2016.

To be perfectly honest I don't like Kud very much. But you're cool.

From the spoilers I've read, the cutscenes sound (unintentionally) hilarious and I'm ready to fully embrace Starcraft's transformation into Dragon Ball Z. That said, I haven't even played Heart of the Swarm yet, lol. I should get on that because the campaigns do sound fun. I played SC2:WoL multiplayer for a short spell but I don't think that's something I could keep up, and I don't feel like paying for additional campaigns until they're real cheap.

Steam's cut is only 30%, not 70%. And that's honestly a lot more generous than most other means of game distribution. no its random for indie but few have told that its 70% cut if you are a company with high value game (what SP has been doing all this time). It's not "random." Every single time I've seen a developer disclose their revenue numbers, big or indie, it has ALWAYS been 30%. So says Phil Fish, and so says court documents from a THQ vs Sega case, which covers two VERY different kinds of games. I have seen a variety of other sources that all say 30%. I have never seen another number, let alone a number as colossal as 70%. And Sekai Project has not released a single "high value" game thus far, their sales are pretty low in the grand scheme of things. What's your source on this?

Steam's cut is only 30%, not 70%. And that's honestly a lot more generous than most other means of game distribution.

You'd be surprised at how many high schoolers aren't virgins. Even in Japan.

Holy fucking shit, this is pure fucking gold.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was thinking that.

I am not 100% sure on that, to be honest.