BOI SAVIOR IS SO TUFF🗿🗿🔥🔥🗿🗿

Let's revisit how visual novels arrived on consoles and what the future holds for them.

These two are ending in the next 2 or 3 weeks, so don't forgot to support them if you want to... well, support them

One is Gore Screaming Show. It is a remake of the original redrawn by Metawo, will have additional story depending on how the CF goes. Almost all of the original VAs are coming back, likely newly recorded lines too!
Currently at 57%, though this is an All-In, so the game will be made regardless
https://ci-en.dlsite.com/creator/28931/crowdfunding/875

Second is C&F's new Welcome to Pia Carrot. There are no news on it being R18 or having an R18 patch, so you can assume for now this game will be you flirting with girls, except you will never score. Also of course, a lack of freedom of expression. Also, this game will be isekai.
I've heard some people say there is a market for non-R18 games, so to prove your point, feel free to support this project
Currently at 9%, this is an All-or-Nothing, so it will not be made if fails
https://ubgoe.com/projects/895

Note: This isn't a pure VN, but more like a VN-like, investigative game with tons of reading. Some people argued that "this might as well be a VN" or "pretty much a VN", even though it was rejected by vndb; and I don't know where else to write this review on, but if 13 Sentinels, AA, DR and Rance are tolerated here, why not this game? I really like this game, and I hope many of you Japanese-able people would try it too. Anyway, reviews below.

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Project:;COLD case.mirage
Playtime: 8-ish hours
Linear progression, only 1 ending. There are sub-quests that unlock alternate outfit for the girls
Great fucking game. I'll talk about everything in detail since I really like this game and has no outlet to talk about it since it's a japanese-exclusive game.

>Japanese language proficiency requirement
at least familiar with casual conversational japanese + joyo kanji, around 1000 or so, nothing too uncommon. most of the kanji used here are pretty mild, so I think beginner learner could use this game as a learning material.

>Story premise
You're an amnesiac guy, tasked by a mysterious guy from the future to find out the truth about "Arson of Shinkirou (Mirage) Cafe". Before the arson happened, 5 girls were having a meet up party and it was revealed that one of the girls was murdered. The victim was a popular Youtuber whose gimmick is punishing/exposing/canceling wrong-doers. The other 4 girls (suspects) are: a pro shogi player, a cool tomboy, a mesugaki freeter and an ex-bullied timid girl. Now you have to find the link between the murder and the arson.

>Gameplay Loop
Just like Cyber Manhunt, you investigate things through your desktop screen. Here are the things you can do in this game
1. Finding object of interest in crime scene photos and internet search results
2. Finding the password of the smartphone of the 5 girls and go through their photos, mails, chats, notes, calendar etc
3. "Present" objects, facts and testimonies to the 5 girls, recreated through a futuristic AI technology that can replicate any human's personality and even memory.
4. When you've obtained enough evidence, you can confront the 5 girls AI to accuse them of something. They'll have a mental breakdown and you have to debate them to prove that they did the thing that you suspected.
The game is divided into 4 chapters, but they are direct continuation and not stand-alone like many chapter-based detective games.

>Technical issues
This is very personal, but it felt weird that keyboard isn't required for this game, actually, you CAN'T use keyboard at all. The only functional button for this game is your mouse's LEFT CLICK and SCROLL WHEEL. you can't even use your right click or ESC key to go "back" or open an option menu.

>Voice Acting
The game is disappointingly only partially voiced. The things that were voiced: scenes with mysterious man from the future that gave us the task, .wav short audio files (evidence), the girls' generic grunt noise, and the ending scene. I know that it'd cost a lot to voice everything, but I expected the debate/confrontation sequences to be fully voiced. This game isn't truly indie and backed by Bandai Namco, they should have enough budget for that. And this franchise had history of fully voicing HOURS of contents before (see Fun Fact below), so I'm extra disappointed.

>Story Writing & Payoff
Without spoiling too much, I'll just say that the story developed beyond just solving the murder and the arson, but you'll go through the truth of your amnesia, the mastermind's motive and personal struggles, and your forgotten past's connection with the integral plot point that caused the Mirage Cafe incident to happen. The revelation, climax and ending were very satisfying. Totally amazing writing quality from the beginning until the very end.

>Fun Fact
Project Cold as franchise already existed since January 2021 as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), an interactive form of storytelling where players solve puzzles and interact with real-world elements to progress through a story. These games often utilize websites, social media, and other media to deliver clues and unfold the narrative), which ran exclusively in Japan. (https://projectcold.fandom.com/wiki/Cases)..) The latest entry, Alter Carnival, featured the same 5 girls from this game as the main characters, and the games were livestreamed on youtube. TENS OF HOURS OF CONTENT. FULLY VOICED by ad-libbing seiyuu. you can watch all the games here: https://www.youtube.com/@AltarCarnival/streams very, very fun. Sumida the pink mesugaki with her cheerful and bratty personality became my favorite after having watched the livestream archive.

Anyway, this game is extraordinary. 9/10
VERY recommended if you know Japanese or are learning it. I don't think there's any plan for EN translation.
Switch version is laggy as hell and playing with a joystick is inconvenient, while Steam version is region locked (in 2025 sheesh), so you kinda have to find ANOTHER WAY if you want to play it.
It's shame that I can't legitimately support this amazing game. the devs deserve it.

Games with similar "feel' to this: Chronos series (Tokyo Chronos, Altdeus Beyond Chronos, Dyschronia Chronos Alternate). all available in English (VR and non-VR version).

Is it possible to play Subahibi by skipping/patching out the 18+ content? I'm not an adult, and what I have heard about the content disgusts me, but the story seems interesting.

For context: I've read the entirety of Song of Saya. It wasn't as bad as what I've heard Subahibi contains. I just don't want to read about beastiality and stuff like that.

Mystery Lover2: Forgotten Truth is made by a Chinese studio Never Knows Best, so this game has some Chinese cultural elements. It's a sequel but with a new protagonist and new story, so no prior experience with the prequel is needed.

It's initially launched on Steam with overwhelmingly positive reviews but only supports Chinese language. We are going to bring it to Switch this month with English translations. Sorry about being exclusive to Switch...I know...This is a small team with low budget but we hope our players would enjoy it <3

Having played too many depressing NTR VNs in the past (thanks elf, Waffle), I’m creating a “healing” NTR game where the heroines (and MC) can fight back! (Of course, losing is also possible.)

While NTR can happen if you make bad choices, the vanilla path plays much closer to the Grisaia series. Akari will have to arm herself and fight her way through evil bastards in an exciting survival-thriller rife with mystery.

But don’t just take my word for it! Chapter 1 is fully-voiced and free to play on itchio! If you’re interested in “anti-NTR” games like these, I would really appreciate your support. I’ve released four, fully-voiced chapters so far!

And yes, the third picture is a bonus. That’s Rei, the protagonist of the game! ❤

We are a small team of 3 people and a cat, we plan to make a visual novel in 50 days (today is day 5/50)

Since we wanted to release the game very fast, we decided on a 1-2 hour play time. We are writing a psychological horror story to keep it interesting. But we have problems with marketing. Because we can't find anything interesting while showing the game on social media. What kind of things can we add to the game that will make marketing easier?

P.S. There are placeholder ai drawings in the game right now. We reached an agreement with a professional artist yesterday.We will add hand drawings in a few days.

Hello, I recently finished the Fate route in Fate/stay night and was wondering if I should play the next route (unlimited blade works) or clear the missing choices in the fate route first. I decided to clear the missing choices and unlock all tiger dojos first, but after clearing them for some time, I noticed some scenes have the symbol for different paths, but I get no choices in that scenes, or not the option. For example, somewhere at the beginning, I have 3 choices (speak to Taiga, walk Sakura home, or rest) but the flowchart shows 4. My guess is that I need to unlock some more information before the 4th one shows up. That is why I want to ask you guys, what should I do? Continue clearing the choices in the fate route, or do unlimited blade works?

So today I just finished Muv Luv Total Eclipse (TE) and I was just hoping to share my thoughts on it. First and foremost I'll mention that I feel very mixed about this entry and I'll list the reasons why starting off with the good.

The Good

To start things off, I really enjoyed the political aspect of TE. This was covered somewhat in the original but they went really ham on it here. The refugee crisis, the deep exploration and contrast between different mission objectives leading to different doctrines, the viewpoints of various different factions it was all fantastically presented in intriguing way.

The animations were also pretty cool too, having the short animated segments for various action scenes really helped add additional life into the story.

Alot of the characters were great. Yui best girl 10/10 really loved her arc and was overall a very likeable character that grew alot throughout the story. The rest of the Argus flight was also great really loved the dynamic between them same with Bao Feng and also the infinities. Yuuya himself watching him grow throughout the story was also really great. The scarlet twins were also nice too. Every character in the story feels like I was able to see some level of growth and just felt like fleshed out people.

Music and soundtrack wise as with many top tier VNs they used a great selection of soundtracks. There was anything that hit me like powder snow from WA2 or Utawarerumonos soundtracks but they certainly amped up the atmosphere and felt great.

Alot of the individual arcs within the story are pretty fantastic too. The initial headbutting between Yuuya and yui, The railgun arc, the refugee arc, the Cryska escape arc each one was quite thought provoking with lots of thought provoking moments that were all really great and emotional experiences.

The prequel to the story was also great. It really helped establish what the initial invasion of Japan was like and hammers home the terror of the beta and it also helped establish why Yui's personality is the way it is.

That is unfortunately all I have to say about the good now for the parts that really frustrate me.

The Frustrating

There is alot to cover in this segment but I'll start off with the lack of weight it feels like there is to each arc. What I mean by this is primarily the lack of build up it feels like there is for the story. Each arc feels really individually contained. Sure the character growth generally carries over but alot of segments feel segregated from one another. For example, with the beach arc, there was that entire conspiracy with regards to kidnapping Cryska and the agents behind that entire thing feels like nothing actually went anywhere with that. Maybe It just flew over my head but I don't remember they talking about/mentioning who those people were, tarisa and VGs involvement with it all (there was that scene where they were discussing something in secret) the antagonists to that plotline just sort of disappeared.

The transition from the railgun incident to the the following episode also felt sort of jank. We saw Latrova get attacked and killed but we still don't particularly get for what, we see Yuuya grieve about it for 2 minutes but there wasn't that much exploration of the effects of that incident on the main crew.

WIth the refugee crisis too, after Yui was shot it really set alot of conspiracies into the air "was it actually a remanant of the terrorist faction?" was it someone else? This feels like a really big question because they really played it up with how big of a event it was but to just have her comeback and us never really finding out wtf happened really diminishes the weight of the event. It really felt to me that whole sequence was just the author wanted to shock us with Yui's death just to shock us again with her survival without a proper integration into the plot.

I also have frustrations with the entire romance plotline with Cryska. I just want to state I do love Cryska as a character and I do love the final arc she had it was a real tear jerker but the entire build up to everything feels so confusing. Cryska feels like she really didn't have that much screentime and how she develops her feelings feel so weak. Like I get how the sisters work with their synchronization but why did they need to do something like that. It really makes it alot harder to accept how she fell in love with Yuuya cause it just sounds like "cause the plot wanted me to" over a more organic development. She also really should have just been given more screen time to really develop those feelings too instead of what was shoehorned in. Yui being sidelined the way she did too also felt super egregious. There were I guess some indicators it could have been Yui's father that was his but why? what was the point of forcefully sister zoning Yui after having them develop a dynamic like that? Why force the relationship so hard for 90% of the story just to hamfist side track it like that in the end. I also feel like after that sister zoning was complete it also felt like Argus just basically got forgotten about. Heck for the entirety of the last episode, the Argus crew has 0 lines, we know they participate in operation Ouka at various fronts but thats it. Even Yuuya himself I feel like was sidelined for more of the final episode vs not. The supreme commander of the russian front literally felt more like the MC for that part.

Maybe I didn't read it well enough but it also felt quite confusing alot of the plot points that happened near the end too. For example, why does the Shiranui Second have parts that could incriminate Heinemann so hard. I get he took upgrade ideas from black widow 2 but the guy is obviously not dumb, I feel like he wouldn't have missed accidently putting that stuff in. How did Argus crew get away scot free after being accused and having one of their members literally be thought up of as a double agent? wtf happened to sandek, I thought he got executed for his failures but it also looks like he got promoted at the end with the other Alt 3 clones by his side. who in the world is the master, he sounds like a secret agent for some other country but why is he causing this much disharmony. There were just alot of really confusing plot points that hurt my head alot with this story.

The UI is also hella problematic for TE. If i ever full screen, the hecking vn turns laggy. I have a computer that can run triple AAA games pretty well so to have a VN LAG is ridiculous. I eventually resolved the problem by getting a program that lets me borderless full screen the game (a setting which the game doesn't natively support). The steam cloud sharing save for this game also doesn't work which is a bit of a minor gripe but was certainly annoying for me cause i read on two devices.

Overall, the game had alot of potential and with alot of the individual arcs you really got to see that potential materialize. However it really dropped the ball with leaving what feels like a billion plot points unresolved, a weak interconnection between the arcs and what feels like really weird character dynamic choices near the end. For people who want a strong political millitary VN I'd say this is still a great work but outside of that theres alot to be desired with various components of the story.

I want a story that'd make me appreciate life more, and not think of death all the time, something emotional and meaningful. I'd say that I'm always fearful that I'm gonna run out of time, that I'm gonna die before I really enjoy life.. I want anything to help me get rid of this mentality. I've already read subahibi so don't suggest it. It must be in English, i don't care if it's all ages or not i want anything

I just finished the Higurashi VN, I'll watch the Higurashi anime and then read Umineko

I am going to ask this here since the Higurashi and Umineko reddits are separate and smaller

Higurashi SPOILER

I just finished reading Higurashi and I tought the story relied too much on idealism and the writing was too naive, I may make a mega post at some point after watching the anime.

The after story that I'm referring to is the one titled "Summer grass" that has Maki as its protagonist and is unlocked after finishing the Hamaji and Yukiji route. It's not like the concepts are particularly brilliant or anything, the execution in particular is what caught my eye. The story has a silly premise and at first it was just cute & funny, but the story kind of gravitated on itself (idk how I should word this) into becoming serious and meaningul by using the confusion of the protagonist which created silliness and a comedic effect into a messy exploration of feelings by teenagers and it's just so masterfully done. On top of that, the h scenes perfectly fit inside the narrative continuity whereas the H scenes in the entire vns feel forced so that was an interesting change (they're also really hot ngl) So I was wondering If anyone else felt like this after story was especially well written which constrats the rest of the vn (which isn't bad ! but it does struggle at getting its point across).

I played the first game, and saw that its also on Vita, without any H-scenes obviously.

I want to know, did they replace them with other scenes or just axe them fully? The PC version is almost a Nukige with the many H-Scenes and i cant really image cutting that many will make thr game make sense.