Western visual novels?

Do they exist?

Well, okay obviously they do as Hanako Games, Winter Wolves are indie developers that make them and there is that game called Analogue, but are any of them good enough that you would actually recommend them?

edited 16th Sep '12 10:30:34 AM by SpookyMask

Katawa Shoujo is the most stand-out obvious one, naturally.

Hmm, yeah, forgot that one. Anyhoo, seems like visual novels is ultimate niche market in west. Checking this section only Higurashi and Type Moon threads seem to be active ones

Yeah, they tend to attract a smaller audience than most.

And most V Ns tend to have some sort of H content in them. Because of this, the term Visual Novel is sort of synonymous with Dating Sim in the western world. Because H content would sell so poorly in the west, it‘s understandably difficult to attract a following outside of Asia.

And seems like VN fanbase that DOES exist in west is actually in it for porn or just are interested in Japanese ones

The only one I've read apart from Katawa Shoujo is Fatal Hearts or Shadow Hearts or something like that. It wasn't very good.

Analogue was very good. To The Moon also has very little gameplay, so it might as well have been a VN. Magical Diary is a fun take on the Otome game.

Western VN-like games are still very indie, but I like to think that that's a good thing. It might just be me picking the wrong VN to read, or that good ones never get translated, but Japanese VN started to feel a bit stale and overly commercial to me. They were suddenly so unreal and never actually about something, it started to bore me.

The fun thing about western-made VN is that the creators know they'll never have much commercial success with it. So there are only to reasons for them to get in it: because they love the medium so much they want to have some fun with it themselves, or because they have one heckoffa story to tell. Both will result in a VN I would like to read.

(This post consisted of some early-morning thoughts. I am fully aware of the overly generalized nature of it.)

Some of stuff I've seen made by Winter Wolves feel like some kind of wish fulfillment though Not sure about their games they actually consider to be pure VN though

Well, I must admit I only play western VN after they've already been bombarded with praise, and I've never even heard of Winter Wolves before. That may ruin my perspective a bit.

Eh, whatevs. If it's good, it's good, no matter where it comes from.

edited 19th Sep '12 2:33:43 AM by Kayeka

I'm not sure about whether they are good or not in general though but some descriptions of their own for them sound... Er... I dunno word for what I'm thinking off ^^;

Anyway, I've only played one of them so far.(got them from Groupees bundle, they usually cost each around 20 but I got majority of them for 10)

If you focus on aesthetics, then there are a handful of commercial visual novels which don't use an Animesque style. One example is Moacube's VN Cinders and another example is the XBLA indie game Chaos Gateway. There are a few more which are freeware.

Fatal Hearts was mentioned earlier in the thread. It was released almost five years ago. It wasn't the first Hanako Games release, and it certainly wasn't the last. My main complaint about it was a number of unskippable puzzles. Since then, the group has released a number of general video games and VNs, including Date Warp and Long Live The Queen.

My favorite overall Winter Wolves game is the first Flower Shop game (Summer in Fairbrook). I kind of liked Spirited Heart, but I found the Nintendo Hard difficulty level to be frustrating, even with careful saving-and-loading. Also, I should mention that the main developer seems to be pretty frank on Twitter about which games sell and don't sell. It sounds like the complex games sell better than VNs, and the ones focused on GxB pairings sell better than the BxG games.

Zeiva Inc is one of the other active groups. Their first commercial VN was Other Age: Second Encounter (which references their earlier freeware games), followed up by X-Note and Train of Afterlife.

Finally, there's Sakura River. This is the group behind Fading Hearts and Infinite Game Works. The last I heard, they're working on a game called Don't Save the World, but they might end up using one of the RPG Maker programs.

As of this writing, Super Six-Three has released only one commercial game, named Lucky Rabbit Reflex. Likewise, the people at Okashi Studio have only released Shira Oka Second Chances.

At times, it's difficult to be optimistic about the WVN scene. Lots of promising works-in-progress never get more than a demo, or never get past the planning stages. Sturgeon's Law and Twain's Observation on Originality are both applicable, in regards to both the categories of freeware and indie games. ...But then again, I could state similar criticisms (if not the exact same ones) about a lot of other types and categories of media.

A few WVN creators have released freeware games with NSFW content. Will anyone *sell* a game which is not worksafe? There are a couple works-in-progress which might be the first... (If one gets finished, where would they sell it? Only a few niche sites such as DLSite allow NSFW games.)

edited 23rd Sep '12 7:58:21 AM by dorkatlarge

Out of stuff I've mentioned, I have tried out Magical Diary, Analog, Planet Stronghold and Spirited Hearts.

In case of Winter Wolves I suspect it might be strongly case of them improving longer they go on :p Apparently Loren one isn't written by Jack Norton anymore so its writing has improved apparently.(Stronghold has awkward writing if you ask me)

Spirited Hearts is kind of... Odd I guess. I mean, it seems to be mostly about trying to get as money you can to get skill training to get better job and in mean while have events with characters? Seems kind of slow

What about Plumbers Dont Wear Ties? :D

According to a blurb on the Full Motion Video page, "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties... looks like an Interactive Movie which was originally shot in live-action but for technical reasons most of the video had to be reduced to an odd selection of still frames." This statement seems to be substantiated by its Wikipedia page.

There have been a few other commercial games created in English which had little to no precedent, and which have seemingly been ignored since:

• Circuit's Edge. It was one of the last products released by Infocom. The VNDB calls it an "interactive adventure game," but after reading about it on Moby Games and Wikipedia, apparently it could qualify as interactive fiction or a role-playing game.

• Sinkha. A four-part series of digital comics and "multimedia novels" that date back to 1995, and which have been published simultaneously in multiple languages.

• Sprung. A curiosity that was released early in the lifespan of the Nintendo DS. Its critical reception was better than Plumbers, but not by much. Its Metacritic score sits at 48, and it got a dishonorable mention in Hardcore Gaming 101's Weekly Kusoge column. Scroll down just a bit. I don't think Ubisoft has made anything similar before or since.

• Brooktown High. Another portable game that could've been something... it was created by Backbone Entertainment, which has some quality games to its credit. Its Metacritic score is 51. It's depressing to realize that it was released only on the Playstation Portable, and published by Konami, which still hasn't localized anything from the Tokimeki Memorial franchise, or Love Plus.

IGN Wireless mentions some original cellphone games (from Gameloft, no less!) that are probably quite difficult to find or play now. Stuff like Matchmaker: Love U sounds fascinating, but I don't know if it will work with any current mobile devices.

The WVN freeware scene can be traced back to two games: Tales of Lemma and SimGirls. The former was created a year before the first version of Renpy. The latter is a Flash game loosely based on DNA2 that dates back to 2002, and has been periodically updated since. From what I've read, the creator of Tales of Lemma noticed that his Lemmings clone Shoujo Attack was getting far more downloads, and almost gave up on creating more VNs. Likewise, it took at least a few months before people started using and discussing Renpy. It might never have had any versions past 1.0.

edited 20th Oct '12 8:37:06 AM by dorkatlarge

I played Circuit's Edge, or rather I tried to. It really seems more like a RPG (it certainly plays like one), but it may be that it's more plot-based than ordinary RPGs (similar to Planescape: Torment). Never got into it though (hell, I never even had an idea what I'm supposed to do), so I don't know.

I learned about Sprung from HC 101 too. I think it would be interesting to take a look at it, if only because it seems to be amusingly awful.

I think Long Live the Queen (I love how ironic the title is) is pretty good, but it relies heavily on trial and error and learning from your mistakes. Unless you have precognition skills, it's nearly impossible to finish it at your first try (I did manage to get to the end, though). Also, there only seem to be two ways to beat the end, both of which need a certain set of skills, otherwise you are at a (very literal) dead end. That's dissapointingly unflexible.

There are lots of different ways to reach the coronation, not just two. My brother, for one, managed to beat the game in a single afternoon using a combination of skills that I'd never even thought of. :3 There are lots of hidden events and paths and routes in that game - you might think that there are only two ways to success when in fact there's just a lot of other content you haven't accessed yet. Try varying your play style and trying out different skill sets instead of just focusing on the stuff you think is necessary to reach the coronation.

Well if you're not adverse to using the iphone OS the Surviving High School and visualNovel/Cause Of Death apps are quite worth checking out. The're pretty close to being western visual novels.

I've only played the latter but I quite liked it, it's done in the style of a Forensic detective show such as Bones or Dexter.

Yes it's own by EA but don't hold that against it.

It's been a while since I last tried Surviving High School. The thing I remember most is some frustrating mini-games. If you ask me, having to *succeed* with a mini-game can make almost any video game irritating... Also, the characters reminded me of the GBA version of The Sims Bustin' Out. They seemed vaguely similar to characters from long-forgotten sitcoms or Archie comics, but they were not bad.

Also, in the time since my last post, Mangagamer has started helping WVN indie creators sell their games. Their site is now one more place where people can purchase Host Holic by Red Panda Games, Jisei and Kansei by Sakevisual, and Fading Hearts.

Well they dropped them entirely in Causeof Death , so it's looks like the designers didn't like them either. All you need to do pay attention to what's happening and use common sense when making decisions.

Much like real police work really

edited 4th Sep '13 1:23:22 PM by joeyjojo

Okay, I have gotten Loren recently from sale and its writing is better than Planet Stronghold. Of course story is pretty generic/simple/cliche/typical so it doesn't really evoke as much "Umm, what?" reaction as Planet Stronghold did on some parts. Still, I guess it is pretty enjoyable if you don't mind simpler stuff.

Some Winter Wolves games have pages here: Heileen (historical fiction), Bionic Heart (sci-fi), Cinders (Cinderella inspired). Cinders is a collaborarion with MoaCube, and the artwork for that game very well done.

Sake Visual is another group, they created RE: Alistair.

edited 23rd Aug '13 3:06:49 PM by allboyband

Well, what do you know?

Swords of Edo Visual Novel Game

Ecchi Combat system eh?

edited 18th Sep '13 7:19:30 AM by MrTerrorist

So... This seems interesting.

Its post apocalyptic visual novel/adventure game apparently inspired by Zero Escape(999 and Virtue's last reward) and Ace Attorney series in sense of western market lacking visual novels <_< And artist is Japanese so there isn't that problem of western artist mimicking "anime" artstyle in the way where were art feels bland because of that. Not that artstyle seems much unique, but still its nice.*shrugs*

edited 29th Apr '14 6:00:12 AM by SpookyMask

Any good stuff on Steam right now?

I haven't looked at Steam Store in quite a few months. Checked today, and found the following:

• The Detail: Described as a crime noir adventure. Very positive ratings after 54 reviews.
• A Bird Story: Person who wrote To The Moon has now written a one-hour "interactive animation." Very positive ratings after 1444 reviews.
• Cinders, a pseudo-fairytale. If I remember correctly, the creators at Moacube sell it on their own site, and are creating a new story called Solstice.
• Dysfunctional Systems, part one. The creators used Kickstarter to fund parts two and three of their story, and I'm almost certain they are still working on it.
• Journal, a hand painted short adventure game. Very positive ratings after 113 reviews.
• Shan Gui, a short story about two students on a journey. Very positive ratings after 523 reviews. Also, it's one of only three visual novels available in English that I know were originally written in Chinese (the others being Prince Maker Braveness and Fullmetal Alchemist Bluebirds Illusion).

My attitudes and interests have changed with time. There was that one year when official manga translations were still scarce, and I was a bit frustrated when my local comics store carried far more Ben Dunn or Adam Warren comics. Five or six years later, OEL Manga became a thing. I read a few, but I was mostly left thinking So Okay, It's Average. Around 2013, I started thinking about series that used to be so common at bookstores, and asking myself where they had all gone. If I see one these days, I'll probably just call it a comic or a webcomic. I don't care about fan-imposed or company-imposed categories anymore.

edited 28th Dec '14 5:34:13 PM by dorkatlarge