So many good visual novels out there. I need more
Not a fan of sekai project but still going to pay $12. They're worth the price even if the company is crap.
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Not a fan of sekai project but still going to pay $12.
Gotta appreciate Humble letting you customize how your payment is distributed.
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Yep, I get to donate money to charity on exchange for games. So much good.
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Thank you for the interesting insight. As a person who had no idea about the situation with Sekai Project, I always thought of them as the good guys, since without them all those great VNs wouldn't have been published on Steam, or would they? Are there any alternative Japanese VN publishers on Steam? Is Sekai Project only loathed among console owners, I wonder, or have they screwed up Steam users as well?
Just curious, not trying to defend them or anything.
Thank you for all the giveaways too. :)
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Obviously everyone's opinions on the subject would differ, and I'm hardly an expert on the VN industry - largely I only watch a handful of developers or franchises in the first place.
Sekai Project isn't the only group in the business - MangaGamer still does a lot of stuff, and what can be made nudity-free without obliterating the work in the process generally ends up on Steam, with all sorts of uncensored and 18+ stuff on their own digital store if that's your thing. I won't claim to follow them closely, so I don't know what kind of controversies they might've embroiled themselves in, but generally they're a bit better at letting customers know about the status of projects they're working on (I think they have weekly updates?) - even the ones that haven't taken money via Kickstarter, etc. (whereas just about every Sekai Project title has to go through a successful round of Kickstarter funding before they'll even commit to it. It's not like they only do 18+ stuff, either; they do a lot of stuff that, while not necessarily all-ages, is still nudity-free and Steam safe. The House in Fata Morgana was one of my favorite VNs to be published in English last year (and I'll openly admit that MangaGamer is well behind on their plan of getting the side-story disc out by the end of 2016).
Japanese publishers are also slowly becoming more willing to publish English versions of their work, although in most cases an English release would have existed on another platform. Spike Chunsoft self-published Danganronpa 1+2 and the Zero Escape trilogy on Steam, but all of those games had prior or simultaneous Vita releases. Same goes for 5pb and Steins;Gate, which in some ways was a step back from previous official releases, even the PC ones. They're bringing the rest of the franchise to Steam as well, but currently it seems most of those releases will remain in Japanese. Light just self-published Dies irae Amantes Amentes, and even made the first dozen-ish hours a free-to-play trial, with the rest of the content available for purchase as DLC, for the same price it would've been initially. Granted, that was after a very poorly handled Kickstarter, and it was a group of English localizers who made most of it happen, but it's progress.
Again, whether or not Sekai Project is even a 'bad' company depends largely on who you ask. I've grown frustrated after years of promises about Vita games, but they've never shown a whole lot of professionalism in anything but running Kickstarters. Radio silence about the status of a game that was estimated for release months ago seems to be the norm, not the exception, from my experience with them. When Root Double was estimated for a March 2016 release (with the Kickstarter opening in January, implying the work was already largely finished), they didn't announce the delay until the end of March, then went silent until about 48 hours before the game launched (which, thankfully, was only about a month later). That's the closest I've seen to them handling a delay professionally.
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I have very little knowledge about this subject, so I will respect your opinion and withhold my own :P Have a bump!
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Hey, my though's always been that an opinion's not worth having if it's not worth sharing. I'm hardly a VN scholar, either.
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I'm sure there are pros and cons to this, but perhaps it would be preferable to see more Japanese VN publishers release their games in the west themselves rather than license them out to different ones? For example, Idea Factory released its Neptunia games via its Idea Factory International branch. Granted, the Nep-Nep games aren't visual novels, so maybe there are other factors at play when it comes to them.
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A lot of the time it comes down to VNs being the works of indie groups and small studios; the cost of worldwide publishing is mitigated these days due to Steam and other worldwide digital distribution networks, but even then there's the cost of keeping a staff dedicated to translating and publicizing items that generally have much more text and a much smaller niche than RPGs or other interactive media.
Most companies at least retain the rights to a translation even if another publisher handles it, which is largely why Spike Chunsoft is coming around and self-publishing Danganronpa, Zero Escape, etc. 5pb could publish Steins;Gate 0 and Chaos;Child if they wanted to, but it seems like the lukewarm reception of Steins;Gate's Steam version soured them on using Steam to reach English-speaking audiences.
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Got a few public $12-tier flash GAs active. Click my profile.
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I only read the first 2 paragraphs, but I think the bundle is... necessary. Maybe even if for introducing people to a new genre.
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:O Didn't know there was this kind of drama in publishing games. o__o
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There's drama everywhere.
I mean, don't open kickstarter or there's about 80% of projects that just crashed and burned... drama right there.
Or better, look up "Shan Gui" on Steam. Read those reviews.
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Hnnnnnn not touching those with a 10 foot pole haha. I'll get sucked in and spend 10 hours reading some thread about the drama.
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Doesn't seem the game's so popular to have a mega-topic (just a lot of reviews). It's... not a fairly good game. But here's the dev-post. Enjoy!
Since the Shan Gui has back to Steam’s goods catalog. As the development team, we, Magenta Factory, want to give our customers a brief explanation about the previous removal.
In the first half of 2014, a guy known online as Jucai (Steam Profile: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198077050350 ) contacted us with a cooperative plan. In accordance with his suggestion, he will serve as a publisher to help releasing Shan Gui on Steam. Later, another technical assistant joined the team makes a trio group. According to trilateral agreement, the profit from Shan Gui will be equally divided into three parts.
But Jucai betrayed others. He set an unreasonable price for Shan Gui without our authorization. And after a short of time, he began to pocket all profit and kicked both developer and technical assistant out of Steamworks group. We could no longer manage the game on Steam nor to update it. As retaliation, technical assistant sent a DCMA ticket to Steam’s administrator caused Shan Gui’s removal.
Soon after that, Jucai sent a counter notice, too. Since Jucai is controlling the right of distribution (but not own), it means if we do not bring a suit in US (out of our ability), then Shan Gui will re-shelf Steam, under his control again. Additionally, Steam received Jucai counter notice makes no sense for admit his right of distribution. In this case, Steam is just follow the rule of DMCA, without investigating someone’s argument.
Of course, we can sue Jucai for copyright infringement. But this case happened in US and our team is based in China, we can’t afford the time and money cost for a transnational lawsuit. So after an inner-team meeting, we decided not to look into the cause, TEMPORARILY. From now on, Magenta Factory is dissolving all relationship and cooperation with Jucai. Magenta Factory is no longer responsible for the follow-up customer service and update of Shan Gui (AppID:307050). The copyright of Shan Gui is still ours, we will take the right of distribution back at a proper time.
Thanks to all the fans of Shan Gui. Magenta Factory will devote all its effects and talents into our next work Bai Qu (hundreds of melodies). We promise you will love it, too. See you when melodies wafting.
PS: About the Trojan complaint. We checked the whole game and found it is caused by the Ren'Py Engine we use. It is a false alarm, and won’t cause any damage to your computer.
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The thread came to me haha. Thanks for the share. You're right. Drama right there.
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There's nowhere to hide from drama... run... ruuun!
(Also one can understand why devs pick Sekai Project to publish above self-publishing reading stories like this, Valve screwing them over too.)
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I tried reading Ever17 a few years ago and I just couldn't get past the first three or four hours. It was too goofy. Now, I like goofy (Hatoful Boyfriend is a gem in the genre, the punishment game club sections of Higurashi are goofy but serve as a contrast to show how bad things have gotten later on) but with Ever17... I just couldn't do it.
If it shows up on steam again, maybe I'll pick it up. I looked at Root Double but it doesn't seem to work for me either. Funnily enough, I loved the Zero Escape series (EXCEPT THE THIRD ONE). Maybe Uchikoshi just needed to mature a bit as a writer for me?
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Ever17 was really them trying to find a good balance. The first game in the series, Never7, was a much lighter game with less in the way of sci-fi elements. The sci-fi aspect was well received, so they jacked it up in Ever17, but still had to find a way to ease people in. Even though there's some strong character development and some dark twists to the plot, a good chunk of Ever17 is still a slow-paced, upbeat game.
Root Double still has some strong slice-of-life stuff (I think the second route is largely an everyday school life thing), but it also starts off with real stakes. Like 999, it has no qualms about getting bloody, and in fact if you're careless with your choices you can die within the first fifteen minutes or so of the novel. The character design can be pretty polarizing, though.
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Volumes 0, 1, and 2 are all available in different tiers of this week's Humble Bundle.
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I mean, it's a bunch of interactive weeb books, by perhaps one of the most loathed publishers among the English VN fanbase, spread across a number of genres.
Right away, you've got about three reasons people would be immediately turned off - not a fan of Chinese picture books, an ingrained hatred of Sekai Project, or too much trash like Nekopara (I expect someone to blacklist me for that claim).
And honestly, I'm really only a fan of the sci-fi/fantasy genres, and I'm fed up with SP's shit, and I still backed the top tier. And you know what? I might buy a second bundle just to give away a copy of Root Double.
If you've followed visual novels at all, one of the seminal English releases was Ever17. The premise seems simple enough - a handful of young people with stereotypical anime personalities get trapped in an underwater amusement park, with days to survive before oxygen runs out or water pressure crushes the structure. With tensions and emotions running high, it doesn't help that nothing is what it seems initially, and in the end it turns from a bit of a slice-of-life/suspense story to a great sci-fi novel with memorable characters and twists despite a horrific localization job. The next entry in the Infinity franchise, Remember11, is even more mind-bending, and still has a large following despite never properly releasing outside of Japan.
The heads of the series went their separate ways after the company more or less folded, but they both still produced memorable works. Kotaro Uchikoshi went on to create the Zero Escape series, an underground hit sci-fi/horror series starting with 999 on the DS, and for better or for worse, even cancellation couldn't keep the series down thanks to the high demand from the English-speaking market. The Zero Escape series tended to explore a lot of the same themes as the Infinity series
The other lead, Takumi Nakazawa, went on to found his own company, Regista. He'd also direct and publish some other great VNs, such as I/O (a great sci-fi story about the difference between dreams, physical reality, and virtual reality, which was somehow even more of a frustrating mindfuck than Remember11) and Root Double, which in a lot of ways was a throwback to Ever17 - a bunch of people trapped with a matter of hours to live unless they can work together and find an escape, with their connections both to events and each other much more intertwined than they initially seem. I/O only ever received a fan translation, unfortunately, but Sekai Project picked up the expanded edition of Root Double for publication in the west, and even brought on the team from the I/O translation for localization.
Of course, Sekai Project wouldn't have been my first choice for the project, and a lot of people likely feel the same way. Even ignoring the whiny behavior of the higher-ups or questionable choices about what gets kept or cut, they regularly miss release dates and refuse to release timely updates, and they've promised nearly a dozen Vita releases over the last three or four years without actually publishing a single one. In fact, until they partnered with someone else last year, they didn't even have a real plan for developing most of the ports they'd promised. Their first console with a concrete date was supposed to be Rabi-Ribi, in December of last year - the release window was even marked on the official PlayStation blog. Naturally, the game still hasn't been published, and to my knowledge they've yet to offer any updates about its status.
Luckily, Root Double was published with minimal delays, at least on PC. The story's good, and the translation's good. Other than the Vita release slipping past its first two release windows (who could've seen that coming?) there's not a lot to complain about. It's a great sci-fi VN, even if it's not necessarily as strong as its predecessors. But is it worth $12? Of course. Did I give away my Kickstarter Steam key to a friend because I had faith that Regista wouldn't let Sekai Project screw up the Vita release? Unfortunately, yes.
I picked this bundle up because I wanted my own Root Double key, and Nekopara titles aside, I might find something else in here I genuinely enjoy. In the meantime, I already had World End Economica ep01 in my library from a bundle two or three years ago. I'll admit I've never tried it, but it's an opportunity for someone to take my spare key and see if they want to pick up this bundle for further entries into the series:
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/9KXX6/world-end-economica-episode01endedFor now, that's the only giveaway I've got. The Nekopara titles are going up soon (see bottom), so don't blacklist me just yet if you want a stab at them. And if you don't want to throw away $12 on my own recommendation of Root Double, take a look below.
UPDATED: Here's a Root Double giveaway (basic SGTools checks): http://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/afa47ed8-4af1-11e7-91df-fa163ee2f826
The giveaway's open until 4PM eastern time next Tuesday, so you've still got another week to buy the game if you don't win.
UPDATED again: Here's a Nekopara train, for all your catgirl-sex needs, or whatever the hell these games are actually about. Lv1 + Lv4 GAs, ending Sunday afternoon (eastern time).
UPDATE: World End Economica GA is over, but I've got most of a second bundle to give out chunk-by-chunk. Here's Sound of Drop -fall into poison-, which I've also never played.6/8: Today's giveaway is Japanese School Life, because we needed more tired anime tropes in our lives.6/9: This time I've got Idol Magical Girl Chiru Chiru Michiru Part 1. I guess it's some sort of spinoff/parody of the Grisaia series? I've never played this or the source material, so I can't tell you what to expect. Only other things I can glean from the Steam reviews are that the price was jacked up and the translation is questionable, so basically a quintessential Sekai Project release.
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