Tag Archives: visual novels

Around the Network

Good afternoon! I spent my weekend frantically playing a game for (paid) review, so didn’t find time to do this then. Also it’s hot. Really hot. And I don’t want to do anything that involves the slightest bit of activity.

Not that sitting on my arse typing some nonsense really counts as “activity”, of course, but you know what I mean. We’ve reached a point here where the heat, humidity and general airlessness is borderline anxiety-inducing; it actually feels like the world is trying to suffocate me at times.

On that cheery note, then, let’s look at what you might have missed in the last week!

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Steam’s Inconsistency is Hurting Visual Novels – How We Can Help

Update: 05/08/2020

Steam has reinstated Bokuten after investigation confirmed the issue with the missed (and inaccessible) CGs mentioned below. This article remains relevant, however, because Steam’s treatment of MangaGamer in this incident was totally unacceptable. Original article follows.


Steam is the largest, most well-established PC gaming platform out there. For many gamers, “PC gaming” and “Steam” are pretty much synonymous.

To put it another way, in much the same way that Grandma thinks that Facebook is “the Internet”, there are many people out there who don’t look beyond Steam as a place to buy new games. And while there are perfectly valid reasons to favour Steam — its social features are pretty good, its frequent sales make gaming very affordable and it’s where you’ll find the largest communities for many online games — there are certain parts of the industry that are being treated extremely poorly by the platform.

One of those is the localised Japanese visual novel sector, which frequently finds itself the victim of Valve’s seemingly amorphous content policies. So it’s time we looked at what we, as a community, can perhaps do a bit differently.

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LAMUNATION!: Keeping It In The Family

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Well, it’s been quite a journey so far, hasn’t it? Between Lamune’s dramatic reversal of fortunes and Iris and Rayla’s somewhat open, fluid views on sexuality, one certainly cannot call White Powder’s visual novel LAMUNATION! “boring”.

You haven’t seen anything yet, though, because we’re about to explore probably the strangest and most chaotic narrative path of all: that of protagonist Luna’s sister Corona.

We’ve got incest. We’ve got magic. We’ve got musings on the nature of visual novels as a medium. Grab a cold Red Bull, strap yourself in and hold on tight, ’cause we’re going in.

Some NSFW stuff ahead!

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LAMUNATION!: Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

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Central to LAMUNATION!, whichever narrative route you choose to explore, is the setting of the Cherry Crown Diner.

A diner inspired by 1950s Americana, the Cherry Crown serves as something of a social hub for the main cast — and, in pretty much all of the paths through the game, ends up becoming a successful landmark and tourist attraction in the unusual corporate-run city of Saint Aria.

There are a lot of interesting things about the Cherry Crown Diner — not least of which are the charismatic, chaotic twin sisters Iris and Rayla, who run it in their parents’ seemingly perpetual absence. That seems like as good a place as any to continue our exploration of this delightfully delirious visual novel!

Some NSFW stuff ahead!

Continue reading LAMUNATION!: Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

LAMUNATION!: Introduction

cropped-lamunation-header-7839609This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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One of the things I love about Japanese popular media is its willingness to create manga, anime and visual novels about all manner of subject matter — not just “safe”, predictable options that we see all the time.

As such, when the prospect of taking a look at LAMUNATION!, a visual novel that appeared to mostly be about fizzy pop, reared its head, I was more than happy to take a closer look — particularly given the track record of the localiser-publisher Love Lab, who we’ve previously seen here on MoeGamer with the beautifully presented, Ishikei-illustrated, polyamory-themed visual novel  Love³ -Love Cube- and Shade’s highly enjoyable (and exceedingly sexy) Bullet Girls Phantasia.

And with that in mind, I was particularly delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Meru and Blick from Love Lab and find out a bit more about the game, Love Lab’s approach to localisation and some of the challenges they encountered with this peculiar project! Grab a bottle, chug it down (don’t forget to go “Pwaaaahhh!!” afterwards, this is non-negotiable) and let’s get started.

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The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: Ten Years, Ten VNs

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas!

It’s nearly the end of a decade, and you know what that means: looking back over the last ten years to arbitrarily decide what was “best” from that equally arbitrary length of time.

I was just going to do a “games of the decade” sort of affair, but I realised while putting my provisional lists together that I had enough visual novels to do them in their own dedicated, separate list. So the “Ten Years, Ten Games” award will be following next week, and for now let’s talk visual novels!

For each year of (English language) release, I’m picking a visual novel that I found personally significant. This doesn’t mean that it was necessarily the “best” that year had to offer — whatever that means — but it was important to me. So let’s delve in… and note that at the time of writing, there are holiday sales going on all over the Internet, so you can pick up many of these for pretty cheap right now!

And the winners are…

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My Time With Dee Dee: Learn Through, Uh, Doing

One of the nice things about being a non-commercial site that isn’t funded by big corporate advertising bullshit is that I’m not obliged to be in “competition” with any of my peers.

That means that when people like our friends over at Digitally Downloaded do something cool and interesting, I can explore it for myself and, more to the point, make you aware of it, dear reader.

If I haven’t made this abundantly clear already, the following relates to a piece of media created by a friend of mine. And if you have the slightest interest in media criticism and making use of the conventions of gaming to educate or learn something… you should definitely check it out!

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Waifu Wednesday: Rin Takato

Before we leave The Expression: Amrilato behind, I wanted to show a particular bit of appreciation for its protagonist Rin.

Rin is the player’s eyes and ears over the course of the narrative, and as the game progresses you develop something of a mutually beneficial relationship with her as a player; she, more often than not, acts as the face of the game’s “study sessions” and as such becomes someone you associate with the act of learning the language of Esperanto… sorry, “Juliamo”.

But she’s a pretty great character in her own right, too. Let’s take a closer look at why she’s such a great central character.

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Waifu Wednesday: Yuno Hayase

Who doesn’t love a good girl? That, it seems, is the angle that Yuno Hayase, valued member of game developer Judgement 7 alongside her sister Asano, is going for.

Throughout the early hours of visual novel Our World is Ended, Yuno represents a source of relentless positivity and optimism. She’s always there to encourage protagonist Reiji and her comrades in Judgement 7, whether the situation is simply enduring a hot day or fleeing for their lives from mysterious men in black.

But, unsurprisingly, there’s a bit more going on beneath the surface than her airheaded first impressions might suggest. Make that a lot more.

Spoilers and heavy mental health stuff ahead.

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Waifu Wednesday: Natsumi Yuki

It’s fair to say that “insecurity” is a pretty core theme to Our World is Ended, and the different characters all express this trait in one way or another to varying degrees.

To date, we’ve seen how Tatiana is a walking contradiction in terms of the clash between her naturally childish nature and her genius-level intellect, and how Asano’s past trauma haunts her sufficiently to affect the person she is today.

Today, it’s time to take a look at Natsumi Yuki, seemingly one of the most unapproachable members of the main cast, but one who undergoes some of the most significant changes as the narrative progresses.

Some spoilers for Our World is Ended ahead!

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Natsumi Yuki