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LGBTQ VN Week: Day Five! (6/22)

Welcome back for my fifth day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! If you didn’t check out my first post, I recommend at least skimming the “One note before we get started” section to get a handle on what this series of posts is. (And especially, as the case may be, what it isn’t.)

Today I’m looking at character-driven horror (?) and the ways Cyanide Tea’s Break Chance Memento, Novectacle’s The House In Fata Morgana, and d Marie’s Us Lovely Corpses work to elicit sympathy even for the most unsympathetic of characters, plus an interview with Heiden of Dr. Frank’s Build-A-Boyfriend!

Hit the jump to see discussion of [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and learn more about these visual novels! 

BREAK CHANCE MEMENTO (CYANIDE TEA)

Itch.io Tagline: “a VN about family bonds across time.” Genre(s): Horror; drama; romance. Release Date: December 16th, 2015. Content Warnings: Blood; violence; gore; death.

Cyanide Tea, a team that has (unfortunately) since disbanded, was a duo that put out some of my favorite visual novels — my personal favorite work of theirs, Where We Lay Our Scene, builds on the relatively slice-of-life premise of an actor interacting with four central characters on a romance route to deliver a lot of excellent writing and character development, and the. But it’s not a stretch (for me, at least) to say that Break Chance Memento was Cyanide Tea at their absolute best. All of the individual elements come together phenomenally well, and everything the gorgeous art to the nuanced writing to the extremely well-delivered exection of its premise — where you play a character struggling to defend his friends and family from a serial killer hellbent on killing them by rewinding through time — are all working perfectly to deliver an excellent story.

I can’t go into a lot of the smartly-executed narrative elements that make this this, specifically, one of their best visual novels. (Compelling, compassionate horror can be a tricky thing to pull off, so all of the entries on this list would be even more laden with spoilers if I went into detail every single time! Sorry!) But I’ll say without a shred of a doubt that I think their worldbuilding is top-notch and their sense of pacing — particularly when it comes to the points where the story enters another timeloop — is thoughtfully done. I can see a lot of the effort that went into making certain scenes in Break Chance Memento so smart and clever, and I really appreciate the work Cyanide Tea did to deliver on that promise! In some visual novels, I think my immersion can personally end up being ruined by being able to see that work, but what I’ve always loved about Cyanide Tea is that noticing their efforts (and noticing how they pay off) has never really done that for me.

One thing I can say, however, is that I think time travel is an excellent vehicle for horror and tragedy that this team was extremely smart about. If there’s anything that made the Groundhog Day movie so memorable to me, it was the absolute pain of its protagonist struggling against something he didn’t really understand even as it was balanced with slice-of-life moments and comedy, and the writing for Break Chance Memento takes that to another (maybe even smarter?) level.

Break Chance Memento is available now for a discounted price of $10.04 (down from its regular $14.99); while the Cyanide Tea website and blog are no longer updating, you can follow its two members (Lore and Auro) on Twitter to keep an eye on their own independent work!

THE HOUSE IN FATA MORGANA (NOVECTACLE)

Steam Tagline: “A gothic suspense tale set in a cursed mansion.” Genre(s): Gothic horror; surrealism. Release Date: December 31st, 2012 (Japanese); May 13th, 2016 (English). Content Warnings: See MangaGamer list.

(This post contains some minor spoilers for The House In Fata Morgana’s later-game plot twists — but if I were to try to spoil all the twists and turns, I’d be here all day!)

When it comes to Gothic horror, I don’t think there’s a richer, more developed example on the visual novel scene than The House In Fata Morgana. It tells the tale of a mysterious Maid that walks You — capitalization intentional — through a handful of tragic stories set in a huge variety of time periods, each of which has much more going on than the initial premise might suggest. And then some. There’s a lot of meat on The House In Fata Morgana’s narrative bones, with so much happening in every individual slice of the story that it can be easy to forget it’s well past the 20 hour mark as a whole. Its music is distinct and memorable in the larger field of relatively similar BGMs, with character-appropriate inspirations for each track, and I absolutely adore the art style.

What brings The House In Fata Morgana to its well-earned place on an “LGBTQ VN list”, though, is the throughline of one specific character — Michel Bollinger. To use more relatively modern terms than Michel would’ve had access to, but ones that summarize it fairly well, he’s revealed to be an intersex trans man whose relationship with his fairly consistent gender identity versus the society he was born into drives a lot of his character arc. And, ultimately, much of the story as a whole! Michel is a sympathetic character whose cruelty at the hands of the society he lives in, from his family to the religious leaders around him, is never skimmed over nor unnecessarily graphic when compared to the fates of Fata Morgana’s other characters. In some ways, the figures who express the most overt cruelty to Michel for being trans and intersex are actually offered far less humanization and redemption than many of their counterparts in other tragedies, leaving that bigotry narratively positioned as something linked to irredeemably poisoned characters’ viewpoints.

At its core, The House In Fata Morgana uses its supernatural elements and its Gothic trappings to get at human nature, the way many of the best horror stories do. Nearly all of the characters are given a great deal of depth and exploration of their motivations, and more than anything else, Fata Morgana carefully twists each narrative so many of them are sympathetic in spite of their crimes. While there’s stories I personally didn’t like, as is the case for most players with quasi-episodic narratives about different (?) sets of characters — Mell’s door, in particular, was extremely well-written but the topic I personally found the most upsetting of them all — as a whole, I feel relatively confident saying that there’s enough depth to The House In Fata Morgana’s stories that there’s something for everyone.

The House In Fata Morgana is available now for a discounted price of $12.47 on MangaGamer’s website, down from $24.95, while its Requiem For Innocence DLC is also currently on sale MangaGamer for $12.70 (down from $14.95)!

US LOVELY CORPSES (D MARIE)

Itch.io Tagline: “A girl, a monster, another girl, roses. The usual.” Genre(s): Fairy tale; horror. Release Date: March 7th, 2018. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page's Patreon post link.

A fairy tale-esque story about a woman named Alejandra's regular battle with a monster to save her friend (?) Marisol, Us Lovely Corpses is one of the most quietly unsettling visual novels on this list. From its distinctive, consistent color palette to its genuinely kind of challenging quasi-puzzles, especially when it comes to the choice of listening to the monster's manifestations or simply cutting them off outright, everything about it works fantastically well to create the kind of atmosphere it's going for. I'd be remiss to not mention the humor, too, especially when it comes to some of Alejandra's lines or overwrought maid Betty's entire character. It's extremely funny without ever being distracting.

The use of floral symbolism is a particularly distinct narrative choice I personally would recommend thinking about while you play through it for the first time — roses function, even in most of the early parts of the story, as a manifestation of the mysterious monster that laid a curse on Marisol. (Or maybe it'd be more apt to say they're a manifestation of "being cursed" itself?) That monster speaks to Alejandra through a mouth that forms in the blossom, "like usual", and the spread of the roses throughout the house is something she has to cut through to reach Marisol. Us Lovely Corpses complicates roses' symbolic beauty with a tinge of monstrosity and suffering, calling back to tragic fairy tales as old as the Grimm Brothers' aptly-named The Rose, and delivers on the questions it asks with thoughtful detail.

Where d Marie's writing shines most strongly, in my opinion, is their quiet development of Marisol's sympathetic perspective over the course of Us Lovely Corpses. I definitely don't want to spoil anything, because the slow insight into why she acts the way she does was one of my favorite parts! Alejandra is an extremely well-drawn character — in terms both art and writing, haha — who I absolutely adored for her perseverence and wit, but Marisol's angle in the story is what ended up impacting me the most deeply as a reader. It's been a couple of months since I played this, actually, but Marisol's design and genuinely empathetic writing are something I still think about fondly enough that Us Lovely Corpses was one of my first picks for this list — and Marisol alone would easily clear into the Top 10 of my favorite visual novel characters, if I were to make one!

Us Lovely Corpses is available now for free on Itch.io, with the art collection as a bonus for a $2 or more tip; you can support d Marie on Patreon or follow them on Twitter, where they’ve recently been posting their own visual novel recommendation thread!

DR. FRANK’S BUILD-A-BOYFRIEND (HEIDEN)

Itch.io Tagline: “Build Your Ultimate Boyfriend!” Genre(s): Comedy; point-and-click. Release Date: October 6th, 2017. Content Warnings: Adult language; comedic body horror.

Tonally, Dr. Frank’s Build-A-Boyfriend is a pretty steep departure from all three other items on the list — rather than trying to stop a serial killer, or unravel horrible tragedies, or rescue someone from a monster, it’s a point-and-click built around the titular Dr. Frank’s antics. But at the same time, its writing does what the best comedy does and builds even further to draw out the real emotions behind the jokes about dicks, reanimating corpses, and mysterious blond newcomers.

I reached out to Heiden, developer of Dr. Frank’s Build-A-Boyfriend, and asked them a couple of questions about point-and-clicks and the inspiration behind their work!

IVAN Thanks for talking to me today, Heiden! To start off — in your own words, how would you describe Dr. Frank's Build-A-Boyfriend to a stranger?

HEIDEN: Dr. Frank's Build-A-Boyfriend is a comedy Visual Novel/Point and Click adventure hybrid about a mad scientist named Dr. Frank who is trying to build the world's hottest boy in an attempt to get back at the man who dumped him and stole his research.

Point-and-click/visual novel hybrid is a good way to put it! You use a lot of point-and-click and adventure game mechanics alongside visual novel ones, I've noticed; what about those appeals to you, and what's it like to get those things working in Ren'Py?

Getting those mechanics working in Ren'Py was an utter nightmare, haha. I had originally planned to finish the game in 3 months, but that easily blossomed into a year b/c of the unforeseen difficulties I had with implementing everything. As for what about appeals to me about those two genres- I really like how in Point and Click adventures, just the act of forcing the player to solve puzzles, or walk around in the shoes of the player character, looking through flavor text, helps the player become more endeared, or closer to that character. For visual novels, I've always liked how they allowed a greater degree of narrative that you can't get easily in other types of video games. So for Dr. Frank, I tried taking a bit of both to see how that would effect the player's engagement about what was going on during the more classic Visual Novel elements.

Haha, the flavor text was definitely one of my favorite parts of Dr. Frank! In my opinion, your visual novels always have lots of memorable, distinct character. Where do you get the ideas for the stories you want to tell and the characters you want to tell them about from? Anything in particular — including even things from other mediums or other fields of study — that inspires you?

I try to take inspiration from every aspect of my life. I have a day job in a hospital working closely with surgeries, and in the past I've had multiple opportunities to work in a very busy Medical Examiner's Office, and through these experiences I've met a fair number of people who were having their very worst days, and just through these experiences I felt like, I wanted to put characters into my own stories that reflected the people who I had met, but might not show up in the media I was consuming. I just felt like, there was this huge gap and I wanted to do my part in at least saying, "Hey, you're forgetting about these people. They exist too, you know? They find ways to live on, and still have overall happy lives."

I can see that in your work! There are definitely a lot of kinds of stories I don't think we see very much, so having that kind of inspiration is really worthwhile and makes for some great results. 

What kinds of aesthetics or themes are you interested in exploring in your future visual novel/point-and-click work? Any specific projects you can namedrop that you're working on finishing right now?

It's so hot where I am right now, so the next work I'm working on takes place on this mountainous snowy village in the middle of nowhere, haha. The tentative name for it right now is What Lies Ahead, and the theme I'm going for is a slice of life work that has a melancholic feeling, sort of like the older World Masterpiece Theater anime shows. I don't think it'll come out anytime soon, as I'm attempting to move to the Unity engine, and use the Adventure Creator plug in! I'm learning a lot and very excited!

Wow, Unity! Good luck — I'll definitely be looking to that snowy retreat of a game if the temperatures where I am stay above 100 Fahrenheit, haha! But if you could give one piece of advice to your younger self when you were first starting to make visual novels, knowing everything that you know now, what would it be?

I would tell them, make tons of games! Don't worry about what people say about your first couple. As long as you are learning something, it's a success. And if people are being extra mean to you about them, just ignore them. Make your stuff and have fun!!

Super solid advice! I feel like we could all keep that in mind no matter how far along we might be, haha. Finally, what are some LGBTQ visual novels you didn't work on that you'd personally recommend?

I really enjoyed Disaster Log C by Sofdelux Studio, Green Eyed Monster by Carrogath, and Vicarwissen by Team Lazilisk!

Thanks for your time, Heiden, this was a super enlightening conversation.

Dr. Frank’s Build-A-Boyfriend is available now for free, and you can also follow Heiden on Twitter or Itch.io to learn more about their upcoming projects!

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Four! (6/21)

Wow, we’re already at the fourth day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! You’ve probably seen this preface on previous parts of this list, but if you haven’t read my first post, that writeup’s “One note before we get started” section, explains more clearly what this list is and why I’m writing it!

Plenty of visual novels talk about sex and intimacy, so for today, I’ve set aside four with my personal favorite approaches to the topic — CODE:Phantasm’s 404 Error: Connection Not Found, parade’s No Thank You!!!, SugarScript’s Cute Demon Crashers, and Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim, plus a conversation with Mitch about his creative process on Tusks.

Head on in to hear about your little brother dyeing his hair pink, a truly inscrutable protagonist, freeloading demons playing Mario Kart, and inspirational Skyrim mods!

404 ERROR: CONNECTION NOT FOUND (CODE:PHANTASM)

Itchio Tagline: “Sometimes connecting to others is harder than loneliness.” Genre(s): Slice of life; drama. Release Date: July 30th, 2017 (demo); TBA (full version). Content Warnings: Text-only depiction of sex and sex work; adult content.

404 Error: Connection Not Found is the story of Ren Matsuura, a camboy who ran away from home after turning eighteen and supports himself financially through camming — but thanks to his agoraphobia and general anxiety, he rarely goes outside, to the point that he’s pared all his social connections down to casual conversations with his clients and lying to his younger brother Haru about what he does for a living. When his brother decides to come visit for the first time since Ren moved out, Ren is forced to confront the fact that his guilt and shame have driven him into a corner with no support system. In the span of the demo, he starts to try and reach out to the clients he has a more regular relationship with to prepare him for Haru’s eventual visit, ending on a cliffhanger that seems to be leading directly into the plotline of the main story.

This visual novel’s demo is the shortest of all the stories on my entire list, to my knowledge, but it’s also the most memorable demo I’ve played in a long, long while. As someone who’s had to contend with similar mental illnesses in the past — paranoia and agoraphobia unsurprisingly have a pretty high degree of comorbidity! — I felt like Ren’s slow struggle to make progress for the sake of his younger brother was written sincerely, thoughtfully, and believably in the timespan of a single demo playthrough. Ren can be funny, when he’s not spiraling internally, and his rocky progress at trying to talk to others more honestly is loaded with plenty of funny jokes and quips about his takes on things. He’s a sympathetic, well-rounded protagonist who comes across strongly in the demo alone, and I ended up really rooting for him to make it to a place where he was happier with his life.

There’s another aspect to the story that I ended up really liking, too: the fact that sex work, especially jobs like camming, can be extremely common among LGBTQ people who can’t support themselves financially in other ways. Ren can’t go outside and can’t interact with many people without severe, earth-shattering anxiety attacks (a few of which we see in the demo!), so this job is what he’s got. It’s a job that’s sustained him for years, and although it’s certainly fed into his own relative isolation, 404 Error seemed to walk that careful balance of making it explicit that it’s Ren’s own lack of steady support for his mental illness instead of the simple fact that he does sex work that causes his interpersonal problems. I’m optimistic about the remainder of the story’s handling of those kinds of things, too, because what was present in the demo was sympathetic and sincere! There’s not very many sex workers or camgirls/camboys in visual novels outside of an extremely tiny handful, let ones alone in conjunction to stories that acknowledge of the way LGBTQ people as a whole can struggle with more convential jobs, so Ren’s genuinely empathetic personality and the hope I have for his future makes me excited to see where CODE:Phantasm takes 404 Error from here.

404 Error: Connection Not Found’s free Yaoi Game Jam demo is available now, and you can follow the CODE:Phantasm team on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to stay updated on their progress with Ren’s story.

NO THANK YOU!!! (PARADE)

MangaGamer Tagline: “This summer vacation begins with a car accident...” Genre(s): Comedy; drama; mystery. Release Date: June 28, 2013 (Japanese); February 27, 2015 (English).  Content Warnings: Adult content; multiple sex scenes; frequent sexual harassment; blood; drugs; violence; death.

Right off the bat, I think parade’s debut visual novel (as a studio, at least) does a lot of interesting things and definitely seems to be aiming high with creating distinct, memorable stories. The art in No Thank You!!! is gorgeous, its voice acting is top-tier, a lot of the side characters are compelling even beyond the space or role the narrative gives them, and the love interests alone are all fully-realized characters with interesting stories. Romance option Ryu’s route, in particular, fleshes out the larger sense of mystery and the other characters to an astounding degree! That’s to say nothing of the most unique mechanic — which I mostly call the NTY!!! button — that offers you the chance to say “no thank you” in a variety of scenes without always telling you what it is you’re saying that to. It’s occasionally a little too easy to guess, but at certain points I ended up lulled into a false sense of security with that easiness that the game was all too ready to take advantage of with a much less obvious choice.

One of the sticking points with No Thank You!!! that I’ve seen other players express, on the other hand, is the way protagonist Haru is written. That’s not to say his writing specifically is bad — parade clearly had a vision in mind for Haru’s personality, and from his sketchy beginnings to his clearer end, he’s a coherent character with a consistent narrative. While the crux of the story is more insight into Haru, where he came from, and what the truth behind all those mysteries might be, though, Haru’s behavior still underpins a lot of what drives the romance routes forward. And his behavior... The official quote on his personality, “[s]exual harassment is an everyday activity for him,” can at times seem like it’s underselling exactly how often he tries to grab an ass. It’s no surprise that a fair few other players I’ve seen have walked away with pretty strong opinions on Haru as a character. (I’m personally not a huge fan.)

But to me, a divisive protagonist who you don’t actually fully understand as a character — Haru’s thoughts on a lot of key things are far less accessible than the likes of Aoba Seragaki or most Western M/M protagonists, which leaves you knowing most of his thoughts or feelings via his interactions from others — seems to go perfectly hand-in-hand with the way the visual novel as a whole operates. No Thank You!!! puts you at a distance by Haru’s viewpoint being occasionally “indecipherable” (to use the official phrasing), and then it throws you further with its sometimes-unpredictable NTY!!! button mechanic, but the strength of its other individual pieces taken together still sold me on it as both a solid set of mystery stories and an 18+ dating sim.

Also I really like Maki.

No Thank You!!! is available for a sale price of $19.95 on MangaGamer’s store (18+), and you can read more about parade’s story and characters on MangaGamer’s designated No Thank You!!! page (also 18+).

CUTE DEMON CRASHERS (SUGARSCRIPT)

Itchio Tagline: “A short and silly consent-friendly and sex-positive VN!” Genre(s): Modern fantasy. Release Date: April 7th, 2015 (Mirari and Akki’s routes); August 15th, 2015 (full version). Content Warnings: Multiple sex scenes; detailed uncensored nudity.

I don’t think I could sum up Cute Demon Crashers better than the Itch.io tagline does — it’s short, it’s hilarious, and it’s got an emphasis on consent that meshes perfectly with its goofy “a bunch of incubi and one succubus come to the mortal realm to have sex” plot. The characters are all charming and fit perfectly into its universe, with distinct personalities that come across clearly without ever feeling hamfisted in the limited time that the script lets you spend with them. Although this isn’t necessarily a romance game, especially given that incubi and succubi are “closer to what people know of as aromantic” according to the SugarScript FAQ, its cute, thoughtful writing and adorable design in everything from the characters to the user interface mean that there’s plenty of love infused in every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers.

Like yesterday’s We Know The Devil, Cute Demon Crashers is one of those visual novels with a distinct, memorable mechanic that almost placed it squarely in Tuesday’s creative design list. Cute Demon Crashers is one of the first visual novels — or, by my experience, the first altogether — to implement a mechanic specifically themed around stopping in the middle of sex. If you’re ever uncomfortable or you just plain want the scene to end, you can hit a button and protagonist Claire will talk with her partner to bring things to a close. (There’s also an option to just plain old not have sex with any of them, and spending time with the characters!) A lot of the dialogue in these scenes in particular is thoughtful, nuanced, and reads to me as being a pretty realistic depiction of how someone like Claire might ask those questions or express those kinds of concerns. 

The way Cute Demon Crashers handles intimacy and sexuality, by another measure, is one of those things that I think has also had a not-insignificant impact on the visual novel community as a whole; I’ve seen a fair number of people who’ve apparently never enjoyed an 18+ dating sim before talk about how its portrayal of sex resonated with them or brought them some measure of comfort. Because of the SugarScript team’s relative investment in the English-language visual novel scene as a whole, too — this project was born out of NaNoRenO and I’ve seen them promote development forum hub LemmaSoft or other small visual novels more than once — the compassion for the player that’s written into every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers seems to extend naturally to everyone else around the team in real life, which is something extremely special.

The entirety of Cute Demon Crashers is available now for free, and you can find out more information on its upcoming sequel (Cute Demon Crashers: Side B) on the SugarScript Twitter, Tumblr, and Itch.io!

Itchio Tagline: “GAY ORCS available in YOUR AREA.” Genre(s): Romance; fantasy; community building. Release Date: July 18th, 2015 (First Day demo); January 1st, 2018 (FUARLANG/full main story); TBA (individual route endings). Content Warnings: Adult content; sex; mentions of violence.

Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim, from head to toe, is one of my favorite depictions of sex and intimacy in video games — and with every gradual update, especially the most recent FUARLANG build that finished out the mai storyline, I’ve only become more sure of that. There’s an endearingly genuine quality to its art, character dialogue, and even in things like the NPC autonomy feature, where your companions have just as many chances to sway things like group votes or decide who’s on watch as you would without NPC autonomy being enabled. 

Interested to hear Mitch talk a little bit about his design process and the inspiration behind Tusks, I got in touch and asked him a few questions!

Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Mitch! While the title might be fairly self-explanatory, haha, how would you outline Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim in more detail to somebody new?

Tusks is a visual novel where the player joins a group at an annual orcish gathering, in a forest at the edge of a semi-mythical version of Scotland, and you then travel with this new found family and get to know them better. Most of the game is your group getting into adventures, talking to them one-on-one at camp at nighttime, and making decisions about how to go about your travels. The game's cast are all queer, and the game itself is an exploration of queer identity, community, history, and our relationship with the idea of monstrosity/Otherness.

I think it's fair to say that Tusks, as well as your larger body of work, deals a lot with intimacy and sexuality, especially the intersection between those two things; this is probably a question you've thought over yourself a fair bit, but what in particular interests you about those topics that drives you to explore them in Tusks and your other work?

Part of it is the fact that intimacy and sexuality are areas that can be massively important to queer people (especially since many of us are marginalised as a result of our sexuality being seen as deviant) but there aren't a lot of mainstream sources that play with intimacy and sexuality in relevant ways. And part of it is just because exploring sexuality for its own sake can be fun as well!

Definitely! There's always room for more fun with depictions of sexuality, haha. The premise for an all-orc dating sim is definitely a memorable one, and one you've fleshed out incredibly well with the thoughtfulness of your worldbuilding and character dynamics. What was the original inspiration that you built Tusks on, and what helped carry you across the finishing line of completing (for the most part) its story?

It was a lot of different threads coming together: I'd been playing a modded Skyrim save with an orc character who, in my head, was gay and had left his stronghold so to find other orcs like him and establish his own wee found family. That happened at the same time as me finding out about the NaNoReNo visual novel game jam, plus wanting to work on a game that actually put queer characters and discussions first and foremost rather than us just being a token presentation.

As for what carried me through, there was lots of things: the excitement of getting to tell stories that you just don't see in mainstream games, getting amazing feedback from players, and then at the end when I released the full main story on New Years', it was sheer bloody-mindedness.

There's a fair few interesting mechanics in Tusks, especially with regards to NPC autonomy; can you share a little bit of insight on why you decided to include those and how they function in the code?

NPC autonomy's a small but effective way of just slightly upsetting this idea that in visual novels, the player character gets to make all the decisions -- it automatically puts you in a decision-making leader role, and it's up to the writer then to narratively justify that -- which can be difficult if you're wanting to tell a story about a group of equal partners. So instead, NPC autonomy lets characters vote on things or lets characters potentially turn you down for romantic encounters.

It's an optional feature, so it's possible to play the game without it being on -- it just slightly changes the flow of the story and makes it seem a tad-bit more like you're part of a collective, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense! I think my playthroughs where NPC autonomy was on were definitely more interesting, by and large, because it really does add a lot to that sense of cooperation and community.

If you had to pick just one, what non-human (and non-orc) creature do you think more people should appreciate?

I'm really interested in exploring things with strong mythological connotations like minotaurs, since they're surrounded by particular ideas like labyrinths, being half-human and half-animal. I'd also really like to see someone explore the monstrousness of hags from [Dungeons and Dragons], because I think there's probably a way to talk about them and explore their relationships to femininity, presentation, glamour magick, witchcraft, and power.

Good choices! Those are both definitely really interesting ones. To wrap things up, are there any LGBTQ visual novels from other developers that you'd like to recommend?

I'd recommend checking out The Bitter Drop, by Isak Grozny; Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love, and We Know the Devil by Date Nighto!

Perfect! It's been a pleasure talking to you, Mitch, and I'm looking forward to your future projects.

Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim is available now for a reverse-sale price of $2.02, and you can support Mitch Alexander’s work on Patreon or follow his “nonsense” on Twitter and fully-released work on Itch.io!

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Three! (6/20)

Welcome back for my third day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! Remember to check out my first post’s “One note before we get started” section to get a handle on what this recommendation list is, what it’s not, and why I made it, if you haven’t already!

The four visual novels I’ve got lined up to talk about today move beyond endlessly bleak apocalypses to focus instead on persistence and hopes for a brighter future — Spincut’s Who We Are Now, Sofdelux Studio’s Disaster Log C, and Worst Girls Games’ We Know The Devil, followed by a conversation with Jaime Scribbles Games about her upcoming As We Know It.

(Disclaimers: I’m somehow still into unique-looking apocalypse stories in the year 2018, so I backed both Who We Are Now and As We Know It on Kickstarter, and I also know the creators of Disaster Log C personally.)

Head on in for comic book supervillain jokes, super important teddy bears, one hell of a summer camp, and juggling your full-time job with the end of the world!

WHO WE ARE NOW (SPINCUT)

Itch.io Tagline: "A queer, post-apocalyptic visual novel about love at the end of the world.” Genre(s): Romance; slice of life; science fiction. Release Date: December 12th, 2017 (Xander’s Story); June 18th, 2018 (Jesse’s Story); TBA (Ray’s Story & Nathan’s Story). Content Warnings: Multiple explicit sex scenes; discussion of traumatic violence.

Who We Are Now, a visual novel following protagonist Wes as he offers comfort to the isolated fellow residents of a post-apocalyptic town named Home under the advice of town leader Mohra. The backdrop for Who We Are Now is distinctly science fiction, but the worldbuilding elements are interestingly vague enough that the characters only refer to the apocalypse more in terms of how it impacted their lives, rather than concrete details about exactly which places were destroyed on what dates and how. That’s personally something I prefer for character-focused pieces like this, and an interesting contrast to the hyper-detailed way AAA studios approach the apocalypse — it works in Who We Are Now, especially in the instances where the characters react differently to the circumstances of their situation or share different information, because it’s what they’ve retained.

Although Who We Are Now is short and largely still in “preorder”, according to its Itch.io page, both of the two relatively complete Stories — starring romanceable characters Xander and Jesse, respectively — offer distinct enough stories with memorable characters that I feel comfortable saying their two companion pending routes (Ray and Nathan) will all be well worth the price and the wait. Spincut’s script treats the two love interests’ struggles with society and their respective traumas carefully, never really offering an answer or a single moment that stood out to me as being a demand for them to just “get over it”. Both Jesse and Xander bristle, especially in the later half, and neither Xander’s struggle to control his mysterious electric powers nor Jesse’s slow progress fitting in as part of the society in Home go seamlessly. Even Wes’s personality feels realistically flawed; as a character who’s lived for years on his own, there’s moments in the script where his self-reliance and avoidance gets in the way of honest and open communication.

As a relationship-focused story with a heavy emphasis on character development, Who We Are Now’s writing delivers some solid growth and reasonable conflicts in a minimal amount of time, especially in Xander’s Story! Without going into too many spoilers, his convictions about the “bad guys” outside of the community of Home and his struggles with self-worth throughout the story build up to a believable, sympathetic end — his Story raises some interesting questions about violence in a post-apocalyptic world that, combined with how different it felt from Jesse’s perspective, made me all the more excited to see Ray and Nathan’s viewpoints on the apocalypse.

(Also, the sex scenes are 👌.)

The Xander’s Story and Jesse’s Story chapters of Who We Are Now are available now for a total price $15, a price that includes the eventual release of Ray’s Story and Nathan’s Story, both of which currently TBA. For more updates, you can follow developer Spincut on Itch.io or Twitter.

DISASTER LOG C (SOFDELUX STUDIO)

Itch.io Tagline: "It has been raining ceaselessly for 7 days...” Genre(s): Comedy; mild horror. Release Date: October 23rd, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

(This section contains mild, vague spoilers for Disaster Log C’s ending. It’s short and free, you might want to give it a try first!)

When it comes to the four apocalypse stories on this list, they’ve all got (thankfully) relatively different approaches to handling the end of the world, but Disaster Log C’s approach is one of the few visual novels that actually surprised me with its later swerve into a revelation I hadn’t totally expected. (I’m trying to be vague enough as possible, but I seriously didn’t see that plot point coming and can appreciate the worldbuilding that made it easy to accept as a “how did I miss that?” kind of fact once it’s revealed!) Protagonist Mell’s no-nonsense approach perfectly serves the story’s steady pace, punctuated by Mell’s own “Disaster Logs” of the ocean rising up to swallow the island she’s lived on her whole life, and that pace is fed into perfectly with the frantic nature of knife-wielding Issa’s demands about where to go, what to do, and how much alcohol she wants to drink. 

There’s a goofiness to Disaster Log C that never undercuts the story’s more serious moments — Mell’s struggle with the end of the world she’s always known and Issa’s own relative detachment from that world as it exists are both given more than enough space in the text, and the story never holds their growth back for the sake of slapstick. But there’s plenty of slapstick and a lot of absolutely hilarious moments, served equally well by both script and story, that are well-placed enough that it becomes clearer and clearer in hindsight exactly when Mell and Issa became as close as they can be by the story’s end. Their dynamic is a delight and well worth reading for, whether it’s in the most serious of heart-to-hearts or a scene where they’re arguing with one another about how much food to eat.

But above all else, the thing that really sells me on Disaster Log C — and Sofdelux Studio’s previous dating sim, Mermaid Splash Passion Festival — is how sincere it is. It’s easy for apocalyptic fiction to be smug, or grim, or just plain dark, but Disaster Log C manages to capture the real grief inherent in its premise without ever plunging into hopelessness. The world Issa and Mell inhabit is a beautifully illustrated one filled with plenty of jokes and triumphant fishing CGs, but it’s also a cruel world, and it’s still very much the story of how everything Mell has ever known disappeared in the blink of an eye. That’s a delicate balance to walk, for sure, but it’s a balance Disaster Log C walks seamlessly enough that its wonderfully optimistic True Ending had me in tears.

Disaster Log C is available now for free, in both English and Korean. Both halves of Sofdelux Studio also have individual Itch.io pages (DCS’s here and Nami’s here), or you can follow their shared Itch.io for more Sofdelux Studio projects!

WE KNOW THE DEVIL (PILLOWFIGHT, WORST GIRLS GAMES)

Steam Tagline: "Follow meangirl Neptune, tomboy Jupiter, and shy shy Venus as they get to know each other--but one always gets left out.” Genre(s): Group relationship horror. Release Date: February 15th, 2016. Content Warnings: Religious abuse; blood; character death; implications of sexual harrassment/abuse.

(This section contains spoilers for the plot and endings of We Know The Devil. Sorry! Please play it!)

It would be difficult — if not totally impossible — for me to talk about why I liked We Know The Devil or what it's doing in this group of visual novels without spoiling the ending in one way or another. (I don't think I could even refer to Venus, my hands-down favorite character, in a way that felt natural without dodging around her pronouns like a middle schooler playing volleyball.) For a while, I considered putting this in the creative design category and trying to avoid spoilers anyway! There’s been of fascinating pieces that I’ve loved reading about how We Know The Devil’s unique choice system operates; its “choose two characters out of three” model is smart, well-executed, and offers a lot of character development in both the duo you observe and the one you don’t in every playthrough.

But the piece of this story that I’ve always loved the most has been its ending and the way I feel that it functions as a work of apocalyptic fiction. While the other three entries on this list are all set either at the dawn of the apocalypse or well after the apocalypse has literally “dawned”, We Know The Devil’s apocalypse is more quasi-metaphorical and much more closely linked to its ending. If you read it 100% literally, the “three worst girls since Eve” ascend in all the ways they were never supposed to be and end the world; if you read it strictly metaphorically, they still become more removed from the all-encroaching, endlessly painful social standards that have been forced upon them. And in that case, it’s even more the “end of the world” for their family or the religious authority figures around them to see that self-satisfaction and acceptance instead of the quiet repression and shame, isn’t it?

I can’t deny that a lot of my fondness for this kind of reading is a deeply personal one, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. (If anything, I think how many personal reactions there have been to We Know The Devil is a testament — ha! — to the nuanced writing and worldbuilding.) The legacy of religious abuse in the name of Christianity, specifically Irish Catholicism, is something that’s haunted my own family for generations. It’s dictated who got married and who couldn’t get divorced, it’s been the reason some of my friends were born and the reason some others died, and its impact is so irreversable that the guilt even gets passed down into generations that have barely attended a service. So for We Know The Devil’s true ending to take a lot of those religious hallmarks, that guilt from failing to live up to expectations, and then build up to a true ending where the rest of the world is damned for the way it treated Jupiter, Neptune, and Venus — without the true ending’s text ever condemning any of them for being teenagers who are willing to scorch the Earth, metaphorically or literally, and refuse to accept the pain they shouldn’t have to suffer? As a story about the end of three characters’ slice of the world, We Know The Devil one hell of an answer to the Christian idea of a Rapture, and one I prefer a thousand times over.

We Know The Devil is available now on sale for $1.99 (75% off), while you can try We Know The Demo for free on Itch.io; Worst Girls Games can be found on Twitter and Tumblr with more information about their upcoming project, Heaven Will Be Mine!

AS WE KNOW IT (JAIME SCRIBBLES GAMES)

Kickstarter Tagline: "A heavily branching visual novel, featuring love, friendship and life-sim elements in a future destroyed by the sun.” Genre(s): Romance; drama. Release Date: April 25th, 2018 (demo); TBA (final version). Content Warnings: Alcohol and drug use; violence; mature content.

As someone who really enjoyed Pinewood Island, Jaime Scribbles Games’ debut horror visual novel about college students trapped on an island with a murderer, I’ve been looking forward to As We Know It since I first saw initial character designs. The first demo definitely was what I’d been hoping it would be — although visually unfinished in places, given that the Kickstarter was largely to help fund purchase of its art assets like finished backgrounds and side character sprites — and the story about a post-apocalypse society that largely functioned but still ran into unexpected troubles instantly hooked me.

Interested in hearing a little more about protagonist Ashlynn’s dual focus on romance and maintaining a job, I reached out to Jaime with a couple questions to hear what she had to say about her upcoming visual nove.

First, congratulations on your Kickstarter reaching full funding and a bonus goal! I'm sure you've done a lot of this already during the funding period, but how would you pitch As We Know It to someone who'd never heard of it before?

A heavily branching visual novel with romance in a post-apocalyptic setting. Something along those lines.

Yeah, that sounds accurate to me! What's the experience in having run a successfully-funded Kickstarter for a visual novel been like? Are there any weird little details or things that you weren't expecting to have to deal with that have become surprisingly important?

Hm, I didn’t really know what to expect. I can’t say anything too unusual occurred.

Hey, no news is better than bad news, for sure!

Both As We Know It and Pinewood Island have had different mechanics alongside the romance -- in Pinewood Island's case, unpuzzling a brutal series of deaths, and in As We Know It's case, pursuing a career path in a crisis-stricken community -- that seem to be just as central to the storytelling, rather than a backdrop for romance. Can you talk a little bit about striking that balance?

It’s not easy! I have to make sure it makes sense for these characters to want to pursue romance despite whatever else is going on. That usually means making sure things don’t get too intense until more of a relationship is formed. Since romance is such a heavy aspect I hope people don’t question it too much lol

When you're designing characters' personalities or approving their visual depictions, what do you keep in mind? What do you think is the most important thing when it comes to building a lineup of characters to make them all feel distinct from one another?

I think of different personalities, different types of people I want to write, and then I try to make sure their looks are diverse and varied. As I write them their characteristics become more solid.

Were someone else to make a "dream visual novel" for you as a player, what do you think that visual novel would be like? In terms of genre, romance routes, etc?

Oh I’m not sure 🤔 probably a really good mash up of horror and romance with psychological elements and a mature story (no teenager plz) lol

😆 I'd definitely play that, too!

For my last question, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers or creators are your personal recommendations?

Let’s see, Hustle Cat, Let's Meat Adam are my faves, but there are tons more out there!

Definitely! Thank you for the conversation, Jaime, I'm looking forward to seeing As We Know It's progress over the next couple months!

You can find more information about As We Know It on Kickstarter, try out the free demo on Itch.io and Steam, or keep up with progress on the game’s development blog!

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Two! (6/19)

Welcome back for my second day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! If you didn’t check out my first post, I recommend at least skimming the "One note before we get started” section to get a handle on what this series of posts is. (And especially, as the case may be, what it isn’t.)

Today’s topic is “crafty creative design”, so I’ve pulled out Marccus’s Eldet, Geek Remix and ChicMonster’s Pairanormal, and Team Rumblebee’s Love Is Strange to talk about their development teams’ ambition (and ability to deliver), followed by a discussion with Boys Laugh+ about their 2017 NaNoRenO entry, //TODO: today!

Keep on reading to hear about treasure hunts with hot guys, mysterious twists and turns, power in reimagined narratives, and why taking time to look for brand-new visual novels you’ve never heard of before can be worth your while!

ELDET (MARCCUS)

Kickstarter Tagline: "A medieval fantasy themed visual novel with emphasis on LGBT characters and people of color.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy. Release Date: July 1st, 2017(?) (updated demo); TBA (full version). Content Warnings: Fantasy violence.

When it comes to aiming for new heights with visual novel storytelling and art, Marccus’s Eldet is one of the most standout examples of ambition — if it’s a possibility or a feature you could potentially implement, you’ll probably be able to find a mention of it somewhere in Marccus’s Eldet development updates on Kickstarter. They’re jam-packed with information about ways he’s exploring different ideas for interlocking narratives, replay value, or using the absolutely gorgeous art to its full potential. If the final version lives up to even a tenth of what Marccus has demonstrated working to include over the past two years, that ambition and drive to see things through as much as possible will almost definitely provide one hell of a visual novel.

Strictly looking at the demo alone, though, still provides a uniquely detailed experience where focus on trying out new things that suit the story is crystal-clear. The writing is sharp and captivating, with an interesting plot and gorgeous scenery that’s complimented by a smart use of animated effects. There have been more and more visual novels that have branched into the use of things like Live2D or animated sprites, but for me as a player, it’s been interesting to see how far use of effects like that can go before they just plain old start to be distracting. Idle animations or things like blinking and breathing can be charming, but the uncanny valley is very real and very easy to dive headlong into if you’re trying to include as many of those as possible.

So Eldet’s demo is noteworthy to me not just for trying out all of the visual effects it can manage, but even moreso for knowing by and large where to place those effects and varying sprites for the best possible impact. Characters are integrated into different backgrounds for special conversational scenes, or specific parts of event graphics glow, and none of it — to my eyes, at least — felt overused or poorly-executed. In fact, it all seemed especially suited to the fantasy genre Eldet is fitting itself into, with all of the pieces working together to create a world that feels alive and breathing. And it’s a world that seems well worth waiting for a final version of!

Eldet’s demo is available now on Kickstarter; you can also keep up with the final version’s progress on its development blog, or follow Marccus on Twitter and Patreon (18+).

PAIRANORMAL (GEEK REMIX, CHICMONSTER)

Itchio Tagline: "Love is a mystery and so are ghosts.” Genre(s): Mystery, romance.  Release Date: April 1st, 2018 (Chapter 1); TBA (Chapters 2+). Content Warnings: Glitches and static (can be turned off); jumpscares.

There have been a couple "real person dating sim" visual novels in the past few years, but I've never really been all that interested in actually playing any of them; I can see the connection back to all those elaborate magazine quizzes about which celebrity you'd date, so I think they're interesting conceptually, but none of them have really pulled me in. I'm equally wary of the trend of Western visual novels from first-time developers that want to "subvert genre conventions" because of how many have fallen woefully flat of even understanding what that means beyond a very limited scope — I'm talking "oh, I don't really like or play any visual novels, the whole medium isn’t for me" visual novel developer commentary, here — so if an EVN promises a twist on a genre, or even if its players do, it's unfortunately a lot harder to sell me on it.

To my pleasant surprise, Pairanormal's demo sold me on both its "real person-inspired characters" aspects and its departure from the dating-based focus I'd been expecting into sharing space with another genre! I don't want to spoil anything about the plot, but upfront, the turn in the demo alone was a genuinely interesting look at a “blank protagonist” and well-served by being placed where it was. That’s to say nothing of the charming art style! Mechanically and visually, it's also one of the most interesting visual novels I've played; the character movement, the individual soundfonts, and the pacing of the dialogue all come together to work consistently well. (I love smartly-used soundfonts! Please give me all your VNs with good soundfonts!)

Even as someone who's watched a handful of YouTube playthroughs by two of the YouTubers being shown here, Mari and Stacey of Geek Remix, the writing in Pairanormal was sharp and fast-paced enough to actually make my brain draw a pretty easy divide between the real Mari and Stacey versus "Mari Sashimi" and "Stacey Croft". I'm sure there's plenty of rewarding jokes for their primary audience of a Geek Remix fanbase, too — but one of the strongest merits of Pairanormal for me as a player was the experience of having so little personal familiarity with most of the people these characters were based on and still finding the characters enjoyable, well-defined, and interesting.

Chapter 1 of Pairanormal is available now for free; you can also follow development of the coming chapters on Chicmonster’s Patreon, Twitter, and Itchio.

LOVE IS STRANGE (TEAM RUMBLEBEE)

Blog Tagline: "A fanwork based off of Life is Strange.” Genre(s): Slice of life, romance. Release Date: April 1st, 2016. Content Warnings: Drug use; underage drinking; mentions of severe bullying.

Do those characters and that title look familiar? If you’ve paid attention to the gaming scene at large in the past three years, you probably recognize the acronym "LiS” or Max Caulfield’s character design — Team Rumblebee’s 2016 debut project, Love is Strange, came to life as a Life is Strange (DONTNOD Entertainment) fanmade visual novel! In Love is Strange, set a year later after the original game in a completely different timeline, protagonist Max never gained her canonical magical powers and many of the tragedies that gripped Arcadia Bay never came to pass. Instead, she’s given a week to team up with one of her four love interests — Chloe, Kate, Rachel, or Victoria — and win a photography contest together.

There’s a lot to love about it beyond any connection you may or may not have to Life is Strange itself �� everything, from the art to the music to the writing, pulls together seamlessly. But the biggest strength of Love is Strange as a fanwork, in my opinion, is the way it’s not trying to totally remove itself from the original canon tonally or trying too hard to conform to that tone without it seeming natural. Max’s character arc is reflective of some anxieties she’d had in the original story, which goes doubly for the explorations of her love interests’ arcs, but it’s fundamentally a different story where her priorities are different. Love is Strange loses what isn’t necessary or what doesn’t help the story — including the teacher-turned-[spoilers] from the original series, Mr. Jefferson — then fills in a lot of the blanks with the same charm and same compelling characters that captivated fans in the first place.

My favorite example here is Rachel Amber, one of the four routes but the lone one who never appeared in the text of the original Life is Strange itself, and a route that felt as wholly comprehensive as the rest. Love is Strange takes the perpetually absent, long-since-departed Rachel and recreates her from whole cloth, giving her a distinctive speech pattern, a history, and a set of beliefs that all work together as a perfect answer for the void around her character in the original text. She feels as real and authentic as the rest of the pitch-perfect cast, a character it’s difficult to imagine the original Life is Strange without. So in both enhancing the original text’s characterizations without ever losing its charm and standing alone as its own thoughtful, genuine F/F dating sim that is just as enjoyable without any fondness for the canon, Love is Strange easily cemented itself as one of my favorite visual novels — so strongly, in fact, that I’m still planning to cheer on Team Rumblebee’s individual and collective outputs for years to come.

Love is Strange is available now for free on the development blog. You can also follow Team Rumblebee on Twitter, Tumblr, and Itch.io to be the first to know if they decide to release anything next!

//TODO: TODAY (BOYS LAUGH PLUS)

Itchio Tagline: "A visual novel about figuring out life with the help of an AI.” Genre(s): Modern sci-fi. Release Date: March 31st, 2017 (Part 1); August 2018 (Part 2). Content Warnings: Depictions of severe depression.

Player personalization is one of the more tricky things for developers, largely in part because there’s no way to write something every player will be happy with; while some people prefer being able to insert themselves entirely into a protagonist with minimal predefined personality and more vague actions, so they can headcanon more easily, other audiences would rather explore specific situations with a smaller number responses that each more clearly reflect the defined protagonist’s personality. It’d be nearly impossible to please both of those groups at once — and there’s dozens of other, more specific takes that other players can have on visual novel protagonists!

As someone in the latter camp out of just those two examples, I thought //TODO: today’s handling of their protagonist Teal (plus their love interests Joyce and Phoenix) was right up my alley, so I reached out to Felix and Rohan of Boys Laugh+ to talk about their work on its story!

IVAN: Pleasure to be talking to you both today! Can you give me the elevator pitch of //TODO: today that you might give to an interested attendee at a con? You're both free to answer this if you'd like, haha.

FELIX: Sure, thanks for having us! //TODO: today is a slice of life visual novel about the aspiring artist Teal who already struggles to make ends meet but things get a little more complicated when an AI suddenly appears in their computer, with the intention to help Teal get their life back in order.

Perfectly put! (I like the phrasing of "aspiring artist Teal", haha, I feel like I'm reading their Twitter bio.) The gender/sexuality/pronoun options (and what I've seen of the dialogue variations) for the protagonist plus the romanceable characters are comprehensive, but never in a way that feels insincere or bland. I really feel like Teal's character — and that of both love interests — shines through strongly no matter what! What went into designing the personalization system as it currently exists, and why did you choose to include it in the first place?

ROHAN: Haha, yeah, Teal is the type who's a bit insecure about their art. So it's easier to say "aspiring artist" even though Teal has been drawing for a while. :'D Although our protagonist has their quirks and own background story we wanted the player to be able to identify with Teal. The player can choose to change Teal's name in the beginning of the game too. And the gender and sexuality options are based on this idea. :3

Back when we were developing the concept for //TODO: today in 2017, we had a close look at other recent VNs. And Date Nighto's Hustle Cat got us thinking about using "they" pronouns then. Hustle Cat's protagonist "Avery" has a gender-neutral design too. That got the ball rolling for us to think how we could make the typical romance situation in //TODO: today inclusive and enjoyable for queer people as well!^u^

FELIX: We also tried to keep the additional work for this fairly small. For the three main characters all pronouns and their variations are stored in variables. That makes it pretty easy to use the same base dialogue regardless of the characters' gender. But in addition to that, we used conditional statements to add some custom dialogue whenever it made sense. The romantic preferences are pretty much the same. They mainly decide the gender of the romanceable characters but there are a few moments where dialogue varies depending on the preferences the player chooses.

That also means that there are some things that people will miss if they don't make a specific selection of gender or romantic preferences but we wanted to make sure that those choices are also part of the characters and the writing and not purely cosmetic. All in all we tried to make the game as inclusive of LGBTQ identities as we could without making the scope unrealistically big for a two person team.

I think you definitely struck a good balance there! If I'm not mistaken, the two of you work in Ren'Py, right? What kind of Ren'Py limits or perks do you take into consideration when working to augment a story with more complex pieces of code other than dialogue variables, like deciding what your upcoming project Defaction's cellphone (?) can do? Anything you've unfortunately had to give up on? (And are there any lines of dialogue or features you're especially proud of including in //TODO: today?)

FELIX: Yeah, we're working in Ren'Py. I can't really think of any limits aside from smaller issues where different systems and languages intersect but there have definitely been a lot of perks! I really like Ren'Py's screen system which is where at least 80% of the work for the phone in Defaction happens.

The python integration is also really nice. In //TODO: today I barely used any python aside from if-statements and variables but being able use custom code pretty much anywhere in the script makes the engine really flexible!

As for feature decisions, so far we mainly based them on what we wanted to include from a narrative design standpoint and then tried to figure out how or if we would be able to implement them. I can't think of anything we had to cut for technical reasons so I think it worked out pretty well so far :'D

//TODO: today was the first bigger visual novel I worked on and aside from the gender and preference options for the characters, something I'm pretty proud of are the optional work and gaming scenes. They are pretty much the first piece of non-linear writing I ever did and it was a fun challenge to make sure they make sense regardless of what in-game day the player sees them on.

ROHAN: I think the most obvious feature we're proud of are the preference options we included, haha. We really wanted to take a few steps aside of the otome or exclusively hetero male-oriented genres out there. And to make the experience feel tailored to the player there are the dialogue features Felix has described before in combination with the visual designs of Joyce, the AI, and Phoenix, Teal's bookstore co-worker.

It's integrated into the story that Joyce has been made just for the Teal. Other AIs in the world would look different depending on their owners. That's why you get a feminine or masculine looking Joyce that match the player's preferences.

Of course there are limitations, I mean, we can't read the players mind to know what they like. And we couldn't include too many unique character sprites due to the scope. But I'm very happy about how the different designs turned out in the end. It was generally fun to visually design the game. Cute colours everywhere! >u<

On another note I think what really went well, too, was how AI Joyce behaves. We took some liberties with sci-fi magic, but Joyce is a being with their own set of characteristics, goals and values. They were made to serve, yet they're on eye-level with Teal and you get some funny situations out of it.

That's right, I'd completely forgotten that the work and art contest scenes weren't confined to the story's timeline on any specific dates — they definitely always felt like they matched up. And I'm so glad you brought up the designs, Rohan, that was actually my next question! The overall world design and character stylization of //TODO: today clearly had a considerable amount of care put into making sure they all meshed well and looked good individually! Can you talk a little bit about why you settled on the design aesthetic you did and what influenced //TODO: today's style or character designs? (Also, who are each of your favorite characters out of the cast, visually or personality-wise?)

ROHAN: Ah, well. First and foremost we were under a good amount of time-pressure during the NaNoRenO '17. Thus I had to decide for an artstyle that I could pull off for the game's assets to be produced in time. There's no complicated shading, not too much intriciate line-work. It was also the first time for me to create art for a visual novel. I was mostly a concept artist before. So I wanted to play it safe. That's one part of the story at least.

The other thing was that by the end of 2016 a lot of artists have emerged online who experimented with reduced palettes, pastel tones and comic and anime inspired shading. I was really intrigued by the charm of this combination. I wanted to make myself feel okay that although I'm a guy I can express myself in shades of pink, haha. This kind of aesthetic also matches the overall cute but realistic story of //TODO: today. I wanted the reality of the game to feel like our world but with some intense photo filters on top, haha. And my favourite character(s)? As the artist who designed them, I'd say visually all of them! xD But character wise, I think it's a close head-to-head of Joyce and SuuJ. <3

FELIX: I think my favorite character is Snow. I also really like Zen's design and his relaxed personality, but Snow was really fun to write! They're reserved and don't show much about their insecurities or problems, but Snow is still fairly confident and mature for their age.

I think a lot of that personality was also inspired by the art. Snow's design really brings across how introverted they are and because Snow doesn't have a lot of facial expressions, this definitely influenced the way I wrote some of their dialogue.

As a big fan of pastels/pinks, I can definitely empathize with that desire to express it more in art regardless of gender, haha! If you could each add any one feature to your projects that's currently beyond of your technical/artistic capabilities, a "wildest dreams" kind of thing, what would those two features be?

FELIX: I'm really intrigued by the idea of procedural narrative. Not in the sense that a story is random, but rather that it's systemic and somewhat non-linear. That's not really something you can just add to any project though and it probably also involves a lot of trial and error before it works but maybe one day :'D

ROHAN: Oh, nice question! I think it would be super cool to have hand-drawn animated cutscenes in a game. But that's completely beyond our budget of...everything...right now. TuT

Haha, I would love to play a procedural visual novel with animated cutscenes! (Although those two things combined would add even more work to each other, huh? #gamedev!) One final question — do you two have any LGBTQ visual novel recommendations from any other teams or creators?

FELIX: Ladykiller In a Bind left a pretty strong impression on me. In general, Christine Love's visual novels are usually really interesting mechanically in addition to their LGBTQ themes.

Most people probably already heard of Butterfly Soup but I really liked how heartfelt it is and the way the story is told!

And we already mentioned Hustle Cat, which is interesting in the way the main story and the romance routes are intertwined in addition to allowing you to romance all characters regardless of gender.

ROHAN: Hahaha, just imagine creating cutscenes for every generatable piece of story. That would be a killer xD And yes, I'd agree with what Felix wrote. The games by Christine Love, are really well written. Butterfly Soup is a fun ride and way too relatable for people growing up with Asian families. I also play The Arcana on my phone right now. I don't like the payment system too much but the story and characters are well-developed. And the artstyle is just gorgeous!

But one should also keep an eye on indie devs who aren't too well-known. Visual novels seem to generally be on the rise right now and we'll surely find some nice surprises if we keep looking! :3

Definitely agreed that people can find some really pleasant surprises by doing deep dives into places like Itchio's VN tag — or hopefully even from my list and these interviews, haha! Thank you both so much for talking to me, Rohan and Felix, it's been a pleasure.

The first half of //TODO: today is available now for free, or you can follow Boys Laugh + on their Twitter and Itchio accounts to find out more about their progress on the second half!

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day One! (6/18)

Welcome to the first day of my LGBTQ visual novel recommendation week, in honor of Pride Month 2018! Every day from today (June 18th) to Sunday (June 24th), I’ll be talking about four visual novels with LGBTQ themes, characters, and/or creators that have stood out to me and explaining a little bit about why I like them! I also reached out to a handful of those VNs’ developers and talked with them about their work, so you’ll be seeing a casual interview tagged onto the end of every post, too. ✨

To kick things off today, I’m highlighting four visual novels that are practically bursting at the seams with personality, all in their own ways — Saturn’s WORST DATING SIM, Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top, Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, and Madeleine’s Inverness Nights! 

Hit the jump to read about watching Animal Planet with punks, beta-testing hookup apps, Mario fire alarms, and why it is that so many visual novels seem to use character archetypes.

One note before we get started! This list isn't meant to be reflective of "the objectively best LGBTQ visual novels" or anything like that, which I want to be ultra-clear about upfront. It's not a list of all the ones I've ever played, either. There are plenty of visual novels with LGBTQ characters/themes that have been recommended to me frequently — while I was working on this list and over the past couple years — that didn't make it onto this list because I couldn't afford to buy them, or because they just weren't for me when I did buy them, or because of a million other reasons.

To give an example of this in action: I barely have any originally-Japanese language visual novels on here, because the number of M/M ones that get translated is already so low and already nearly 100% commercial, and I'm way more inclined to pay for M/M than anything else. (Reason: I'm gay and I like looking at hot guys.) For the purposes of this list specifically, I've also cut out a fair few BL-marketed VNs — from both Western and Eastern developers — that skirt around the issue of whether or not the protagonist is gay/bi/etc awkwardly.

I also tried to limit myself to one VN per team, picking the ones I thought were best representative of their output and leaving space to mention other works of theirs that I'd liked, with the aim of keeping this list from being totally dominated by studios who'd put out a lot over a long period of time. And then personal taste for other genre and content details comes into play, so it cuts out even more from what's left! In the originally-Japanese BL category alone, that left me with a single nominee, which was... Well, you'll see!

Basically, I went over a lot of different options to settle onto a list that's ultimately only supposed to be things that I, personally, would recommend! And I don't want to recommend things I didn't enjoy, one way or another. Nobody wants to sit through multiple paragraphs of a slog where I'm trying to talk about a game I didn't actually like (or, in plenty of cases, a game I couldn't afford) without acknowledging that I didn't like it. To be totally honest, that sounds like it would suck to try and write.

So if your favorite LGBTQ visual novels aren't on here, but you want to give people an excuse to play them, I'd love to read anyone else's personal recommendation lists! I'm not a journalist or a reviewer and this isn't anything close to a formalized games review blog that I'm planning to update ever again; I'm just a VN dev who felt like sitting down and making a list of other LGBTQ VNs I liked one day, so I went and I did it. And I felt like giving those other devs a platform if I was going to talk about their work, so I took my own Patreon earnings to pay for as many as I could, then I went and did some interviews, too.

Thanks for sitting through (or skimming, as the case may be) that wall of text! Without further ado, let's talk WORST DATING SIM!

WORST DATING SIM (SATURN)

Itchio Tagline: “MRGRGR.” Genre(s): Slice of life, shitpost. Release Date: January 22nd, 2018. Content Warnings: Brief depiction of blood; violence.

Out of all the visual novels I’ll be covering over the next week, WORST DATING SIM is the only one I haven’t seen nearly all the content for, and not for a lack of trying! Saturn’s debut visual novel, a challenging conversational simulator where a punk named Etsuji decides to follow you home and hang out with you purely because he can, features a grand total of 69 ways you can get a GAME OVER. By and large, these endings come at the hands of your newfound friend (?), who’s got a temper and a sensitive streak a mile wide. If Etsuji doesn’t like what you’re saying, he’ll knock your lights out, and you’ll get booted back to the title screen.

The way WORST DATING SIM doubles down on this challenge is by intentionally removing Ren’Py’s default save feature — if you piss Etsuji off, you’re back at square one, period. You have to either somehow retain the information yourself or turn to someone else’s successful run for help, because it’s deliberately designed to be done in a single playthrough without reloading. Even a fair few jokes in the script, like “I’m sure in several alternate universes he’s punched my lights out, but so far I’m safe,” are dropped in to acknowledge the fact that beating WORST DATING SIM is more akin to powering through a run of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. (But don’t worry, the Skip Text function is still there to help you out!)

As someone who does turn to guides frequently to find out what I’m missing on my third or fourth playthroughs of visual novels, I assumed from the start that at some point that I’d want to find a walkthrough in order to see any real endings. But the sheer charm of Etsuji’s responses and, to be completely frank, how much fun I was having just trying to scale Etsuji’s emotional mountain meant that I never really hit that point while playing. WORST DATING SIM’s distinct personality struck exactly the right chord in my brain that made me want to keep playing by myself, tunneling away at it persistently, and it made the ending(s!) feel all that much more rewarding.

WORST DATING SIM is available now for free on Itchio, and you can follow Saturn on his Itch.io or Twitter (NSFW) for updates on more potential WDS content or his other upcoming visual novels.

COMING OUT ON TOP (OBSCURASOFT)

Itchio Tagline: “The erotic comedy gay dating game that'll make [you] laugh, cry, and get a little boned up! Hot dudes included.” Genre(s): Comedy, romance. Release Date: December 10th, 2014. Content Warnings: Nudity; mentions of homophobia; sexual content; seriously there’s a lot of sex in this.

If you’ve played M/M dating sims in the English language sphere any time in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top — drawing more from the Western tradition of porn by and for gay men than anything else, it tells the story of newly-out college senior Mark Matthews and his run-ins with hot guy after hot guy (after hot guy, after... you get the picture). With the help of his roommate Penny, he also takes on the hookup app scene and delves into a sea of bonus dates funded by Kickstarter backers, which were released steadily from January 2015 to December 2016.

Coming Out On Top’s steady stream of humor never goes so far as to be totally derailing from its focus on sexuality and Mark’s genuinely sincere approach to relationships, casual or otherwise; Obscurasoft manages to infuse the numerous sex scenes with enough awkwardness, humor, and personality that actually playing through them back-to-back feels less like a string of pinups and more like scenes Mark is actively involved in or growing from. As a character, especially one whose archetype has gotten a lot of mileage in gay porn since the dawn of mankind, it’d be narratively easy to let Mark remain a generally undefined slate for players to project themselves onto.

And while there is a degree of personalization, especially when it comes to how blatantly horned-up some of the dialogue is compared to other options the player can choose, Coming Out On Top is still very distinctly Mark’s story. His specific insecurities from years of being closeted don’t vanish as soon as he comes out, and hookups don’t always work out for him the way they might in ten minute long “first time” AVs. His grades still matter, and his friends still exist, and he’s still got his own sense of priorities the player can disregard (at their own fish-related peril) or see through on the slow climb to the end of his senior year.

Coming Out On Top is available now for $14.99 on Itch.io, and Obscurasoft’s website; to get early updates about what they’re working on next, you can follow their News & Updates blog or their Twitter.

BUTTERFLY SOUP (BRIANNA LEI)

Itchio Tagline: “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life. Release Date: September 16th, 2017. Content Warnings: Parental abuse; violence; racist language; homophobic language; ableist abuse and slurs.

The strength of Butterfly Soup’s personality, from beginning to end, is founded in its four point-of-view characters — kindhearted Diya, reckless Min, sharp Noelle, and carefree (?) Akarsha. As a group of ninth grade friends with different priorities and different reasons for joining their shared baseball team, which are as obvious as the hugely-varied color schemes of each girl’s clothes, they play off of one another easily. Lei uses her fair share of actual memes, but never ones that feel like the speaking character — usually Akarsha — wouldn’t say them, which holds true to the rest of Lei’s dialogue writing. It feels distinctly ninth grade without ever being mocking or trivializing the way everything is so extremely important all the time when you’re a ninth grader.

Part of that strength definitely comes from Lei’s willingness to lean on each character’s archetype and unpack it at the same time; Diya’s physical strength and sheer skill, combined with her reluctance to talk to strangers, could have easily seen her shoehorned into a much more detached character than she’s written as. Instead, she’s thoughtful, expressive, and deeply concerned with the people she cares about, even if she can’t always necessarily communicate that to them very well through her ever-present anxiety. Exactly how their own differences manifest and each of the three other girls’ reasons for being that way are slightly trending into spoiler territory, but I think Diya’s fellow main characters also each have their own similarly-smart tweaks on familiar archetypes that make their joke-filled banter all that much more personalized and memorable.

Although there’s a lot to love about the positive, hilarious moments in the protagonists’ everyday lives, one of the things that I think worked just as well narratively were the scenes that required all those content warnings up there. They're very much going to be a YMMV situation for different players, especially with my own caveat that my relationship to dysfunctional families is coming from white Irish ex-Catholicism rather than those two specific Asian cultures’ values — trying not to give any spoilers about which characters I’m referring to, here! — but in-text, they’re never situations without any future, because we can see that future where the group has each other, and they always have room in the moment to be angry, or upset, or hurt without the narrative itself punishing them for failing to be perfect. Instead, they get to play baseball and fall in love and set off fire alarms, and they do pretty okay.

Butterfly Soup is available now for free, and you can follow Brianna Lei on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to learn more about her upcoming work.

INVERNESS NIGHTS (MADELEINE)

Itchio Tagline: “Every relationship ends.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy, drama. Release Date: June 30th, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

There are a lot of things about Inverness Nights that worked for me in a way I don’t know that they would have in another visual novel — in particular, Tristram’s character is difficult in ways that pretty directly pertain to some of the content warnings linked above, and I was personally interested in seeing the text unpack that bit by bit. The eventual turn the story takes further on in your playtime, to try and phrase that in a way that isn’t super spoilery, was something I personally didn’t mind taking a little longer to get to.

Curious to hear what its developer Madeleine had to say about the story, their thoughts on character design, and what they’re up to next, I reached out to them for an interview!

IVAN: Thanks for having me, Madeleine! To get this conversation started, how would you sum up Inverness Nights to everyone reading this?

MADELEINE: Inverness Nights is a game about queer isolation and the importance of queer community outside of romantic relationships. Set in 18th c Scotland you play as Tristram Rose, an immortal gay man who has just broken up with his mortal boyfriend, and decide how he’ll cope with the loss as someone unable to tell the world around him that he’s magical and queer.

Sounds spot-on! And definitely a great summary of all the things that made it super appealing — to me, at least, haha. Before anything else, I want to note that it's been just about a year since you released Inverness Nights! Congratulations! How's the experience been, and what particular highlights or lowlights over the past year stand out to you?

It was good actually releasing a game, I enjoyed that part a lot! Aside from that, I really appreciated a couple of thoughtful reviews it got where people connected with it as a game where being queer is difficult, but not bleak. I think that because AAA games love tragic gay stories indie games can sometimes feel they need to be ultra-positive to balance that in the other direction, which is cool, but as someone who likes stories that’re more in-the-middle it was a gap I wanted to fill. There was a good reaction to that, albeit a quiet reaction. It’s a very ‘first game, niche game’ complaint but the lowlight would probably be that not many people played it — however, there are a lot of understandable reasons why it worked out that way so I’m not too hurt overall.

Haha, getting something finished and released is definitely a great feeling; I'm personally really glad you stepped in to fill that niche, as someone who likes things that are honest about their characters' pain without feeling exploitative or endlessly hopeless! In the fantastic (but spoiler-filled) Medium postmortem you wrote on your process, you say that "an important part of marketing visual novels is selling your characters"; the postmortem goes into that in fairly great detail, especially as it pertains to ensemble casts, but would you care to expand upon that observation in the scope of the visual novel genre (and how you're keeping it in mind for future projects) a little bit here?

People make fun of visual novels sometimes for their reliance on archetypes — you know, look up the average dating sim and you can probably tell in an instant who the bad boy is, who the smart girl is, so on — but when you’re selling a character driven game to people, you can’t give away the cast’s backstories and quirks up front or there’s nothing to play for, so you’ve got to find some sort of shorthand to suggest what an audience wants will be there, and that usually comes back to telling them which archetypes you’ve got. When I started Inverness Nights I kind of laughed at that reliance on archetypes and tried to do something different but I learnt the hard way why it’s important. At the moment I’m finishing a game called Catacomb Prince with my didn’t-quite-finish-it-for-a-jam group Skeleteam, and when our character artist Roxy was doing the designs I gave her very broad notes on who the cast were so they’d be more archetypical. Consequently we have a very recognisable cool girl/frat boy/petite NB slate of romance options that people’ve connected with waaay more easily and way faster than anyone did with the IN cast, which I think speaks to why it’s a sound approach.

I definitely agree in the importance of finding a good balance with archetypes; I've had people who've instantly bonded when I invoked "shy genius" or "lovestruck best friend", which ironically has given me a bit more of that freedom in telling their stories more uniquely! Could you shed a little light on what Catacomb Prince is, without too many spoilers, and what your storytelling influences for a visual novel like that have been?

Catacomb Prince is a Gothic comedy; you are Prince Vitali, trashy heir to a fantasy Renaissance kingdom, and you have woken up dead five years after a raging party. Your parents still expect you to inherit the throne despite your new skeletal appearance, but your kingdom’s laws require the King to be married. Find love, find your killer — or die again trying.

It’s mostly inspired by Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, which is an old kitschy BL VN about a guy named Georik taking up alchemy to make a new body for his decapitated (still living) sister while hiding his hobby from his friends. Animamundi has some very gloomy stuff happening but it’s so over-the-top about it that it loops around to being a very funny game, and I wanted more experiences like that in the world, so here we are. There’re also some aspects of other goofy Gothic stories in there, like Hammer Horror movies and EC Comics, though the romance aspect of it means it’s not all rib-ticklers all the time. We took care to make the love interests more than just fodder for jokes and/or horror. They’re complete, kissable people, with flesh and everything.

I am not doing a good job of easing up on the skeleton jokes but please believe me on that last point.

Glad to hear the love interests have skin! Not super fussed about that, personally, but I'm sure some players would have logistical concerns about things like skeleton-on-skeleton kissing. (I'd like to go on the record and say I'm pro-skeleton and extremely pro-skeleton puns, so I'm waiting with bated breath to get to play as your not-breathing protagonist.) Other than what we'll be seeing in Catacomb Prince, what kind of genres and themes are you interested in exploring more of in the future?

After Catacomb Prince I’m going to work on finishing an IF game I started last year called Captain Dracula, about being the last survivor on a submarine after your Captain reveals he’s Dracula. That’s also a comedy. I spent three years making Inverness Nights so taking a breather to make funny games for a while seemed like a good plan, and I’m really into classic horror, so I’ve gravitated in that direction with it. I’ve also got a regular no-pictures no-choices fantasy novel I’m several drafts through at the moment which I’ll hopefully be releasing later this year. Once those’re off my plate, I’m keen to try making either an 80 Days-style narrative travel game or a Clock Tower-style point-and-click horror for a change of pace. I want to do something that’s more about exploring a place; I do academic stuff as well as indie development and all my academic work has been on how we explore places in games, so it feels weird that I haven’t made anything that utilises my research.

It sounds like you've got a lot coming up! I'm looking forward to seeing how you can combine your academic studies with your fiction work, which already have such strong settings of place from the get-go. And last but not least, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers would you like to recommend?

It's IF rather than a VN but I love Heart of the House by Nissa Campbell, which is a Gothic game about an exorcist trying to remove an evil presence from a Victorian manor house, and maybe also wooing some of its residents. It’s very atmospheric and you can be NB, two things I like a lot. With caveats I’m also really keen on Animamundi (like I mentioned earlier — fun, funny MLM but warning for violent horror elements and sexual abuse), and The House in Fata Morgana (a dark romance about a trans man trying to rescue his girlfriend from a cursed manor, there’s an extensive content warning list on its website). Lastly, on the lighter side, Butterfly Soup and The Duenkhy are both good VNs about queer people making friends :) probably play them when you need to smile after all the grimmer suggestions I’ve made.

Awesome — and thanks again for your time, Madeleine! It was a pleasure.

Inverness Nights is available now for $12 USD, and you can follow Madeleine on Twitter or Itch.io to keep up with all the skeleton romances and Dracula adventures they're setting their sights on next!

Thanks to everyone who read this far! Keep an eye on the Twitter thread or this blog for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll be talking about four more visual novels that I think do some crafty things with their creative design!