#cavyhouse

[cookiethiefem]

Game Suggestions #4

Still got more games to suggest, and today is a game in the ‘My Organic Garden’ series, The Sealed Ampoule ! A dungeon-crawling game where someone buys a used Dungeon, and has to figure out the mystery of why someone was killed in there. Not to mention gathering Alchemical ingredients to pay off what she spent on the dungeon, and to upgrade herself. Your main goal is to Domesticate the Dungeon, so that you can get ingredients easier.

[monsterkissed]

Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden is on sale for just a little over £1, and that is more than cheap enough to be worth a shot if the idea of a clicker game where you grow human organs from trees sounds even a little intriguing. developer cavyhouse has a knack for putting out weird and chewy games with relatively simple UIs and mechanics but a magnetic peculiar atmosphere and finely-pitched gentle horror that is just irresistible to me. forget me not was my entry point into the series and it's a great one for that; the organs you are growing are your bread and butter and a kidney bush or stomach vine quickly become mundane things to be grown and optimised in your commercial empire. the fine edge to the game's otherwise cheerful, relaxing tone comes from the clientele looking to buy them. before you even fully cleared the tutorial you've likely met a young girl hoping that a transplant of one of your meaty alchemical marvels will bring her cat back from the dead, or the young man looking for a pound of flesh to bring life into an inanimate doll. your boss and garden-owner irene is almost as quick to drop ominous warnings about the potential consequences as she is to take people's money, but the stories tend not to play out in exactly the cliche frankenstein rampage you might have been expecting. as in most cavyhouse ventures the horror is a more of an insidious, creeping unease, the realisation that the organs might not be what is rotting in this garden.

cavyhouse's other games on steam are also on sale, and particularly great value for very little money are This Starry Midnight We Make (a game about influencing the fates of strangers by growing your own stars) and The Midnight Sanctuary (more a linear visual novel about a town where the dead aren't dying which has some utterly harrowing moments of subtle horror and brings the series' striking visual style into 3D in gorgeous fashion)

[marikorawralton]

Tempted to turn my blog into a Cavyhouse fan blog.

[cavyculture]

[englishvisualnovels]

Carpe Fulgur Launches Kickstarter for 3D Occult and Suspense Visual Novel The Midnight Sanctuary

Localization publisher Carpe Fulgur recently launched a Kickstarter to add full voice acting to CAVYHOUSE’s upcoming The Midnight Sanctuary!

If funded, popular voice actors such as Yuu Shimamura (Annie Leonhart from Attack on Titan, Haruka Haruno from Go! Princess Precure, etc.) will provide their voices for the game. A video containing voice acting samples featuring Shimamura can be found on the Kickstarter campaign page.

The campaign will end on June 9th.

The Midnight Sanctuary is an occult suspense visual novel that tells its story through 3D cinematic format or in VR format at the player’s choosing. The game is slated to come out on Steam sometime during Summer 2017.

Relevant Links:

Official Site

Demo: Official Site, Steam

Videos: Opening Video, Trailer

Features, via CAVYHOUSE:

The novel art style. The Japanese-flavored character design and minimalist, non-photorealistic scenes are perfectly harmonized. The most significant thing is the texture expression sticky to the field of view, which brings the illusion of blending 2D and 3D worlds.

Exploitation of a new genre, called VR Visual Novel (VR-VN), by merging this unique art style with VR technology. Visual Novel (VN) is a game genre with primary roots in Japan. You can enjoy the story at your own pace as you would read a novel, with visually-expressed characters interactions. However, by applying virtual reality to a VN, it provides a never-before-seen experience. We are aiming to realize the sensation of observing a drama from inside the stage. This is endorsed by Japanese web magazine INSIDE Games, quoted as “This feeling is very close to the one I get when reading a novel. This is truly VN; in other words, the novelistic world is deployed into a VR space."

Dark suspense story steeped in folklore. The protagonist sees how the saint worshiped by a small superstitious village drives them mad. Although she will make an effort to bring the village back to sanity, the protagonist notices that the living and the dead coexist, and despairs of this. The story you follow sees the dead people which are at first unseen, bringing deep synchronicity with the VR experience.  

Simultaneously developed a 3D visual novel version that does not require VR devices, and which takes advantage of camerawork unavailable in VR games. Depending on the player's environment, either version may be selected.

Synopsis:

Our story is set in the rural Japanese village of Daiusu, where a community of Christians have lived in seclusion for many generations. Hamomoru Tachbana is invited to this village as a guest.

The village has just finished building its long-dreamed-of cathedral, and the mood is celebratory.

The villagers wish to use this moment to enter the modern world of the 1920s. As part of this, Hamomoru is asked to archive the history and legends of Daiusu.

Located in a secluded part of Japan due to a long history of oppression, the village's faith has taken a peculiar turn.

The Faith of the Saint.

The villagers have come to project their hopes for salvation onto a "Saint" who came from the outside world.

This tradition of treasuring friendly visitors seems perfectly suited to modernizing the village.

And yet.

Just as the village begins to come together, a restless shroud still hangs over it. Individual motives begin to clash, and miracles occur as if to make a mockery of everything...

What will become of Daiusu's attempt to enter the wider world?

[miketendo-64]

3D Novel The Midnight Sanctuary Comes to Switch in October

3D Novel The Midnight Sanctuary Comes to #NintendoSwitch in October.

On the off-chance your looking for another 3D novel to add to your ongoing Switch collection, today UNTIES has revealed an upcoming release that you can get on multiple platforms, which includes the Nintendo Switch on October 4, 2018.

The full details can be seen here:

Supernatural 3D Narrative The Midnight Sanctuary Arrives Oct. 4 on Switch, PlayStation 4, PSVR, Steam

  Steam VR Support to…

[operationrainfall]

PAX West 2018: The Midnight Sanctuary

PAX West 2018: The Midnight Sanctuary

The Midnight Sanctuarywas the second Unties game I played at PAX West 2018. I always try to mix up the genres I cover, so when I saw this was a visual novel, I knew I wanted to give it a shot. What immediately stood out to me was the presentation and the premise. Visually, the game looks like a mixture of anime characters and cel shaded art. I was quickly struck by a strange and beautiful visual…

[orbitbrain]

The Sealed Ampoule will be launched for Switch on February 3

The Sealed Ampoule will be launched for Switch on February 3

Writer PLAYISM and developer CAVYHOUSE have simply introduced the discharge of The Sealed Ampoule on February third for Swap, PS4, and Xbox One. Pre-orders have already began on the Nintendo eShop and the Microsoft Retailer. Right here is the sport description: “The Sealed Ampoule was created to match the unique idea of a “procedurally generated dungeon crawler clicker”. From the universe of…

[mrol93memo]

「くちなしアンプル」は「わすれなオルガン」や「マヨナカ・ガラン」を制作した CAVYHOUSEがおくるダンジョン農地化ローグライクゲーム。

[monsterkissed]

i never see anyone talking about CAVYHOUSE games which is a shame bc they make wonderfully offbeat weird stuff. 'the sealed ampoule' is probably my least favourite of their games thus far and it still ate up an easy 30 hours of my life. here is my favourite screenshot and a small collection of my favourite enemy and item descriptions bc i feel like they really capture the Vibe these things have

[cavyculture]

Good morning from Lana!

[nextnnet]

The Midnight Sanctuary abre la temporada de juegos de miedo en Nintendo Switch

The Midnight Sanctuary abre la temporada de juegos de miedo en Nintendo Switch

Ya sabemos como va esto. Cada vez que llega octubre las tiendas, tanto digitales como físicas, se llenan de juegos de terror de todo tipo. The Midnight Sanctuary es la apuesta de CavyHouse por ofrecer un thriller de terror y suspense en Nintendo Switch. ¿Qué le diferencia de otros muchos? Su estética amable y anime es la forma perfecta de ocultar todo el mal rollo que esconde el título.

 The…

[gertlushgaming]

The Midnight Sanctuary Will Haunt Switch, PS4, PSVR, Steam on Oct. 4

The Midnight Sanctuary Will Haunt Switch, PS4, PSVR, Steam on Oct. 4

The Midnight Sanctuary, the occult suspense 3D novel from Sony publishing label UNTIES and developer CAVYHOUSE, will shake players to their core on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PSVR and Steam on Oct. 4. VR support will haunt Steam at a future date. The people of Daiusu, a long-isolated Japanese village, revere a mystic woman known as “The Saint.” Once persecuted for their religious beliefs but…

[operationrainfall]

Title The Midnight Sanctuary Developer CAVYHOUSE Publisher Unties Release Date October 4th, 2018 Genre Visual Novel Platform Steam, PS4, Switch Age Rating T for Teen – Fantasy Violence Official Website

I haven’t tackled that many Visual Novels since joining Operation Rainfall, but the ones I have played generally left me with a positive impression. Series like Zero Escape and the Danganronpa games really made me think, and left me wanting more thought provoking madness. Enter a new title published by Unties called The Midnight Sanctuary. It was developed by CAVYHOUSE, and all I knew about it was that it had a unique art style and creepy supernatural elements. After playing a brief demo at PAX West, I figured I might as well be the person to tackle the review. The question is, was a unique style and creepy atmosphere enough for The Midnight Sanctuary to shine?

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The story all takes place in a small village called Daiusu. It was built in the Edo period by Christians fleeing prosecution in Japan. It’s a very secluded and strange place, but the lure of historical context brings in our protagonist, a studious pastor named Hamomoru. She’s a very kind and quirky sort with a ravenous appetite for both history as well as any local delicacies. Seriously, she repeatedly makes a scene during the game by guzzling down platters of food, much to the astonishment of the villagers. Besides her, there are a handful of other primary characters. There’s the pushy Jyuan, son of the chief of Daiusu, who longs to help modernize the village and bring in more tourism. Then there’s the painfully quiet priest Kurosou. He seems to constantly be searching for meaning, and rarely gives away many clues as to what is bothering him. Finally, there’s the sarcastic girl in red, Eku. Treated like nobility upon arriving at the village, her goals are a bit suspect, as is the pleasant front she first shows the people of Daiusu. Other than them, there is one other important character, but in the interest of avoiding too many spoilers, I won’t talk about them. However, I will need to reveal one minor spoiler next, just to give the proper context necessary to analyze the game. So if you’re concerned about spoilers, you can skip ahead to the final paragraph, though I promise the thing I reveal next is hardly a secret to anybody that’s given even a cursory glance to the game’s Steam, Nintendo or PSN listings.

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It becomes quite apparent early on that there’s something off about Daiusu Village. Despite the villagers being very friendly to outsiders, they all seem to be holding secrets. Perhaps the most curious thing is how some people seem to be invisible to others. There’s a reason for that. In Daiusu, dying isn’t quite as permanent as it is everywhere else. In fact, when you die in the village, you come back as a spectral member of the Dead. You look just as you did when you perished, so those who die young are forever children, whereas those who die old stay wrinkled. Furthermore, to those without faith in a higher power, the Dead aren’t visible and can’t be heard, but to those who hold faith in their hearts, the Dead spend their days wandering about and gabbing like anybody else. Take Hamomoru and Eku, for instance. Hamomoru very much believes in a higher power, so she sees the villagers from the start of the game, which is used to great effect when she chastises Eku for ignoring a question from one of the Dead.

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The mystery of why the Dead are so different in Daiusu than anywhere else is sadly never answered, but it does serve as a good framing device as the story unfolds. Daiusu holds many mysteries, and at least those central to its own identity are answered by the end of the story. It’s a linear adventure, so in my 3 hours with the game, I enjoyed having small snippets of the lore of the village revealed bit by bit. The people of Daiusu are a quirky bunch, and woefully uninformed as to the norms of the outside world. It was also entertaining to watch the main characters interact, but sadly I felt most of them were just cursory sketches of people, lacking any real development. In a way, the character of the village itself is the most well developed, which is unfortunate to Hamomoru, Eku, Jyuan and Kurosou.

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The farther you get into the game, the more you realize that Christianity in Daiusu isn’t the same either. For some reason, it’s heavily flavored by mysticism revolving around a figure called the Crane Wife. The religious aspects, meanwhile, seem to revolve around another myth about the Saint who saved the village from starvation. I won’t go into more detail about either of those, but I will say that understanding the stories are important in revealing the truth of Daiusu. They also ultimately serve as the core takeaway of The Midnight Sanctuary – be wary of religious fanaticism. Religion and mysticism are fine by themselves, but blind adherence to any tradition can lead to dangerous consequences.

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It wouldn’t be fair to end this review without touching upon the visual and sound design. Generally I keep this pretty brief, but there’s a lot to discuss for The Midnight Sanctuary, for both good and ill. First, let’s talk about the art. The Midnight Sanctuary uses a really unique visual style that makes heavy use of negative space. Many characters are a basic outline with jet black skin, and when they move or walk, you see stained glass travel through that empty space. It’s a really stunning visual, and one that caught my interest early on. My only complaint was that it was unclear why it was utilized more for some characters than others. At first I thought only the minor characters had this effect, but then noticed that even the main cast had some element of negative space used in their design. There’s even a flashback with some main characters where they get the full treatment, making them look just like any other villager. Which brings me to a more serious complaint. This style is great, but it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish one villager from another. The only real way to tell is when they speak, but otherwise it makes everything look a bit samey.

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Also on the topic of visuals, while I like the stained glass effect, the same can’t be said for the models used for the characters. Every character in The Midnight Sanctuary has very odd proportions and many walk about awkwardly, like giant unwieldy insects. Take Eku, for example. She has long, grasping arms and claw like fingers, but she’s just supposed to be a regular person, not deformed or monstrous. Likewise, the architecture of Daiusu village is often full of empty space, which makes it hard to gauge what is going on at times. In one scene it completely escaped my notice when one villager was walking in a river, for example. Finally, I dislike the visual effect for how characters eat. Hamomoru is constantly devouring food, and when she does so she holds it right up to her mouth, and the food magically disappears. I realize that perhaps CAVYHOUSE had a limited budget for effects, but this just drew attention to how primitive some animation was.

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Likwise, the sound design is also a mixed bag. On the one hand, there’s fantastic and distinctive Japanese voice acting for every character. I really appreciated that, and felt it helped ground the emotion of the story well. Where the game dropped the ball a bit is with odd sound effects, such as characters walking. Instead of the sound of shoes on cobbles, it sounds like angry frogs croaking. It’s quite odd, and contrasts oddly with the normal sound of walking that plays from the Map screen as you walk about. However, I had no complaints about the music, which was generally solemn and unsettling. But, regardless of the missteps in the visual and audio design, they did more good than harm, as far as I’m concerned.

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Now, while I can mostly forgive my other issues with the game, there is one aspect that I was very perturbed by. I often complain about anime or manga for having poorly written stories, and while the story in The Midnight Sanctuary is generally well written, it also feels incomplete. The game only lasts 4 chapters, and while there is some meat to the bone, I also felt it ended abruptly and without tying up all the loose ends. By far the best example of this is when the game suddenly puts the spotlight on a villager who doesn’t speak a word the entire game. There’s supposed to be some significance to this mysterious Watcher, but I’ll be damned if I could explain what that is. I think I’m most frustrated by this because it’s a cardinal rule of a Visual Novel that the story is conveyed through the writing. Having multiple instances where this character says absolutely nothing would be comparable to having levels in a Mario game you randomly couldn’t jump. It just goes against the grain of the genre.

Easily the moral of the story

In the end result, while I didn’t love everything about The Midnight Sanctuary, I do feel it’s a story worth experiencing. There’s a lot of poorly designed elements, but they are outweighed by the good. For $9.99, you get a 3 hour adventure that’s perfect for playing while you’re trying to unwind. There are plenty of quirky and interesting characters, and a subtly unnerving plot here. Despite wishing the ending was less abrupt, I do feel the main story gets resolved. I just wish there was more story to draw us further into the strange village of Daiusu. If you enjoy VNs or just want to support a strange story this Halloween season, you might enjoy The Midnight Sanctuary.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: The Midnight Sanctuary Title The Midnight Sanctuary

[ggsgamer]

Review: The Midnight Sanctuary

Review: The Midnight Sanctuary

Up all night!

Title: The Midnight Sanctuary Platform: PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4 (reviewed) Developer: CAVYHOUSE Publisher: Carpe Fulgar, Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc./UNTIES Release date: Out now tl;dr: A supernatural 3D visual novel that plays out an intriguing story with a quirky art style. Price: $9.99/£7.99 (across all platforms) Family Focus: Click here for more information.

As gaming has…

[englishvisualnovels]

A Saint in an Isolated Village — The Midnight Sanctuary Launches Worldwide for the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Windows PC

Developer: CAVYHOUSE Publisher: UNTIES Games Release Date: October 4, 2018 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Windows Age Rating: 10+ Price: $9.99

UNTIES Games released occult horror visual novel The Midnight Sanctuary for English-speaking audiences. The game is available on the Nintendo Switch, the Playstation 4, and Windows PC.

Carpe Fulgur handled the English localization for The Midnight Sanctuary. Carpe Fulgur is a localization publisher best known for their release of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale.

Relevant Links:

Where to Buy (Digital): Nintendo eShop, Playstation Store, Steam (Demo available)

Features, via UNTIES Games:

Mysterious Graphics – Gorgeous graphics like cut-paper art that blur the line between realism and surrealism. Experience a trip into a mysterious world that’s not quite two or three dimensional.

Fully-Acted, Fully-Animated – Animated by the two-person team at Cavyhouse and voiced by a team of professional Japanese actors, Midnight Sanctuary comes to life in ways you’ll never expect. (Voice audio is in Japanese.)

Mysterious Doings – Hamomoru Tachibana has been invited to catalogue the traditions of Daiusu Village, long isolated from the rest of Japan. But once she arrives, a being the villagers identify as the Saints also appears. What could it mean?…

Synopsis:

“What ending do those eyes desire, little watcher?”

Will it be salvation, or will it be the end?

A haunting story wrought by mystical visuals and talented voice artists. The Midnight Sanctuary, a fully-voiced, fully-animation occult horror visual novel about confronting the mystery of a so-called Saint who descends upon an isolated village.

“Um, so. Are you… maybe one of the Dead, too?”

A curious, haunting tale.

Is it salvation which the Saint who descended into this isolated village brings… or is it the end of things?

An occult horror visual novel wrought by mystical visuals & talented voice artists.

“What ending do those eyes desire, little watcher?”