EVN Developer Spotlight: ds-sans (interview)

This interview was originally published on Fuwanovel Forums on May 4th 2018.

In March I've brought you two interviews with notable yuri and otome OELVN developers, talking with Nami and Reine Works' founder, Jackie M. Today, however, we're venturing into the world of very, very traditional romance (with equally high levels of cuteness), as my guest is ds-sans, the author of a lovely freeware VN Sounds of Her Love (be sure to check my review of that game) and the upcoming commercial title Chemically Bonded. I encourage you to join us as we discuss the place of all-ages romance in the VN scene, the role of voice acting in OELVNs and more.

Plk_Lesiak: Welcome and thank you for accepting my invitation! While many people in the VN community might recognize your nick, they probably don’t know much beyond that. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

 

ds-sans: I wouldn't really say that I'm that interesting. I'm currently an undergraduate student at university in the UK studying geography, with an interest in anime and related media in my spare time. (Although, that's died down in recent years.) If I were to describe my current background, it'd be fairly cliché, just like the stories of my VNs. I started developing VNs in 2015, while I was 16, but really showed an interest in January 2014. I didn't make it that far though and only really came back to it to prove that I could do something if I tried.

 

PL: Sooo... Where did the "ds-sans" label come from?

 

ds: In all honesty, I don't think the name really means anything. From what I remember, I think I honestly scrambled a few letters together from a car's registration plate, but this was a good 4 years ago. To clarify though, it has nothing to do with Japanese honorifics at least. I'd only started getting into anime a few months prior and still had no clue as to their usage.

The story itself isn't that special, but the name stuck and at this point, I feel that it's too late to change it.

 

PL: You create rather tame, cute romances in a market that seem to reward ecchi and h-content over anything else. Why this formula?

 

ds: Pure romance novels have always been very diverse in the EVN industry, in my opinion. From what I've personally seen, many of the tamer romance titles are either a lot more Western in style or are low-scale non-commercial in nature and target a different audience. As far as I'm aware, there are relatively few commercial B x G titles with no 18+ content which take significant influence from Japanese VNs.
 

Reading Clannad was really influential in my decision to focus on cute romance stories as I wanted to emphasize emotional connections between people over physical. If I were to add scenes like that into the stories, they'd need to supplement that motive as opposed to attracting more sales or getting people off. Katawa Shoujo is a good example of a VN which does h-scenes in this way. It's the formula which my inspiration is driven from, but it's not as if I'm not open to expanding into different genres for different audiences in the future.

Lost Impressions

 

PL: Your first VN, Lost Impressions, used some pretty heavy themes and drastic plot developments. What inspired that project and what do you think about it today? 

 

ds: Lost Impressions is definitely the 'black sheep' of my VNs, but I feel that's because it was the first. At that point, I didn't really have much of an idea as to what I was doing and a lot of the inspiration came from the early animes I was watching. A fusion between the cutesy romance shows and series such as Higurashi and Mirai Nikki. I just wanted to get something out there.
 

I can't say whether I hate it or love it, really, it just sticks there in my past as an obscure title. There are definitely parts of it I think could be better conveyed, looking back. It's something I'd like to do one day. 36,000 words wasn't nearly enough for what I was trying to convey, especially when it's split between three routes. The development process too is just as confusing as the plot itself. Most of the resources that were original to the game were sourced through work/art trades or volunteer work. A lot of that depended on just sticking with what was done, which is why there's about 5 different art styles. Still, I'd never say that I regret making it.

 

PL: You consistently use Japan as the setting for your VNs. Why set a Western-made game – and a one with English voice acting on top of that – in Japan?

 

ds: One of the main reasons I take Japan as the setting for the stories comes down to the freeware nature of my first two VNs. Finding backgrounds for the games which would fit into a global range of scenarios was a challenging task at the time, with many having Japanese itself somewhere visible in the image. It's not something I minded, since at the time it aligned with my anime interests, but now that I'm starting out in the commercial market, getting custom assets is a lot easier. Even though everything in Chemically Bonded is unique, I still felt that setting the story in Japan would be appropriate to get the interest of my target audience. Writing stories set there accurately is the biggest problem about it though, which is why with Sounds of Her Love I took the approach of setting the story in an international school to avoid cultural discrepancies.
 

With the voice acting, it really comes down to my reasoning behind having it in the games in the first place.

 

PL: Staying on that topic then, you're one of the relatively few OELVN developers who seem to consistently rely on voice acting. What's your rationale behind including VA in your projects?

 

ds: Hiring voice actors is honestly one of the most ignored gems of making a visual novel, at least for projects with an emphasis on the story. Having an idea of how a character might sound or react in your head is one thing, but guaranteeing that each reader will think the same is another. It's one thing to add a s-s-stutter to the dialogue, but hearing the nervousness and embarrassment in a VAs voice really sells the emotions and feelings of a character and adds to the situation.
 

It's also easier to add personality to the characters too. In Chemically Bonded, Kiyoko is a lot more upbeat and cute whereas Naomi is blunt and insulting. Writing the lines for that is easy enough, but connecting a voice to them that suits the characters I feel allows readers to really grasp their personalities quicker than with just plain text. With voice acting, selling the scene is a lot easier and really helps to convey the story to the reader. You also get to work with really great people too, which is always wonderful to be able to do as it not just builds a community of players around the VN but a community of different people working on the project (in a way, a temporary studio of freelancers?).
 

I don't think Sounds of Her Love or Chemically Bonded would have done as well as they might without the use of voice acting in them.

Chemically Bonded

 

PL: How would you describe your experience with implementing VA in a larger project such as Chemically Bonded? Have you struggled with any aspect of it?

 

ds: There haven't really been any major problems in having VA in Chemically Bonded so far. You have to account for the rate of people's work and your own ability to describe clearly how each character should sound. Most of the struggles just come from implementing that many lines into the game, especially when there's an increased focus on the conversation between the characters. Ensuring that each line is clear too is another minor thing. It's not something that usually happens, but it's always something you have to consider when having VA in a project. So far, working with the voice actresses in the project has been a wonderful experience.

 

PL: Sounds of Her Love, your second freeware game, had pretty high production quality and gathered quite a lot of attention. Did you make it with the switch to commercial VN projects in mind?

 

ds: Sounds of Her Love was really intended to be my last project at the time of starting development. After releasing Lost Impressions, I felt the need to produce something of a higher quality before really giving up on producing VNs. I never really intended to go commercial until after SoHL was released, since I didn't expect it to get that much attention.

The budget for the entire project was around $300, allowing me some leeway with hiring artists with the style I was after (the sprite artist for SoHL now working with us on Chemically Bonded as both the sprite and CG artist). The real reason I decided upon producing a commercial VN was after working for DEVGRU-P on their game Stay Stay DPRK and using the funds from their payment to invest into a Kickstarter campaign.

 

PL: Speaking of DEVGRU-P, they act as a publisher for both SoHL and Chemically Bonded and you seem to have a close relationship with them – in the era where self-publishing on Steam and other platforms is an easily accessible option for VN creators, do you think there's any major benefit to such cooperation?

 

ds: Publishing is probably one of the harder aspects of developing a commercial title. I wouldn't call our relationship that 'close', since I've really have had complete independence in creating and managing my projects, but it really is 'ideal' for a developer-publisher relationship. They're really great to work with and have picked up a few other EVN groups which I believe them to help out considerably more with certain aspects.
 

The only real downside to having a publisher are some limitations with managing the sales and figures of the title. I have considered self-publishing, but right now having the support of a larger entity is a real benefit and I would recommend it for people starting out with commercial game development. I can't speak for all publishers, but working with a group with an ability to provide support and additional marketing truly helps.

 

PL: Coming back to Chemically Bonded. Even though you reached the first stretch goal, your Kickstarter was a pretty close call, being funded less than 48 hours before the deadline – did it teach you anything about crowdfunding and would you do anything differently when attempting another campaign?

 

ds: Social media and the importance of reaching out and spreading awareness was definitely something I took out of running Chemically Bonded's Kickstarter campaign. The work doesn't end after you launch, a lot of effort had to be put into marketing the campaign, you can't just rely on the hope that people will come across it through Kickstarter itself. Twitter was one of our biggest platforms for spreading awareness, but it reached a point where it stopped being useful in gathering interest. Contacting game/anime/VN journalism outlets was a key help in getting us past the funding goal. 
 

One real regret is not releasing a demo for the project to go alongside the campaign. At that point, there weren't enough assets to really create one and even then I was against the idea, but having gone through most of the latter half of the campaign with the assumption that it'd fail to meet the goal, I changed my mind about the idea. I think it'd definitely help when crowdfunding another title.

Sounds of Her Love

 

PL: For those who know your style of storytelling from SoHL, should they expect a very similar experience from your new game or is there something that might surprise them?

 

ds: People can hope to expect something similar in execution, but with Chemically Bonded a lot of the key parts have been done differently, which should hopefully surprise people and prove to be more enjoyable than what SoHL was. Looking back on it, there were plenty of issues with the story and the way it was written. I wanted to address these within Chemically Bonded as I didn't feel that they'd work out in a longer VN whereas they seemed to work given SoHL's short nature. Having two love interests too really changes the way the story has to be written, at least to include both girls into the main story without keeping their routes entirely separate.
 

Chemically Bonded is a lot more grounded in reality, I've tried to make the events that happen a lot more likely than what occurred in SoHL and Lost Impressions. There are no car accidents or tragic backstories, the romance isn't cliched as hell and the characters are a lot deeper than my previous works. The choices are a more vague too, rather than being predictable, so the routes and endings achieved should hopefully reflect the reader's instincts. I could go into a lot more detail, but to summarise I'd say people can expect a rather captivating romantic story like SoHL had, but will give people a chance to connect with more fledged characters and themes. That and the production quality is a lot better now we have the funding to do it, so, all in all, I think people who liked SoHL will appreciate Chemically Bonded much more. The story doesn't just end after a confession either, so I think people will appreciate that too.

 

PL: Assuming that Chemically Bonded meets your expectations when it goes to sales and general reception, do you have any specific plans for future VN projects?

 

ds: If it does, I'd like to continue making VNs at some point. I don't have any specific plans yet, and I feel like I'd need the time to really recoup interest in developing another project. I've always had on and off ideas for future VNs throughout developing all three, but when it comes down to creating something new I usually come up with a fresh idea and discard the old.
 

For a while, I promised a full sequel to Sounds of Her Love, and I did create plans for it, but I don't feel the need to rush into it after Chemically Bonded releases. I'd hope to branch out into different story genres, but even then I'd find it hard to escape producing romantic stories since that's what I've really become accustomed to at this point. Who knows? I might try developing two at once and see how that goes, or I might leave it at Chemically Bonded. I know for a fact that I won't be producing a sequel to it though. At the moment I stick to what I like to work on, which I think is what people should really follow when making any kind of creative project, not what the market expects.

 

PL: Thank you for your time!

 

 

I hope you all enjoyed the interview – it was definitely the most detail-heavy one so far and I've had some great time working on it. As always, all feedback will be highly appreciated. What more would you want to know about the devs I invite here? Are there any specific ones whose thoughts on certain topics you would like to hear? Let me know what you think and, once again, have a great weekend!

Yuri Game Jam 2019 – Visual Novels Overview (Updated)

The Yuri Game Jam is a yearly event celebrating my favourite romantic setup in visual novels in all configurations imaginable. Each edition attracts both newcomer and experienced developers, flocking to share their work of various sizes and various states of completion, and while it's not a purely VN-oriented event, in practice it was always dominated by those. From the early days of my interest in VNs as a medium, it held a very special place in my heart, spawning both celebrated classics, such as The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns, and dozens of overlooked, but lovely games I’ve mentioned in my past coverage and retrospectives.

                At the same time, like most Itch.io events, Yuri Game Jam is fairly crowded and full of demos and prototypes that can be interesting only to the most dedicated yuri fanatics – for this reason, I once more took upon myself to search out complete VNs submitted to the event and assess them for all of you, making it easy to find out which games are truly worth your attention. As always, I’ll be skipping the in-development titles in my coverage, also because unfinished projects can very easily stay that way forever in the world of indie VNs. And if a game I’m writing about catches your attention, you can go straight to its Itch.io page by clicking its title – all Yuri Game Jam entries are free to download.

                Yuri Game Jam 2019 was the smallest YGJ edition to date, with even fewer entries than the first event in 2015 and less than two-thirds of last year’s submissions, a drop from 60 games to just 39. It’s also pretty objectively the weakest one yet, with very few titles standing out and the overall production quality of the games being particularly low. Same applies to the length of the visual novel entries, as none of them was much longer than an hour. This is a sad thing to see, but also made my work a bit easier his year, with 9 complete projects to go through, all of them pretty short and straightforward. The highlights of the event were several sci-fi dramas, with Remeniscience Overwrite interestingly touching on topics of memory and communicational barriers, and Package Chat surprising the reader with its fresh ideas and uncompromising narration. My pick for the best game of the event, however, have to unquestionably go to Crescendo’s Café Bouvardie, which combined lovely art direction with a unique setting and greatly-written characters, turning out to be the most feature-complete and satisfying experience this time around. I still encourage you to read through the whole list though, as depending on your preferences, there might be more games worth your attention – so, let’s get started!

Spring Leaves No Flowers

Npckc is an author of cute, small VNs about being different, and the prejudice and discrimination that comes with standing out from the “normal” society. Spring Leaves No Flowers is the third game of a trilogy focused on Haru, a young transgender woman living in Japan and her two friends, Manani and Erika. The first two entries in the series, One Night, Hot Springs and The Last day of Spring, mostly explored the exclusion and misunderstanding transgender people experience in everyday situations, by the example of a visit to hot springs. The third one switches things a bit, focusing on Manami and her struggle to understand her own feelings, after she discovered that she might also be different in the way she experiences relationships and her attraction to other people...

                Those that are familiar with this author’s work, will know exactly what to expect – Spring Leaves No Flowers is minimalistic, straight-to-the-point and offers a believable glimpse at experiences connected to its subject matter, which this time is being asexual and/or aromantic. It avoids pandering or being overly moralistic, but simply shows typical situations members of sexual minorities find themselves in and different ways of coping with them – both negative and positive ones. If you’re looking to learn a bit about these issues, or they’re already part of your experience and you’re seeking a relatable story in a different cultural context, you should be satisfied with what you find here.

Final Rating: Recommended

A Matter of Dosage

If I had to pinpoint a leading theme in this year’s Yuri Game Jam, it would be games with no soundtrack (which is always kind of baffling, considering the amount of quality, royalty-free music available online). A Matter of Dosage is the first among the disturbingly-silent entries, telling the story of Eliza, a young woman who, because of her boyfriend’s indiscretion, becomes trapped as a guinea pig of a powerful medical corporation. As part of experiments that give people superhuman abilities, she has to find a way to regain her freedom and bring down the company that essentially robbed her of her life. And to do that, she has to recruit the help of other test subjects, none of whom really seem that interested in cooperating…

                While this setup sounds pretty cool, everything else about this game… Just isn’t. I could probably look past the fact it’s short, or the not-very-appealing art, but the core writing is consistently weak and full of plotholes, which is much harder to ignore. While I was being bombarded with unusual romantic setups of the characters and the accompanying terminology, the intrigue stayed paper-thin and unconvincing all the way through. The twists were boring, character’s powers barely saw any real use and the conclusion, no matter what route I've chosen, always felt deeply anticlimactic. Some of the game’s core ideas, like the basic characteristics and backstories of the main characters, weren’t bad, but were put together in a way that never proved very enjoyable and never me truly care about what’s happening (also because the protagonist is simply unlikeable). In the end, I simply have no reason to recommend reading this VN – everything it attempted to do it did so mediocrely that there are no high points that’d make it worth your time.

Final Rating: Not Recommended

And Nothing Was Wrong

It’s definitely a bad habit to spoil a game’s story, and visual novel’s story in particular, as it’s usually the main point of the experience. However, I think I’m justified in this specific case. And Nothing Was Wrong is a very short VN about isolating oneself and being crippled by self-doubt – one that starts intriguing, but ends with a strange and disturbing suicide sequence which ultimately felt out of place and pointlessly depressing. While I was confused in the past by this particular author’s strange, borderline-trolling games, this one tackles a topic of transgender person destroying the bonds they build in the past and being crushed by loneliness due to their own insecurity – something that definitely happens in real life and can lead to similarly tragic consequences. Exactly for this reason, it should be handled with the utmost care and careful consideration of its possible consequences, and this game, despite apparently being inspired by author’s own struggles, did a poor job at warning the readers of its content, or properly building up to the drastic turn of events. While its minimalistic presentation and core writing are pretty interesting and solid, approach it only if you’re prepared to read something deeply depressing and strange.

Final Rating: Cautiously Recommended

Reminiscience Overwrite

Going back to silent VNs, Reminiscience Overwrite is maybe a particularly sad example of that problem, as everything else about it is very solid and the omission of proper background music hurts the consistently-positive impression I’ve got from it. The game features a (mostly blank-stale) female protagonist who is kidnapped by aliens and gets experimented on with some kind of memory-altering device. While trying to understand what’s going on and find her way out of captivity, she develops a peculiar bond with one of the alien scientists participating in the tests, gradually finding shared emotions and experiences between them – a connection that might prove to be her only chance of salvation.

                While very brief, Reminiscience Overwrite’s story managed to present a few interesting themes and provide a satisfying payoff to its intrigue. Unlike in A Matter of Dosage, pretty much every scene and piece of information in it had meaning for the plot, while the story progression was tied to the slowly-removed language and cultural barrier between the protagonist and her captors. The art direction is also among the strongest ones in this year's YGJ, with an aesthetic and consistent look, even though it's not in any way spectacular. With a bit more content and polish, it could’ve been quite an exceptional VN, but even now it’s fully worth experiencing, particularly if you enjoy the mix of sci-fi and light romance.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

The Start of Something Amazing

The Start of Something Amazing is the most by-the-numbers love story among the games on this list, featuring two childhood friends who finally recognize their feelings for each other during a sleepover. While it’s not the greatest VN of this type when it goes to art direction, it’s so full of wholesome warmth and chemistry between the heroines that it’s hard to truly dislike it. If I really had to seriously complain about something, it would be that it also fell victim to the no-soundtrack epidemy, openly asking the reader to run their own music in the background. It also, quite predictably, relies a lot on the typical “I can’t be in love with my best friend” clichés, with the protagonist being confused about things that seem absolutely obvious. In the end, however, it’s all done in a rather charming and enjoyable way. For those looking for traditional yuri wholesomeness, it’s worth giving a try.

Final Rating: Recommended

A Walk With a Cloud

A Walk With a Cloud is a cute, short VN about Eddie, a birdgirl who can’t fly. While she’s stuck on the ground during the day of a sky festival, alone and sulking, she meets a strange figure – a cloudperson, visiting the world below for the first time. While they explore the local area together, they’ll discover an unlikely connection between them, along with pieces of history the cloudgirl’s family has with Eddie’s town. That is, only if Eddie decides to open up to the visitor and visit some places she’s not fully comfortable with... With the presentation stylized to look a bit like a child’s drawing, the game has a really cute and comforting atmosphere, tackling the fairly-typical Yuri Game Jam themes of being different and self-acceptance in a subtle manner. It’s not particularly groundbreaking in any of it, but just pleasant enough to justify giving an hour of your time to read through it.

Final Rating: Recommended

A Letter For You

There’s a pretty popular dating sim template followed by many Yuri Game Jam VNs, one that involves a festival or event of sorts and a short amount of time to choose between a few heroines that could be invited to it, with selectable interactions along the way.  A Latter For You basically took that framework and filled it only with the bare-minimum amount of content to create a comprehensible story. One portrayed in large part through rough sketches that are often genuinely hard to decipher and monster-girl theme the game pretty much does nothing with. While I don’t like to complain about such games, clearly made for fun and usually having its amusing moments, there’s simply not enough of either substance or eye candy in this one to make it worth picking up – while it’s ultimately inoffensive, I still recommend skipping it.

Final Rating: Not Recommended

Package Chat

One of the most interesting games of the jam, despite its technical simplicity and relative lack of polish, Package Chat is a sci-fi story about a girl stuck in a deeply-uncomfortable space journey from the dying Earth to a remote colony. Consciously trapped for months in a life-support pod, with only virtual reality to distract her from the misery of it and little motivation to interact with other people in the ship’s network, she can barely stand her situation. Breaking this depressing tedium, a crew member – one of the small team of people operating the ship and thus not stuck in the containers – starts talking to her… Opening with something that sounds like a very bad pickup line.

                The awkward interactions between the two women give the opportunity to present the background of the perilous journey on an unfinished spaceship, forced by the deteriorating situation on Earth. At the same time, we learn some elements of the girls’ personal backstories. All of this is conveyed in a very crude, naturalistic style that doesn’t shy away from gross details of travelling through space as living cargo, crude comment from the characters... And a lot of swearing. It provides worldbuilding through the protagonist’s obviously-biased and cynical perspective, but offers enough details and original ideas to engross you in the game’s world. As a piece of interactive fiction, with no sprites or elaborate CGs, but just simple backgrounds and music, it’s not the most visually impressive game in this year’s YGJ, to say the least. However, it turned out to be one of the most through-provoking and most satisfying reads among them, and I recommend both checking it out and keeping a closer look at its author – which a debut like this, they might create something really spectacular in the future.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

Café Bouvardie

My favourite game from this year’s Jam is an unusual one, with an imaginative story somewhere on the cross between fantasy and science fiction. It features an unnamed protagonist, a time-travelling agent living in the immortal dimension known as the End of Time. After finishing a mission and solving a time paradox she feels a “pull” – a warning sign indicating her next travel into past or future would likely kill her, which means the end of her career. Unexpectedly, she’s faced with an eternity of retirement in the End of Time, needing to find a new purpose and place for herself after completely devoting herself to her work. Looking for answers, she visits the titular Café Bouvardie, a place which is said to give respite to agents in her position. There, she meets the two owners of the café, Clementine and Lotus, who share their stories with her…

                Café Bouvardie has a clear theme of finding one’s place in the world, with time travel and the unusual setting being, more or less, devices to ask some very universal questions. This, however, doesn’t mean that background isn’t worth attention – it introduces a lot of interesting questions and ideas, ones which I have a suspicion will be used by the game's authors for other projects. And, honestly, it would be a waste not to do that, because the End of Time provides more or less unlimited possibilities, with its immortal characters from different ages, arcane machinery and the organisation fighting to keep the world’s history undisrupted. The game’s story is also quite enjoyable to follow, with Clementine and Lotus being instantly likeable and the conversation between them and the protagonist leaving a good impression. At times I had a feeling it tried a bit too hard to be profound, but it mostly works as a coming-of-age metaphor, with the quality of writing and presentation being enjoyable enough on their own – even if you don’t fully embrace its message, it shouldn’t spoil the experience for you. Also, the romantic angle is so light that the story is definitely not something directed only to yuri fans – I’m willing to recommend it to pretty much anyone and really, there’s no reason to not give it a chance.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

And this ends my summary of the Yuri Game Jam 2019 – a little underwhelming considering the really great titles I was discovering in its past editions, but still offering some worthwhile VNs to read through. I’m really interested whether this slowdown is a sign of things to come, with generally fewer hobbyist/freeware projects the visual novel scene, or just a one-time anomaly. While we’ll have to wait a while to find out, I’ll be looking forward to the chance to cover future events: make sure to look out for my NaNoRen0 and Yuri game Jam summaries next year. And for now, thank you for reading this one. Have a great weekend everyone!

Post-deadline update

Two full weeks after the end-of-December deadline two games arrived to change the gloomy picture I’ve described above, at least a little bit: the cheesy romance VN by the event veterans Team ANPIM, with a title too long to cite more than once, and my new “winner” of the YGJ 2019 – the stylish and intense short drama story by the name of Double Exposure. So, stay with me a little longer, while I explore what these Jam latecomers have to offer!

I Can’t Believe the Most Popular Girl in School is a Lesbian, Just Like Me!

Team ANPIM does practically one thing – short, cheesy romance dramas that are purposefully embracing typical yuri tropes, but are also written and put together well enough to be genuinely satisfying – at least if this kind of fluff is your thing. Their newest game, with its light-novel-spoof title, is not any different and despite feeling a bit unpolished, not any less lovely than their previous work. It focuses on Hinata, a closeted lesbian high schooler maintaining a cold, aloof persona to keep people at distance and don’t get found out for her sexual orientation. One day, she slips up by checking out the most popular girl in class during a boring lesson and getting noticed by her. This leads to a somewhat unpredictable chain of events ending with a very predictable, but still charming, romantic resolution. The presentation is a bit stiff, with sprites being stuck in one position and having just a few expressions, while CGs are also very few, but the chemistry between the main girls and fun slice-of-life content are definitely there. Personally, I never get bored of this kind of awkward love stories and f/f kissing scenes, so if you’re like me, this is probably the best treat in Yuri Game Jam 2019.

Final Rating: Recommended

Double Exposure

Double Exposure was a major surprise and nearly slipped past my attention due to its really late arrival. At the same time, it’s a game that I’d hate to see overlooked, as it’s simply the best story in this year’s Jam. The protagonist, Selena, is a young and accomplished fashion photographer, who doesn't seem to care about anything outside of her job. Her attitude changes when a mysterious phenomenon from her past reoccurs – after having a session with a talented young model, Lizzie, she sees a mark on one of the photos. The mark, invisible to anyone but Selene, appeared once in the past and turned out to be a premonition of death for that person – a tragedy that traumatized Selene and made her into a career-obsessed recluse she is now. Deeply shocked and unsure on how to approach the situation, she ultimately decides to do everything in her power to not let the history repeat itself, particularly because she quickly starts to care about Lizzie as more than just random person in danger...

                While Double Exposure is short and maybe even a bit rushed in the later portions of the story, there’s a lot to love about it. The mental strain and neurotic reactions of Selene are really well portrayed and while she might come out as unlikeable at first, the game quickly explains why she acts the way she does. Lizzie is nearly a polar opposite of her stiff, overly-professional personality and the interactions between them are really fun. On the other hand, with Selene progressively more on edge, believing Lizzie is in mortal danger without knowing the source of it, the tension gets very intense pretty fast. There’s only one choice in the game, with one option probably leading to a bad ending, but I honestly didn’t have the courage to check what it is, considering how invested I was in the story and how much I didn’t want to see a negative resolution to the plot. The presentation is another strong point, with really nice-looking sprites and consistent visual style – while there’s a near-lack of CGs that could make the story even more impactful, the assets that are there are still solid enough to carry the plot. For me it was a genuine gem among this year’s YGJ submissions – one that I hope won't stay hidden, as it's really worth checking out, and not just as a yuri game, but simply a great short story.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

And with this update, my Yuri Game Jam 2019 coverage is truly over – any game appearing after this kind of forgo any reasonable right to be included. I’m, however, really happy this update happened, showing that there’s still a lot of potential in events like this – hopefully, the next one will prove satisfying without the need to wait for latecomers. Thank you for reading!

EVN Chronicles' Steam Curator Wrap-up – Fall 2019 (Summer Meetings; Omnimus; Knife Sisters; The Far Rings; 4 Alice: Lorange Journey)

Hello and welcome to my seasonal Steam Curator Connect Wrap-up, where I’ll be looking at games sent to me for review through my Steam Curator profile during the last few months – particularly the shorter/simpler among them, for which I couldn’t make dedicated posts. This time, the quality of the VNs I’ve received was a positive surprise, with each title offering something interesting and most of them exceeding my expectations in some ways. The highlights of today’s list are definitely the virtual reality-themed thriller Omnimus and the uniquely-stylized, mildly-erotic queer VN Knife Sisters. However, all of the games I’ll be writing about are arguably worth your attention, so please stay with me while I explore their main perks and issues. As usual, links in each title will lead you straight to the Steam store page, so you can quickly check the games out at their source. Enjoy!

Summer Meetings

The growth of Mikołaj Spychał’s lineup of perfectly-generic romance VNs quite likely isn’t stopping any time soon, and his fourth game, Summer Meetings, is another incremental improvement to the previously-established formula. Much of the fun in his VNs come not from the very standard love stories, or especially from the minimalistic visuals (nearly no CGs and simple sprites), but from the ability to mess up the romance in an impressive number of ways. Dating a few girls at once without them knowing, cheating, randomly kissing the wrong girl at the concert you went to as a group… For people that just want to see the world burn, this might be the best opportunity since School Days (although without that significant bonus of hentai and/or gore).

                At the same time, the core story is solid enough for what it tries to be and the writing feels like a step up from all the author’s previous titles: it has a nice flow to it and the English script feels pretty much devoid of translation issues I’ve noticed in his earlier games. The five heroines are decently fleshed-out and even can surprise you in some ways – like the step-sister's willingness to keep the romance non-committal and even tolerating other girl being the protagonist’s primary focus. The main thing stopping me from fully recommending it is the price: for a VN this simple visually and with 5-6 hours of content, 10 dollars feels like an overkill. If you find it for half of that price, however, it’s a surprisingly fun way of burning one or two evenings.

Final Rating: Cautiously Recommended

Omnimus

Omnimus is probably the biggest positive surprise of today’s list: a cheap visual novel by a low-profile Russian studio that at first looked rather unassuming, but quickly managed to capture my attention with a high-quality intro. After that, it simply never stopped being well-produced and immersive. The opening segment efficiently introduces you to the setting: a near-future Earth on which, after a series of natural disasters and conflicts, the nation-states started decaying, making space for the rise of corporate power. From this broad picture we're immediately transitioning to our protagonist waking up from a coma, apparently paralyzed, only to find out that he’s been “volunteered” for a highly-ambitious virtual reality experiment. He then meets three other test subjects, with whom he’ll get involved in a highly-unpredictable intrigue with strong flavours of capitalist dystopia and transhumanism.

                While short and ultimately pretty simple (the plot is mostly linear and your choices have only a very limited impact on the major events), Omnimus do a few things very well. First, it effectively sustains a sense of tension while you’re navigating the virtual world, without knowing its real purpose or true intentions of the crucial actors involved in the story. Second, it makes the mystery plot rather complex and ambiguous – each reveal both clarifies certain things and makes you question the sincerity of those providing you with the information. Each of the two main forces driving the plot has their own agenda, not necessarily aligning with your best interest and you have to play knowing you’re your own best, and possibly only ally. There’s also a very minimalistic romance subplot for each of the two female characters you meet in the virtual reality – this is the source of one of my only complaints about the game, as getting the romance scenes requires making a perfect sequence of 9, very not-obvious choices, which is a major overkill. Other than that, though, Omnimus is just a very cool experience, which reads, looks and sounds very solid despite costing just 2 dollars. This is exactly the kind of quality and value proposition I like to see in EVNs by small studios, and I strongly encourage all of you to check it out and support the devs behind it.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

Knife Sisters

Knife Sisters is a deeply unique VN experience for a variety of reasons. Its pencil-drawn, monochrome art is very distinct, but also surprisingly detailed and expressive. Its choice system, with the ability to respond immediately, stall to see different dialogue options or just wait out decisions altogether, represents real-life dialogue way better and more in-depth than most of the typical visual novel mechanics. Its approach to romance is unapologetically queer and polygamous, and full of eroticism, but never crosses the line into plain porn. The effecting mix is quite unlike anything I’ve read before, while it also isn’t extravagant or extreme in its context to the point it couldn’t be enjoyed by more or less anyone who isn’t allergic to LGBT+ themes.

                The game focuses on Leo, a non-binary individual whose life is turned upside-down by the arrival of their new roommate, a strange girl known as Dagger. Trying to pull Leo in strange occult rituals and apparent personal vendettas, she opens a horror plot going alongside a much more relaxed story of protagonist’s relationships and hook-ups. All this leaves quite a lot of space for player agency, both with the usual dialogue choices and decisions on what to do/who to meet at many point in the story, while always staying true to the main character’s core personality traits – general lack of interest in long-term relationships and laid-back nature, meaning they’ll always prioritize fun over building deep bonds. It’s not your usual love story, but is very believable and consistent in what it shows, and even wholesome in its own peculiar way, as it rewards being mindful of other people’s feelings and needs, despite the kinky and non-committal nature of what is happening between them and the protagonist.

                While I have some minor gripes with Knife Sisters, like the lack of certain quality-of-life features (the game is made in Unity and not a dedicated VN engine) and lack of control over certain events (for example, you can’t outright avoid many romantic interactions even when you want to), they are mostly irrelevant in comparison to sheer enjoyment factor it offers. It simply looks, sounds and reads to well for those issues to have a major impact and if it sounds like something you might enjoy, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a chance.

Final Rating: Highly Recommended

The Far Rings

Getting a review copy of a free game is always a bit ironic, but in the case of The Far Rings, I can’t say I regret getting the curation request and the opportunity to share this game with others. This small sci-fi otome, co-authored by the game jam veteran Heiden (responsible for the semi-famous Helena’s Flowers, among other titles) offers a brief, but well-written and well-paced story about war and prejudice, with a totalitarian state in the background. The protagonist, Athena, is a doctor who went on a humanitarian aid mission to a planet invaded without provocation by her homeworld. There, her organisation’s camp is attacked by the local resistance and she is the only one to survive the resulting massacre. The story proper starts with Athena on a small spaceship, carrying both her and a prisoner – alien supposedly responsible for orchestrating the attack – back to her home platen, piloted by a young naval officer acting as the ship’s only crew. Before they can reach their destination, the player can discover the connections between Athena and those accompanying her on her journey, and maybe find an escape from the cycle of conflict and oppression forced upon then by her planet’s progressively more authoritarian and warmongering government.

                The Far Rings, while very short (around two hours of content), does many things well. The quickly-stablished setting and the reveals, both those related to heroes and Athena herself, are genuinely interesting. The protagonist is well fleshed out and her idealism clashes constantly with the attitudes of those around her, shaped by the pressure to conform and the atrocities of war. The aesthetic and sound, while not particularly flashy, are really well-done. Ignoring one naively-positive resolution to the story (I’m pretty sure that shouting at a homicidal warlord could have many results, but him backing down is the least probable one), it’s a thoroughly enjoyable experience, with the authors promising to expand on it further with a definitive version featuring an extra (true) ending. You might want to wait until that kicks in, but even now, for the generous price of nothing, it’s a visual novel absolutely worth trying out.

Final Rating: Recommended

4 Alice: Lorange Journey & Divine D.I.V.A

It’s arguably pretty futile to write here about games that were delisted since I’ve received my review copies, but in the case the author decides to restore them, I’ve decided to give them some coverage – also because they are something of a unique affair and this applies particularly to the first game in question, 4 Alice. That short story is written from the perspective of an autistic person interacting with other people like her, but whose disorders show different symptoms and levels of severity. It offers a very rare opportunity for to experience the thought process and perception of the world by someone on the autism spectrum without being overly focused on the attempts to educate people – its brief fantasy/horror plot about a group of girls stuck in a magical house could work without the quirks of its cast, but is made more interesting by their internal struggles and unusual behaviour.

                The second story, Divine D.I.V.A, is a bit less interesting – a simple wish-fulfilment story about a team of female mercenaries in the far future. Both games are also brought down by technical limitations: the simultaneous French and English text in both the story and menus is particularly jarring, killing the aesthetic of both titles (which is already very simple – they’re very basic interactive fiction with no character sprites and stock art). English translation is also pretty junky, but the experience of reading these stories made me believe the author had some potential and many things to say. If she polishes her approach to making the stories and returns to Steam, I’ll be quite interested in seeing what she comes up with.

Final Rating: Cautiously Recommended

And this would be it for today’s summary – the next one will be coming in February, hopefully with the winter season giving me the opportunity to go through some longer/more ambitious games that are still waiting to be covered on the blog. And there are some amazing-looking titles in my backlog, that I really want to give a proper look and share them with all of you. Until that happens, I hope you’ve all enjoyed today's list – see you in two weeks!

Soundless -A Modern Salem in Remote Area- Review (English Original Visual Novel)

There were few EVNs in the last few years that I’ve seen seriously hyped up by other VN fans and brought to my attention through multiple recommendations and positive reviews – particularly beyond titles by a handful of relatively well-known and respected creators such as ebi-hime. The game I’ll be writing about today, Soundless -A Modern Salem in Remote Area-, is one of such exceptions, enthusiastic opinions about which intrigued me to a major degree, even though it ended up being two years before I finally picked it up. And this is not where the curious and unusual things about it end: this freeware visual novel was released in late 2017 by a small circle under the name of Milk+ and is heavily influenced by the denpa subgenre of horror – one reliant on distortion of reality and chains of bizarre events, true meaning of which is usually hidden under multiple layers of mystery. It mimics extremely well the visual style and climate of the early 2000s’ Japanese games, offering a now rarely-seen call-back to parts of visual novel history highly nostalgic to many fans. And thankfully, there’s a lot more to it than just the interesting stylisation and riding on memories of the past…

Soundless is not an experience for those faint of heart, but is more about psychological abuse and social exclusion than plain violence

 

Soundless offers a multi-layered story and some of its themes are impossible to talk about without major spoilers, which I’ll do my best to avoid. Most of the main plot, however, consistently revolves around Mercy, an ostracized teenage girl living a miserable life in an isolated village led by a strange religious cult. Her apparent mental illness, involving various hallucinations and delusions, led her to being embraced by the community as a mystic, however, when a certain chain of events turned her visions dark and disturbing, she was proclaimed a curse-bearer and started being perceived as a danger. Abused both by the village’s “clergy” and the children in her school, she suffers through incredible pain and loneliness – until a new holy woman, appearing in the village after the tragic death of the previous one, shows her kindness no one was willing to offer for years. All this, however, is just a surface of a very dense story, taking many unpredictable turns and slowly revealing the meaning behind various developments and subplots. Then, the last missing parts of the puzzle are provided through bonus content, uncovering the final set of mysteries connected to the game’s setting and crucial characters.

                Soundless’ most immediate themes are those of mental illness and social exclusion – we observe the whole story through the distorted lens of Mercy’s mind, which warps the reality around her in a disturbing fashion. She’s not really an unreliable narrator, but one that filters the world through a layer of dark delusions and deeply-internalized identity of a cursed person, who deserves being excluded due to her impurity. It’s an excruciating study of scapegoating, in a way more disturbing than the witch trials the game’s title references through its long-term and systematic nature. It’s not a story of a violent incident, but an ever-growing spiral of abuse targeting a person stripped from their human dignity and protection connected to being part of the community. Mercy is an outcast, but is also necessary as a symbol – a personification of “the other”, a visible threat cementing the unity of other villagers under their religious leader. The game approaches this topic in a detailed and gruesome manner, before it shifts to other, similarly disturbing issues.

Soundless doesn’t shy away from using strange visual effects and distorting the story to represent the protagonist’s mental illness, but it's hard to accuse it of prioritizing form over substance

 

Writing in Soundless can be only described as excellent. Above all, the game excels at creating a dense, depressing atmosphere of entrapment and hopelessness that dominate Mercy’s life. Following her struggle was disturbing and captivating at the same time and when I was expecting the story to reach a predictably-grim conclusion, it struck me with a serious of surprises, most of which I didn’t even vaguely anticipate. Other major characters, such as Delilah, the heir of one of the prestigious clergy families, are interesting and believable enough to give the story proper depth. From the title, one could easily expect Soundless to be just a tale of faceless mob prosecuting a defenceless girl, but Mercy’s tragedy is very personalized and reflected in her interactions with crucial members of the community. Most of them also have roles to play in the plot’s sudden turns.

                If I had to complain about something in the context of Soundless’ story, it would be its final chapter, focusing on what can be described as light yuri romance between the protagonist and Auma, a holy woman newly-arrived in the village and insistent on ignoring Mercy's status as a pariah. While it has its own set of themes, it feels fairly disconnected with the flow and tone of the previous story segments. It’s also where the game's denpa stylisation kicks in the hardest, with whole segments presented through strange collages and child-like drawings, coupled with heavily distorted dialogue. While I don't think it was bad by any definition, it was hard for me to adjust to the new direction of the story and I enjoyed it less than everything that came before it. It also underlines the fact that Soundless is probably not for everyone – between its disturbing moments and sheer weirdness and confusion that occasionally kick in, I can easily imagine some readers finding it pretentious or overbearing.

The yuri subplot which develops in the latter half of the game is probably one of its weaker parts and evolves into a really strange and confusing direction

 

Presentation-wise, Soundless truly feels more like an early-2000s Japanese doujin than a modern VN, despite being made in Ren'Py. The photographic backgrounds, the style of the drawings, NVL text display and even the UI just scream “old Japanese VN”, and if someone showed it to me as an obscure fan-translated title, I’d have no reason to doubt their word. This mimicry is not just kitsch imitation though, as Soundless really captures and spirit and thick climate of the better VNs of that era, while telling a really original and impactful story. It’s also far from being stale or unimaginative, mixing various techniques (like full-colour and sepia drawings) and artstyles depending on what fits specific situations. The relative simplicity of the presentation leaves a lot of space for the excellent prose to do its job, while the minimalistic music and creepy sound effects further enhance the overall climate. In this, it reminds me of another title I’ve read recently, Nitroplus’ Phenomeno – just with a much more robust story and many more things to say.

                As it’s pretty clear by this point, I enjoyed Soundless a lot and consider it easily one of the best horror EVNs I’ve read so far. For such a small (6-8 hours of reading) game, and one so simple from the technical standpoint, it’s an impressive storytelling achievement and stands out from most VNs in its category. It was obviously crafted with a lot of care and the authors improved upon their initial work with the 1.2 and 2.0 versions, the latter published a year after the initial release of the game. As a free title, I see little reason for any VN fan to not give it a chance – unless the denpa horror formula is really not your thing. And if it is something you particularly enjoy, this game is an absolute must-read.

 
Final Rating: 4/5
 
Pros:
+ Engaging, multi-layered narrative
+ Great sense of tension
+ Effective handling of multiple dark themes
 
Cons:
- Tiny resolution and (purposefully) clunky feel
- Goes slightly off the rails at the end


VNDB Page
Download Soundless for free on Itch.io