The summary: As the title suggests, it's a story inspired by Alice in Wonderland except the group of kids who visited said wonderland are now grown adults in their 30s with typical adult problems. A certain incident leads them to return to the wonderland of their childhood once again and things go wrong. so wrong. There are also timeloop shenanigans.
The story is especially interesting to me since it features a male asexual protagonist and that fact is discussed in a lot of detail in the text.
So far it's a lot more brutal than I expected lmao The first arc is very generous with the violence and torture, and paired with the protag being a damsel in distress, it has a slight sadistic feel to it imo. That changes a lot later on it seems, as the protag claims more agency over the narrative.
I'm really curious how this is going to end. I'm playing about half an arc at a time.
If you're curious about this VN definitely check out the CW beforehand!
I read the excellent game jam VN Model Employee, set in the same universe and time frame as of the Devil and had a really good time! Didn't expect that considering that the premise is that you're working in a near-future Amazon warehouse. I love my manipulative corporate AI girlfriend <3
Apart from that, I recently started playing an indie mystery VN called The Murder Hotel (three guesses what its about lol). I'm still at the very start, though.
Final Fantasy XIV and it's not even close... need to grind to get my girl new outfits
I've been playing since mid-2020 now and mostly spend my time either playing the story, doing side-content or making pretty screenshots of new glamours
I had high expectations and they got surpassed, can't believe nth Circle did it again! I binged the new ep over the span of a few days immediately after release.
While Episode 0 dealt with a serial killer case and Episode 1 with a murder in the (mega-) corporate sphere, Ep 2 is all about the mob.
The case is definitely a step up both in terms of scale, complexity and production value, they even added in new character themes for Morgan and Emma :D I felt thoroughly entertained right from the start. There was already some neat set-up for future developments as well,
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
as Morgan now made herself the target of some sort of super assassin. Whoopsie, that's what you get for stealing from the mob. Due to the unwanted spotlight and a few slip-ups, Emma seems to also start to suspect her more.
:::
They also already announced Episode 3, the waiting begins anew.
I picked this free denpa VN up after a recommendation by an IRL friend and finished it in 2 days. It's short but a great experience, so I immediately went and bought the digital artbook afterwards to support the dev. Apropos, the dev is a somewhat well-known Vocaloid producer, as I found out later.
It's set in a closed town in the USSR and the protag is a school girl with a very peculiar world-view who gets bullied regularly. The story revolves around the disappearance of her friend and I won't spoil more. If you're a fan of Serial Experiments Lain, this is an easy rec!
This one's an "anti-killing game" VN with escape room mini games.
The setting is only revealed bit by bit but it seems to be some sort of near future surveillance state. The main cast are all criminals who have to participate in this game in order to rehabilitate themselves, though we don't know which crimes in particular they committed yet.
I haven't fully formed an opinion on the game yet, except that the protagonist reminds me of some sort of nervous hamster (affectionate). His ugly-cute smile has won me over, also.
I've also very much fallen in love with the game's UI! Kigyo is a Ren'Py wizard and I've probably spent an hour analyzing all the little design details!
Still following MangoCake's Hundred Line playthrough! We're now at 30/100
::: spoiler Spoilers for Serial Battles, Casual and Box of Calamity Routes
Serial battles was just a whole lot of skipping, just to drop a brand-new piece of lore that wasn't followed up on (maybe in a different route?)
Casual was part strange and part very unnerving in a good way. Really loved what this whole thing told us about Takumi :)
We're now one ending into Box of Calamity and accidentally spoiled the identity of the killer :/ but despite that i'm really invested so far!
:::
I also started playing Hanako Game's successor to Long Live the Queen, Galaxy Princess Zorana! And I managed to barely survive until the election on my first playthrough. Of course I lost it by a mile :,)
hundred line definitely is closer to VN than strategy game, especially since you can skip practically all of the gameplay sequences after a certain point^^
Current Hundred Line progress: 26/100! and i'm completely sold now
::: spoiler Spoilers for multiple Hundred Line routes (I'm listing them at the beginning)
I've watched Mangocake now clear the Coming of Age, 2nd Scenario, Rebellion, Goodbye Eito, Conspiracy, Cult of Takumi, Eva and Multiple Eitos routes. The last one was my absolute favourite so far. Like brain-chemistry-alteringly good. The routes are hit or miss overall (especially the Conspiracy one), and sometimes severely undercooked (looking at Rebellion here), but the ones that do hit, hit hard.
2nd scenario has had the highest production value by far, so I guess it's supposed to be the closest thing to a true end? It was definitely very emotional, but I didn't agree with it :/ Having everyone sacrifice themselves and leave Nozomi behind wasn't very satisfying. (not to mention that Takumi effectively managed to make everything worse in this route, compared to route 0)
Eva route felt like a better rebellion route (and even had more positive consequences?). The kaiju fight between commander!Eva and V'exhness was pretty cool and the romance between Eva and Takumi was sweet as well.
Multiple Eitos is an absolute feast for toxic yaoi fans, like, a 4-course menu of nuclear level toxicity. When Takumi kept committing suicide in order to torture Eito who was trying to take over his body from the inside, I was clinging to the screen sickos-style. Delicious 🥰
:::
Kodaka also confirmed that they're looking into a DLC, but I hope for an update first so they can fix all the spelling mistakes in the English localization and maybe flesh out existing routes a little bit more?
I've been watching MangoCake stream Hundred Line after I've gifted it to them, and they finished route zero yesterday. Now continuing with the second scenario.....without spoiling too much, I am very very hooked. Eito Aotsuki, my beloved
::: spoiler Huge spoilers for Hundred line route 0 below
Honestly, the base game is kind of hard to get through since the protag is so, so painfully oblivious and a complete pushover. There are multiple points where there's clearly something suspicious going on, but the story completely glosses over it, not to mention that there are several scenes where the way the protag acts just makes no sense at all.
It was around day 50+ where it got especially bad, since the game literally forces you to gaslight a girl into not joining the fight because her obsessive brother wants so. The whole thing is even more frustrating because we have recruited several people who are clearly less suited for fighting than her with no qualms (like, people who get physically ill when they get stressed out or are involved in a conflict), but somehow this healthy, very enthusiastic person is not qualified not be a soldier according to the protag. Mango literally said on stream that, if they weren't streaming it, that would have been the point where they'd just close the game.
In the end, the situation gets resolved when said girl puts her foot down and defends her decision against both the protag and her brother, but it still left a bad aftertaste.
I spoiled myself a lot beforehand, and if I hadn't known that there would be time travel involved, I would have agreed. SO glad that the protag grows a lot in his second run.
I'm mainly in for the mystery and eito at this point
:::
Payment processors should not get to police what kind of legal transactions people use their services for. No matter how much you dislike the particular product. And especially since they have an effective monopoly. If we let them go through with this, it would open the gateway for them to enact the kind of control over our consumption that should be exclusive to elected officials.
I've been reading Carrot's Our Wonderland and am currently in Act 3.
The summary: As the title suggests, it's a story inspired by Alice in Wonderland except the group of kids who visited said wonderland are now grown adults in their 30s with typical adult problems. A certain incident leads them to return to the wonderland of their childhood once again and things go wrong. so wrong. There are also timeloop shenanigans.
The story is especially interesting to me since it features a male asexual protagonist and that fact is discussed in a lot of detail in the text.
So far it's a lot more brutal than I expected lmao The first arc is very generous with the violence and torture, and paired with the protag being a damsel in distress, it has a slight sadistic feel to it imo. That changes a lot later on it seems, as the protag claims more agency over the narrative.
I'm really curious how this is going to end. I'm playing about half an arc at a time.
If you're curious about this VN definitely check out the CW beforehand!
I read the excellent game jam VN Model Employee, set in the same universe and time frame as of the Devil and had a really good time! Didn't expect that considering that the premise is that you're working in a near-future Amazon warehouse. I love my manipulative corporate AI girlfriend <3
Apart from that, I recently started playing an indie mystery VN called The Murder Hotel (three guesses what its about lol). I'm still at the very start, though.
Final Fantasy XIV and it's not even close... need to grind to get my girl new outfits
I've been playing since mid-2020 now and mostly spend my time either playing the story, doing side-content or making pretty screenshots of new glamours
Happy New Year!
I spent the last month playing a bunch of different indie VNs
of the Devil Episode 2
I had high expectations and they got surpassed, can't believe nth Circle did it again! I binged the new ep over the span of a few days immediately after release.
While Episode 0 dealt with a serial killer case and Episode 1 with a murder in the (mega-) corporate sphere, Ep 2 is all about the mob.
The case is definitely a step up both in terms of scale, complexity and production value, they even added in new character themes for Morgan and Emma :D I felt thoroughly entertained right from the start. There was already some neat set-up for future developments as well,
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler as Morgan now made herself the target of some sort of super assassin. Whoopsie, that's what you get for stealing from the mob. Due to the unwanted spotlight and a few slip-ups, Emma seems to also start to suspect her more. :::
They also already announced Episode 3, the waiting begins anew.
Z.A.T.O. // I love the World and Everything in it
I picked this free denpa VN up after a recommendation by an IRL friend and finished it in 2 days. It's short but a great experience, so I immediately went and bought the digital artbook afterwards to support the dev. Apropos, the dev is a somewhat well-known Vocaloid producer, as I found out later.
It's set in a closed town in the USSR and the protag is a school girl with a very peculiar world-view who gets bullied regularly. The story revolves around the disappearance of her friend and I won't spoil more. If you're a fan of Serial Experiments Lain, this is an easy rec!
Artificial Selection (Demo Version)
This one's an "anti-killing game" VN with escape room mini games.
The setting is only revealed bit by bit but it seems to be some sort of near future surveillance state. The main cast are all criminals who have to participate in this game in order to rehabilitate themselves, though we don't know which crimes in particular they committed yet.
I haven't fully formed an opinion on the game yet, except that the protagonist reminds me of some sort of nervous hamster (affectionate). His ugly-cute smile has won me over, also.
I've also very much fallen in love with the game's UI! Kigyo is a Ren'Py wizard and I've probably spent an hour analyzing all the little design details!
Still following MangoCake's Hundred Line playthrough! We're now at 30/100
::: spoiler Spoilers for Serial Battles, Casual and Box of Calamity Routes
Serial battles was just a whole lot of skipping, just to drop a brand-new piece of lore that wasn't followed up on (maybe in a different route?)
Casual was part strange and part very unnerving in a good way. Really loved what this whole thing told us about Takumi :)
We're now one ending into Box of Calamity and accidentally spoiled the identity of the killer :/ but despite that i'm really invested so far! :::
I also started playing Hanako Game's successor to Long Live the Queen, Galaxy Princess Zorana! And I managed to barely survive until the election on my first playthrough. Of course I lost it by a mile :,)
hundred line definitely is closer to VN than strategy game, especially since you can skip practically all of the gameplay sequences after a certain point^^
Current Hundred Line progress: 26/100! and i'm completely sold now
::: spoiler Spoilers for multiple Hundred Line routes (I'm listing them at the beginning) I've watched Mangocake now clear the Coming of Age, 2nd Scenario, Rebellion, Goodbye Eito, Conspiracy, Cult of Takumi, Eva and Multiple Eitos routes. The last one was my absolute favourite so far. Like brain-chemistry-alteringly good. The routes are hit or miss overall (especially the Conspiracy one), and sometimes severely undercooked (looking at Rebellion here), but the ones that do hit, hit hard.
2nd scenario has had the highest production value by far, so I guess it's supposed to be the closest thing to a true end? It was definitely very emotional, but I didn't agree with it :/ Having everyone sacrifice themselves and leave Nozomi behind wasn't very satisfying. (not to mention that Takumi effectively managed to make everything worse in this route, compared to route 0)
Eva route felt like a better rebellion route (and even had more positive consequences?). The kaiju fight between commander!Eva and V'exhness was pretty cool and the romance between Eva and Takumi was sweet as well.
Multiple Eitos is an absolute feast for toxic yaoi fans, like, a 4-course menu of nuclear level toxicity. When Takumi kept committing suicide in order to torture Eito who was trying to take over his body from the inside, I was clinging to the screen sickos-style. Delicious 🥰 ::: Kodaka also confirmed that they're looking into a DLC, but I hope for an update first so they can fix all the spelling mistakes in the English localization and maybe flesh out existing routes a little bit more?
I've completely switched to Otto, and I'm pretty content so far. Only problem is that the choice of products isn't quite as broad
Cross Code is a pixel action RPG made by a German studio that was pretty well-received!
I've been watching MangoCake stream Hundred Line after I've gifted it to them, and they finished route zero yesterday. Now continuing with the second scenario.....without spoiling too much, I am very very hooked. Eito Aotsuki, my beloved
::: spoiler Huge spoilers for Hundred line route 0 below Honestly, the base game is kind of hard to get through since the protag is so, so painfully oblivious and a complete pushover. There are multiple points where there's clearly something suspicious going on, but the story completely glosses over it, not to mention that there are several scenes where the way the protag acts just makes no sense at all.
It was around day 50+ where it got especially bad, since the game literally forces you to gaslight a girl into not joining the fight because her obsessive brother wants so. The whole thing is even more frustrating because we have recruited several people who are clearly less suited for fighting than her with no qualms (like, people who get physically ill when they get stressed out or are involved in a conflict), but somehow this healthy, very enthusiastic person is not qualified not be a soldier according to the protag. Mango literally said on stream that, if they weren't streaming it, that would have been the point where they'd just close the game. In the end, the situation gets resolved when said girl puts her foot down and defends her decision against both the protag and her brother, but it still left a bad aftertaste. I spoiled myself a lot beforehand, and if I hadn't known that there would be time travel involved, I would have agreed. SO glad that the protag grows a lot in his second run.
I'm mainly in for the mystery and eito at this point :::
The jump in visual fidelity isnt that big and I don't like what they did with the faces of the new models :(
I cried while watching Yuri on Ice, when yuri perfectly executed his eros performance ;_; those were wild times
Kinda late to the party but yet, there is a CRT monitor shader by devil spider! There are also retro shader effects from the Make Visual Novels! shader pack that might add interesting effects.
Edit: just saw that tal already linked devil spider's pack >.<
Yes! Many people in the english-speaking vndev space consider her the top source for marketing-related info :D
kindly use /s next time please^^;
According to this article by Rock Paper Shotgun, they have connections to known fundamentalist and conservative groups.
Collective Shout is run by christian fundamentalists
Payment processors should not get to police what kind of legal transactions people use their services for. No matter how much you dislike the particular product. And especially since they have an effective monopoly. If we let them go through with this, it would open the gateway for them to enact the kind of control over our consumption that should be exclusive to elected officials.