How much interest does the JNC community have in visual novels!

renofury

@Terrence Higurashi was my first try, I liked both the anime and manga, so much so that I also went through every possible English translated available sidestory.

I similarly approached the VN after having totally spoiled story line and just Higurashi multimedia experience wasn't enough to keep me interested. Also the version I had was only a 640x480 resolution so the visual quality wasn't there

Serah

@jon-mitchell said in How much interest does the JNC community have in visual novels!:

I haven’t played any visual novels yet. I’d like to maybe give it a go. If JNC added visual novels to the manga/LN offerings ( gaming emulator on the app? Port to web plugin?) anyway if it were possible, what would you like to see? How much would you pay? Multiple premium credits for a full game?

Despite this is an old topic... are there any you are interested in? By now there are several worthwhile ones available for free via Steam.

Jon Mitchell

@serah
Not sure , I’m open to suggestions. The idea of a good story and being interactive is what I find interesting.

Not a dating sim or anything like that

Serah

Visual novels are not always like that - or limited to a certain extent. A few good, mainstream, ones have been already mentioned. If i would not know you are after visual novels, the first thing I expected would have been you are interested in games like Disco Elysium and/or Tyranny. RPGs with a lot of impact by each decision made - with a good story, of course. Or Life is Strange, which I consider as a VN even.

Currently Doki Doki Literature Club (https://store.steampowered.com/app/698780/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club/) is one among the more popular ones, even within the U.S.A. as much as I have been told. Ever heard of that? Though, the genre is probably psychological horror, more than the typical harem+sci-fi thingy...

Narcissu (https://store.steampowered.com/app/264380/Narcissu_1st__2nd/) is free to play too - though if you know more about what kind of story you like to enjoy, you might benefit from the current sale on Steam.

What kind of visual novels you have enjoyed/tried so far?

Jon Mitchell

@serah

I’ll have to take a look at steam. I haven’t played/read any VN’s yet

Serah

@jon-mitchell hmm... the basic gameplay you can certainly check out by one of the F2P games. For a very good story experience, checking out GATE, Psycho-Pass and Dangoronpa might be worth your time.

If you have experience with the Ace Attorney franchise, even better.

Farmerdad

I have only tried "playing" one... maybe two VNs so far. I keep looking at getting them, though. However, I think it's a totally different beast than books and manga. The VNs I've looked at all had voice talent. I don't know if popular ones are even available without voice acting. I am interested in VNs, but not interested in JNC doing them as they are set up.

Kyon7

I'm more interested in novelisations of some VNs, like Umineko. It's just more convenient to read on kindle.

Serah

With the modern technologies it had become hard to say, if visual novels are still a worthwhile medium...

But then, as with light novels, a bunch of them have such good stories that they even gotten manga and anime adaptions beloved by plenty...

Terrence

There's not enough modern games doing choose your own adventure style stories (heck, there's barely even any published books doing that these days). T_T

There is a movement towards 3D Visual Novel type games, which I'm not sure if should be put aside in their own category (Ai Somnium Files, I'd even consider Adventure Games by TellTale similar like The Walking Dead). So VN producers are trying to adapt.

I think Live2D has also helped make expressive VNs a bit easier too (and I assume cheaper?).

I've heard from forum chatter people saying Sol Press has not made a profit on a single visual novel though... If true, doesn't make me feel very safe about the stability of that industry here (and you look at Sekai Project's delays and constant Kickstarters too).