This is a pretty serious post, and pretty long, so look out.
4Leaf Studio finally released a demo of their sure to be a classic visual novel, Katawa Shoujo (Cripple Girl). Originally I was more than concerned about 4Chan making a VN about crippled girls, but thus far the game has been delightfully tasteful. Well, as tasteful as cripple porn can get. In my quest to become as ronrey as possible, I downloaded the demo, a few days ago. First I’m gonna give you my quick impressions, but then I want to discuss the implications of this game.
Here’s my impressions:
-First thing I noticed is how cool the effects are in this game. The falling snow, moving crowds, sakura blowing by your window. I’ll admit that it’s a little gimmicky, but it helped to impress me.
-So far this has read pretty similar to Narcissu, but I’m not that far into it.
More important than the actual game, is what this game means for the future of OEL VNs.
Let’s face it, Ren’py game that last for about 4 minutes and has art that looks like it belongs pinned to your refrigerator, aren’t exactly convincing anyone to take OEL VNs naturally. Crossover projects like The World Of Haruhi also read like Harry PotterxNaruto fanfiction. Especially when all of the art is “borrowed” from other sources. However, Katawa Shoujo seems legit to the max. Frankly, if we go on pure production values alone, than this game is superior even to my beloved Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. This is a huge step forward for the English market for VNs. While previous commercial attempts to bring VNs to America have largely failed (ie. Hirameki INT), however, I feel that non-commercial efforts will have greater success in raising awareness about VNs, one just need look to Japan for evidence of this. We’ve all heard of how 70% of PC games released in Japan are Visual Novels, which misleadingly leads on to believe that there is a huge Japanese market for VNs, however, in an interview I conducted with Zepy of Canned Dogs, he stated
“Hmm the thing about these games is that they can be made cheaply by small teams and published without much costs, so you’ve got this market which makes more game releases per year than the combined number of games released over every console in a year, and they don’t sell very well, but they’re enough to keep the companies going…There are only 8 titles that ever sold more than 100,000 copies for PC visual novels”,
thus showing that although there may be a glut of VNs released, most of them do not find commercial success. My point in this fact is that most Japanese are not yet willing to make an investment in purchasing VNs, so it’s no surprise that they find even worse success stateside. However, with a free, quality, production like KS, it offers potential buyer a risk-free opportunity to “test the waters”, with out that horrid 6th circle of hell know as importing. Even beyond my anticipation of the completion of this project, I can’t wait for 4Leaf studio’s next projects, for others to form groups because they were inspired by KS, and copycat groups trying to ride off KS soon fame. I consider Katawa Shoujo to be the true beginning of the American Western (Edit: I put american here by mistake, it’s a bad habit of mine) Visual Novel community, and I gladly look forward to what is to come.
PS: Apparently this group is creating their own OEL VN, which they plan on charging for. Besides the fact that charging will murder them alone, the novel also look like crap. I’ll reserve my actual judgement for when it comes out, but…
PSS: Please read my comment below, as I expand on some points I make in this post.
I consider Katawa Shoujo to be the true beginning of the American Visual Novel community
… so the people who are already creating English visual novels and selling them AT A PROFIT don’t count as anything for you?
Katawa Shoujo is a great project, I don’t want to take anything away from it or to compare anything to it in terms of artistic quality. But it’s not a business venture, and doesn’t serve as a model of anything resembling a sustainable business venture. Neither does Shira Oka – although it’s also a cool project, and it’ll be great if/when they ever finish it.
First, let me thank you for being the first commenter on my blog. I’m going to remember you for a long time.
Since you left no contact info, here’s my rebuttal, I hope you see it.
First let me say that when ever I refer to Ren’py games, I mean those other than KS, because KS is certainly an outlier.
I assume that we are only referring to Visual Novels created in English (Instead of translations)? In which case let’s take a look at our options.
Dlsite.com has woefully little exposure, and most of the works on that site are either translated, or are just porn made in Poser with next to story, hardly what I would call a Visual Novel.
Next, forgive me for genralizing, but nothing I have ever played in Ren’py has been good. Ever. And I’ve played a lot of those fuckers. http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Ren%27Py_Games
Not to mention that nearly all Ren’Py games are free.
Blade engine games have so far been disappointing, though the engine has potential. Bladeengine.com
And finally we have Novelty, which I’ll admit has eluded my attention. I must say, it looks terribly cool, but as with programming or website creation, wysiwyg editors tend to limit what the creator can do. http://www.visualnovelty.com/
If you are talking about Jlist.com or the former hirameki, these companies translated japanese games, which did build something of a fanbase, but did not create anything new that the west can call their own. With this project being both easily accessible (Free) and of good quality, I think that it is the start of the wests ability to add to the Visual novel market. Once western VNs have built up popularity and are reputable, then charging can become an option. As for games that charge right now, they are destined to doom, because no one has any assurance that they will be worthwhile, as there is no precedent.
Hopefully, with the release of free VNs, a market will soon develop.
The fame of this game is gonna be great. This will be the first game with something that is different from other games.
For one thing it is not from America that make it but from UK and it is not first time that 4 leaf studios make games but of course you guys know about it.
Anyway, I try the demo version of this game and the first thing I ever seen was the Cinema of it and others.
The backgrounds is okay I guess as they just took pictures of some university and edit with photoshop
The story was downright awesome as it is understandable and doesn’t like mess up.
Telling on the Characters were simple. Overall it is a good game…. for now.
P.S: good luck with your blog, Cheers.
Forgive me if I said America instead of the west, it’s a bad habit. Also, while The Answer had cool art, it was more of a rant than a serious project. And PxT was pretty silly (Shakespeer as a VN? I bite my thumb at 4Leaf for even thinking of such a monstrosity).
The backgrounds didn’t exactly impress me either, but the last VN I played was Tsukihime, so I’m used to it.
I must say that I was so worried originally that this was just going to be some kind of joke project (4Chan dwellers+Cripples? Uh oh), but the story has proven that the internet can take a touchy subject and make a downright lovely game from it.
Thanks for your good wishes Cedric.
I will freely admit that, as the creator of Ren’Py, I’m a bit biased, but I think it’s unfair to claim that there were no good Ren’Py games before Katawa Shoujo. While it’s true that if you pick a random game off the list of games, it will probably be crud, that’s just Sturgeon’s law in action: 90% of everything is crud.
There have been a lot of good games made with Ren’Py. Some of my favorites are:
- Songs of Ariah
- Renai Blogger
- Summer Session
- Real Life: A Bishoujo Adventure
- Starlight Episode Zero
- Time’s Tear
- Starlit Sky
- Elven Relations
- Ori, Ochi, Onoe.
- Magical Boutique
I’d also recommend the remade version of Moonlight Walks, but since I wrote it, I’m more than a little biased. If you liked the effects, I’d check out Starlight Episode Zero, which really makes good use of Ren’Py.
I’m curious as to which Ren’Py games you’ve played, since I think there are a lot of gems out there. (Along with many games that are less than stellar.)
First, I am honestly honored that you have commented on my humble blog. Seriously, I’m astounded.
Next, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to make something good in Ren’py, or that it’s never happened before,
“but nothing I have ever played in Ren’py has been good.”.
I don’t doubt that there are good ones out there, but when creation is so easy (that’s a credit to you), there will always be those who just churn out crap at record speeds. Just look at Deviantart or Youtube.
What I did was that about a year ago, I just downloaded 25 or so random VNs off of Ren’py’s big list o’ games. I thought that by randomly choosing them, it would give me a good cross-section of what Ren’py is about. Well…
I’m going to be sure to check out those recommendations you gave me, hopefully they’ll shed some new light on Ren’py-using creators.
Have to say I missed out on the whole origins of this idea. (I never saw the rumoured posted image that sparked off the whole thing). First I heard of it was when the demo was released, and someone posted a screenshot of it on one of the “chans”. The screenshot in question was a really tiny thumbnail that I just glanced at and moved on. Then returning to the same board the next day I noticed it had been bumped so much that I was surprised it didn’t just explode out the top of my monitor upon loading!
Decided to download it and see what all the fuss was about. (Cripple girls + hentai? Yep, I was thinking “uh oh” too).
First time I played it though, I was like “Wow! This is actually a proper game!”
Speaking from a writer’s perspective (just boring non-visual novels at the moment), the story is told in a way that just drags you into the whole scenario, with characters like Rin and Kenji ensuring plenty of comic relief to keep it from descending into melancholy.
I’d never heard of Ren’py until I’d played this actually. But this one has inspired me to take a closer look at it, and I’m seriously considering it for an idea or two I’ve had for a while.
Checking the development blogs every day for the release of the full version of Katawa Shoujo too. If the demo is anything to go by, this will be worth the wait…
BlFyqH bfkdcqawfkut, [url=http://wyrrhepinhoo.com/]wyrrhepinhoo[/url], [link=http://ykwnapmrytlj.com/]ykwnapmrytlj[/link], http://cccukhhvkbor.com/
I’ve heard good things about this game… its free, right?