Back in 2023 (dear lord, time flies fast), Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo was a surprising release by Square Enix. By that company’s standard, it was a humble and straightforward visual novel, but clearly the execs had seen the success of Danganronpa, AI: The Somnium Files, Famicom Detective Club and others and wanted a piece of the pie. The…
Jen Williams has seen the future, and like many of us, she’s worried about it. The studio lead at Cherrymochi, the Japan-based indie outfit behind the cult hit Tokyo Dark, spent the early 2000s working with Hewlett-Packard on GPS-triggered gaming experiments in Bristol. Back then, everyone was certain they were…
After introducing Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse at last week’s Nintendo Direct Partner…
Idea Factory International has announced a late May release date for Birushana:…
Death Mark deserves better recognition than it gets. The first two games in the series (Death Mark itself, and then Spirit Hunter: Ng) are both incredible horror visual novels, through which Experience Inc. has given us some of the finest art and suspense narratives that we’ve seen. And yet to…
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Well, Konosuba: Love for These Clothes of Desire certainly has its eye-opening moments. This is a game that likes to get downright dirty in places, and embraces (with gusto) every possible sexualisation trope you can imagine in anime. It has a ball doing so, and as long as isekai-style narratives…
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It is finally happening! For years and years now, Fate/Stay Night has been perhaps the most important visual novel to never be released (officially) in English. Despite launching a massive media property, including untold numbers of games that have been localised, the original visual novel has languished, only available to…
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What do tornadoes, a cult, and a man in a trunk have in common? You’ll be surprised. Bahnsen Knights is the third in LCB Game Studio’s Pixel Pulp series. The series takes pulp fiction, gives it a paranormal twist, and turns it into a video game. To date, it has…
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The next Steam Next Fest is next month (that’s a lot of nexts), which means developers and getting demos ready now. At full launch, visual novel The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty will be available in English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese – but the demo…
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Some licensed games aim to introduce people to the property, and in doing so help to expand the overall number of fans the thing has. Koei Tecmo has been particularly successful at that over the years, applying the Warriors (Musou) formula to several emerging IP. Arslan: The Warriors of Legend,…
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One – also known as Kagayaku Kisetsu e – is one of the legends of the visual novel genre. Originally released way back in 1998, it was one of the early projects by a developer called Tactics, which is notable because many of the creative team moved on from that…
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Cupid Parasite is one of the stronger visual novels launched this decade. In Matt’s review for DDNet, he writes, “Comedy’s always hard to get right, especially when there’s an underlying subversive quality to it, but Cupid Parasite never falters… This is one of Otomate’s finest.” That was two years ago,…
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The remake of celebrated visual novel Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon launched for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in Japan during August 2021. It will take nearly three years, but the game is now set to launch in the West during “summer” 2024 (think Q3, or approximately June-September).…
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CASCHA Games’ Concealed caught my attention for several reasons. The game has gorgeous art direction for one thing, and the promise of a horror visual novel set in a school is always a good way to catch my attention. Those two things go together beautifully. Unfortunately, this is going to…
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