#oneaday Day 671: Doki Doki janai

Apparently Doki Doki Literature Club has been removed from the Google Play store. According to its publishers, Serenity Forge, this was because "the game's content violates [Google's] Terms of Service in its depiction of sensitive themes".

Chances are if you are even a little bit plugged into gaming news you know what Doki Doki Literature Club is at this point; if you don't, I did a spoileriffic writeup on it over on MoeGamer back around the time it first started getting attention — nearly ten years ago at this point, Jesus. To summarise for those disinclined to click a link (you know who you are), Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays with expectations and tropes of the format to deliver a potent narrative, primarily about mental health but also dealing with subjects such as parasocial relationships with non-existent (or perhaps it would be better to say non-sentient) entities like game characters.

It's a modern classic! Granted, uncharitable sorts might argue it started a somewhat unwelcome trend of western-developed visual novels that felt the need to be self-consciously subversive, insincere and ironic, but it can't really be blamed for what other people did in its wake; Doki Doki Literature Club itself, despite deliberately subverting a lot of classic visual novel/dating sim tropes in the name of telling what is essentially a horror narrative, is a well-written piece of work that makes good use of its medium (and the unique characteristics of that medium) to engage the player and get them thinking about how they are interacting with the characters involved.

Make no mistake, it goes to some dark places — its ESRB M/PEGI 18 ratings are well-deserved, though for those about to make an assumption about it being a visual novel, these ratings are not due to any sexual content. Rather, it gives an uncompromising look at mental health matters, and that sometimes there is no "winning", particularly when you are attempting to support someone else through a difficult time in their life, rather than taking command of your own destiny.

But there's the thing: it's already got those ratings, which make it suitable for worldwide distribution, along with various other ratings from other worldwide ratings bodies, such as CERO in Japan (where, interestingly, it only netted a "C" rating — an equivalent to 15/16 ratings elsewhere in the world) and it is, at this point, widely agreed to be a worthwhile work of art. For Google Play to suddenly decide that it is unacceptable is… bizarre, but not entirely unexpected, sadly.

Those who follow certain corners of the Internet may be aware that there has been a lot of unrest surrounding Visa and MasterCard seemingly interfering with online purchases of late — particularly when those purchases relate to adult (and specifically sexual) content. Naturally, this put sex workers, erotic artists, adult performers and makers of adults-only games in a somewhat difficult position, as it was making it significantly more difficult for them to make a living.

These things always start with porn, because porn is easy to attack. It's the thing that, while people might talk about it openly on the Internet, is still a great taboo in society — and one that is difficult to defend, particularly when you're talking to people who aren't breathing Internet fumes all day. Who wants to be the one standing up and saying that yes, porn is fine and good and should be protected just as with any other form of creative expression? Don't you know that porn is exploitative, and no-one gets involved in it willingly?

While I won't deny that there are parts of the sex work industry — speaking very broadly here — which are exploitative, in the modern day we live in an at least somewhat enlightened age where there are plenty of people who choose to get involved in various forms of adults-only entertainment because they like doing it. Not just because they like having sex, either; consider the artists, who just enjoy drawing naked people because, it turns out, they're good at it — to name just one example.

Why am I talking about porn? Because there are some who fear that Visa and MasterCard's at least partially successful encroachment into determining what it is and is not "acceptable" for people to get their rocks off to in the privacy of their own homes will mean that they will then start looking at what they might consider to be other forms of "unacceptable" media. Media that, say, tells the stories of marginalised groups, or which deals with challenging themes that society would rather we just swept under the rug.

Doki Doki Literature Club is not porn. But it being suddenly branded as "unacceptable" on a platform as big as Google Play sets a worrying precedent — one that people need to stand up and object to, forcefully. Thankfully, the game is still available on a variety of other platforms, including iOS, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC — but for how long?

"[Doki Doki Literature Club] is widely celebrated for portraying mental health in a way that meaningfully connects deeply with players around the world, helping them to feel heard, understood and less alone on their journey," says creator Dan Salvato. "Managing to achieve that — making a truly meaningful difference by using the power of fiction to connect to others — is what I'm most grateful for. It inspires me every day to keep making cool new things, things that can really reach others, especially those in need of connection."

It's an important piece of work that does not deserve to be silenced, so I sincerely hope Salvato and Serenity Forge are able to get the situation resolved as soon as they can — without having to compromise on the work they have created.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 664: Visual novels!

I've been getting back into visual novels of late thanks to Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death (which I wrote more about over on MoeGamer recently, if you'd care to check it out) — and it hasn't taken me long to remember exactly why I enjoy this type of experience so much. I have been once again trying something that I did a while back with some success, which is to replace watching a TV show or YouTube videos over lunch with a visual novel on auto-play, and it's a fine way to enjoy the unfolding story. In fact, I've often found that the bit of time I get to enjoy some of the story at lunchtime makes me more inclined to want to continue after work in the evening.

Following Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, I've started a VN that's been on my shelf for a very long time, but which I've not yet got around to. It's called WorldEnd Syndrome, and it's by the same company as Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death. In fact, it supposedly unfolds in the same narrative "universe", though exactly what that means is so far not clear; the main setting and core cast are different, so I suspect it may just be a case of the two games having a similar overall vibe.

One of the things I really like about visual novels is the fact it feels like you're really getting to spend some quality time with a (hopefully) interesting cast of characters — characters who you will doubtless have an initial reaction to, and may well change your opinion of over the course of a complete story that involves them. This was certainly the case with Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, which has an excellent ensemble cast who have a lot of chemistry with one another, and plenty of interesting things to learn about them. The only unfortunate thing is that the concluding hours of the story are very much setting up a sequel and possibly a larger series of multiple games, and so I was left rather wanting more at the end of proceedings!

As someone who has often suffered loneliness, and who has difficulties with self-esteem and confidence when even contemplating socialising with real people out in the real, three-dimensional world, visual novels have always provided a certain sense of comfort. By their very nature, they include you in a close-knit group of people, and give you a sense of "belonging" — even if the way their narrative is constructed makes it clear that you are not the protagonist yourself; you just happen to be riding along in their head, able to hear their innermost thoughts.

A lot of visual novel writers are clearly wise to this particular appeal element of the medium, too, as many of them are set up with characters designed to be varying degrees of relatable, dealing with real-life issues that anyone can understand — and that is comforting. Although the people involved are not real, knowing that someone is aware enough of feelings that you have had to be able to compose a story that involves and acknowledges those feelings — and perhaps even provides some suggestions on how to cope with them (or how not to cope with them) — is reassuring and, in its own way, helps counter some of the loneliness the modern age brings with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing how WorldEnd Syndrome unfolds. I'm only a short way into it so far — still in the introduction, very clearly — but it's already intriguing, and from what I understand, this one does some interesting things with narrative structure. So I might just go and read a bit before bed, now…

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#oneaday Day 498: Forgetful... again

Ooh, I forgot to write something yesterday, again. To be honest, yesterday just sort of went by in a haze. I don't feel like I really "achieved" anything. We went food shopping, which was something, but aside from that, not a lot happened. I didn't even really feel like I had much time to spend doing things I enjoy — before I knew it, the day was just over.

I did play the demo for the upcoming Nighthawks on Steam, though. I'll likely write something more substantial about this soon, but my first impressions on this short-but-sweet demo were very encouraging.

For the unfamiliar, Nighthawks is an adventure game/visual novel/RPG type thing published by adventure game maestros Wadjet Eye Games and developed by The Curiosity Engine. It's a vampire-themed game that obviously takes some heavy cues from Vampire: The Masquerade without actually using the World of Darkness license. Which is good, because it sounds as if the long-awaited Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has turned out to be… not so good. As if anyone is surprised at that after its cursed development cycle.

Nighthawks, though — that gets the whole World of Darkness vibe, with a few interesting twists. For starters, in the world of Nighthawks, humanity is aware of the existence of vampires, so no need for the "Masquerade". That said, making use of your vampiric powers somewhere that you can be noticed is still frowned upon, so you still have to be a bit careful.

The game starts with you creating a character by establishing some elements of your background: where you came from, who your sire was, what your specialisms are. From there, you're thrown into the plot proper, where you arrive in town in search of a former contact who has absconded with something precious to you. As a pretty new vampire, you have no money to your name, no contacts and no reputation, so it's up to you to establish all these things — and I believe the full game ends up with you owning the eponymous nightclub and having to run it.

I really like what I've seen so far, and I'm going to try playing the demo again with a different character archetype to see what — if anything — changes. It looks as if it's going to be one of those games where you can very much "role-play" your character and have a markedly different experience depending on your choices, both during character creation and once the game proper is underway.

The demo is still up at the time of writing as part of Steam Next Fest, so be sure to download it and give it a go if it sounds like your sort of thing. In the absence of a good Vampire: The Masquerade game (though I must confess I never played those visual novels from a while back) it's looking like it has the potential to be a very good substitute.

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#oneaday Day 166: Only seven years late... and then some

Longtime readers of my blog and MoeGamer will know that the visual novel series Grisaia has been something of a defining influence on my media tastes for quite some time. Indeed, over on MoeGamer there's probably a book's worth of words on the first two games that I invite you to read at your leisure.

And yet. And yet. For some reason, despite coming to the end of second entry The Labyrinth of Grisaia in 2017 and being incredibly excited about the cliffhanger it ended on, and curious on how it might end up… I have only just got around to making a start on the final part of the original trilogy The Eden of Grisaia. I say "the original trilogy", because since The Eden of Grisaia's release in English, there have been numerous non-canonical spinoff titles released in the series, plus an entire second series of games known as Grisaia Phantom Trigger which, I believe, is eight volumes long. (Granted, I believe one "volume" of Phantom Trigger is a tad shorter than one of the original three Grisaia games, but still.)

Anyway, like I say, I have finally got around to starting The Eden of Grisaia. I was concerned it would be tough to get back into after seven years away from the series, but almost immediately I was reminded why I love this series, and why I've always considered it so important to me. So I'm definitely going to make reading through this final volume from the first trilogy an absolute priority, because I am thrilled to be back in the company of these characters.

But what is Grisaia? I mean, my simple answer to that is "go read the MoeGamer articles linked above", but you may not have the time to read a five-figure word count on the subject. So I will attempt to summarise the series thus:

Grisaia is, in part, a coming-of-age story about people finding their place in the world. This might not sound particularly unusual for a visual novel, and indeed Grisaia initially looks like it's doing its very best to be a fairly conventional high school romance sort of affair. There's an unvoiced male protagonist, a harem of young women who all come to adore him for one reason or another, nookie (in the 18+ version, anyway, which is absolutely the version you should be playing) and multiple endings.

But there's one fairly large spanner thrown in the works almost immediately, and that is the protagonist in question: Yuuji Kazami. He is anything but a "self-insert" or cipher for the player, and right from the opening moments of the first installment The Fruit of Grisaia it's clear that something is up with him. We join him just as he has walked 150km to get to his new school, Mihama Academy, and over the course of his interactions with the five main heroines, we come to learn that he has a mysterious "job".

Initially, the details of this "job" are kept exceedingly vague, but it becomes apparent very quickly that Yuuji is no ordinary high school boy. He is wise — and cynical — well beyond his years, and he uses this experience to help the heroines in various ways. He by no means acts as a "magic bullet" to solve all their problems for them, but his experience in the ways of the world helps him form an incredibly close bond with all five of them. In the original The Fruit of Grisaia, these bonds are implied to be exclusive, and indeed there are even "After Stories" in second part The Labyrinth of Grisaia that continue on that assumption.

But the main story of Grisaia really gets started in The Labyrinth of Grisaia. It's there we learn all about Yuuji's background — which I won't spoil here for the moment, but it's fair to say he is cynical, jaded and experienced in some curiously specialised skills with very good reason — and the whole thing concludes on a dramatic moment that effectively seems to take Yuuji completely out of the picture.

Now, it's a bold series that seemingly removes its protagonist from proceedings two-thirds of the way through, but that's exactly how final part The Eden of Grisaia starts. We switch to third-person narration and follow, for the most part, the exploits of the five heroines as they leave Mihama Academy behind and take on the seemingly impossible task of getting Yuuji back. We have occasional cuts back to Yuuji's present situation, but the focus is still very much on the heroines. At least it has been for as far as I've read so far.

This is a really interesting narrative technique, because it makes it abundantly clear that while The Fruit of Grisaia very much had a kind of "dating sim"-style setup in which you had to pick the right choices to get onto your favourite girl's route and then pick the right choices to get her "good" ending, The Labyrinth and The Eden of Grisaia have a very specific story to tell. Indeed, the main narratives of both unfold as a kinetic novel with no player input whatsoever. It's testament to the quality of the writing (and the translation) that Grisaia remains so thoroughly compelling, even after it takes away both the player's already limited agency in proceedings and the character they were supposed to be "inhabiting".

Don't mistake the switch to third-person narration as being boring, though. The Eden of Grisaia's narrator may be omniscient and non-participant, but they very much have a personality of their own, and they have some exceedingly entertaining remarks to make at times — usually at the expense of Michiru Matsushima, the group's resident "idiot".

Thus far I am very much back in Grisaia mode, and I can't wait to see what happens next. I also know that Grisaia games are a very long read — honestly, it's knowing there are probably 30+ hours of reading ahead that caused me to put off Eden for so long — but I am going to take my time and enjoy it.

In the meantime, if you've never explored the series for yourself, I still highly recommend it. Yes, it's a bit of a commitment to read all of it, to say the least, but it's a journey well worth taking. It's regarded as an absolute classic of the medium with very good reason, and my "Complete Box" version of it that I have on my shelf is absolutely one of my prized gaming-related possessions.

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#oneaday Day 142: More sound novels, please

Playing through Death Mark and now its sequel NG, I'm once again struck by how much I like the "sound novel" approach to Japanese-style adventure games. I last encountered this style of presentation back when I looked at 428: Shibuya Scramble, and I liked it a lot there, too. And I'd like to see more of it.

For the unfamiliar, a "sound novel" is usually a form of visual novel in which audible character speech (as in, voice acting) is eschewed in favour of presenting narration and dialogue exclusively (or almost exclusively in the case of Death Mark and NG) through text. To counterbalance the "loss" of this aspect that is normally found in most visual novels these days, sound novels place a much stronger emphasis on ambient audio.

That means unlike many other visual novels, which tend to have continuous background music as their main accompaniment to the action, sound novels attempt to create a sense of "immersion" in the game environment via a slightly different means. It's a uniquely "video game" way of doing things, and the more I experience it, the more I really like it.

Part of the reason I appreciate it is because I'm a fast reader, and when I'm playing a visual novel with full voice acting, I find it very difficult to make myself advance the text before the speech has finished playing — even if the speech is not in a language I understand. This is because I know that there is often some very good voice acting in visual novels — it tends to be where a lot of the budget goes — and I worry that I might miss out on some particularly dramatic or emotional moments if I skip the sound.

The game that got me into this habit was Corpse Party on PSP, which is kind of sort of a visual novel, only with RPG-style exploration. The voice acting in that game was so good that I not only listened to every line in its entirety, even though I don't speak Japanese, I also made listening to the Japanese voice track my norm in most games (well, those that originated in Japan, anyway) I played from thereon.

But I'm always just a bit conscious of the fact that all that lovely voice acting is slowing me down, and since I inevitably read a line faster than it's spoken — particularly if we're dealing with one of those characters that speaks incredibly slowly — I can occasionally feel my attention wandering. Now, I could just skip the dialogue and move on to the next line, but like I say, there's a little switch in my brain that's flipped, and I can't flip it back; it just doesn't feel right to do that.

Sound novels, though, present no such difficulty. I can romp through Death Mark and NG (and indeed 428: Shibuya Scramble before them) at completely my own pace. I don't need to wait for a voice actor, I don't need to wait for a dramatic moment, I just read and advance. And I really like it.

This got me thinking more broadly about how I'm settling into a place where I feel like I actually prefer the games that deliberately hold themselves back from trying to be "realistic" in various ways. I played Death Mark immediately after the Silent Hill 2 remake, and while the Silent Hill 2 remake was indisputably excellent, I think I'm actually drifting into a place where I enjoyed Death Mark more in terms of the way it was presented to me. And I'm enjoying NG even more than Death Mark, because it's doing a lot of the same things, only it feels a bit more polished and refined.

So I think I'm in a place where the "sound novel" approach is fast becoming one of my favourite ways to present an interactive narrative. It's got the descriptive text and well-crafted dialogue I enjoy, it's got incredibly atmospheric ambient sound to feel "immersive", and I can play through it at completely my own pace, rather than being arbitrarily limited by my inability to skip through voice-acted lines.

Of course, in the other games I suppose I could just turn the voice acting off. But then I feel like I'm deliberately depriving myself of an important part of that game's presentation.

Oh, woe is me. I realise, of course, that this is a completely pointless problem to be worrying about, and, to be honest, I'm not actually worrying about it at all. It just struck me as something interesting while I was playing NG this evening, and I hope I can find some more sound novels to enjoy once I'm done with the Spirit Hunter series.

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#oneaday Day 86: Emio - Roll Credits

I just finished Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, the new Nintendo Switch release that, as the name suggests, acts as an official sequel to the two classic Famicom Detective Club games that were first released on Famicom Disk System, and subsequently remade for Switch a couple of years back. You can read my thoughts on both of them here and here.

I'll do a "proper" writeup on the game at some point in the next few days over on MoeGamer, but suffice to say for now that it was excellent, and acts as a wonderful successor to the already very good two predecessors.

For the unfamiliar, the Famicom Detective Club series unfolds as Japanese-style adventure games. That means you spend the majority of your time selecting actions from a menu, reading a lot of dialogue and searching for the next "trigger" to move the story along. Japanese adventures are more about the plot than solving puzzles; to put it another way, they are the modern equivalent of the narrative-centric "interactive fiction" versus the mechanics-centric "text adventures".

The first two Famicom Detective Club titles occasionally lapsed into "click on every option multiple times until something happens", which was mildly annoying, but this new third one makes the sensible decision of highlighting important words and phrases in the dialogue which generally gives you a solid idea of what you need to do next. You can actually turn this feature off if you prefer, but honestly just leaving it on is the best way to keep the story flowing.

The story this time around concerns a dead body that has been found. The corpse is a student named Eisuke, and he appears to have been strangled. Unusually, his corpse was found with a paper bag over his head, and a creepy smiley face scrawled crudely on the bag. What then follows is your attempts (as both the self-insert protagonist from the first two games and his long-suffering coworker Ayumi) to solve the case by interviewing suspects, examining important locations and gradually piecing everything together.

In the tradition of Japanese adventure games, you're not really "doing" much beyond simply advancing the plot, but that's fine. There's no "moon logic" to worry about here; it's just about enjoying the story unfold, and occasionally demonstrating that you've understood what you've witnessed through short "Review" sequences that quiz you on the most recent happenings. There aren't really any consequences for getting these wrong other than Ayumi giving you the stink-eye, but that will be punishment enough for many players.

I'll refrain from saying any more about the plot for the moment for the sake of spoilers, but I will say it's refreshing and welcome to see Nintendo going unabashedly adult with this one. It's PEGI 18 rated with good reason; it does not pull punches, and I mean that in several respects. The game is all the better for not holding back; it drives home the fact that the case you're investigating is very serious for a number of different reasons, and the complex motivations of the many characters you'll encounter over the course of the plot will keep you intrigued right up until the end.

I was also impressed by how comprehensively it wrapped things up by the conclusion. It pulls a little bit of a fast one on you in this regard, but I'll leave exactly how for you to discover.

Anyway, yes; Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is proof that the Switch very much still has plenty to offer in what most people are assuming is its twilight year. And it's yet another reminder, if one were needed, that modern gaming isn't actually all that bad, really — so long as you steer clear of the shit bits.

More on MoeGamer at some point this week.

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2485: The Value of Short Experiences

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You know me, dear reader, I love getting my teeth into a meaty RPG as much as the next man — assuming the next man is as much of a loser as I am — but sometimes it's nice to cleanse the palate with something shorter. Perhaps even something that you can finish in a single sitting.

I thought this with Outlast and its DLC, which I played recently, and I've also thought it with the visual novel Negligee, which I'm going to do a writeup for on MoeGamer later this week. I also think it whenever I play games that are friendly to bite-size sessions, like arcade-style games where the emphasis is on getting better at a short, sharp experience rather than slogging your way through hundreds of levels.

There seems to be something of an assumption among many people online these days that a game somehow lacks value if its developers don't "support" it post-release with regular updates. Now, in some cases, this makes sense — massively multiplayer games like Final Fantasy XIV would grow stale quickly if they didn't get an injection of new stuff to do now and then, for example — but in others, particularly games that are heavily story-based, there's a great deal of value in simply drawing a line under it, saying "that's it" and calling it finished.

This clamouring for constant updates is particularly pronounced in the mobile game sector, where a lot of games seem to have designs on being "massively multiplayer" experiences anyway, even when they involve little to no actual player interaction. Google Play and App Store reviewers (and, to a marginally lesser extent, Steam reviewers) will get seriously whiny if even the dumbest of timewasters doesn't have regular updates with new levels or seasonal events or whatever — and even worse if the experience costs "too much" for what they perceive the mythical money-to-hours ratio is supposed to be — and it always bothers me a bit. Are they seriously saying that they don't want that game to ever end, that they'll be happy doing nothing but flicking birds at pigs or matching candy sweets forever? I can't imagine feeling that way. I need new and interesting things to do on a fairly regular basis; while my longstanding love affair with Final Fantasy XIV would seem to run counter to this statement, that game does at least reinvent itself with new stuff every so often, and I play other things alongside it anyway.

Back to the original point, though: there is a great deal of value in shorter experiences that forego bloat and filler in favour of a concise but still enjoyable experience. Not everything needs to be a 50+ hour epic, at least partly because no-one has time to play all the 50+ hour epics that are already out there, let alone a new one.

Outlast would have got exhausting and tiresome if it was any longer than it was — the main game was already skating on that boundary by the time I finished it; I much preferred the snappier DLC — and Negligee tells the story it wants to tell in less than an hour, albeit with eleven different endings to encourage replays. A game that provides an enjoyable experience without taking over your whole life is something to be celebrated, particularly when you're waiting for the next exciting thing to come over the horizon as I am right now with the imminent Final Fantasy XV. And I for one am glad that there are plenty of developers out there who don't feel the need to add unnecessary bloat to their games for the sake of an artificially inflated playtime, or a set of Achievements, or simply because the ever-whiny general public insists that £15 is "too much" for a game that is over in two hours.

Short game developers, I salute you, and you'll always have my business in that awkward period just before a big release! 🙂

2476: The Growth of the Visual Novel

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When discussing my full writeup on Supipara earlier today, it occurred to me that visual novels are in a much better place here in the West than they were even a few years ago.

When I first encountered visual novels — like, first first encountered them — they were like a hidden gem of the Internet. Gorgeous Japanese pixel art, interesting stories, memorable characters and porn, all in one happy package. Naturally, despite a number of them having been officially translated by the well-established (and still standing) JAST USA, they were mostly distributed through… shall we say, questionable means. (If I remember correctly, this was still the days of KaZaA and Limewire over dial-up, well before BitTorrent became a thing.)

I had a lot of fun with some of these early visual novels but was never quite sure if it was "acceptable" to talk about them, what with them being widely regarded as porn first and foremost. Fortunately, a number of friends and I all discovered Parsley's wonderful True Love around the same time, and found ourselves thoroughly captivated by its wide variety of different characters, its interesting stat-based gameplay and the various mini-stories each of the game's heroines got you involved with.

Other memorable early visual novels I encountered included Ring-Out!! which was about a young girl sold into essentially sex slavery dressed up as professional (all-lesbian) wrestling for the gratification of rich, bored playboys with nothing better to do and less-than-progressive attitudes towards women. While this game's plot was a thinly-veiled excuse to have, well, lots of lesbian wrestling in lingerie, it stuck with me long after I first played it because it presented the protagonist as a very "human" character caught up in events beyond her control, not quite sure how to deal with what was essentially a horrific situation to be caught in. There were a number of different narrative paths through the game, each of which explored what might happen if the protagonist responded to her situation in different ways. Short version, though: if ever you wanted to feel really, really bad about popping a boner over some lesbians doing lesbian things, Ring-Out!! is the game for you.

I also quite vividly remember Three Sisters Story, because although it presented you with the opportunity to bump uglies with all three of the titular sisters over the course of the narrative, doing so would cause you to suffer the indignity of a bad ending where you didn't end up with any of them after the dramatic finale. This was surprising to me, and confirmed something I already suspected: there was a lot more going on in many of these games than excuses to display lovingly-drawn images of depraved sexual acts.

It would be a good few years before I got back into visual novels, and Japanese games in general. I typically credit Katawa Shoujo with my current interest in Japanese popular media, despite it being largely Western-developed, and by this point, discussion of visual novels — including their lewd bits — had become much more "acceptable" to many, though still not all, people.

After Katawa Shoujo, I decided to catch up on a number of visual novels, primarily from JAST, who were still pumping them out, and a couple from relative newcomer MangaGamer. I had a great time with many of them, and still fondly look back on a number of these titles such as the gloriously silly My Girlfriend is the President and the lengthy, emotional road trip story that is Kira-Kira!

Visual novels still hadn't quite hit the mainstream, though, and this was disappointing to me, as here was a genre of game — no, I've often argued it's a distinct medium in its own right — that was exploring subjects and themes more traditional games typically shied away from for various reasons, whether it be concerns over the subject matter itself to simply not being sure how to make a game about people just living their life actually fun and interesting to play. I wanted more people to appreciate this fantastic medium and enjoy the stories I'd enjoyed, but it remained difficult to convince many people that they were anything more than just porn, even if I cited specific examples of how they clearly weren't.

When I look around today, I see a very different landscape. Visual novels are everywhere on Steam, and not just from Japanese developers: these days we have works from English, American, Russian, Korean authors… authors from all over the world who want to tell their story in the distinctive way that the visual novel medium allows them to. And the genre/medium as a whole has, I feel, finally hit the mainstream.

That's absolutely delightful to see for me, as someone who was around when they were very much an "underground" sort of experience; the growth of the visual novel sector — both adult and all-ages — has been wonderful to observe, and so long as there are great stories that people want to tell, there seems to be no shortage of new experiences to enjoy.

There's still work to be done — most notably with regard to the distribution of adults-only titles, which can't be sold on leading digital distribution platform Steam in their uncut forms, and which some companies are selling the sexual content for separately rather than simply providing a free patch or alternative download — but for the most part, we're in a much better place than we were even a couple of years ago. And, I feel, it's only going to continue to get better from here.

Also, buy Supipara. (Read more about why you should do this here.) I want to see the other chapters released!

2472: minori

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As I've noted previously, I'm going to do a full write-up on minori's kinetic novel Supipara Chapter 1 (localised by MangaGamer — if you feel like picking it up, doing so through that affiliate link gets me a few very welcome cents) at some point in the very near future over on MoeGamer, but I have to finish reading it first!

In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to appreciate what developer minori has done with Supipara and, I believe, with their other works, which I'm yet to familiarise myself with, but which I have bumped right up the list after getting about halfway through Supipara.

Most visual novels fall into one of two categories.

Novel types fill the screen with a text box and narrate everything, just like a regular novel, and images appear in the background behind the text box — usually a combination of unique images for the situation, and character sprites to depict who is present or talking. Good examples of this approach include Kana Little Sister and Kira-Kira!, both of which are highly recommended if you want some compelling, character-driven stories that will make you cry your eyes out on numerous occasions.

Adventure types look more "gamey" in that they have a smaller text window, usually at the bottom of the screen, and for the most part they unfold from first-person perspective, with characters looking "out of the screen" at you, or, more accurately, at the protagonist. Particularly important scenes are marked by "event" images that eschew the usual perspective in favour of a unique image to depict what is going on. In adults-only visual novels, the sex scenes fall into this category, but they're also used to highlight important events in character development too.

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minori's approach is closer to the adventure type, but with a much less game-like aesthetic, more carefully crafted and directed to appear almost more like an animated movie than a typical visual novel.

Your typical adventure type visual novel doesn't tend to shift the perspective around too much. Characters all stand in front of the protagonist, regardless of whether they're talking to him or to each other, and they all look "out" of the screen. In Supipara, meanwhile, there's a much more dynamic approach to presentation: we get different perspectives and camera angles, mostly reflecting the protagonist looking in different directions, much as you would when interacting with real groups of people, but also to highlight important moments in conversations.

Perhaps most notably, minori isn't afraid to show the back of characters' heads, which isn't something you'd think is particularly unusual until you notice quite how much they do it. Only then does it dawn on you that no, this doesn't normally happen; the player-protagonist is normally the centre of attention, even if they aren't being directly addressed, and it's a little strange to see characters turning away from you to address other people.

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This adds an interesting twist to the aesthetic at times, allowing you to feel like you're "standing with" a character while another addresses the pair of you. At other times, it is used to make it feel like you're walking along behind a character, or that they've turned to leave. It's a very effective touch that makes a big difference to the overall presentation.

And that presentation is overall absolutely stunning. Supipara is without a doubt one of the most gorgeous visual novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and its art is animated, too. Characters blink, mouths move, poses change in the middle of utterances. It gives the whole work a huge amount of personality and makes it enormously compelling. The characters are already well-written, but seeing them acting more "human" than simple static sprites helps make them even more adorable.

As for the story, well, I won't spoil anything for now — at least partly because I haven't yet finished it! — but it's an interesting blend between light-hearted high school slice of life and some stranger, supernatural goings-on. It has a very pleasant tone to it with some wonderful characters and a gorgeous setting that I want to spend the rest of my life in. And irritatingly catchy music.

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Full write-up coming soon on MoeGamer, but in the meantime, pick up Supipara with confidence — both because it's a great visual novel in its own right, but also because doing so helps fund the rest of the series' development and localisation!

2470: The Not-Games

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There seems to be a perpetual struggle in the world of video game enthusiasts to define exactly what is and is not a game.

At the head of this nontroversy is Fullbright Studios' Gone Home, a first-person interactive story where you walk around a house sans its inhabitants, piecing together a number of different plot threads scattered around the place, some of which are more explicit than others — and some of which are handled better than others. I liked Gone Home, but I felt like its "main" story — the one that lets you "finish" the game when you reach its ultimately rather mundane conclusion, despite what it has built you up to expect — was by far its weakest aspect, with much more interesting things going on through the "unspoken" stories: the bottle of whiskey hidden on top of a bookcase; the condoms in a drawer; the documents lying around the place.

To some people, Gone Home isn't a game, much as similar games in the genre that has become semi-derisively known as "walking simulator" aren't considered games either. Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and others like them: all too many people are far too hung up on the rather dull question of whether or not they are actually a game rather than unpacking the dense, interesting narratives that each of these experiences feature.

For some reason, visual novels appear to largely escape this sort of discussion, despite being less interactive than a walking simulator. In your average visual novel, you click through reams of text for hours and hours and hours and occasionally make a choice. In a particular subset of the visual novel called the kinetic novel, you don't even make any choices: you just read and read and read, and then it's over with you not having actually done anything.

Even these almost entirely non-interactive affairs don't seem to get lambasted in the same way as Gone Home and its ilk, though, despite arguably being less of a "game" than something that has a 3D engine, WSAD movement controls and mouselook. In fact, even some of the most well-regarded games in the genre — The Fruit of Grisaia is the most prominent that springs to mind — only have maybe one or two meaningful choices to make in the whole game, with each acting as a fairly transparent means of setting a flag as to which character's route you're going to follow, and whether your get their Good or Bad ending.

I wonder why this is? Is it subject matter? No, I don't think so, because while, say, Gone Home has its narrow-minded detractors for being "progressive" — I think the statute of limitations is probably up on it by now and we can say its main story is actually about a young lesbian couple running away together — there are certainly plenty of well-regarded visual novels out there that deal sensitively with homosexuality, both male-male and female-female.

Is it about artistic intent and the overall "honesty" of the work? Perhaps. Titles such as Everybody's Gone to the Rapture often draw ire for being "pretentious" and, while I enjoyed all of the titles I've mentioned thus far, it's kind of hard to argue with that label. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture in particular feels very much like a case of "let's make this as arty and confusing as possible" before kind of running out of steam in its final moments and getting just a bit too silly and implausible. Dear Esther suffers from a similar problem, deliberately mixing a number of different narratives together — with some randomisation in the mix, too — to try and obfuscate what the whole damn thing is actually about for as long as possible. The Stanley Parable, meanwhile, completely runs with this and knows exactly what it is doing, laughing along with the player at every opportunity, too.

Contrast with a visual novel, such as the one I'm currently reading/playing: Supipara, by minori. Supipara is a kinetic novel: there are no choices whatsoever. Yet it's charming, compelling and addictive purely by virtue of its beautiful presentation, likeable and mysterious characters and intriguing premise that blends the mundanity of a slice-of-life tale with elements of the supernatural.

At no point does Supipara let any part of itself run away or overwhelm the rest of it. Its supernatural elements are incorporated honestly and without attempts to obfuscate or explain them away as quickly as possible, hoping we won't notice — Life is Strange, I'm looking at you. It just is what it is, and it invites you to judge it on that basis. There's no need to critically analyse it just to understand what the fuck happened in it — though this isn't to say there isn't value in applying some literary theory to unpack the various subtexts and themes in it — and thus it can be enjoyed on a number of different levels without Dear Esther's implicit suggestion that "you must be this smart to enjoy this ride".

I don't have an answer to the question "is [x] actually a game?" because your definition of "game" will doubtless be different from mine. Ultimately it doesn't really matter, anyway; the only thing you should be asking yourself when engaging with a piece of interactive entertainment — regardless of how interactive — is, quite simply, "is this a good use of my time?" If yes, great. If no, maybe put it down and try something else instead, while acknowledging the fact that some people might enjoy it more than you. There's really no need for the bitter arguments that have ensued since technology has allowed developers to get a bit more "artsy" with their creations.

Supipara is great, by the way. I'm going to do a full write-up on MoeGamer in the near future once I've read the whole thing, but for now I'll say it's one of the most beautifully presented visual novels I've ever seen, has a compelling, if low-key story, and some grade-A waifus. And what more, really, do you need to have a good time of an evening?