Oof... How to begin? Starting off with a general round-up here.

Thing is, my current game project is currently unnamed along with most of the characters, as of setting up this page. I've got most other things figured out by now! More on that further down though!

While I've tried to tinker with different game development software, I am by far most comfortable to work in the visual novel engine Ren'py. Once you crack that thing open and play with code there's so much more one can do than dating sims or kinetic novels and the comminity around it constantly shares new codes to try out if you're ready to tackle a wall of alien language to get it working. Honestly it's very similar to how neocites got a community with web design resources and teaching new people how to set up html? (Or at least the impression I've gotten?) It'd be really cool to get the coding community in on to see what more people can cook up.

That said, I absolutely agree with the common opinion that visual novels are hard to get into from a gaming perspective... Compared to most other game genres it can feel more like reading a motion comic through your console or a light novel put on as a puppet theater for adult nerds. And thats not to dunk on visual novels! Many of those are genuinely enjoyable when in the mood, but I have a hard time even replaying my favorite stories on days where I play games to burn stress. I'm one of the people who actually enjoy Digimon: Survive above the other open-world titles in the series but I find myself getting frustrated on replays whenever I pick it back up. The best way I could put it to words was that I wanted to rush that game into surgery for like the 5th time and patch it up in the way it gave me the Danganronpa impressions before release! Both are made in the same medium, it shouldn't be that hard! So I've found myself script-doctoring Digimon: Survive and any VNs that has given me that same conflicting feeling until that was something that became a pursuit of it's own.

After scratching off the paint and looking into the history of the visual novel medium, it's come to my understanding that the expected style has regressed significantly since it's golden age in the 90's. Thinking back to the few 90's adventure games I played on my own family's pc as a kid it's hard to picture anything surpassing Freddi Fish so I had to agree. The 1990's knew whats good.

I learned that most of those fabled 'classic' visual novel games mostly never left Japan and Ren'py was put together in the first place by that markets' western fans. And what's worse was that the really impressive ones were made for a Japan-exclusive computer! So after the roadblocks of both a language barrier and finicky emulation options for PC-98, I felt stumped. The screenshots I found looked absolutely gorgeous to boot. With mainly screenshot observations and online text reviews I began to try and puzzle the gameplay elements together.

Firstly; I learned that they were referred to as 'Adventure Games', a variation from the point-and-click classification that's more common today. (Just like Freddi Fish!!!). The mechanics were simple but seemed very interesting use of limited software options. Some very creative uses of the choose-your-own-adventure features in ways that are less common in branching narratives today.

Secondly; this is a staggering amount of porn. And I mean, it's almost exclusively porn. Even more serious titles seemed to include it out of obligation. These games look so non-sexual and lovingly crafted pixel-by-pixel that I thought it couldn't possibly be that much smut. It is. Apparently these are in large part the reason why censorship got so heavily enforced on the game and manga market after? I am not confident it's the only factor but it seems to have been a pretty big nail in that coffin. It also explains why none of them got officially translated...

I don't have beef with sexual media and firmly believe it has its own cultural worth that deserves a space and to be preserved. But, damn, I was very happy to have done so much reading first instead of blindly trying to emulate an abandonware copy I did not understand. A lot of these titles most likely wouldn't even be legal for me to have with some of their contents...

Happy to report that I have since found and done some field research playing a few select pc98 that has been unofficially translated and will write up my findings from them and any future observations in the research page. They don't contain anything too compromising and are safe to look into for anyone else curious.

So, about my project... The takeaway from all that research is that I still want to try and recreate the elements I really enjoyed from that bygone era of visual novels. As well as to spice up my own game design choices. Because besides a mountain of questionable pixel pornography I did find a genuinely interesting variation of point-and-click that I wish there was more of. Something about those overly decorated UI frames and unique branch of pixel art made me crave more of that variation as well. Hell, retro anime in general got a special flavor to it. And isn't retro horror the cool thing everyone is doing nowardays?

Even if I cannot write something actually scary, I would love to recreate the gloomy atmosphere. Make it a homage to common tropes of the 80-90's. The way those backgrounds had the most aggressively thick TVs or brown leather couches made me feel nostalgic about Murder She Wrote or Stephen King movies in the same way Silent Hill 1-2 did.

As of writing this, I've come far enough with prototypes to set up game tests in Ren'py. With some luck, my motivation will last long enough for me to at least put up a demo and collect feedback through places like this. And if not, I can pick it up again when I do with what I leave here. It's probably not a good omen that I'm writing this the same way you find notes along survival a horror games to learn what went terribly wrong. But OH WELL.

Come with me on this journey to recreate a version of Freddi Fish (that's not under water, slightly sexier and with a few more human corpses)?

Get in the car, loser. Current progress and details are in the little buttons somewhere on here.