August is a slow month, so I decided to break the monotony and try out a few Visual Novel Dating Sims created by other people. I played four that are at least interesting enough to check out. Inspiring Celina Story by Superawesomemans Graphics by Sylakone2 Download and Online play link This is the newest and the best of the four
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After just shy of a month of my open beta test, with 30,000 downloads, I have learned a few things. Thought I’d post some thoughts, as well as give people an opportunity to point out other stuff I might have missed. First the good news, it seems Something’s In The Air is a critical success. Everyone seems to like it
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Now that the game is out, I thought I’d write some commentaries on the game, throw some insights into my thinking. I’m doing this as a “Director’s Commentary” like you might have in a DVD if this was a movie. This post will contain spoilers! If you have not played story 1 yet, download the game now and play it
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I did a close beta test with a couple of people I know. They both indicated (and the truth is I agree) that the Bonnie the Bartender story was the weakest. Since none of you have seen the game, you don’t know what I am talking about. Basically, she is a bartender you pick up at the end of her
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After working on it for over a year, I am declaring an end to the “Principal Photography” portion of Something’s In The Air. When I started this project I had in mind a 6 story visual novel. It got whittled down to 4. One (a “romantic” story) was dropped because I couldn’t figure out how to make it interesting. Another
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I promised earlier that I would introduce some characters of the visual novel when I was done doing their story. I finally finished story 4, which is the largest of the 6 stories, and the one I needed to finish to get it out of the way, so I could move to the easier stuff. I am trying to make
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A lot of people have the wrong idea about “the sequel”, and it is probably my fault for calling it “the sequel”, so maybe I should take a post to clarify my master plan and set the record straight. I suspect that, like the character update, there will be those that will say “That sounds awesome!”, and others that will
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So what is a Visual Novel? Well that depends on what direction you come from. From a static media perspective, the visual novel is a comic book with choices. From a video game perspective, its a graphic adventure game without an inventory to keep track of. They all have text and pictures. Most have choices to make, some tell a linear story (aka Kinetic Visual Novels) without choices. Most are hand drawn graphics. Some have voice over, music, sound effects, some pictures are animated.
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It wasn’t too long after releasing the first version that I discovered I was wrong. A whole genre of “Dating Sims” had risen and declined in the decade before my game. My ignorance can be forgiven since all of this happened in Japan, and nowhere else.
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Date Ariane Games 