Apparently, we haven’t yet covered Seiyuu Danshi, which is a great shame. It’s a visual novel about a young voice actor who doesn’t take his job very seriously. One day, he gets a new boss who forces him into gear.
This is a different kind of visual novel. Along with the usual reading and making dialog choices, you also have a few other things to worry about. You’re given a map of the in-game world and can go wherever you want, whenever you want. You can hang with friends at the mall, catch a movie, go out to eat, go home and look at porn (yes, really), or you can find some gigs.
The thing is, you also have to go to voice acting school every day, as well as attend other optional classes in order to gain experience. Your level of experience will determine how good an actor you are, and how much people respect you. It becomes a balancing act between school, your job and your social life, and you have to constantly deal with your stress levels.
It’s also Yaoi game, by the way.
I recently played the demo for our Youtube channel, and I had a great time. Most of that was because, somewhat ironically, the demo had no voice acting and I was providing my own.
But even then, I was impressed by how detailed the demo was. It covered many of the mechanics that will be in the final game, including the open world. It’s an impressively polished demo, there were no bugs, the art was fantastic, and the writing was better than most visual novels. There were one or two lines that were oddly translated, this game is being made in Indonesia, but they were few and far between.
Voice acting isn’t a passive experience, you have to choose how to read your lines.
Other people seem to agree, as the Kickstarter blew past it’s $5,000 in only 9 hours. So far, several stretch goals have been met including voice acting, and a vitally important underwear option. Don’t worry visual novel fans, the obligatory beach scene stretch goal was unlocked as well. As was a $11,300 “condom option” stretch goal. I didn’t realize condoms were so expensive. Well, I mean… I do, I use them all the time… yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgmCrz48-gA
A humorous article that doesn’t rely on ironic snark and actually takes the game it’s about seriously? You’re doing millennial humor wrong, dude.
Great article tho. And more people should definitely be talking about this game. Even if Yaoi isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, a VN with actual gameplay is an amazing accomplishment.
It’s funny you should mention that, I was thinking about just writing “GAAAAAAAAY” over and over again, but decided against it.
But yeah, Yaoi isn’t really my kind of thing, but the demo was fantastic. It was well polished, better written than a lot of VN’s, and the gameplay didn’t feel tacked on, it was actually fun.
I just realized I like writing the phrase “blew past it’s initial goal” a little too much. New drinking game?