Last month, PQube announced that it will bring Iwakura Aria to Western territories later this year. I do not know why I’m only receiving a press release now, dated for today, so I’m a bit bummed I didn’t get to talk about this pre-holidays! Iwakura Aria is a suspense visual novel developed by MAGES.; it launched for Nintendo Switch in…
Last month, PQube announced that it will bring Iwakura Aria to Western territories later this year. I do not know why I’m only receiving a press release now, dated for today, so I’m a bit bummed I didn’t get to talk about this pre-holidays! Iwakura Aria is a suspense visual…
Read MoreGrizzly Man is the fourth title in LCB Game Studio’s Pixel Pulps series, beginning a second trilogy titled “Pixel Pulps DTV Collection.” (DTV is short for direct-to-video.) It is a psychedelic slasher game about a former MIB agent who was severely injured in a mysterious attack, waking up with full…
Read MoreIdea Factory International is bringing otome visual novel Battlefield Waltz to the West over a decade after its original Japanese launch. First announced during IFI’s Summer Festival 2024, the game will be available in physical and digital editions.) It follows a young woman named Lan on her journey as the…
Read MoreDelays in the game industry are a dime a dozen, and the indie rookie detective game Paper Perjury is no different. It was planned for an October 2024 release, which was bumped to a November launch date and then to a December launch window. Hopefully, the announced December date will…
Read MoreThe Infinity Series are well-known visual novels by Kotaro Uchikoshi that sit firmly in the science fiction, suspense, and adventure game genres. It began in the early 2000s, branching out to three mainline games, one spin-off, and one reboot. Today, Spike Chunsoft announced that remastered versions of the series’ first…
Read MoreIt’s such a tough gig to be an indie VN developer. It’s a niche genre at the best of times, and the resources that you have to dedicate to it are going to be limited. It’s a question of what you throw money into to try to make your project…
Read MoreI admit, I might have a slight obsession with Urban Myth Dissolution Center, which launches in February 2025. It sounds wonderful: the publisher describes it as a single-player psycho-detective mystery adventure that has a unique blend of psychological intrigue and supernatural investigation. It is split into episodes/chapters, and the latest…
Read MoreSINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is a spin-off of an incredibly long-running series: Memories Off, which has been running since 1999, is now close to twenty titles deep, and has, over the years, had some legends of the visual novel medium work on it, including Mr. Zero Escape himself,…
Read MoreWriting horror is a tough gig. It’s challenging for writers to create and maintain fear and tension. Horror needs to be character-driven and it needs to make the audience care about the horrible things that are happening to those characters. Meanwhile, it’s difficult for visual artists because even the slightest…
Read MoreDance is a difficult subject to tackle, for many reasons. These challenges are, fundamentally, why it’s not a topic that video game developers typically touch (or filmmakers, or novelists, or painters, or most other art forms). The Ukrainian developer behind Light de Deux has given a ballet-themed visual novel a…
Read More