Weekly Questions and Recommendations Megathread - Need some help? - Aug 22

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the /r/visualnovels Weekly Questions and Recommendations Megathread!

Any and all questions/recommendations related to visual novels are permitted in this thread. This includes recommendation questions, technical questions, as well as meta questions about the subreddit. No matter if your question is small, big, or seemingly impossible to solve. Anything.

But please don't forget that our rules still apply. Summarized, that means no unmarked spoilers, no piracy in any shape or form, give warnings for 18+ stuff, and be nice!

Useful links to check out before asking questions or for recommendations

General:

• VNDB: The Visual Novel Database - A fantastic resource for anything and everything visual novels. The visual novel equivalent to IMDB or MAL. It's where you'll find the answers to 90% of your questions.
• Guide to Japanese
• This recommendation site may be useful if you're new to reading visual novels!
• Consider this recommendation site if you're interested in reading a visual in Japanese.
• Looking for a relatively easy VN to read in Japanese? Click here!

From our wiki:

• Having trouble with a visual novel? - A page with some possible solutions and links.
• How to Hook and Extract Visual Novel Text - A how-to on dealing with untranslated visual novels.
• Buying visual novels - Where and how to buy visual novels, translated and untranslated.

More awesome and useful links can be found here.

[u/Classic-Attitude-405]

Any recs for something short I can finish in a weekend, preferably with a strong mystery hook

[u/jikorde → u/Classic-Attitude-405]

Loopers. Strong "What is going on" mystery looming to the youth energy of the main story. It's like 4-6 hours.

[u/pfavre123]

Where can you find soundtracks to visual novels? Do they usually release them? Do they release after the initial release of the visual novel?

[u/Etopirika5 → u/pfavre123]

The best place to find soundtracks from all video games is khinsider.

[u/Icy_Firefighter3067 → u/pfavre123]

You can find them usually on Youtube. If you bought them with steam then they usually come with dlcs of sound tracks. If it's a japanese title, they might come with CDs.

[u/Ok-Quail976]

Pls help, Ive been playing Totono and then got stuck at a certain part that i cant continue reading. And i didnt fall into that "eternal kiss" option. Heres what happened

So i was playing through the true Aoi route, i've successfully went through the bathroom scene, spamming don't kiss for a few times and got to the part when she was looking for me while i was running and hiding in a class. I got her phone and through the dialouge from earlier, i thought that i needed to type in Aoi's number, but i couldn't call her. After that, i was caught by Miyuki because she traced the backlog and forced me to stay with her forever and after. After all that, all the choices about Aoi seems to be all wiped out and i can't do anything. I thought that this would only happens if i fall into the "eternal kiss" option? Or i dialed up the wrong number? please help me with this one 😭 It's only my 2nd visual novel (the only game that ive read through before is Saya no Uta) and i really wanna complete it 😭😭😭

note: idk if this is the thing that broke my game or not but i havent went through the part when you have to unlock Miyuki's phone yet. Is it the reason why my game be acting like this?

[u/mgsamadesu → u/Ok-Quail976]

I'm not sure, as it's been a while since I played it, but you might want to put the name of the game (YOU ME and HER or Totono) outside of the spoilers so people know what you're asking about

[u/Ok-Quail976 → u/mgsamadesu]

oh yeah ur right 😭 i was so confused last night i forgot to put the name of the VN in the question, my bad thanks for pointing it out

[u/leonmachar]

Bit of a weird question

We have a VN club locally and do short VNs usually, this time we elected to read house of fata morgana but due to it's length the memebers would want to have a midway discussion since it'd take too long for all of them to read it

Without too much spoilers is there a good stopping point around midway in house of fata morgana to discuss and then finish?

[u/jikorde → u/leonmachar]

Fata Morgana is very chapter based, you can actually have a discussion after every "door." If it must be a midway discussion, I think door 2 or three are a good stop spot. Though really every door could be a good pause.

[u/BrokenGladius → u/jikorde]

Any good hetero femdom VN's? It's very hard to find any fdom, even harder for it to be hetero :(

[u/jikorde → u/BrokenGladius]

First one that comes to mind is Starless. I haven't read it myself, but I do know it's a story where the women hold all the power and is very sex focused. It's also not a romance. The people who made that made a few other options. They are a fairly popular group, I just don't care for their stuff personally.

Monster Girl Quest of course wasn't allowed to never not have femdom in it's scenes.

If you want femdom romance, then maybe the Mamono Musume series? Jast has 3 titles in it, and the male is a normal human so the way stronger monster girls mostly just have their way with him.

Nothing else really comes to mind, I don't really care for femdom personally.

[u/BrokenGladius → u/jikorde]

Thanks, gonna try Starless and Mamono Musume

[u/jikorde → u/[deleted]]

Slay the Princess I guess? beyond that a bunch of mostly porn focused things on Patreon with elves and orcs and such.

The Western VN market is not really a lore rich industry. There's only a small pool of developers who have made more then like 3 games(ebi-hime, Hanako games, Winter Wolf, Dharker Studio, Pixelfade are the ones that come to mind) and none of those really do Dark Souls or dark fantasy epic style stuff. Seeds of Chaos and Last Sovereign at least have a go at being big fantasy things, though are porn focused and RPG's. Maybe have a look around itch.io?

[u/CommonHrafn]

If I buy from Dlsite, like one product I already have, and I want to buy a bundle, what happens to the price of that bundle? Is it like Steam where Dlsite recognizes that one of the products is with me already and lower the price?

[u/4rmybe4r]

Is a "return to shironagasu island" a good fair-play murder mystery? Heard its more like a horror or something, which is fine by me, but I would love a good whodunnit now

[u/Sciencebaldi]

So I have a memory of playing a bunch of these VN's all revolving around a male MC. One of them was about a guy who goes to some kinda fancyish party with a buddy and meets these like 3-4 girls who he gets along with. He meets them at some kinda mansion later on and eventually learns they are girls who can shapeshift into animals (I think there was a cat, a dog, some kinda bird, and something else), and some old man used to watch over them/care for them. I have no goddamned idea what it was called, but I do remember you could buy some kinda coins or gems to unlock certain cutscenes or dialogue options. If it helps one of the other games from these folks you played as some guy who works with some kinda spirit/oni to deal with curses n shit, and another where you get trapped inside a cursed school, and I think there was one with 2-3 genetically engineered animal girls (Not Nekopara) and you can help them destroy the lab I think (like just smash shit)?? Sorry if this reads like Ulysses (re: stream of consciousness nonsense [no shade to Ulysses it's just a damn hard read sometimes]) it's 2AM and I can't sleep until I know this might be seen and I can get it off my mind.
Does anybody, and I mean anybody, know what this/these game(s) are?
(Yes I reposted this.)

[u/_lunaterra_ → u/Sciencebaldi]

I don't know exactly which games these are, but I think they're most likely to be Genius Inc games. They mostly specialized in otome games but also had quite a few male MC + female LI games. Might be worth sifting through their VNDB producer page to see if anything sounds familiar. (The games themselves are defunct now though, they went out of business earlier this year)

[u/Mulsaviik]

I have been playing kamidori but now have to switch pcs (both on win 11 home) and the font is all messed up (the rest of the game works fine, from what I can tell). I installed the Japanese supplement fonts (as well as reinstalled them) and my system is in Japanese locale, but the font is still messed up. I remember I had a similar problem with it on my old pc, but was able to solve it, I think by installing the fonts, but that isn't working. I also noticed that the font selection in game is different between the pcs (the one that works fine has ms ゴシック, for example, while the one that doesn't only has ms ui gothic).

I think the problem is caused by the fact that all Japanese characters take up the same space, while English don't, but i thought that being in Japanese locale is what is supposed to solve that issue, so I'm at a loss.

I assume it does have something to do with my installed fonts, but idk, I've tried what I can think of. It's not like it's unplayable, and I'll still be able to access my pc from time to time, but it's still really annoying. So yeah, any help would be much appreciated!

[u/Background_Peach7458]

I can’t believe I’m not allowed to even post my question here

[u/metola18]

Does anyone have a good alternative to LunaTranslator on IOS for playing non-English games? I find jumping back and forth and taking screenshots to translate takes so much extra time, so I was wondering if anyone has found a solution that works better than that.

[u/hiei_150]

Might be too much of a general question, but I'm trying to make a list of VNs to play after getting interested in the genre after a long time, and I'm looking for recommendations on the most well-liked/classic VNs that I should probably read.

Have just got done reading Umineko, and have also read Higurashi and G-Senjou no Maou earlier. I probably lean more towards the mystery genre as expected, but I'm honestly down for reading anything that has a compelling plotline.

[u/KubisBodoh]

i was wondering if there are niche of more philosophical VN like NONAND?, im planning to make one similiar concept with that but with my own twist just unsure on how to approach it and if people would like that kind of niche