Interactivity in Visual Novels

Lately I've been working on what I'd call the more interactive chapters of Detective Butler, and it's gotten me curious about the concept of having an interactive visual novel. I believe it can be good, if done properly, but I'll examine the pros and cons in further detail.

I don't understand the appeal of most sim games. If you are not familiar with those, it should be easy to find quite a few of them on the Internet advertising themselves as visual novels. And I'm not sure what to m ...

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English vs. Japanese Visual Novels

Here's something I wrote a while back but didn't post anywhere. Enjoy:

If I'm playing a Japanese VN I can pretty much assume it's at least decent. I don't question the author's intentions. But for English ones, everything is criticized because we don’t think very highly of English authors. You wouldn't find typos in a professionally finished work. Using words that seem unnatural could be used for character development instead of remnants of the author's mistaken grasping of the Englis ...

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Quality Over Quantity

During the past month I have contemplated whether or not to participate in NaNoReNo this year. Ultimately what I've decided... is that I won't. I'll lead you through my thought process as to why I've decided against it.

The first step to writing a story is to brainstorm ideas for one. I went to a fairly simple VN idea generator and came up with a bunch, only some of which I remotely thought were interesting. In the end I thought that none of them were really appealing enough for me t ...

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World-Building

When I first started out writing Detective Butler, I didn't have much of a game plan. Create some characters and a story and see where things go. But at the same time I was given the incentive to make each chapter a certain length (at minimum). And during the early chapters, where I had little idea of where the story was going, it was incredibly painful to try and make that goal.

However, I have since found the secret. It's world-building. Take some time to elaborate on the story and ...

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Secret Projects and Game Tips

Darn, one day earlier and I would've updated twice in a single month!

On that note, I think I will actually start posting more often. One thing I do want to make clear is that, while I have obviously been discussing fangames and Detective Butler frequently, I am coming up with ideas and stories for future games. My personal preference when working with games is to keep things very much under wraps until I have something close to being finished.

I think one of the more interest ...

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Getting Busy Again

Welp, my break is over, and so now is a good time to make an update.

I'll be announcing another fangame, On the Night of Kinjo's Redemption. It's the sequel to Repercussion, taking place in the land of Higanbana. Expect it to take another half-year, or something similar.

Now, for Detective Butler's progress. I've stated before that the full game will have ten chapters, and the first four are included in the demo. I've been going through and doing some re-organizing of the st ...

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One Last Update

Happy New Year's!

Firstly, you may have noticed that Repercussion is complete. Well that is a half-truth. The game still needs to be polished before Ozaki feels it can be released to the public however it is there if you want to read. This version of the game will answer the main mystery however still leave a few questions unanswered.

...Anyway, to be completely honest, Detective Butler has been taking more effort than I originally thought. But I didn't want to disappoint, s ...

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Detective Butler EP1 Demo - Mac Version

After a very long time it appears that I've gotten the game to work on Macs. Hooray!

Progress is going well. I'll soon have lots of free time to finish up things and get both projects out next month.

Unfortunately chocojax does not have such luck, and is unable to continue working on Detective Butler due to her increasingly busy schedule. As a result, I've had to find a new artist, so the game is going to get a huge graphical revamp before its next release. Look forward to it ...

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