Found another visual novel engine, this one is called Almight AVG Platform, developed by Curious Factory [curiousfactory.com]. Looks like this one will be proprietary.
It says the engine is optimized for publishing on Browsers (Html5), Android, iOS and Windows. Particularly impressive is its ability to port Kirikiri engine games onto smartphone (and browser?). So this is very useful for eroge companies. The Kirikiri is significant, because if you visit the TLWiki script size page, you’ll see it occupies around half of all the visual novels recorded in that list.
The engine is still in development, the game that is packed in with the demo is Maid Tantei Dille & Elle, released in May this year. It’s also available on DLSite.
While this development doesn’t really affect fan translation or fan creations, it’s interesting to see the ideas for a multi-platform visual novel engine, simultaneously appearing all over the net.
This is a good idea in theory, but the implementation is quite poor. Games basically run as HTML5 regardless of platform. It’s quite clear that you’re not getting a native build, since games tend to be laggy and kinda glitchy with a pretty terrible framerate. Visual novels are pretty simple games, so the fact that this engine can’t run them properly is not a good sign.
Of course, the engine is still under development, but that they chose to release it in such a state does not give a good impression. It’s quite possible that they’ll optimise the engine to make games run smoother, in which case it might be something worth looking into. However, for the time being, I’m forced to throw the idea of using this into the “don’t bother” bin.