This week’s header image comes from one of last week’s releases: Steins;Gate 0 (PQube) which can be played on the PS4 or PS Vita! It’s really good. If you haven’t read our review, yet, you probably should!
VNTS (Visual Novel Translation Status Updates Series) is published each Saturday and brings the latest updates from VN translation projects — both licensed and by fans — from around the net. If you find any errors, or you think a project is missing from this list, please let us know in the comments.
From The Team: Was it just me, or did November fly by at warp speed? In any case, Happy December, everyone. Drive safely in the snow (if you live in an area with snow, that is). So, before we get started, I’ve got two things to mention: 1) You should check out our Steins;Gate 0 review, written by Fred the Barber, over on the Reviews hub.
Next, #2) Tomorrow (Sunday 12/4) is my catch-up day where I’ll be doing a crap-ton of Fuwanovel work. This includes updating the releases and dropped tables which occassionally grace our VNTS posts. If you need these tables in the immediate future, look for a post going up tomorrow which should include them. Otherwise, they should be here in VNTS next week.
Much thanks to Decay who did almost all of the tables last night. I was caught up in some RL issues, and he stepped in to save the day. Gratzi! – Tay
The Short Version: Only the New Stuff
- Apathy – Midnight Collection Vol. 1 – Okuri Inu: Edit: 5.7% > 15%
- Boku to Koisuru Ponkotsu Akuma (Sekai Project) – TL: 16.03% > 18.19%
- Chrono Clock (Sekai Project) – TL: 60.64% > 65.22%
- Dies Irae (Light) – Prefundia now up! $160,000 base goal; $325,000 for Interview with Kaziklu Bey; $500,000 for a new, original story. Split into two parts, both releasing on Steam May 2017. 18+ patch to come around three months later. Loads of other features like restoration of censored non-ero content, multiple aspect ratio support, enhanced graphical effects, and more!
- Eden of Grisaia (Sekai Project) – Steam release planned for March 2017; 18+ release planned for summer 2017
- Hara Kano – The Hiyo h-scenes which Loe didn’t want to translate have been translated by Dekiru Translations. Get the patch/more info over on Loe’s blog.
- Her and Her and My 7 Days -Seven days with the Ghost (Denpasoft + LiLies) – TL: 10% > 11%
- Hoshizora no Memoria -Wish upon a Shooting Star- (Sekai Project) – TL: 67% > 81%
- Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (Degica) – (12/02) Evan released two more “Another Episodes” since we last checked in!
- Labyrinth of Grisaia (Sekai Project) – Unrated (18+) Version: 100% TL, Engine/QA in progress, Late December release.
- Libra of the Vampire Princess (MiKandi Japan) – Aoi’s Route TL: 30% > 70%; Lycoris’ Route TL: 30% > 50%
- Lover Able – TL: 32.08% > 33.31%; Edit: 8.94% > 9.1%; TLC: 12.97% > 13.85%
- Maitetsu (Sekai Project) – TL: 64.54% > 70.84%
- Majo Koi Nikki – TL: 59.5% > 59.7%; Edit: 46.7% > 48.7%
- Miniature Garden (Fruitbat Factory) – TL: 50% > 100%
- Rance 5D & VI (MangaGamer) – Preorders now open, get yours here! Releasing December 23rd!
- PacaPlus (Sekai Project) – TL: 100%; Engine/QA work in progress.
- Period: Cube ~Shackles of Amadeus~ (Aksys Games) – Preorders now open, get yours here!
- Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo (Front Wing) – New kickstarter now live! The base funding goal is already met!
- Tenshin Ranman (Sekai Project) – TL: 71.34% > 74.13%
- Tsui Yuri – Re-Translation: 16.5%> ~25% (Link)
- Unannounced Project #1 (Sekai Project) – Top Sekrit Project; TL: 100%; Engine/QA work in progress.
- Unannounced Project #2 (Sekai Project) – Top Sekrit Project; TL: 17%
- Unannounced Project #3 (Sekai Project) – Top Sekrit Project; TL: 100%
- WORLD END ECONOMiCA (Sekai Project) – Episode 3 releasing in late December.
New Releases!
- (None this week! Gasp!)
All the Game Updates:
Fan Translation Projects
[wpdatatable id=243]
MangaGamer (Updates)
Whoops, we forgot to add one thing to the table this week! My sincerest apologies.
- Rance 5D & VI (MangaGamer) – Preorders now open, get yours here! Releasing December 23rd!
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Sekai Project (Update Page)
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Other
- Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link
Other Projects
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— Commentary Section —
Zakabox™ Commentary
「Zaka did write something! It’ll appear here a little later today, though.」
Decay’s Musings
Hello! So I guess we’re finally getting the Dies Irae Kickstarter soon. It’s pretty cool to see another long-desired VN translation come to fruition. Five or so more months and we’ll all be able to see what all the Japanese readers have raved about over the years, huh? I’m a little concerned that it’s been overhyped at this point. I’m pretty much immune to that stuff, but I fear other people may walk away disappointed if it’s not the greatest VN they’ve ever played. If you want to de-hype yourself a little, read a short bit of criticism from one of the game’s translators and biggest fans, Conjueror. As popular as the game has become, it’s still an imperfect work, and I really look forward to digging into it and finding out how for myself in May.
The Prefundia itself looks great, though I worry the goal might be too high. I was honestly expecting something a little more modest. I think it has a very good chance of making it, but it might not be as much of a smash success as they’re hoping for, and some of its stretch goals could be out of reach. I’d love to be wrong, but I’ve seen enough western VN fans who never heard of Dies Irae to know that its popularity among Japanese readers doesn’t necessarily translate to popularity among the general western audience. Yeah, sure, it’s well-known on Fuwanovel, 4chan, Reddit, etc, but it’s easy to forget that all the VN communities out there combined only make up a small portion of the market.
Someone actually responded to our tweet about the prefundia yesterday. They’re a VN fan, they backed Sharin no Kuni and RT stuff from Fruitbat Factory and Sekai Project. They follow our account and some similar ones. And they also never even heard of Dies Irae before until they saw our tweet. That doesn’t surprise me, though, because I’ve seen others just like that. The truth is, the people who hype DI are just a small subset of our community. And our community is a small subset of the overall VN-buying market. If the people running the campaign are relying on that small subset of a small subset to carry them to victory, they’re going to have a rough time. They’ll have to work hard for this one.
The fact that they basically favorably addressed every single common concern for Kickstarter projects right out of the gate helps a huge amount. It really does feel like they thought of everything. It all seems like common sense at first glance, but this kind of knowledge of the western community doesn’t come natural to all Japanese companies. Light and Regista have found some really smart, clued-in people steer this project. That’s what I felt as soon as we heard who they hired to translate it, and I feel extra strongly about that now. They clearly know what they’re doing, so maybe my concerns are unfounded.
The one other criticism I’d levy is that the reward tiers don’t seem great. SnK spoiled us with amazing tiers and I won’t expect a repeat, but a mountain of shikishi isn’t the most inspiring reward. I understand that shikishi are kind of Light’s thing, but still. Something else to mix things up might help, especially at that hole between $65 and $300 people have been talking about.
I finally found the time to read a VN, and it’s Steins;Gate 0. Okay, yeah, I said last week that wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t help myself though, and actually borrowed my brother’s PS4. I’m hopeless. I haven’t obtained any of the endings yet, but as a huge S;G fan what I’ll say to the other S;G fans out there is PLAY THIS GAME. Seriously. I don’t know if it tops the original, but it is definitely a worthy follow-up. I was afraid that it would feel like an extraneous addition to the series, a cheap tie-in to milk fans. It’s true that it doesn’t feel like the creators envisioned 90% of the S;G0 story when writing the original game, but it’s incredibly well made and they managed to insert it into the fiction intelligently. The end result is that it absolutely feels essential. I almost want to suggest to people playing the original for the first time to NOT read the final true end in S;G until after reading S;G0. Is that unreasonable? Probably.
Well, that’s all from me. Hopefully by this time next week I’ll have S;G0 off my plate just in time for Himawari. There’s never been a better time to be an English-reading VN fan. Until next time, folks!
TAYsteful™ Thoughts
Apologies for the delay, everybody! Much thanks to Decay who did all the tables except Fan TL for me last night!
Have a good week, everybody.
I actually totally forgot about the Rance pre-orders, my bad. I fixed it.
Period Cube pre-order is also open ( http://tenshieffect.tumblr.com/post/153792556768/amazon-gamestop-amazon-ca-play-asia )
to be released on April 25th, 2017
Where’s that release date from? Note that retailers often use placeholder dates, so if it’s from a retailer then it’s unofficial.
it’s from amazon so i guess it’s unofficial, i’m sorry ;;
They haven’t announced an exact release date as far as I know, but Aksys did confirm that they’re aiming to get Period Cube out sometime during spring in 2017:
https://twitter.com/aksysgames/status/803319583406886912
Oh wait, the release date estimate is already listed in this week’s TL update. Never mind, sorry!
oh?
> Eden of Grisaia 18+ release planned for summer 2017
> Labyrinth of Grisaia 18+ Late December release.
ooooooooooh~
Thanks for the weekly update, have a great holiday boys.
Still waiting for labyrinth of grisaia’s patch.
My VNTS Review for this week, and I think you better add Aokana new translation project considering that OriginalRen already stated that he support that. But I’ll just leave it whether if you want to add that here or now.
http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1541-love-story-between-mad-scientist-and-ai-review/
About +18 patch of Dies irae, how its handled? There is no +18 Amantes Amantes version in Japanese releases. Is it going to be handled like F/SN? Is H-scenes going to be ported from original game?
I’ve just taken a look at Sekai Project’s website for their progress on their list of games and it seems like most of them are already translated. Most of them are especially stuck on the engine work phase.
With a whole heap of games on that phase you’d expect for them to at least have one completed or does take a lot more time than I imagined it to be?
Depending on the engine, it could take a hell of a lot of time, yeah. It just depends on how nice the engines are. QA stuff could take a little bit, too, cause it’s essentially going through the game again and testing for bugs. It’s a phase that fan translations have been known to get a bit stalled on beyond what’s expected, too. Depending on the game, there could be a lot of bugs. And, of course, with this many games in the same spot, it’s a pretty obvious bottleneck if just one of the games is particularly tricky or they don’t have enough people (which I wouldn’t know either; I don’t know their staffing). So, potentially. Or maybe SP’s just waiting for a good time to announce release dates that are convenient for them and this is a PR ruse. We may never know either way….
I’d also like to take this chance to point out for my fellow otome fans: one of those SP Sekrit Projects is an otome game. I’m kinda excited.
Where’s this info from?
It was revealed in their recent reddit AMA that they’re working on an otome game. Or at least, they very strongly hinted at that.
I’m also playing Steins;Gate 0, but, unfortunately, I don’t really like it. I’m already 25 hours into it. It is quite boring and nothing really happens most of the time. They saved money on art and even organized the story to use old sprites and cg. And I definetly don’t like the structure of the game. The music is fantastic, though
Just a heads up: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/5g1ldg/amairo_islenauts_partial_patch_read_at_own_risk/
Update on Bad Medicine patch
http://jokertrap-ran.tumblr.com/post/154114493449/bad-medicince-infectious-teachers-update-4