I have Steins;Gate sitting on my computer but I haven’t bothered playing it yet. I actually plan to play it in English first and then Japanese later.
I like the anime adaptions of the Key games (especially Clannad), but I’m not sure I’ll play any of the games. While some of them are for “all audiences” and aren’t lewd from what I hear, I still don’t think I’ll enjoy the “which girl will you end up with” aspects. Just doesn’t really interest me.
I try to read some visual novels on steam but the most free or cheap one’S are just the really weird porn one’s or just weird Dating stuff one’s xD I would love to have some slice of life with out these far to dramatic “everything will end” “I’m a cyborg with feelings” “I want you to cry reaaaally hard”- Style of visual novels. But I may not have found the right way to look for them or the good one’s are not to be found on steam 
I was thinking about Clannad but this one is also so melancholic that it might be really hard for me to stick with it 
Right now my Main Input for reading is conversation with Japanese friends and Manga (right now I’m working my way through “Cooking Papa” (or the few volumes I own) )
I hope that in September when I finish my work intensive part of university I’ll go a little more into the reading part, but that is still a bit in the future and I hope until then I’ll slowly approach the realm of level 30, which is my set starting point to go full force with reading 
tl:dr: Visual Novels are weird so far.
Is this the site recommended in a thread a few weeks ago?
99% is like Zanmai. That shit has…a lot of lewd shit.
There are tamer things out there though. Narcissu is a popular one. And there’s even just all ages versions of games where it cuts out the lewd shit from games that have it.
But yeah, there’s a lot of variety out there. Just stay away from saya’s song and you’ll be alright :3
Yep, it’s nice to organize and keep track of things you read.
Or I just like the way it looks, I guess.
That’s like a surefire way to make me google things…
But more seriously, I have enough stuff to read right now, so it will be a while before I check anything on the visual novel front. AND I will go for the console versions, just in case.
Unfortunately, I interpreted “volume” as one book instead of one pack, so I still screwed up the answer. Looks like there is no way to edit a response to a poll. I think of “volume” as a single book, but I see the packs the readers are sold in are referred to as volumes. My bad.
If you click ‘hide answers’ you should be able to vote differently 
I agree it’s confusing… but not sure how else it could be worded…
Most of my Japanese reading comes from other categories, such as:
children’s picture books
magazine articles (for @kyasurin’s poll I’m considering this a part of a book)
cookbooks
NHK easy news
But the real answer to the title question is: not much.
Boo, I forgot votes are submitted immediately upon clicking an option, with no way to undo that I can see… I accidentally chose 21-30 manga but it’s really over 50+ by now. I’ve been picking up the pace a lot since starting WK, especially in the last 6-9 months, getting to the point where I’m probably spending more time reading manga in Japanese than watching anime with subtitles.
At the moment I’m reading Hanayamata, Hinamatsuri, and Kase-san.
I’m caught up on and waiting for new volumes of Citrus, Konohana Kitan, Harukana Receive, Ato de Shimai masu, and Flying Witch.
Recently finished Koufuku Graffiti and Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou, plus various 1-2 volume series.
I’ve got a long list of other ones to get to, but I’ll never be anywhere near caught up.
Edit: Oh weird, I went back up to the poll and my vote was no longer there so I was able to recast it.
If you click ‘hide results’ you can always recast your vote. If you leave the page and come back it will also show you the options rather than the results.
Another sort-of benefit to looking at console-space, aside from not having the temptation to use text-hookers and other continuous machine-translation tools, is that the porting process (and, where the original wasn’t already all-ages, rewrites to sidestep H-scenes) has an associated cost, so it’s usually more-successful titles that make the jump.
If you’re into JRPGs, the more VN-like of them (Atelier series, for example) implement many common VN features, like a text-log with the option to replay voiced dialogue, which is great for shadowing.
There are also a lot of high-quality VNs that were specifically designed for consoles, like the Zero Escape Trilogy and, though unvoiced, 逆転裁判 (Ace Attorney/Phoenix Wright; the NA and, I believe, EU digital trilogy release for 3DS allows for full Japanese text).
Ah thanks, that would do it. I guess it’s been a while since I used a poll.
Wait, those are visual novels? I guess that makes sense… Well, then I have “read” one visual novel in Japanese. I’m not going to update the poll, since it was too short, with barely any branching, to compare to what the others were talking about…
Steins;Gate, which you’ve probably heard of, only has one real branch, plus a handful of exit-points along the way (kinda like how you could choose to end Chrono Trigger at various times, if you’ve played it).
It has a few very, very short detours in response to your choices, but you’re really just setting flags that determine which ending you ultimately get in the final 10% of the story.
The ones mentioned above mostly follow the formula of throwing a bunch of choices at the player during the common route (typically about half a playthrough’s length, in which you’ll see slices of the story tied together by some unavoidable events), then the decisions that were made are used to determine which character’s route will be followed for the second half, with some minor deviation within that path.
VNs span a really broad spectrum, where “it tells a story almost exclusively through text and images” is the only real criteria that must be met for a game to quality.
I’m pretty sure there was a reason why the polls in the OP are already closed within 13 hours of them being created, but meh.
I also wanted to qualify my answer in @Kyasurin’s poll. I’ve watched several foreign movies on Japanese Netflix with only include Japanese subtitles so I selected “blogs and other longer online media” because it takes longer to go through than “random snippets” and “online news articles”. Also in the what-have-you-read-in-the-last-week poll, the “more than one complete book” option means the person has read more than an entire book in the span of a week?
Hmm? The polls are still open. The only polls that were closed were the first versions of @Kyasurin’s polls.
?? They’re not closed. I just changed my vote on visual novels…
That’s strange. I couldn’t select anything on my phone… It just showed the results which I couldn’t revert back to vote. But on the PC it’s fine. Sorry about that.
EDIT: Something really trying to punk me because I checked my phone and they were back up. I swear I couldn’t vote for anything. Maybe I’m cracking…
You get enough sleep last night? 