It’s here!
Here we will go where one club has ever gone before, and read a visual novel together!
Currently reading ルーパーズ
A Visual What?
Learn what a visual novel is
Visual novels exist at the intersection of books and videogames, often on the PC but sometimes on videogame consoles as well. They are written stories that always feature at minimum the written text, accompanying music, and images. They often but not always also include things like voice acting, multiple choices (which lead to different routes, with a full playthrough of a visual novel often involving seeing all of said routes), and occasionally even some gameplay elements. Games you may be familiar with like Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, and 13 Sentinels sort of sit on the edge of being considered the most game-y that visual novels reach.
Resources
Useful tools for finding VNs and getting easy lookups
VNDB, a detailed visual novel database
If you haven’t done any of this before there’s some first time setup involved, but as soon as everything is ready to go, all that will be required is to launch the texthooker, select your game, and then select the “hook.” It takes mere seconds once you know how it works!
A guide to installing and first using Textractor, also features the below links
Textractor (allows extracting VN scripts in real time for Yomichan lookups)
Yomichan (instant browser dictionary lookups)
Clipboard Inserter (allows for using Yomichan on text extracted by Textractor)
VN Proposals
Currently closed until we determine what parameters to allow for our next choice!
Necessary elements of a proposed visual novel (almost definitely subject to change after our first reading)
- A length that does not exceed 15 hours on VNDB
- No sexual content, or a version that cuts the sexual content (there is a “no sexual content” tag to verify with on VNDB)
- Linear route, essentially a “kinetic visual novel,” but allowing for a little more in the way of insignificant choices. Basically, no game with multiple routes to potentially fragment us, just yet.
- Limited gameplay (hard to draw an objective line because I think reading related-gameplay like puzzles in Zero Escape/Ace Attorney/Danganronpa are fine). Just keep in mind this is of course a reading focused club, and we don’t want too much time spent on pure gameplay or potentially excluding members who don’t play videogames.
- A PC version available for legal purchase in Japanese
This VNDB link filters to linear route, no sexual content, 2-10 hours, and sorts by rating. We’re allowing for a little more time, but VNDB seems to only allow length in preset chunks, with the next being 10-30, so this is the best I can provide, but is not an exhaustive list by any means.
Many of us will be somewhat flying blind on our picks so just do your best with nothing hugely offputtingly difficult (websites like jpdb.io are occasionally helpful, but take their ratings with a grain of salt). For pros and cons, things you might consider, as well as you know them: ease of access, wider availability (consoles etc.), ease of texthooking, presence or absence of voice acting, writing style and subject matter, difficulty, etc.
Proposal Template
Taken, and then adapted, from the beginner book club.
Copy this template into a new post when proposing a visual novel.
# Insert Title Here
Developer:
VNDB Play Time:
VNDB Link:[details=“Summary”]
Add summary here.
[/details]## Availability
Insert links to online stores here (ensure Japanese is available when using stores like Steam!)## Personal Opinion
Insert why you think this VN would be good to read, personally and for the book club here.### Pros and Cons for the Book Club
#### Pros
* Insert pros here.
#### Cons
* Insert cons here.## Pictures
[details=“Screenshots”]
Insert images here (screenshots from you, the internet, VNDB, etc).
[/details]## Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this VN?[poll type=regular public=true]
* No effort at all
* Minimal effort
* Moderate effort
* Significant effort
* So much effort my head might explode
* I don’t know
[/poll]
Current Proposals
Feel free to ask questions about texthooking, verifying information on visual novels, getting VNs to work, and anything else! This club will be run without a set schedule for now, simply an end date, but that may change in the future.