Well, it might be fine. It’s just that every episode except the fourth ends with an obvious cliffhanger 
So even if the bookclub does just first chapter, I’d encourage everyone to get the complete edition I mentioned above 
Also, the first episode treated as a standalone work is a bit weak - at least my impression when reading 9-nine was that each episode was better than the previous one
Well I figured it being released this way was a strength in that people could buy in at a lower price in case they decide it hasn’t hooked them sufficiently after part 1. Taken as a whole does seem like you save a bit, particularly factoring in the “new episode” part. But I guess which is advisable will come down to how confident or unconfident someone feels going in, heh. In all likelihood I will indeed grab it as a whole myself, whether it wins here or just eventually to read on my own.
Point taken on it functioning much better as a complete work though. I just think it gets less attractive at its full length as a pick for this club. I truly am interested in reading it but if I was willing to nominate a 40+ hour VN at this stage others would take priority, though in my mind the calculation changes if we offload the back 3/4 (honestly more since later parts seem a little longer) to a separate continuation. I can see how the potential of 2 VN clubs or choosing between would also be problematic for some people, but like I said we’d almost definitely keep the spinoff club laid back and otherwise it’s just a good thing to keep in mind for considering votes. Unless more people think I’m wrong about just chapter 1 being the way to go. I love this club but it’s also sometimes a nightmare to organize for 
With your feedback I’ll at least reword the con about the structure a bit more strongly for now.
Those screenshots makes the game seem super easy to read. I’m wary. 
Also, I guess I need to put together a nomination post. Gah, probably won’t have time 'til tomorrow.
Yeah I had the same reaction haha. They’re all that was on vndb unfortunately. Maybe I can look around later for more, maybe YouTube videos to screenshot on my own or something.
Ok, grabbed a couple narration screenshots straight from a Youtube video and added them to make it a bit more representative hopefully 
Developer: Key
VNDB Play Time: 12h.
VNDB Link: Tsui no Stella
Character count: 165k.
Number of weeks to finish: 8.
If I make it to the other side of the sky, I can become human…
Earth has been taken over by a group of machines that created a “singularity.”
Humanity is forced to live hidden in the shadows.
One day a transporter receives an odd request.
Their cargo this time will be a girl android developed as a family member substitute.
She is unaffected by the Singularity Machines.
Despite being put off by the girl’s naive behavior, the transporter sets out on the journey.
Sometimes it’s human bandits they must evade, other times it’s the machines they run from.
Undeterred by such dangerous situations, they press on to make the delivery.
The girl often talks about wanting to become human.
Their destination is a space elevator, so tall it appears to pierce the sky.
The rumor is that androids who make it to the top can be made human, but is it true?
Recently released, I discovered it by chance when aimlessly browsing DLsite. I liked the setting, tried the demo for a few minutes and I actually liked it quite a bit. The text goes from top to bottom instead of text windows, and it seemed like a description-heavy game so there’s probably a fair amount of language processing to do overall. I think the Sci-Fi themes could generate a lot of theories and discussion, hopefully it maintains the mystery until the end. It’s still quite early and there aren’t enough votes yet, but from the ~100 votes in VNDB it seemed very nicely rated so that also makes me curious. Nice music, sfx and art.
I’ve purposefully included a couple screenshots that I found more challenging from the demo so they hopefully give an idea of the difficulty when it gets harder, and the ones from VNDB. From what I could experience it’s not constantly like that and it often has easier vocabulary. However I wholeheartedly recommend using Textractor.
The text is fully expanded in the pictures but it starts from top, line by line, until it reaches about half of the screen and it clears to start again, often with a picture change.
How much effort would you need to read this VN?
0 voters
As I thought, many more unknown words, bumping my vote up to moderate effort. xD
Thanks for taking the time. 
I think my nomination presents as the harder option so far this round. I couldn’t really choose between moderate and significant effort because, while several of the screenshots I’ve posted can be challenging, I didn’t think playing the game would be unachievable when trying the demo, and obviously it’s much easier to read using Textractor than it is from a screenshot. I’m going with significant effort just to be completely safe. It felt mostly fine with sudden spikes of difficulty, it didn’t feel overwhelmingly constant. Now of course this is all personal and it depends on everyone’s own vocabulary range so I’m only speaking for myself (which is definitely not that wide honestly, many of you have read much harder things than I have). At the same time I feel like I can’t really assure anything because I only played the demo for like 30 minutes before I closed it, so it might as well get much harder later on or on the contrary much easier. The percentage of unique words that appear only once is practically the same as Loopers (46%). I suspect it would be much harder in the beginning while we get used to the vocabulary than from a few chapters in until the end. I suppose it wouldn’t be too different from reading something like Stein’s;Gate, which is actually harder with a 6 on JPDB (I’ve learnt super fast not to trust these numbers though ).
I was feeling a bit discouraged from nominating it as a club pick because of the potential difficulty spikes, but I’m going for it anyways because I think it’s a super cool VN regardless. As you said, in the end the club will decide for itself through the voting. Besides if things get hard we have the club to discuss and work together.
I also haven’t voted the difficulty of the other nominations yet but I will soon. How does the voting usually go, do we get a max number of votes? Honestly I’d read anything that has been proposed so far, but I guess if we all vote everything then nothing will win . What do you think, do other clubs limit it in any way or are they free to vote as much as they want?
In the book clubs, we usually limit it to no more than 3 votes per person.
Yeah I’ve actually been meaning to look at other clubs because I don’t know, but maybe someone can easily just tell us here. Last time I limited to a couple votes but I might just make things easy on myself and follow whatever model the other clubs use because as far as I know people don’t seem dissatisfied with the voting process elsewhere. I’m also pretty happy with all the nominations honestly.
Ahh @MrGeneric just barely beat me, thanks. 3 sounds suitable enough now that we have a larger pool of nominations.
Also in the future I don’t mind switching to letting nominations run all the time, but I guess I should start to think about indicating a close time for them. Considering we just got yours and @MissDagger mentioned wanting to make one later, I can give it another week perhaps? All the way to the 13th should ensure everyone gets some chance to nominate and we can vote right after. I’m antsy to get the club running on our second pick but I’m going to need to give enough space for voting to happen and then for people to get the pick… and especially if it’s a Steam game there’s a high possibility of holiday sales so I’m debating if the best start time might just be the beginning of the new year. We’ll see!
One of the nice things is that it looks like chapters 1 & 2 as well as 14, 15, & 16 are short with only 6, 8, and to a lesser degree 7 being long chapters. so I think it would actually be pretty easy to agree to double down the short weeks and split the longer ones over two weeks to make it even overall. It’s really nice that JPDB already has the character counts up to look at.
Edit:
and especially if it’s a Steam game there’s a high possibility of holiday sales so I’m debating if the best start time might just be the beginning of the new year.
Going by Steam DB it looks like the Autumn sale is going to be on Nov 22 and the Winter sale on December 22.
Oh I forgot they even did an autumn sale! Good to know. I’m also used to when this stuff was more secretive years ago, heh. If we stick to the arbitrary date I just made up that’s 9 days after voting so we can have a good idea where that’s headed and I’m sure we’ll have people checking nominations for sales then.
Just out of curiosity have any of you read Planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~ (planetarian ~ちいさなほしのゆめ～)? It’s another old Key title that got my interest for no other reason than being short (only 64k characters). Figured it might make a good side game for when I get some more free time.
If we pick a game I’m joining for, it would help all my reading plans so much to start in the new year. I don’t expect everyone to conform to that though, and a game I’m not joining for can obviously be picked too.
But it is also nice to have some time between vote and starting, because some VNs for Switch come in physical and that can be nice to buy (resell ability is nice for sure). But until one is picked, I’m just shooting the breeze. ^^
Yep, absolutely! For some of us it might just be going on a digital store any time and buying right away, but I know there are various ways this works and people’s finances aren’t always great at all times too so I definitely want a gap to allow for acquiring the stuff. Goal for next time is to definitely plan to streamline this transfer to the following VN a little more ahead of time though.
I have, and I remember thinking it was a pretty nice little read, but that was both in English and like half my life ago so… I’m mostly left with vague impressions and that’s about all you’re going to get out of me unfortunately, haha.
I loved Planetarian, but, like @Daisoujou I also read it in English and some time ago (three years I think).
Also, I’m all for trying Tsui no Stella (I already bought it)
@MrGeneric @Daisoujou Oh that’s handy, I think 3 votes per person sounds perfect.
I didn’t think of that but that makes sense 
. It’s indeed nice that you can plan ahead with the character counts already posted. I guess that makes it more of a pro than a con then .
Same . But it could actually be a great opportunity. If we can have it already voted by the 22nd then we have Steam sales for the potential winner.
I was writing a(n unnecessarily long) tentative, potential organisation of the nomination, voting, purchasing periods but now reading @MissDagger 's post I thought that since we have people that would wait for physical copies, perhaps it’s best that we shorten the nomination period? It’s true that we have nominations still coming in (I wanted to do mine days ago but was uncertain) but we had the nomination advertised in the title for a while already, and we’ve also had the thread active so it’s been seen in the front page many times for many days. I would love for more and more people to join in, of course, but I’m wondering if it’s not just going to be the ones we’re already around anyways. We could try updating the title to something like “Last X days of nominations” as a last attempt 
.
Then when we have the winner beforehand, we still have the potential Steam sales and people who buy physical copies have more time for it to be delivered. And we still have Loopers going until the 17th. Steam sales go from 22nd to 29th, after the 29th then we can plan the start date accordingly.
Nope but I’m also interested, saw it very cheap on Steam recently and it’s apparently amazingly rated so it went straight to my wishlist.
Damn, the time really flies. I just checked my vndb account, and it seems that I finished Planetarian in August 2018, so that would make four years already 
Yeah all that makes a lot of sense, particularly since some of these VNs probably only have Japanese copies one would have to go to a bit of effort and probably wait a bit to get (haven’t looked into physical editions much at all to be honest, but I think it’s likely). Maybe just a couple more days if that gives @MissDagger time to get a nomination prepared and any potential last minute people?
Yeah, I should be able to carve out time tomorrow. I’ve gotten myself into a bit of state today, and I keep mini procrastinating (which for me is like an hour procrastination, don’t ask me what I would consider a normal length procrastination, it gives me nightmares. 
), even though I had and have so much to do. >_<
