Hello, and welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, it has been about three weeks since we recorded an episode together. How has your recovery from COVID been? Have you missed recording this podcast? Yeah, my throat hasn’t though. If I’d done it last week, it would have been game over. I sounded terrible, like death. I’m not one of those people who sound sexy when they’re ill, you know? They get like croaky voice. I just sound like plague personified, so yeah. I’m eating a whole soother at the moment, so I’m hoping you don’t hear any like juicy mouth noises. I like how the week after we recorded our episode with a very professional, Ben Hansen, went back to like being as unprofessional as possible on our own terms, that’s reassuring. I feel a little bit like Kendall Roy in that episode with Adrian Brody of Succession, where he wheels out very sick Brian Cox. I feel like I’ve done that with you for this episode, so apologies for that. So Matthew, we’re joined by another special guest. So Lucy, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi guys, thanks for having me. So I’m Lucy Blundell, I go by Kimoku Online, and I am an independent game developer. I made a short visual novel called One Night Stand, and before that I worked at EA Chillingo, which was five years as a graphic designer. Awesome, yeah, it’s great to be joined by you, Lucy. You are a visual novel expert, and that’s what this episode’s about. In this week’s Back Page, expect to press the A button about 50,000 times as we scroll through the exciting world of visual novels. Matthew wrote that, it’s very good, isn’t it? Thank you. I wrote that for my sick bed, not death bed. Aw. Yeah, that’s good, more pity, that’s good. So Lucy, how are things going? You are deep into your new project at this point. So how has the last kind of 6 to 12 months looked like for you? I feel like the last year has felt like, oh, I’m near the end of the project. And it’s, you know, that last 1% kind of thing. But I’ve been working on this project for 2 years, so really it’s 50%. I’ve been having to like look after myself, you know, like take a step back and not crunch too hard, you know. Kind of like, you know, just go at a good pace. But the game, my next game is getting very close now. I just recently announced it. It’s called Videoverse. And yeah, like hopefully it will be out like kind of early next year, but still, still working on it. Yeah, we’ll definitely get into that new project, you know, in a lot more detail in this episode for sure. So Lucy, we know you’re a listener of the podcast and many thanks for that. We do like to ask the guests if we’ve ever upset them with any terrible takes that we can now apologize for. I’m kind of, I’m always like amazed when people who actually like make cool stuff listen to the podcast. And they’re like, what on earth do they think of it? So is there anything we should apologize for? Like now that you’re here? I guess cause like Splatoon 3 has just come out. I know Matthew’s review was, was quite, I mean, it was fair, I guess, like three out of five, but I don’t know that episode. I remember being like, oh no, like I love Splatoon. And I was a little bit like, oh no, there we go. No, I really, I really biff that review, to be honest. Like I know I kind of agonized over it in that episode. I just didn’t know how to write about it. I just, I completely like froze. I didn’t sort of know how to deal with it just being more Splatoon and that actually being fine. It’s kind of weird cause you know, other games companies, you know, how many FIFA’s are there and they barely change every year. And then when it’s like Nintendo, it’s like held to such a different kind of standard. Yeah. But like, you know, it’s totally fair. Like it’s a very strange kind of game, but at the same time, I’m really loving it. Oh, it’s fantastic. Yeah. That is a really miserable review. And I wish if I could take back one thing this year, apart from COVID, which obviously I would skip. Yeah, that would be it. It’s one of a series of Nintendo reviews that Matthew has written for VGC, where he’s messaged me going, I can’t fucking figure out how to write this review. And then it goes up, he regrets the experience and then repeats it. So I’m excited to see the same thing happen with Bayonetta 3 in a few weeks. I’m already sweating. I tell you what, I can’t get too ahead of it, but Bayonetta is a terrible game to play when you’re feverish ill. It’s just, it’s so hectic and strange and out there. It gave me like actual nightmares. So. I’m not surprised. That’s a quake for the box. Yeah, very good. Next time they re-release, they can stick that on there. And they can do like sort of in stars, sort of like soothers sucking sounds in the background just to kind of add the full effect. So Lucy, before we get into your career, I wanted to talk a bit about your new project Videoverse. So it looks like it’s drawing on Two Things We Love, a Miiverse style social platform and being way too online. So what’s the game about and how did you settle on the idea? Definitely is about both of those things. It’s been like in development for just over two years, but before then I was actually working on another project that I’ve kind of shelved for the time being. And basically this idea came from, it came from a lot of different places, but the main one was that I had a mechanic in the previous game, which was like a drawing mechanic. It hasn’t been done in RemPy, which is the engine that I use. So within the community, we kind of created this like drawing thing and that was really cool. And it just, it was done in like this black and white with the same kind of dimensions as a Miiverse post. And I was thinking like, oh, wow, like that looks like Miiverse. And then I was thinking like, oh, a Miiverse visual novel, like what would that look like? That sounds really cool. And then I was thinking, oh, what about a Miiverse dating sim or… And anyway, it was an idea that I shelved because I was still working on like another project. But yeah, like then when I, you know, kind of hit like a wall with my other project, I thought like, oh, I might go back to that idea and just try something else. That was where it kind of started. And I was also really inspired by, you know, like the codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid. I really like, I know most people who play those games don’t like those bits, but I really like them. Having like the two characters’ faces, like talking. So I kind of wanted to mix like me-verse with that kind of conversation mechanic. And then I also played, or kind of watched my husband play Travis Strikes Again. And that has like the visual novel sections as well. That are done in like a very similar pixel art style. So me-verse posts are like black and white drawings. And then Travis Strikes Again is like the green and black kind of retro aesthetic. So it was really like, oh, I want to blend like all these things and tell like a new story. So Videoverse is about like a love story, but also has lots of like kind of other side characters. And so there’s like a main story and then side characters with like their own little things going on. It’s a much bigger game than my previous game. And it’s another one where I think I’ve like taken off a bit more than I can chew. It was an idea that seems small at first and is now exploded into this like pretty decent length game. I was curious to know if it’s structured similarly to One Night Stand, like in terms of it being deliberately repeatable, or if it’s meant to be one sort of like long experience where you get like maybe fewer outcomes, like how does it different structure? Yeah, it’s definitely the opposite. So it is like a more linear, longer experience. There are like different branches, but ultimately it does lead down the same path. There’s also like side stories that you can choose to do or not. Yeah, there’s like different ways that your character can be. Like if you think Mass Effect, for example, where you’ve got your Renegade and your Paragon, similar like that, like you can play the main character in like a more kind of, you know, cocky, confident way, or a more like kind and compassionate way. So each route will play quite differently, but it still like, it still ends at the end, you know what I mean? Right, yeah, that’s cool. I also, one thing I loved about One Night Stand was just how beautiful the animations were, the sort of rotoscoping style animations. So I was curious like that side of things. I imagine you take a lot of pride in this, looking the part from a visual perspective, what kind of challenges were there in making it? Just nailing an aesthetic that people will like, I guess. It’s quite difficult because I think, you know, like one bit pixel art, it’s either your finger or it’s not. Like, Obra Dinn uses, you know, that same style in a more 3D world. But you know, some people don’t really like that game, while other people love it. So I’m going to lose some people from just the art style that I’ve chosen, which is unfortunate. But I’ve always wanted to do like a pixel art game. So I’m very excited to do that. It has been difficult to do that in a more modern engine that uses like a really high resolution. I know like there’s probably like better engines to do like pixel art games. But yeah, I’ve kind of taught myself programming. So I mainly just use RemPy because that’s all I can do. That’s what you use for One Night Stand as well, right? Yes. Yeah. So RemPy is a visual novel engine that uses Python. So it’s quite easy to kind of learn and dive in and make your own games. I did want to ask, like, am I your first game developer on the podcast? Jay is technically the first one who is working on Cassette Beast and worked for Chucklefish. But yeah, you’re the only one who’s made a game entirely by themselves, basically, testing aside. So that is certainly different, you know. So it’s interesting that this game seems very embedded in gamer culture, as your breakout hit One Night Stand is famously talked about as a more non-traditional subject for a game. Do you see Videoverse as a more gaming-adjacent project, or do they come from a similar place for you in terms of your sensibilities? So again, it’s a bit of both. They do, like, on the outside appear very different, probably for different audiences as well, but they do also come from a similar place, which is me making my own game again. And I think if you play Videoverse, if you’ve played One Night Stand, you’ll see the similarities for sure. So although Videoverse is a longer, linear experience, it is a game where it’s very much about having a deep one on one connection with character, reading into the subtleties of the animations and the body language, which is something that I was really proud of with One Night Stand, is that it’s kind of about reading between the lines kind of game. So Videoverse is kind of the same in that aspect as well. I found myself, and maybe this just reflects on me because I’m a horrible shitty bastard, but when I played One Night Stand, I was quite sort of, I found myself being quite voyeuristic. Voyeuristic, or ruthlessly efficient in how I was investigating this person’s life and using that information, like a kind of, I say against them, I mean, basically to try and further my own nefarious aims. And I wondered if there was an element of that to this as well, that kind of learning about someone online or learning about someone through how they, you know, depict themselves in a social network. Yeah, so some of the characters are quite, you know, they’re expressing themselves through their drawings. And people do that in different ways. So you know, you go on to Miiverse and you’ll see a post that’s like, or at least on Splatoon 3, you’ll see Miiverse posts like, I like men, I am gay, all these kinds of like, kind of inappropriate maybe for a Nintendo thing. But also, like, I’m like, well, this could be that person’s way of coming out. Like, that’s how I view it. And I’m like, you know, whenever you see some of these drawings, I’m like, I’m always like really, my, you know, really like piqued interest, like, well, what’s their story, like what’s going on? So maybe that’s just because I’ve been developing this game for years, and I’m like thinking about these things way more than I should. But yeah, there’s like, you know, lots of drawings. There’s a character that you get to know who’s a really good artist, and she starts kind of like expressing herself more and more with her drawings. The main character as well is like, he’s being kind of put off, like putting drawings on the internet, because people have been a bit mean. There’s been like trolls online, like kind of not making it very firm. So his confidence has been knocked a bit. So it’s about him like building that back up, meeting other artists. I mean, that’s another thing, like another inspiration was that when I was growing up, it was using websites like DeviantArt a lot, sharing artwork with like other people who were artists. So there’s a lot of early message board kind of culture in there as well. Getting to know like regular kind of users and things like that. Is it tricky making something about any kind of online platform? Because it’s also fast moving, like the trends change so radically. And a lot of people when they sort of try and recreate elements of online culture, it’s a bit quote unquote cringe because they’re out of step with it. Or their online experience is so different to everyone else’s online experience. How do you kind of judge that? Because it’s sort of set. Am I right in thinking it’s sort of set and it’s like a sort of fictional gaming platform? Is that right? Yes. So it’s set in like a fiction. It’s like someone described it as like an alternate Nintendo timeline. It’s very much like I’m trying to recreate this, you know, alternate Nintendo universe. The console kind of looks like a cross between a Nintendo DS or a Sega Pico or even like a laptop. Like it’s a bit more of a… it’s a bit different, but it is like… I’m also like trying to find this balance of like, well, they needed to have easy access to internet at this point. Like, which year would this happen? Like, you know, when I first started designing the game, I’m like, oh, I really want it to be like the early 2000s. But it’s… and I had like this small device and it’s like we didn’t have internet on small devices back then, you know. So it’s like, you do want it to be fictional, but you also want it to seem believable. So that was quite a hard line to like whilst I was like building the world at first, that was quite difficult. When is it set? So it is set in 2003. And that’s another thing, like I’m sure someone’s probably going to be like, oh, we had like more than two colours in 2003, you know. But I’m like, well, that’s an aesthetic choice. It’s also like, because I am a solo developer, it’s like, that is also a choice I made. So the work would be a lot easier for me to do, you know. Right, nice. Yeah, if you adding like a load of colours, then it just takes so much longer. So I had to do that with One Night Stand as well. It’s like a very, you know, muted colour palette, very simple backgrounds, but it was doable with what I had available. So yeah. Yeah. Does that mean like you’re having to sort of rewind 20 years of being online to get into the headset, the mindset, when you’re like writing the game? Like, how do you, did you ever write something and think, oh, that’s actually, that’s two, that’s 20, 22 persons speaking. Absolutely. Absolutely. I did that so much. I even like, I wish I’d realized it sooner because I’d been doing a load of drawings as well for the, for the game. Uh, the, you know, the Miiverse like drawings and drawing memes of like things that have happened in the last few years. It’s like, well, that wasn’t there. And it’s weird because it’s like, well, I did it because I know the people playing it are going to be playing it like today, you know, now. And I want to do things that are relevant that people will understand. But then if you go back to like internet culture of 2003, it’s like, I don’t know if everyone remembers that. Like, for example, like I had to keep researching to try and, you know, get, to try and nail this era. And it’s like even smiley like emojis didn’t have, um, like they, they all had noses back then. And I can’t even really remember that. Like apparently the noses got dropped around like, I don’t know if it was like 2008 or something like that. The great denosing of 2008. I remember it well. So yeah, it’s just like things like that, um, have kind of, they did catch me off guard and I had to like, you know, redo quite a bit of work. But I’m at that point now where I’m like, I think I’ve found a good balance. Like even the term, you know, an online troll didn’t really exist. Apparently that crept up around, I think, like to maybe the late nineties. So I just, I just worded it as like internet troll. So almost as though the characters themselves are learning these terms at the time in the game. So yeah, it’s, it’s been tricky, but I think I’ve got it. I was curious, actually, you don’t have, you don’t have to tell us what it’s about if you don’t want to, but the, um, the project that you shelved, what was it like making that decision? Cause I imagine something like that is incredibly difficult to do when, you know, you’re self-motivated, self-employed. Do you mind talking about that? So it’s kind of, I’d say funny, but it’s not funny. I’ve done this like twice. So before I made One Night Stand, I was actually working on another visual novel about the internet. It was, that one was a dating sim and that was set in like an online RPG, RPG, like a kind of World of Warcraft kind of thing. And it’s funny that Matthew said earlier, like, oh, do you find the technology moves on too quick to make these stories? And that’s kind of what happened there with that game was that things had just moved on so much that a lot of the story didn’t quite make sense because I was making it meant to be in present day. So that one got shelved and it didn’t, I fully intended to go back to it, but then One Night Stand like kind of exploded. I really didn’t expect it to take off like it did. And then when I came back to it, I was like, I can’t do this game with like my current, I need a bigger team basically, I was like, right, so shelve that one. So I start like a new project, which was called Memories. That was like a working title and I worked on that for about three years. And that is the one that I shelved when I had the Videoverse idea. So it’s quite painful, but at the same time, like I had quite a lot of life changes happen, which I won’t like go too much into, but the pandemic was one of them. And I was working on this game that was a lot more kind of serious. It was probably like a bit of a downer. And I wanted to make, I just, with the pandemic and everything, I was like, I really just, I want to make something that’s more uplifting, that’s a bit more fun, that will make people laugh. You know, there’s heavy stuff in Videoverse as well. I do want to move people, but I also want people to smile, you know? And Memories wasn’t really that kind of game. It was quite a kind of semi-autobiographical, quite serious. And it just didn’t feel right, the right time, or, you know, for the right, kind of the way the state of the world’s gone since like 2016, I guess. So yeah, it can be really difficult working on something for a long time and then making that decision. But the decision was that Videoverse wouldn’t take two years to make. I was really hoping it would be like a six month kind of thing. But then whilst working on it, I just saw so much potential that I really just wanted to make it into like a fuller experience for the player. Well, that’s a great reason to spend more time on something, you know, if it literally pulls you into it and just can’t resist, then I don’t know, that’s a good sign. I think you kind of know when a game isn’t quite working, or if it’s not the right time and place for it. I know like, it’s not just me that gets this, it’s like other indie devs, it’s other like game studios, a lot of projects get like binned, which sucks, but it’s just, it’s kind of part of the process, I think, with game design, and I hope I’ll never make the mistake again, but I don’t know, we’ll see. Out of interest is the original game you mentioned there, the one set in the online RPG, the reference by that film you can find in One Night Stand, is that, yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s it, and I remember putting that in there at the time being like, I want to see if people think this is a cool idea. But yeah, and you know what, I still want to go back to that. This is the thing, I still want to go back to all my other projects. I think I just need to grow as a developer, really. Well, an unspecified point in the future, if we’re ever optimistic again as a species, which feels unlikely, then Memories is out there waiting to be picked up again, maybe. Ready to bum everyone out. You’re like, are you feeling happy? Well, have I got a game for you? So, you weren’t at EA for five years at Chillingo. What were you doing there? Were they EA at the time, actually, Lucy? Is that actually correct? So, when I started… This is what happens when I plan the absence. It’s full of wrong information. It’s a bit unfair, because it was only like a year after they then got acquired by EA. So, not many people would know that. Phew. That’s got me off Samuel’s shit list. For now. I started there out of uni in 2010. And I was there for just under five years. And yeah, so after a year of being a graphic designer, they got acquired by EA and the team grew quite a bit. I became a manager when I was in my early 20s, which was pretty awesome. And we published, whilst I was there, about 250 mobile games. Yeah. It was like, when I first started, it was like two a week. Wow. Then it went to like one a week and then one every two weeks and so on. But yeah, like, notable ones were the original Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Contre Jour, Order Up, Fight Back. And then there were like more popular IPs, like there was like a Shaun the Sheep game, He-Man, Superman, things like that. Were you actively doing art for these or in that management role, were you like away from that? How did that work? First brought in to, basically Chillingo had like an in-app social network called Crystal. A big selling part of that was that we could skin Crystal to look like it was part of the game. So that’s what I first started doing was like making Crystal skins. And then I then like went into more of a traditional graphic design role. I was making like advertisements, choosing which screenshots to show on the store. We started like designing app store icons to make sure that they’re like really standing out. How did you come to leave Chillingo and set up as an indie dev? Did your time there shape your work that would follow? I didn’t go off and make mobile games, but I really did like learn a lot. There was like an in-house production team there. And we’d always, they’d always be talking about like why this game works. And I just, it was just really beneficial in a way to kind of come from like a publishing background and then go and be a developer. It’s usually, I don’t think I’ve really heard of many developers doing that. Usually like a developer has like a computer science background and has maybe always worked in some kind of development, whether it’s games or software. But I don’t know, like understanding like how a game gets sold really helped me design a game that I thought would sell well, if that makes sense. Your first big game was One Night Stand as we discussed. And as we mentioned, it felt like a bold collision of subject matter and form. I think like the short form nature of each playthrough is really interesting. And a lot of the choices you make on terms of like focusing on a single moment and interaction and how that kind of subsequently plays out, it’s still really kind of one of a kind or at least it feels like it to me. So how did it come about? And did it feel like you were breaking some mold at the time? I think I have a lot of crazy out there ideas. I don’t really stop and realize that something is a bit weird. Like making a game about One Night Stand is pretty weird now that I look back on it. But at the time I was like, I’ve not seen that. Why haven’t I seen that? Let’s do it. I guess I see a lot of games telling the same stories and I get really bored. I think ultimately like I see a gap. I see a huge gap and I’m like, well, I want to fill it about a game about One Night Stand because that hasn’t existed. Or in Videoverse’s case, it’s like I want there to be, I want to talk about this time of the internet and how people connected. And it was this kind of crucial point where the internet kind of is just gaining a lot of traction and a lot of people going to it. And we see what the internet is like now and it’s like, I don’t know if the way people talk online is such a great thing, if you’re online all the time. So I’m always just trying to come up with ideas that I haven’t really seen. And I guess, yeah, I wasn’t maybe super conscious of it at the time, I guess. But I was, with One Night Stand, I did make it for a game jam. So it didn’t really matter wherever it was going to be a success or not. It was just like one month of making a visual novel and seeing if it would work. And it turned out it did. So yeah, then I just kind of developed it longer and made it into like a fuller game. It seemed like it was an example as well of how YouTubers picking up a game can massively make it sort of like soar. Was that huge for you at the time when I think Jacksepticeye picked it up, for example? It was so crazy because I put the free like game jam version out and I hadn’t even play tested it. I just kind of shoved it up and then I went on holiday for two weeks and I didn’t even take my laptop with me. Like I’d never released a game. I was just didn’t expect any of this. And it got picked up by like a really big French YouTuber. I think it’s called like Squeezy or something. I had never heard of him. And then it got picked up by PewDiePie. And then it got picked up by I think like Jacksepticeye, Markiplier, a few others. And I didn’t even really watch any of these YouTubers. I mean, I still don’t, but I really didn’t have a clue about it back then. And yeah, it definitely like exploded. It did help that the first version of the game was free because I just put it out as a game jam thing. And it was at that point where I’m like, shit, like, this is a really good opportunity to make this into like a proper game that I can sell. So it definitely like translated over. What’s very interesting is that some YouTubers like impact sales way more than others. The PewDiePie thing didn’t do anything. All its cheap safety fans. It’s because they’re like 10. None of them have got a credit card. Yeah, and they prefer to like just watch him like mess around, you know? They don’t really want to play the game. But then a lot of the French YouTubers, like I had one just like a month ago, play the game again and then had another like uptick in sales. I don’t know what it is about French YouTubers, but they really seem to sell my game. When it comes to the visual novel genre, obviously One Night Stand does exist within that, even if the subject matter is quite, it was very specific. So visual novel is obviously the topic for this episode. So were you a fan of the genre beforehand? And if so, did making the game make you re-evaluate the genre at all? Was there anything that surprised you in the execution? So yeah, I’ve been like a fan of visual novels since way before I even played visual novels, which sounds really stupid. It’s quite the boast. I basically like when I finished playing Final Fantasy 7 when I was like 11 years old, which I love. It’s my favourite game. I wanted to find more things like it. That’s when I learnt about anime, and that was when I found a game called Tokimeki Memorial, which is like a dating sim, and I still haven’t played it, but I was just obsessed with it. A little 11-year-old me just looking online at all these game guides and things like, oh, I wish I could play that one day. So I always had this thirst for playing a visual novel, and then it was only like by about 2011 or 2012 when I finally realised like, oh, these are actually, quite a lot of them have come over to the West now and been translated into English, so that was kind of when I started playing them. It hasn’t really like affected my work. They’ve always been there whilst I’ve been making visual novels, but I do think like, you know, I kind of touched on it earlier. I feel like there should just be more visual novels about all kinds of things. It’s either, you know, like mystery detective type things or like dating sims. And there are like some outliers, and that’s really cool. But I guess I look at visual novels kind of like books, and there’s like books about anything, but with visual novels we’re still quite conservative. I mean, I don’t know, because like all the books I own are literally Japanese mystery stories. So actually the like visual novels really do reflect what my book collection is like. And I’m like, fantastic. This is such a good genre for me. Yeah. So I suppose like visual novels have always struck me as quite minimalist, built from a few vital parts. I love it when you read a question I’ve written for you. And I put a me in the question. That’s so confusing. Fuck me. That absolutely threw me. I was like, oh, I can’t do this. These questions, now I hear you read them out. I’m like, some of these are a bit a bit chewy. These are like questions I’d ask if I was interviewing you for like Edge. Normally on this podcast, it’s just like, what games do you like? Yeah. So sorry for bamboozling you with those. You know, nice and dense, but I do feel like, yeah, I’m asking for a Wikipedia page’s worth of responses. Is it like hard to pin down the stylistic elements of a visual novel, Lucy, in terms of like picking font, sounds, text speed? Like how much of that do you take from other places and how much of it is sort of your instinct as a designer? It’s something that, yeah, it’s quite simple. It’s usually, you know, visual novels usually like text box, a few buttons and maybe like a little portrait in a name box. But I actually, I do struggle with it sometimes. You want to make sure you find a font that’s not going to be grating after like several hours of reading. You know, some people hate like the little font noise. I mean, I really like it, but I had quite a few people write in for One Night Stand like, oh, could you add a thing where I can switch that off? Which I didn’t do. But the thing is I have done it for Videoverse. I’m like, right, you can switch it off in Videoverse. Like, I know this might great people. Yeah, the reason I sort of wrote that question is because, you know, reading a lot of reviewers of visual novels and actually outside of the stories and the writing itself, what you actually have to kind of like engage with is like super minimalist. You know, I’m not saying like there’s few choices involved in these things, but there are maybe fewer choices or choices which are so important, like the wrong font can sync one of these games, or if the text speed is like a little bit too slow, you can just run out of patience with something. And it just made me think, is there any other video game genre where those decisions carry like so much weight? I don’t know if there are. No, it’s a good point. You know, what really turns me off for visual novels is if there’s no like auto forward, so you got to keep clicking. Like I hate that. I’m a clicker for this, but like to get my ideal speed, I want to be clicking. I know. And that’s the weird thing. Like I’ll still click, but sometimes I’m like, I just like the option to not click. I know it sounds really stupid. I want an auto thing which fits the exact rhythm and pace that is unknown only to me. That’s what I want them to somehow tap into. And the thing is some of them do, but then maybe you’ll like blink and then you won’t read it quite as quick and then it’s gone. And then it’s kind of really annoying. Stressful. Speaking of codec conversations, the thing that always upset me with those is if you accidentally pressed X, they’d stop talking. They turn off the VO and then you could keep clicking through it, but there’s no way to like hit resume on the VO. And you’re like, I just got to either load the game again or just read it and miss out on this line of Kojima dialogue that will be read in a very tortured way by a poor voice actor. So let’s take a quick break then and we’ll come back with the Best Visual Novels and some basics on the genre. Welcome back to the podcast. So, before we kick off with our list, let’s try and attempt to definition of visual novels. There are loads of sub-genres and semi-fringe cases. Matthew, why don’t you kick us off, then Lucy, you can sort of like join in on there, and sort of add to what Matthew lays the groundwork for. Oh, God. You put this in the pan! I know I wrote the question, I thought you were gonna pass this to Lucy, and she was gonna say something amazing, and I’d be like, yeah, basically that. I thought Lucy might want a break. I can try if you want. Oh, go on, Lucy, you should try. Let’s do that. The impossible task of trying to define what a visual novel is. So, visual novel is like an element that is in a lot of games. I kind of split it into three kind of categories. I think first you’ve got, just your visual novel elements in video games. So games like, you know, Final Fantasy, which is like, let’s say one third battles, one third exploration, one third visual novel dialogue, at least with the older games. Then things like Fire Emblem, 13 Sentinels, Ages Rim. Then I think there’s a second category that’s more general adventure game visual novels, where people are going in to expect reading, but are there to play. I kind of put in the games like Danganronpa, Zero Escape series, Ace Attorney, things like that. And then the third category being purest visual novels, which I think people go in not expecting to play a game, but to read. So that would be something that is mostly 100% text, maybe not even any choices, or maybe if there are choices, just a few. So games like Katamashoujo, Steins Gate, Shibuyu Scramble, perhaps, The House in Fatima, Ghana. Okay, so that’s how I’ve tried to categorize. Lucy, I agree completely. Glad we didn’t try and blow the episode by having Matthew lead on that one. Well, I was going to amenable because there’s like, I think that you use the word purest there and like there is a pure form of these, which is like really you will be pressing a button and nothing else to move a story forward. And then there are things which by comparison seem incredibly interactive and sort of, you know, almost veering on point and click adventure. And it’s kind of mad that they both sit under it. Like I remember playing what I would say like more purest visual novels after playing things like Ace Attorney and thinking like, I didn’t think Ace Attorney was a visual novel. Like in my head, I was like, I’ve never played a visual novel before. And it was actually a bit of a surprise that some of these things did, were seen to fall under the category, I guess. Yeah, it’s interesting because I’m kind of the opposite. When I played Ace Attorney, I was like, oh yeah, I’m finally playing like this really cool series, this visual novel series. Right. Because I was so excited to start playing visual novels. I came to Ace Attorney pretty late as well. But yeah, then I remember people online saying, Ace Attorney isn’t a visual novel. And I’m like, it so is. And then I think there’s quite a lot of, I’d love to know what you guys think. I think there’s quite a lot of gatekeeping around what is and isn’t a visual novel. And I’m like, let’s just open it up. And if people say Ace Attorney is a visual novel, I think that’s fine. You are spending like 80% of your time reading. I’ve not really got a problem with it. There is something strange happens in the ones which are a bit more purist because the way you can see them is so sort of passive, I guess, you don’t ever have to engage to make the next thing happen. And I’ve been trying to think of why they work so well, or the argument against them is you might think, well, why not just read a book? What’s different between a book and a purist visual novel where you’re just pressing A? And what is it about the act of just pressing a button that kind of draws you into it? Or is it the nature of the stories? Is it the fact that a lot of these are very dialogue driven in a way that most books wouldn’t be that dialogue driven? It’d be like reading a script as opposed to reading a book. And yeah, I didn’t really have any smart answers. Well, I think maybe you could compare it closer to comics because that’s usually more dialogue in comics. Or like inner thought monologue kind of things. And I do think, you know, when I first played like my first linear visual novel, but didn’t have any choices in it at all, I did wonder like, what is the point of this? Not in such a nasty way. It was more like just trying to understand it, you know? You know, the visual novels I really like tend to be in the second category where I kind of want interaction. I don’t really play that many like pure ones, but the ones that I have, like it tends to be like a mixture of sometimes the artwork on the screen, kind of the angles of the shots. And usually like the music is a big part of it. It’s like reading a really good story with this epic soundtrack that matches it. It’s like a book that someone has soundtracked for you, which it sort of says, this paragraph played this song and the impact of that. That’s what I was saying, like when they’re so, when the moving parts are so minimalist, they can actually like hit you surprisingly hard. You know, like if all of a sudden in a line of dialogue, you know, you change the speed at which it appears, or like, you can create lots of verbal effects with like, you know, words vibrating or words appearing like one by one because something is dawning on someone, you know, that stuff can be really super effective. And you go, oh, actually a book can’t do, you know, this has a couple of tricks which are, you know, very powerful when used right. I think the other element of the gatekeeping thing is that this is quite an unusual genre in the sense that more than maybe any other genre, these games didn’t have a profile in the West for a long, long time. And then, and yet there is this quite deep, rich history. You mentioned Tokimeki Memorial there, Lucy, but like, you know, these are games that existed. I understand there were just, there were tons of like Saturn visual novels, for example, that just obviously never made it here. But maybe some of that purest attitude comes from the fact that the, there is just such a deep history of this stuff. And maybe, and Ace Attorney is maybe considered recent history by comparison. I don’t, not sure if that quite impacts it, but that is where it’s kind of differs to maybe some other genres in the West. I think I kind of agree with you really. I did like, you know, you know, a lot of those kind of Saturn games have like the anime art style as well. And I was wondering, like, this was a few years ago, like, is a visual novel, does it always have to have an anime art style? Does it, it doesn’t have to come from Japan necessarily, but does it need to have that art? And I ran a poll on it and I got like over 100 responses. And I think 10% were like, yes, visual novels have to have an anime art style. So it’s quite a small percentage, but there are still people like out there that kind of maybe still have that attitude of like thinking that’s where they came from and that’s where they should be. And that’s the standard that’s expected. Yeah, it’s very interesting. Yeah, for sure. So I suppose to discuss our first encounters with the genre and then we’ll get a little bit into why we find the genre appealing. Like Matthew, kick off with you. Ace Attorney, was that your gateway drug into the genre or did you have some other brush with it before that? No, that would have been it. But like I said, didn’t really know it was classified as a visual novel at the time. I remember reading into them all when I was reviewing 999 on the DS. I remember thinking, oh, this seems a bit more different. This has got a particular style. And then you’re going to the Wikipedia page for visual novels and like, is this one? Is this one of these things? Incidentally, you will never read worse reviews than most games journalists’ first proper visual novel review. Because they write about them like they’ve discovered this thing for the first time. You know, they’re like, get this, it’s like a book. And I just can’t sort of understate how little you have to do in this game. You just have to press A. And like every journal falls down that hole, I think, of being like, this is crazy that this is so un-interactive. Which for me is I reviewed Steins Gate, I think, on PS3. And yeah, like that review is just embarrassing. I wouldn’t want to dig it up because I think it’s a real like, whoa, check this, smudge it out. Which is just sort of like, yeah, very cringy. But yeah, I think, yeah, and then most of what I’ve played since then has been like the mystery stuff. But more because, you know, being a detective fiend than necessarily a visual novel fiend. How about you, Lucy? What was your first brush with the visual novel? So I think mine was Kata wa Shojo, which kind of translate as disability girls, which sounds like a problematic, potentially problematic kind of dating sim. Right, or empowering one of those two. That’s the thing. It was actually really good. It was one of those really surprised, it kind of dealt with these female love interests in a really nice, sensitive, understanding kind of way. So I’m not really super into dating sims. I do play them, but I’m generally a little bit disappointed. Quite a lot of them are quite trope-y. They rely on the same kind of characters in every game, at least with atome games, which are designed for women. But I thought Katabashoujo, and it has been a long time since I played it, but it felt like each character was pretty deep and quite respected and well understood. And it was nice to just talk to a group of people that had disabilities, I guess. And I think that’s the nice thing about visual novels is you get to just play these conversations with people that maybe you’d never have. So yeah, I think that was the first game I played. And then a couple of years later, I then played Ace Attorney. But I played it on my iPad or something. Yeah. The old iPad artwork. Yeah. It was really bad. The game was good though. Oh, the game was good. Listen, that game can triumph over any arts, art eras. I must say, I tried, I thought I should, I hadn’t played any romance visual novels before this episode. So I thought I should try playing some. I maybe played a little bit of a one, I have a vague memory of one where you’ve dated loads of samurais in like, Oh, is that? some historical period setting. It begins with a H, I think. Yeah, it begins with, it’s a long word beginning with an H, but it was, yeah, I can remember thinking like, oh cool, like, samurais, this is going to be awesome, this is going to be a cool samurai, story about samurais. And you’re like, man, I really want to, I really want to romance all these samurais. This is different, not even realising what it was. But for this episode, I tried playing a bit of Busterfellows on Switch. Oh, yeah, I’ve been playing Busterfellows. I’ve done like two routes in that. Because that’s like sort of crime adjacent in that there’s like crimes happening and all the men that you can kind of romance are sort of vaguely, one’s like a like a mortician or an autopsy guy. Yeah, he’s the one I dated. Oh nice, how did that work out? It was alright, it was a bit of a downer. Yeah, but that’s the thing. I was like, oh, these are just cool guys. I think I was playing it more as a, oh, these are just cool guys. I just want to be guy friends with them. Yeah, and that’s the thing. I hear you say that and I’m like, that would be a nice game to make, wouldn’t it? You could just have a load of like, you play as a male character and you just have a load of guy friends. I just want to make unusual male friends. Because all my male friends are games journalists. You know, visual novel about making friends in your 30s. That’s a good one. There we go. Next game. Thanks, guys. No, you’re welcome. It’s that easy. What is it about visual novels that appeals to you, Lucy? I just really like reading, I guess. But I’m really big into manga. It’s probably my bigger passion than even video games, I’d say. I’ve got a huge shelf full of manga. But when it comes to normal books, I do have quite a lot of books, but I find it harder to read. So for a visual novel, it’s just more engaging and entertaining. You’ve got the pictures and the music. Growing up, I never read any Choose Your Own Adventure books or anything, but I always thought the idea of them sounded really cool. Like, oh, it’s your story, but it’s what you make of it. And, you know, in general, I just, I don’t really love, like, heavy action games. You know, Splatoon is about as action as I get. Otherwise, I just get too stressed out. I don’t really like hitting loads of buttons and, like, keeping up, you know, the stress of, like, having to perform a perfect action, like in a platformer or something. It’s like, ugh. But when I was younger, like, maybe, but I just can’t be bothered now. I’d much rather, like, sit down and relax with a visual novel. Date a mortician. Yeah. Take it easy. Let’s see, next part of this plan. I brackets Matthew have only really had experience with thrillers and detective stories, of which there are many. Does Lucy have more experience with social slash romance viennes? If so, what is their deal? Lucy. So I think I probably played more detective murder mystery type ones as well. I think that’s what I enjoy more. But I have played like a few Atome games, which are so Atome is like maiden games in Japanese and like Western and Indie visual novels as well. I think like it’s nice for me, like I really like romance stories. So most of the manga on my shelf is like romance stuff. And it’s just like it’s more interactive version of that without like any real world consequence. Like, oh yeah, I dated a mortician, but you know, that doesn’t upset my husband. It’s just this bit of just a bit of fun, I guess. And I think some people can get a bit weirded out by it, but it’s like if you get weirded out by someone playing a dating sim, I just like, well, you’re not weirded out by that kid who’s like shooting a gun in a game and blowing someone’s head up. It’s just another thing that’s like, it’s simulating real life or a part of life that maybe you don’t get to do. And I don’t really see much of a problem with it personally. Yeah. Catherine can definitely get a little bit kind of like, hmm, if I’m playing like anything particularly dodgy on TV. It depends how dodgy it goes. Well, not dodgy, if there’s anything where you can like actively pursue a relationship with someone, she seems to be a little bit like, hmm, don’t just do it in my face. That’s interesting. But that also includes watching videos of people having bubble baths in Yakuza, which is probably quite an obnoxious thing to activate in front of your wife. Yeah. Well, the bubble, the thing is, with Yakuza, me and my husband play it together. We always like pass the pad. So when the bubble bath bits come up, we, yeah, I mean, that, that just feels very awkward. And because they’re like real, real women on those videos, it’s like this is, that’s, that’s the line for me. I’m like, oh, they’re staring at the camera. This is really awkward. Lucy, I was curious, did you and your husband play Persona 5, Pass the Pad? We did, but we only got about halfway in. We played like 40 hours. Yeah, right. I was just really curious if you had to negotiate, as I did, the sort of like what unacceptable love interest was in that game, which was like, that was like a UN style, like a hostage style situation to like a hot potato and a compromise is eventually reached. But yeah, I imagine you didn’t get far enough in to experience that. If you ever do get around to it, let me know who you end up picking as a compromise. I did have my eye on the doctor. She seemed really cool. I was like, yeah. But when it comes to these kind of things, my husband’s just like, you pick. I don’t really care because he knows that I really like that stuff. Right. So you pick the love interest who might kill you with drugs. Yeah, it’s another like weird science person. Yeah, for sure. Matthew, maybe you should ask this next bit. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot I wrote these questions. How do you doubt your… I can never make myself sound natural even though I wrote it. How do you… You have to keep this in now. How do you tend to consume these things? It doesn’t sound like any human on Earth, this. How do you tend to consume these things? I found that pairing incredibly long games and often quite low energy storytelling techniques means that I have to be in a particular mindset or frame of mind for them. All the stories have particular hooks. I guess this is more about how do you play visuals? Would you ever sit at a PC and play one of these things? No. I’ve always preferred just before bed, one or two hours, something like that. When I used to read a book, I guess, handheld is really good for visual novels. I did say I played Ace Attorney on my iPad years ago. And then I got Steins Gate for Vita. I also played Virtue’s Last Reward on Vita. And now the Switch is my visual novel thing. And although I do play it on handheld a lot, I do also like what’s so good about the Switch is being able to plug it in on the TV. When it’s like, oh, this is a really cool moment in this game. I want it on the big screen and I want the big speakers. And we’ve recently just bought a new TV that has the Ambilight function. So the whole room will change colour when certain things happen. So I had a really cool moment. I was playing AI Somnium Files, the Nirvana initiative recently. And there’s a part where you walk into one of the Somniums and it goes all red. And the whole room turned red. And it was so atmospheric. I was like, wow, that was worth spending all that money on that new TV. So yeah, mostly it’s handheld. But then sometimes it’s like, yeah, now that the TV is like set up really cool, like that’s nice as well. You want to bathe your living room in the cold blues of Buster Fellows morgue. I can actually endorse One Night Stand on Steam Deck by the way. You get a very scary screen at first saying like some kind of exception error was found because you’re playing it on Linux. But then you just skip that. It seems to work perfectly. I still don’t have one. I guess I don’t know if the selection on Steam is bigger than it is on Switch, but I definitely know there’s a couple you can’t get on Switch currently that are on Steam. Yeah. And the prices tend to be a bit cheaper. So, yep, I agree on the handheld front. So I suppose then, Matthew, I’m curious how you consume these, actually. Do you see these as bedtime reading as well, or is it a bit more like, you know, I’ll save my Japanese crime novel for like 11 p.m. and I’ll play these at 9 p.m. kind of situation? I don’t know. When I play games, I tend to play them for a little longer than just like an hour here or there, you know, so I can still have a good old session with one of these. Yeah, but at the moment, I’d say it probably replaces my bedtime reading. So I’ve got loads of books that I need to be getting through, but I’m not because I’m playing things for this episode or thinking about this episode made me think about some stuff that I hadn’t played, that I needed to play. And yeah, well, as we’ll get to in the list, I’m currently stuck in an absolute monster of a visual novel. So I’m going to be playing that for like basically forever, I think, which is quite stressful. But yeah, Steam Deck Switch seemed perfect. You know, either one of those will keep you well fed. One can charge while you’re using the other, it’s perfect. That’s spot on. Okay, great. Then we come to the list themselves then. So just Lucy and Matthew have both made lists here, top fives. Lucy, do you want to kick off with your number five? Number five, I put Nosier. So that was a game that came out a couple of years ago, on Switch at least in the West. And yeah, it’s, have either of you guys played this one? I have, I’ve played a bit, but I’ve got incredibly stuck. Okay, yeah, it is a bit like that at times. It’s about 15 hours long in total, I think, or around that. I did reach a point where I played about two hours of like the same thing. I’m not starting this off very positive, am I? But apart from that, I was really like hooked with it. It’s a kind of like a narrative version of Among Us, I guess. Like it’s a load of characters on a spaceship, described as like a social deduction game. And it uses like loops. So you end up playing like I think over like a hundred loops of the game. And each time you play like one of the characters, or maybe more like these nausea, and these are characters that will like kill the humans on board the ship. So it’s like a little bit of a murder mystery, but it’s more like you want to find this person before they kill someone else. Like in The Next Night, it’s not a kind of traditional visual novel, in that the dialogue is very repetitive. And at first I was like, this is weird. I don’t really like it. Why the characters saying the same things like in every loop. But then with the loops, you start kind of deducting like, well, that character doesn’t usually say that. Like, why is he acting shifty? Is he nausea this time? And then you kind of like vote who you think it is on each one and see if you can get rid of them. Yeah, I just thought it was really nice. Had like really nice character art and really like a soundtrack that I’ve not really heard anything like that before. It was very kind of futuristic and technical. And yeah, it had like, I just really warmed up to the characters. I think that’s quite an important thing with a lot of visual novels is having likable characters. It’s almost like each case is almost like procedurally generated sort of. And so it really is kind of randomized who the people are each time. So it’s quite a, I’d say it’s definitely at like the game-ier end of the spectrum. Definitely, yeah. In terms of like, I think they’re even like, aren’t they like stats and things you can upgrade? Yeah, you can upgrade your stats. I think you can get to know some of the characters a bit better and unlock like little stories with them. And you can, I think after a while, it just gives you free reign. It’s like, right, you can set up this game however you want. You can be nosier if you want, or you can be, like they give you like roles on the ship as well that give you certain different bits of information. I don’t know, like it was another one that I played with my husband, which when we, you know, whenever I play visual novels, we don’t usually play them together. In fact, this is like the only one that’s happened. But it was so, it was like that kind of addictive, like, just give it one more, one more loop. Let’s do another loop. Like, and we take it in terms between the loops and see if we find out different things. And yeah, like it’s a, it was made by like four people, a group called Petit De Pote, I think, if I’m pronouncing that right. And I think it’s fantastic. And I feel like I don’t really see a lot of people talking about it, which was why I wanted to include it in the list. Because you actually have to do some actual deduction. And it’s random. I was just really bad at it. I never really felt like I learned the rules properly. It was my, it was the reason I stalled with it. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t like move the story forwards because I couldn’t solve any of the cases. Because it turns out I only read mystery fiction, but I’m a terrible detective. Okay, so that’s a cool first recommendation. The art style was certainly distinctive, just from kind of doing a bit of background, adding to wishlisting on my end. That’s awesome. That’s the aim of this episode, is to give you a long list of things to put on your wishlist. Yeah, to make that, poor dude is collecting all of the recommendations we ever put on this podcast, sending down some confusing rabbit holes as he updates the spreadsheet. Okay, cool. What’s your number five, Matthew? My number five is called Ever 17. It’s a mystery adventure game written by Kataro Ichikoshi, who goes on to do the Zero Escape series. This is what he was doing much earlier in his career. He did another trilogy of games. This is the middle part. They’re all kind of unrelated as far as I can tell. I definitely think Zero Escape is better, and we’ll probably get to that later in the picks. And this feels like a much earlier work, but a lot of the building blocks of what he is interested in and what he was going to go on to do are here, and enough so that I think if you did play Zero Escape and you fancy some more of his stuff, actually going back could prove quite fruitful. It’s set in a sort of an aquatic theme park called Limu, which is like these three layers under the ocean. You take big lifts that go down. There is an accident and it floods, trapping a group of characters in this flooding theme park. And they have a hundred hours of air left and they have to escape. And much like the Zero Escape games, it’s a branching, kind of choose your own adventure type story. It doesn’t have the interactive puzzle room elements. It’s like quite pure visual novel in that sense. But it’s also kind of quite a bit clumsier to play than his later games because it doesn’t have like the very neat flowchart stuff, which the later games have, which make it very easy to jump around the story and try new things out. It’s also a lot vaguer in what you’re trying to do to get the different endings. Like there’s almost a romance system in it. In that the two characters that you play as are both men and everyone else is a woman. And you’re not dating them because you’re in a nightmare situation. You’re in this flooding underwater theme park. It’s not really a place for romance. But to get the different endings, you basically prioritize spending time with the different women. But around all that is all the weird sci-fi stuff that is amazing in Zero Escape. He is really good at big concepts, crazy sci-fi twists, some really mad stuff that only emerges once you’ve played all the different paths and see how it all relates. All that good stuff is here. But I had to play it with a walkthrough because it was that unclear how you were meant to get different things to happen. Which I would say is maybe true of older visual novels. I think the genre seems to be a bit smoother as it goes on. Great setting though for great context for this kind of story, right? Yeah, it’s fun. It’s weird because he wrote the story for that World’s End Club last year, which also had an underwater theme park in it. I think there’s a few of his own thriller tropes he returns to a lot. He likes certain reveals that I’ve seen in several of his games. And yeah, it turns out underwater theme park is one of them, which is odd. That sounds really cool. It’s not like all singing, all dancing. It’s pretty sort of stripped back. Quite hard to find as well. You can’t buy this anywhere. So, you know, you just have to do what you have to do. Let’s tick off piracy implied on the old bingo card there. Listen, who knows? Hey, it was apparently remade on 360 in 2011, Matthew. But with 3D models instead of 2D. That’s a shame, isn’t it? What, and released in the West? I think there was one PC version of this, which was released and localized in 2005. I don’t think the 361 was, but then the footprint for that console was so small in Japan. You have to think, why was that even worth it? Yeah, you can, well, I won’t say how, but you can play this on an Android phone if you put your mind to it. Interesting. Yes, that’s say no more and keep lawyers out of the Back Page inbox. So what’s your number four, Lucy? So number four, I picked Eliza. And that is a game that’s made by Zachtronics. It was made in 2019. This one is quite a short visual novel. It’s about five, six hours long. So that’s why I kind of recommend it for people that might be new to visual novels. It doesn’t demand too much of your time. And I think it’s a really good story. I mean, maybe it might just be that it’s like my perfect kind of thing. It’s like all my interests fall into this game. You play as Evelyn, who’s a young woman who’s kind of burnt out from the tech industry that she works in. She was like a programmer. And then you meet her and she’s not really like doing much with her life. But then she starts like kind of virtual counselling as an assistant for this program that’s called Eliza. And she works as a proxy. So it’s kind of like the near future where they’ve made this Eliza program. And it’s like a therapy basically that it makes it’s more so people can access therapy a lot easier. And this big program kind of is your therapist. But instead of it just being like an app or something that’s quite inhuman, they have these like proxies. So Evelyn works as a proxy and basically just has to read a script that the Eliza program gives her. So these people come in for like a therapy session face to face with the proxy. But then all she’s doing is reading the script that the computer is telling her to say. So you can kind of see that, oh, this is a bit weird and maybe morally wrong. And it kind of questions like, is technology really such a good thing? Like, why are we asking computers to do this when maybe humans should be doing it? And it kind of explores in loads of different avenues, like the dangers and the bad side of technology. And you meet like the people she used to work with on the Eliza program. They’ve like had a bit of an argument and one of them has gone off to like make his own company. And he’s like, oh, I want to work in Dreams now. And, you know, these guys are basically trying to like hire Evelyn back. And you can, as the player, you can pick like, well, do I go back to my old boss? Do I go back to the other guy who started up his own company? Even though, you know, that character seems maybe a bit more interesting, but then he’s like quite pervy and like not… he doesn’t seem like someone you’d want to work with. So there’s that kind of toxic workplace environment thing going on as well. So that’s really interesting. All the good stuff. Yeah, yeah. In such a short game as well. It’s really good. And then you meet like other people who are like, oh, I got out of tech. Like, fuck tech, I’m going to be like a DJ now. And she was like, this is like a character who’s like really cool. And I was like, yeah, like I like her attitude. So I’ve actually played like this one a couple of times because I was like, I really want to see like how the other endings go. And it doesn’t really like, it’s not a game that has loads of different branches. It just kind of changes at the end. And it just lets you, it lets you pick from all the information that you’ve gathered, which kind of future Evelyn is the best. I think what makes it so good is that this one is like fully voice acted. And it’s really well done. Because that’s not something that a lot of visual novels have. It’s also a Western visual novel, which is really nice to see. I think it’s a really solid game and I’d definitely recommend that. I need to play this one. I can’t remember if I read an interview or listened to a podcast interview with, is it Matthew Sagey Burns? I think is the writer on this. He did a really good twine game about video game development. I think it’s called The Writer Will Fix It or Get a Writer to Fix It or something. I think he worked at 343, the Halo people. He did this twine thing about being stuck in this very frustrating creative meeting where the pressures on the writing team by the other departments of the game studio were destroying them. I’ve not worked in that environment but it felt very authentic somehow and funny. I liked the writing in it a lot and it was quite alive by twine game standards. I’ve been meaning to play this. I don’t know why I haven’t. I’ve added that to my wishlist. That sounds rad. That’s a great subject matter. The backdrop of shitty tech. You should have called it that instead of Eliza. Shitty tech. That’s why I work in games publishing now, Matthew. They need me. That’s that kind of inspiration. That’s awesome. Okay, great. Thanks for that, Lucy. Matthew, we go to your number four which sounds like your white whale of a visual novel. Oh, yeah. This one’s this one’s a beast. So this is Umineko When They Cry, which I’ve got to say, I started playing a while back and I haven’t finished because the internet estimates this is 140 hours long. And it is literally 140 hours of just pressing a button. You make no branching decisions in this. It is just a story. This is the work of a studio called Seventh Expansion, which I think is actually a couple of like sort of like hobbyists. I can’t remember the official term for it, but like all the all the creators of this, they have like internet handles rather than names. So it’s written by someone called Ryukishi07. Before he wrote this, he wrote another absolutely massive horror mystery epic called Higurashi When They Cry, which I haven’t, which I started to play at the same time as this because I heard that they were unrelated subject matter wise and there seemed to be a lot of people arguing over which one was better or which one was the best place to start. So I figured I was going to commit a hundred plus hours to one of these. I try them both and see which sort of grabbed me. This one, Umineko, is a almost Agatha Christie style setup in that these 18 people end up on this island, which is kind of closed in by typhoon. There’s a family of rich people who are there to discuss inheritance. There are loads of servants, multiple generations of the family, lots of interesting people. It takes about eight hours for anything to happen. It’s just a lot of people, a lot of scene settings, so I can understand why this isn’t for everyone. But if you are into big multi-person ensemble murder mysteries, this is just so much my jam. Loads of people in the house, loads of conflict between different people in the house. You think, oh my god, what’s going on here? Any one of these people could murder anyone else here, and it would kind of make sense. There is a supernatural framing to it where they keep talking about this witch is going to turn up and force a load of sacrifices. Spoiler alert, people start getting bumped off according to the witch’s plan. And the thrust of it, at least where I currently am, like I still probably have 70 hours to go or whatever, is that there’s a lot of debate about the supernatural. Is it as supernatural as it seems? Or is there actually a mundane killer at work here? Everything we were talking about earlier, about how these can elevate just a good book, it’s just a huge murder mystery novel with amazing music that when bodies are found, the music is super sinister and it’s quite chilling. Character art, I love. I did patch this on my Steam Deck. You can patch it to have a PS3 visuals, because there was a PS3 version, so you can update the sprites, and it actually looks pretty spiffing like that. I much prefer that over the original art, which is a bit more cartoonish, and I actually think the subject matter suits slightly more refined art of the PS3 version. And the voice acting, which also gets patched in from the PS3, is absolutely amazing. It’s all in Japanese, but they’re really selling these characters. There’s this old geezer who sounds like he’s on his deathbed recording the dialogue. He’s unbelievably hoarse and frail sounding, but also really angry. And whenever he turns up, I’m like, this is great. I love this guy. I think it might drive me mad, but I think it’s also kind of brilliant. Is that one Lucy that you’re familiar with? I have heard about it, but when I saw the playtime, I was like, nope. It’s just a bit intimidating. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a bit of a pig as well in that you have to buy it in two parts. And it’s quite confusing. When you go into Steam and actually try and find these games, you don’t really know if you’re ever buying the right bit because they’ve all got stupid names. So like the first part of this is the question arcs, which is chapters one to four, and then the second half of the game is chapters five to eight, which is the answer arcs. But then like the original game, the Higurushi, they sell chapter by chapter, so you have to buy all these individual chapters and patch them all individually. They’re not making it easy for this, like, what is held to be this, like, masterpiece of crime fiction. I wish there was an easier way of just bundling it all up and not having to patch it and do all this stuff, but it seems worth it. Okay, yeah, well, I’ll be sure to check in on you on the next five What We’ve Been Playing podcasts, Matthew, to see how you’re getting on with this. Well, that’s the thing, I’ve just got to park it because I’ve got to play other stuff for this fricking podcast, because I can’t just be playing this thing, because I can’t tell anyone what’s going on in it. It’s all spoilery. Right, right, yeah, that’s true. So it’s, yeah, no good for this podcast, so good at all. Yeah, anti-podcast game, this one. So Lucy, what’s your number three? I picked Shibuya Scramble. I think Matthew’s played this one more recently than I have. So good, so good. I think I played it in 2019 on PlayStation 4. I was really lucky because my friend bought it for me for my birthday. And he was like, he knows I like visual novels and he gave it to me. And he’s like, oh, you know, it’s a Spike Chunsoft one. Be right up your alley. And I’m like, I have never heard of it. And I was looking at it like, this looks really weird. Like it’s like an FMV game, but it’s a visual novel. Like what’s the deal? And you load it up and it’s quite like a linear visual novel. I don’t think there’s really that many choices. And when you do make a choice, either one is the right one or one is a bad end kind of thing. So it doesn’t really feel like a choice. It’s like, oh, I go back to the previous choice if I get game over and make the other choice kind of thing. And I was like, I’m not really sure about this like gameplay. It’s not really even much, much game to it. But then after about two hours of like getting into the groove of it really, really hooked me. Really liked it. I like that it goes between characters. I really like that it’s not just the same kind of art style for a visual novel. It’s like actual photos. I think the development said there was like over like a hundred thousand photos in this game. There’s also like some cut scenes as well, but there’s not too many of those. I think it’s got a nice cast of characters. It’s got that kind of loads of twists and turns. It’s got a lot of good like humor in it, I think. I really liked kind of Tama’s story, which is the person in the cat costume, who doesn’t remember how they got there and is having to try and sell this weird energy drink. And it’s just like in this Japanese event that has this like really crazy host guy. And again, the music is really good and fitting for like all these characters and all these scenes. It has that light humor, but it actually has quite a smart, really good story. And I really liked, you know, again, I don’t really want to spoil it, but I do like how all the characters’ stories like came together at the end in Shibuya. I don’t think that’s too much of a… No, no, I think that’s… But yeah, I really like the theme of it. You know, at the beginning of your character, they’re trying to like kidnap this girl in like the opening scene in Shibuya near the Hachiko statue. And the police like try and like protect her and then it just goes off from there. Like, it’s just really fun. Yeah. What did you like about it? Video games don’t tend to make me laugh. I don’t think that there are very few like legitimately like laugh out loud funny video games. And this was just so surreal. It had a couple of just like total idiot characters who just kept cropping up in like different timelines. And the way that they’ve structured the day so that all these different people keep colliding in these interesting ways. Like it actually has the beauty of like a proper theatrical farce in terms of like how people keep kind of, you know, accidentally messing up each other’s sort of what they’re trying to achieve and how that takes them on these new routes. I love that one of the characters is a freelance journalist and just trying to like basically stop one of his friends from kind of killing himself because his business is going to go under because he can’t get his magazine sent on time. Oh God, yeah, I forgot that. He has one afternoon to write like 10 local interest stories and like that’s his whole arc in the game. It’s just like trying to find people interesting enough to put in this stupid gossip bag. I just thought that was just so good. I didn’t put it on my list because you put it on your list, but this is like a legit like all time favourite for me of like anything. I just think it’s so good. And the theme tune is a banger as well. Yeah, I really like it’s a really small thing, but since we were talking about like user interface and visual novels, I really love that when you select a character, it kind of like they move and it zooms in on them. It feels so like kind of cheesy, but it really gets you in the mood to like step into their shoes. I just really like it. Yeah, there’s a load of like extra stories and unlockables as well. I don’t know if you played any of those. I do need to go through and do all that stuff, but I figured I’d sort of needed a guide, because some of that’s buried in some slightly weird decision making. I did unlock one of them and it’s a totally different tone. I was like crying at the end of it. It’s like a one hour, like just this one story about these two minor characters that barely even get mentioned in the main story. I couldn’t believe like how emotional it was. It was really good. I was like, shit, because Shibuya Scramble is a bit of a lighthearted, silly game. And then one minute I’m like laughing and then I read that and I’m like, oh my God. And how like it was only like an hour of like an extra story. Like it got me that emotional in just like one hour was really impressive. So yeah, and I think I played like another one, but there’s still like more side story, more extras that I still haven’t even managed. So yeah, like I think I need a guide to like unlock all the others. Yeah. Well, that’s good. I’m pleased to hear someone else rep this game, which Matthew got at least at least 20 of our listeners to download off the back of his recommendations. So that’s cool. So Matthew, we come to your number three, which I think I’ve mentioned briefly on here before. Yeah, I think so. Raging Loop, which is by Chemco. It’s kind of a horror mystery game. I guess, like, not Miles often knows you in that. It’s another deduction game, but it’s like entirely scripted. There’s no, like, emergent gameplay here. It’s like a very linear story where you go to a village which is attacked by werewolves at night. And in the day, everyone gathers in the town hall to work out who they think amongst them is the werewolf. So it’s like the party game werewolves, but kind of in this written form. But like I say, superscripted, so there’s a very set outcome to it all. But even so, I still got really pulled into the mystery of it. And I got pulled into the drama of the town council meetings where everyone’s theorising why someone would behave in a certain way. Because in different timelines in this game, different people are the werewolves each time. And it has a very different kind of dramatic thrust to it based on who the werewolves are. And maybe held back by some slightly convoluted plotting. Like the end where it basically explains everything is just like a three hour exposition dump. And there’s lots of it I thought was super clever, which is why I’m recommending it. But there was almost some stuff in it I thought, you didn’t really need to go that far. You didn’t need to explain those elements. I would have had a faster moving ending. Like I was impressed by X, Y and Z. You didn’t also need to explain A, B and C. A little bit tropey in places, I guess. There’s some slightly crude anime behaviour. But there isn’t quite a few of these games. Not defending it. It’s just part of the show. An interesting one, I played it on the Switch. It’s about 20 hours long or something. But I think if you played Zero Escape and you liked how that branching story worked there, it’s sort of similar here in the way that you learn information and then take on new branches. Reviews were a little down on this one. I don’t really know why. I thought it was fine. I’ve heard good things about this from other friends that like visual novels. It’s been on my list, but I just haven’t got round to it yet. It’s good. It’s good. It’s good and spooky. And it resolves itself well as well. I like it. Well, we lead into quite a different seeming number two from you, Lucy. Just kind of like having a quick look at this one sort of behind the scenes. So what’s your number two? My number two is Mystic Messenger. So I kind of wanted to include an Atome game or, you know, like a dating sim. For Mystic Messenger, it was very popular when it came out in 2016, 2017. What makes Mystic Messenger quite special is that it’s a mobile game. And it’s probably the most immersive kind of real life crossover game I’ve ever played. It was the first time I played it. So, you know, we’re talking like six years ago now. But basically you download the game on your phone, as you do. But then when you load up the game, it’s like, oh, you’re downloading the game, the app called Mystic Messenger. And when you load up the app, it looks kind of like WhatsApp. And it’s like, oh, hey, you just downloaded this app. And it’s like, oh, shit, I actually did that in real life. And then all these people start talking to you. And it’s an atome game. So it’s like a bunch of cute guys. And there’s also like a girl that you can kind of befriend. You know, they’re all popular. They’re all really cool. Kind of, you know, the characters remind me a lot of Bustafellows. But I felt like that compared to Bustafellows, these characters just felt a bit deeper. They have a little bit more to them. Someone you might think is like, you know, like a blonde haired, smaller, energetic kind of guy in Mystic Messenger is actually, he’s really into League of Legends. And he’s constantly talking about it in the chat. And then I think later on, he starts getting kind of so into the game, he’s kind of suffering from depression and things. And it gets quite serious. And that’s just one character. There’s then like Jahee. So this is me trying to pronounce Korean names, because this is actually a Korean visual novel, which is also quite different. Jahee is the female character that you can kind of befriend. And she is like very kind, very workaholic, works for one of the other guys in the group. And then when you get to know her, it’s like actually she, you kind of learn that her boss is a little bit like overworking her. She wants, she has dreams of like running her own coffee shop and having more of a work life balance. And if you go down her route, which is what I did, you can try and get her out of that and have her like open her own coffee shop. I did try and date like some of the cute guys, but I always kept failing at it. I didn’t realise you could fail. I thought these were like designed that you just win and have a happy ending. No, you can, if you don’t get like enough points, sometimes it can just be like, well, that’s the end of the game. You didn’t get to know anyone well enough. Please try again kind of thing. It’s just like real life romance. And just like real life romance in Mystic Messenger, these messages on this WhatsApp thing, they come in in real time. So you can like sit there and have a chat and then they’ll be like, sorry guys, gotta go. And then you can’t play the game for like five hours until they come back. What? I think there is a name for this kind of game, but it’s basically like real time. It doesn’t charge you to like, you can’t like pay money to get the guys to come back faster. You can. So that’s the thing, you can play it that way, but I am now like, well, one, I’m a bit of a cheapskate. But two, if you play it like that, so like you’re actually messaging your friends, like just a little bit, you know, throughout the day, it felt really immersive. It was like, oh, wow, I’m actually like chatting to these guys. Oh, I just got a text from like, Jahi, like, I’m just going to see what she says. And it’s really, it’s really weird. It’s like, I haven’t played anything like that. And what it gets even stranger because they phone you up. Oh, no. So like your phone rings and you’re like, I’m at work. I can’t talk to you right now. Sorry. It’s a hot Korean boy. Yeah, and they call you and it’s like all in Korean. But you know, you have to look at your screen and read the subtitles. But you can’t really talk back to them. That’s where it gets really awkward. You’re like, uh-huh. Yeah. But yeah, it was a really good game for me at the time, because I’d just moved over to Germany and I didn’t have many friends. And I work at home on my own. So it was like, OK, this is a nice distraction during the day. But also because of that, I haven’t revisited it because I just… I don’t have the time to be distracted all day like that. Do you know what I mean? By pretend Korean boys. Just don’t have time for these boys. I could just pay and just sit there and play the other routes. But I feel like that’s not how the game was designed, you know? Well, this must remain persistently popular because VG247 updated their guide to it just one month ago. So people are still playing this in 2022. I was going to say, I remember there being a couple of sites who basically like Mystic Messenger was like a substantial amount of their entire traffic was just from Mystic Messenger guides. Like they were really, yeah. You can ride that SEO train pretty hard. It sounds really kind of like naive, but I do wish there was a version of this that was aimed at men that wasn’t cursed. But I know such a thing would never exist. Just because I think like conceptually it’d be interesting to go through the thing, I suppose, and go through it in like the, I don’t know, hetero male perspective, I suppose, in a very basic way. Just kind of curious about the experience and the feedback loop of a kind of like immersive app experience like that. The only thing I’ve kind of played like it is like the Mr. Robot iOS game they did, which was like a sort of fake hacking app kind of thing where they would call you as well. But this sounds like a cool format. So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I will have some Korean boys message me after a while. Matthew, let’s go to your number two. My number two is Steins Gate, which is quite famous, quite well known, made by 5BP and Nitro Plus. It’s kind of a time travel story about a mad scientist who creates a time machine with his microwave and starts messing around in the past and creating trouble in the future. Not hugely kind of interactive, like the branching points are text messages that you can send to the past to change the future, but definitely like one of the breakout success in the West. I always thought this was based on an anime, but it’s not. The game came first and then they made the anime of the game, which is also very successful. I really like time travel stories, which is why this made the list. I just really like the whole kind of fucking with consequences and seeing what happens. And they all get themselves into a terrible pickle and then have to kind of get themselves out. And there’s lots of different terrible fates you probably have to experience before you get to the true ending. And I won’t even say whether that’s jolly or not. You have to play it. Interestingly, there’s a couple of versions of this. There’s the original, which is quite sort of static art and very sort of trad visual novel style. And then there’s actually a version which I’ve got on Switch as well, which is called Steins Gate Elite, which is based on… It basically brings in a lot of the anime as the art of the game. So it’s got the same writing, the same voice acting, the same story, but it’s a lot more dynamic because it’s using all these clips from the show. So it feels like they’ve kind of merged the two things together in quite a kind of showboating way, which I like. But now I do know, however, that when we were talking in it, we were listing, preparing for this, this episode. Lucy, you mentioned that you did not like the cast of Steins Gate and that you maybe don’t like Steins Gate at all. So, you know, I am. What’s the beef with Steins Gate? Yeah, I don’t know. I just don’t know if it clicks. It was one that I was very excited about. I got the physical copy, which I don’t usually do. People were saying, oh, yeah, you’re going to really like this. And maybe it was one of the first visual novels I played that didn’t have that many choices in. So maybe that was the first thing that kind of threw me off a bit because I do prefer more interaction. But I also like, I do play visual novels without that. So there was something else. And I think for me, it’s just the characters. I just, I don’t like the main scientist guy. I can’t remember all the names. I didn’t mind the girl with the long hair, the scientist girl. She seemed kind of cool. But then she kind of disappears. And then you’re left with these other characters. I just did not like any of them. I don’t really like the girl with the hat who’s like… Just the way she kind of talks and everything just kind of annoys me. The other guy that he works with seemed like a bit of a… I don’t know if I’m remembering correctly, but are people a bit creepy or pervy in this game? Is that what’s putting me off? It’s funny. When you noted this, I thought, I’m going to look this up and make sure I haven’t forgotten something like Ghastly because I don’t want to be like, this game’s amazing and it’s terrible. And it’s definitely like, there’s some stuff in it, which I didn’t really remember. But when I was reading it today, I was like, oh boy, this is problematic. There’s some quite bad stuff with a trans character in this, for example. Yeah, I remember a bit of that. Where he, like one of the changes, he basically can change a character’s gender and then change it back. It’s a bit messy. Yeah, it’s a bit messy. It’s a little bit like written in 2008. Yeah. Goes into some territory, which I think there’s a lot more like sensitivity and empathy now, and it just doesn’t land as well. Which I would say is true of a few of the things in all of the games that I’ve recommended. There’s stuff where I’m like, oh yikes, this is like, this is bad. This isn’t why I like this. No, and that’s the difficult thing about like visual novels is that there’s some really, really good ones and then they put this kind of stuff in. And most of the time I can look past it. Yeah. But with this one, I just couldn’t. I think it’s because the main character was like you had to, you know, usually like if in Danganronpa, for example, like the main character is usually like bumping this stuff off like, oh, that person’s, why are they saying that? That’s stupid. Like that’s not very nice or whatever. They have like a moral compass. Whereas in Steins Gate, it didn’t feel like the guy did. And I’m sure like, oh, there’ll be like character growth or something. But I’m there like eight hours in. I’m like, I just can’t like, I can’t do anymore. So I didn’t, I didn’t get that far. And then like, it was only like a year ago. I was like, I saw someone talking about Steins Gate again. I’m like, right. I’m going to try and like watch the anime because maybe my problem was the slow pace of the visual novel. And I just couldn’t get into it again. I was like, I hate these characters. And what’s funny, like my friend that gave me Shibuya Scramble for my birthday, he tried playing Steins Gate as well. And he was like, no, I can’t do it. So it just seems like it’s really strange because like I know it’s really like highly rated and people really like it. And I reckon I really like the time travel story, but I just can’t get to it. That opinion seems quite widely held online. There’s a lot of that. But yeah, so I’m recommending it for the time travel story, not the problematic character behavior. Should you choose to play this off the back of my recommendation, that is why I’m recommending it. What’s the best place to play this one, do you think, Matthew? Because it is quite slow paced. I actually think the kind of hyper presentation of that newer elite version is quite a smart way. Because, like I say, it’s almost like an interactive anime. It’s quite smart how they’ve stitched the things together. Because the original game was like very static. There’s not really not a lot going on in it. It’s just like listening to a very hyperactive radio play where now it’s, yeah, this version I think is pretty sound. Awesome. Well, we come to your number one then Lucy. My number one is Virtue’s Last Reward. It’s another one by Kotaru Uchikoshi, who I recently played like AI. Somnium Files. I really love his stuff. So I think I want to try and find ever 17 after this. But yeah, like I like that this blends visual novel with escape room puzzles. I think the when I think back to it, the localization was really good. I remember there being like a robot that was like speaking in a very British accent. And that’s always like a nice charm when it seems like, oh, this isn’t localized for America. This is actually done by a British person. I don’t know if it is, but that’s the vibe I got when I was reading it. I have played like the game that came before, which is 999, which is also very good. But I pick Virtue’s Last Reward. That was the first one I played of the two. I haven’t actually played the third game yet. I really rate it. Like the fandom seemed down on it, but it has some cool tricks of its own. And it’s the same sort of format. So escape room and visual novel, which I think is cool. I’m like stupidly hanging on for it to come to Switch. That’s what I’m waiting for. And it’s just not happening. And I’m like, why is it not happening? So I should probably just buy it elsewhere. But I don’t like playing them on my computer. So that’s why I haven’t played it. But I do like the art style. I know it got kind of it said it was the weakest of the three, but I still reckon like compared to most games, still probably really good. Yeah, but that’s basically it. It’s like congrats. You’re the worst part of a really strong trilogy, you know? So going back to like Virtue’s Last Reward, I kind of prefer this one to 999 because 999 I think is really, really well written, but maybe a bit too much. I think this is a bit more palatable. I’m not like super into like some of the gruesome deaths that some of the characters go through, which is like very graphically written in 999. I think Virtue’s Last Reward still has a bit of that, but it’s not quite as heavy. You’ve got the kind of ambidextrous game with the do you ally or betray the characters. I think the first few times I did that, I was so like tense. I was like screaming at the Vita like, oh my God, that person betrayed, you know, like really, really into it. And I think I got really distracted because it’s basically the same rules as Jasper Carratt’s Golden Balls quiz, which is like you decide whether or not you’re going to show off the other person. It’s tough, but yeah, that association is forever made. I really love how Uchikoshi’s games like he kind of designs. He thinks of like, oh, this is a branching narrative. So the narrative is actually about the branching. Like he did that with like AI. Somnian a little bit as well. Like, oh, characters are remembering things from like other routes. And here it’s again, can’t really spoil, but you know, all the branches actually mean something. It’s not just different routes. So yeah, like I really loved it. I’m really looking forward to replaying this again at some point. Yeah, I love it. I love the mix of characters. I think the balance of story to the escape room bits is really, really well done. The use of the flow chart, I think is absolutely genius. And it was smart in 999, but I think they really, it really perfected it here. I think it does work as a standalone game as well. You know, like if you play the whole trilogy, there’s obviously on running stuff, which makes a lot more sense. But it’s still just a really good thriller, really good characters locked in a really strange place, which is just like such a cool recipe. I love the little science and philosophy lessons. You know, there’s, often you kind of encounter all this weird stuff and someone will explain like the Turing test or whatever. And it just, I don’t know, you kind of come out a little bit smarter at these games. And you also apply that stuff elsewhere and like what you learn in one branch, you start thinking about in another branch. This thing is really elegantly done. I think this guy’s like a mega brain, just genius. Yeah, both this and the AI games are like just top notch. I suppose on a related note Lucy, were you a big PS Vita head? Was that like a big part of your life? It really wasn’t actually. I think I’ve told you everything. It was, again, it was my husband’s console and he bought me Steins Gate and then got me Virtue’s Lost Reward. And then at that point, I think the switch had kind of come out. So then I just moved on to that. So I’m not like a Vita person at all. Oh, that’s fine. Hey, you played a visual novel on the Vita. That feels like a rite of passage. I appreciate this genre. That’s good. So Matthew, what’s your number one? Your very predictable number one. My very predictable number one is I’ve just put the Danganronpa series because I find them quite hard to take them apart. I don’t. I was actually, I mean, I’m a-arring about this because, like, obviously Ace Attorney Games, but, like, I do not need to, I do not need to tell the listeners of this podcast to play the Ace Attorney Games. I probably don’t need to tell them to play the Danganronpa games, to be honest, because I’ve talked a lot about those as well. But I figured just in case this messaging hadn’t got through, I also like this series of murder mysteries. This has more of a high concept to it than Ace Attorney, in that it’s about a load of gifted students locked in various locations, and the only way to escape is to murder another student and get away with it in a trial. So it has like Ace Attorney kind of an investigation period and then like a trial period, but the trial is like a lot more hyperactive, it’s full of always arcade-y mini games, like you have to shoot the evidence of the lies and all this kind of stuff. And that’s a little hectic, it’s a little bit much, but I think if you can kind of get through the kind of little bit muchness of it, actually the murder mysteries are great. I really like the setup in that every student in these three games is like the ultimate something, like the best at a particular discipline. And because of that, it can actually have some really weird creative murders and solution to the murders, because lots of people bring very unique skillsets, you know, from like, there is literally an ultimate detective is one of the characters, but then you’ll have like the ultimate hacker, the ultimate pole vaulter or whatever. And how they use these people who initially seem quite cartoony and tropey is often like really well done. I think the third one’s got the strongest cases for me, but maybe like the first one in terms of like coherence of the story. You’ve also played these, right? Yeah, but funnily, I only started playing them recently. I think you guys mentioned my name on a podcast many episodes ago, and like, oh, we’ll talk about it with Lucy. And I’m like, shit, I have not played these games. No, it’s actually been one of the best things. I couldn’t put them down. So I played Danganronpa 1 near the beginning of the year, and then I was straight onto 2. Then I watched the anime. This whole year is like I’ve loved Danganronpa. So I’m glad that it’s like your number one pick, because it is really good. It was just one of these weird like visual novel areas that I just hadn’t played. And it was one of those like I’d heard mixed things, you know? I’d heard some people be like, oh yeah, it’s great. They’re like the best visual novels. And then other people be like, oh, but they’re, you know, they’re really sexualized and it’s really off putting. And it’s like, yeah, I guess it is both of those things. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think someone, someone along the line said I wouldn’t like it because of that. But I think, I think that put me off. But I know I’m really glad that like I’ve played it now. I’m actually kind of near the end of three. Right. I’m on the fourth class trial in three. And yeah, like I’ve done the one with the video game. Yes. I think that’s the one. I think that is the one I’m on. Yeah, that is the one I’m on at the moment. So I haven’t quite figured out who’s done it yet. I kind of ended it on a cliffhanger last night because I really can’t put it down. I think what’s so good about these games is that at least for me, like I’m not very good with like murder. I find murder mysteries fun, but like some of the the deaths in these games are quite like gruesome. But because they always look like sprites, even when you’re going around in the 3D world, they’re like a flat image, these characters, they kind of don’t feel real. Like it makes it quite enjoyable for me. Like this isn’t a realistic portrayal of people. It’s like looking at some weird picture book or something, if that makes sense. I do also really like Monokuma. Oh really? He’s one of the more divisive elements. I bet he is. I like that he’ll jump in every now and then and just make a bit of a pun about like, there’s one where he’s like defending adventure games because it’s like, well, you know, it’s a cheap budget to make an adventure game and all these kind of like fourth-wall-y, breaky things. I think I saw one recently that’s like him saying Spike Chunsoft games are designed so you can play them alongside your studies. And then I think recently he was saying how he hates Sonic but without saying the name Sonic. He’s like, I hate that damn hedgehog. That’s why, yeah. I’m surprised he doesn’t resonate with me more based on that. I think I struggled a little bit with his like weird sadomasochistic relationship with that rabbit. Yeah, that is really, I don’t like that in two. That is really unsettling, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s how I was like, if there’s any hesitance with these ones, it’s that stuff. There’s also just some weird… I remember too having some really weird sexualized moments with one of the characters that just, she kept ending up in weird situations. And as a female player, it’s like, I really… You feel like I shouldn’t be here. And you don’t want to feel like that because this should be a game for everyone. It’s quite a wide series, you know, but it does feel perverted at times. I don’t like it for that. Yeah, that’s annoying because I think there’s like… The core mysteries and everything are easily as good as the actual mysteries that you do in Ace Attorney. It’s got this quite sordid skin on it. I think compared to Ace Attorney, I just find myself following the mysteries a lot better in Danganronpa. It always stops with you. It’s like, okay, now it’s thinking time, and then you’ll do a mini game. What was the item used for this? It always makes sure that you’re on the right page, whereas Ace Attorney can sometimes lose me, and I’m like, what are they talking about? I especially got that in The Great Ace Attorney. I think there was one of the cases I just didn’t know what was going on, and I don’t like feeling like that. You get to that point where you’re like, shall I play my attorney badge as a piece of evidence? No, surely not. No, that’s when you know you’ve really biffed it. When I had an eight-year hiatus from playing Justice for All, I was halfway through a case and trying to figure out what the hell had happened in the case, where I was in the case, and that was at least four hours of time dedicated to figuring that out, I swear. So, yeah, that’s good to know that they keep it coherent. So, Matthew, any more to add on that in terms of, like, I suppose people should start with one and work forwards, right? It’s just easy to get hold of now. Absolutely. I haven’t played the Switch versions of these. Is that what you’re playing, Lucy? Yeah, I got the physical one that’s got all of them on. Oh, nice. Does it hold up well? Does it… I guess it runs fine? So, I actually played the first one on Game Pass because that’s when I played it because it was on there for free. And because I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, I started it on there and I was like, okay, I like it, so I ordered the thing. And the second game was fine. But the third game has crashed like three times, like hard crash. So, I’ve had to go back and quite away and fast forward my text. And that actually happened like the first half hour. You know when you just start a new game, it’s like, I was really upset about that. Because there’s quite a lot of running around from the beginning of three, like from these big mecha robot things. So you couldn’t even just skip the text. It’s like, oh, I’ve got to actually run around again. And yeah, that kind of sucked. But the second game seemed okay. Oh, that’s good. Didn’t crash for the horrible rabbit. I might play these on Steam Deck then instead and reduce my chances of crashes. That’s good to know. Well, then we did two very good top five lists there. So I’ll put those in the episode description so they’re easy to find for people who want to just grab the recommendations and get on with their lives. That’s absolutely fine. But we’ve got a bunch more to kind of cross off here because we’ve got like a lightning round of sorts of bonus categories, Matthew, that you came up with. Is there anything you want to say here about how you’ve tried to kind of expand the remit of what we talk about and how you’ve approached these categories? Oh, no, not really. In which case, let’s get on with it. Good. They’re all pretty self-explanatory, but I suppose they dial in on individual game elements, right? Yeah, I sort of intended this more as a, you know, if you’ve got to this point and you’ve not heard a recommendation you’re into, maybe something here will just quickly grab you. Okay, cool. So first up then we’ve got the best gateway game into the genre. I’m actually not sure which of you has put these in these categories. She’s a Lucy. I was very lazy with this document. Oh, it doesn’t sound like you, but yeah, Lucy. What have you put here? So yeah, we’ve already kind of covered it, I guess. I think probably Danganronpa is the best to get into it. If you can deal with the kind of anime bullshit. If you’re not into the anime bullshit, then I think The Ace Attorney Trilogy is a really good place to start. Which still has a little bit of anime bullshit, but not too much. Oh, nothing compared to the others. It’s so chaste compared to every other game. Okay, cool. That was very fast. The best stories is the next one we got here. So yeah, this is interesting Lucy, because it’s got a couple you didn’t have in your top five. Yeah, so I’ll skip the others and go on to Ai Somnium Files, which we did talk about. So that’s another one by Uchi Koshi. I didn’t put it in my five, because I think Virtue is Less Reward is just stronger. I think it’s a better story. But that’s not to say that this is not a very good story. It’s really good. I recently played Nirvana Initiative, which is the second game, which I think is weaker than the first. But again, really good game. Some really emotional moments, really nice characters. And yeah, another game I put as best story is Bury Me, My Love, which is an indie game. Well, an indie game. It was made by a few different teams, like Mystic Messenger, another one that’s on your phone, that kind of works like a WhatsApp kind of conversation. And it’s quite serious. It’s about a woman trying to get out of Syria as a refugee. And you kind of like 80 days, you have to make a route and things happen along the way. But I’ve only played it like once and I didn’t, I got quite far. I think I was like about to go to Greece and then something happened. It’s a really good, it’s very serious game, but it’s really like kind of expands what video games can be. And it’s definitely worth checking out. But it’s not like texting you at work about this Syrian lady, is it? I can’t quite remember because I think I played it for IGF many years ago. Right, I see. So I was playing like it just in, you know, as fast as possible. If you play it on the phone, it might text you throughout the day. I’m not quite sure. That would be a bit intense for me. Yeah, it might be a bit intense. I think the sheer contrast of having that and Mystic Messenger on your phone at the same time would be like, that would be intense. Like, I’ve got to deal with these hot Korean boys and then I’ve also got to help this woman with her whole situation. I’ve got a very varied life here in this thing. That’s really cool. Again, I guess it shows the kind of like tonal range of this genre though, Lucy, and the kind of stories you can tell when people venture outside of like, I don’t know, I guess more obvious subject matter. Yeah, exactly. If you’re not looking for anime bullshit, you want something quite serious, like this is a really good game. It’s kind of like a piece of art, I think. I did see it get nominated for BAFTAs and things a few years ago, but I otherwise don’t see many people talking about it, and I do think it is really, really good. So we’ve got the best and worst character from a visual novel, so these are your picks, Lucy. But I assumed that one of them was Matthews based on the choice, but yeah, who have you got for best, first of all? Well, I just put a few names here. I’d love to know what Matthew thought as well, because I’m just like, just writing some of my favourites. I’ve got like Kyle Hyde from Hotel Dusk, Nagito Kameda, I’m probably not pronouncing his name right from Danganronpa, so Danganronpa 2. It’s kind of the crazy, chaotic character who has probably the best, in my opinion, like the best mystery around him and what happens to him. And then I also put Kazuma Asagi from The Great Ace Attorney. I always really like the kind of tutorial characters that they give you in Ace Attorney games. They’re looking after your main character, someone to look up to, and then all of a sudden they get killed and they disappear. And I really was heartbroken when the first case, what happened with Kazuma, I am probably spoiling the game a bit for people who haven’t played it. Oh, I’m sure that it’s cryptic enough, I’d say. Yeah. But yeah, I just really like him. But yeah, I’d like to know your favourite characters. Yeah, Carl Hyde’s awesome. I’m a big… Why is Carl Hyde awesome, Matthew? It’s like he doesn’t want to be there kind of at a… Does that make sense? He’s kind of nonchalant. Yeah, he’s the right detective for that particular mystery as well, in that he’s… It’s sort of like a lazy mystery. It isn’t particularly high stakes and he’s perfectly suited to that. You know, he’s not a super go-getter, but he’s not a total mess either. He’s just kind of a bit of a… A bit like lazy, a bit of a bozo. People don’t tend to use that with characters because you need to have a bit more momentum than that, but he sort of suits the vibe of it. I like the way he looks as well. He just looks cool. Like his little drawing. The way he kind of tilts his head. Yeah. So you’re worse, Lucy. I’m curious about this. Yeah. So I’ve put Toma from Amnesia Memories. So Amnesia Memories is another Otome game. And this is a character that you can, like, romance or get close to. And it goes really wrong. I don’t really know where to start. He’s the, you know, happy-go-lucky. Like he seems really nice on the surface. I was like, oh yeah, like I want to get to know this guy. And then he starts like kind of controlling the main character and being a bit weird. And long story short, it results in him caging the main character, like prisoning her and then barely feeding her and then starting to drug the food that he does give her. And it’s just like, this has, what the heck? Like it’s meant to be a bit of a, not just a romance game, but also like the main person’s forgotten their memories. And it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit dark and gritty at times. But you didn’t really expect it to take this turn. Is he someone you were actively romancing in this game? It was meant, that’s what it was meant to be. So you go in being like, oh yeah, like, I think I like this, I like this character. And then it just turns and you’re like, fuck, like I want to get out. Like, this is awful. And it just becomes like some kind of like traumatic experience. And yeah, it’s, at least amongst the Tomei fans, like people really don’t like this guy. Yeah, no shit. Really messed up. Yeah, so he’s the worst. And the Stein’s Gate cast you’ve noted down here. The entire cast. A trope I really don’t like in games is where you have a really young child character who’s really like shrieking and grating. Like, I don’t really like Pearl Fey in Ace Attorney. Yeah, I’m not. And actually in Umineko, the incredibly long visual novel that I’m playing, there’s this little girl who’s got this sort of like, not speech impediment, but she has this, she does this like wail before every single line. And it’s so grating every time I hear it. I’m like, I wish this child like the worst possible outcome. And she does actually get put through the wringer a fair bit, to the point where I’m, but I’m still like, eh, you know, maybe that’s just okay. She’s just awful. Just an awful wretch of a child. I don’t really like, at least in Danganronpa, I don’t really like the characters, but like the more little girl ones either. I don’t know what it is. Yeah. It’s just a bit, yeah. I’m not into like baby speak and stuff, or like that kind of, all the voices are just so high compared to everyone else’s like register. You’re like, oh my God, I could just really do without this. But it’s canceled out by having like an incredibly old guy who’s awesome. So, you know, that’s fine in Uminiko. In like your best characters in anything, Matthew, it’s always old Japanese men. Oh, I love old. Cool old Japanese men who are incredibly noble. Yeah, I love that. Okay, very good. I like this category, the most interactive. So games with other gameplay gimmicks mixed in. Well, there’s definitely one game tucked in there I did want to ask about because it is massively celebrated and it was re-released this year on Switch. So Lucy, why don’t you go through your picks here? Yeah, so I thought like most interactive, we’ve got Danganronpa, AI. Somnium. They’re games where you get to kind of walk around and explore. Danganronpa has like even like mini games like driving and things. But yeah, I guess you’re thinking of 13 Sentinels, Aegis Rim, which I’ve heard people describe it as a visual novel. And I’m like, I suppose it is. I never really thought of it like that. I maybe see it more as just an adventure game in general. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, but then it has the battles. And I really, really love this game. It was like my favorite game of the year when it came out. I love like the cast of characters. I think, you know, the anime kind of bullshit is quite a minimum in this game. It’s not too bad. It has recently come out on Switch and I have bought it, but I played it on PlayStation 4. Did you guys play this one? I really rate it as well. I don’t know if I fell in love with the sort of tower defencey sort of robot bits. I felt like I was doing them more to sort of like unlock stuff and push the other story bits forward. But absolutely beautiful. I have this on Switch. It looks absolutely amazing on the OLED Switch. I think you’re definitely right. I don’t think it feels like super anime-ish, but it’s deliberately tropey in an interesting way. And it kind of factors into the story somewhat about like what the deal is with this. And like it’s a game with like a lot of like pop culture influences and… But again, you kind of have to sort of play it to kind of unpick all this stuff. I think it’s pretty special. Yeah, it has that kind of like Zero Escape and AI. Somnium. The same kind of twisty-turny sci-fi narrative that seems pretty smart. Yeah. Like you just really enjoy like going through it all. Yeah, and it starts off and you’re like, how the hell is any of this going to ever like coalesce into anything? Because it’s, you know, it’s like almost feels like 13 different stories happening at once, but it does make sense eventually. Got one more here as well, Lucy. Yeah, I put Long Live the Queen, which is quite a popular visual novel on Steam. And that is like a Princess Maker kind of game. So it has a lot of stats, like you kind of design your queen. And because of that, depending on where you put your stats, you end up with like lots of different endings. I’ve only played this one for about three or four hours. And I think there’s like loads of other endings to unlock. But yeah, that’s a really nice one. If you’re into more like stat building kind of games, The Queen like ends up, if you don’t do things right, like dying in loads of different ways. So yeah, it’s quite a, I guess it’s kind of lighthearted. It’s not like too serious. And it’s very nice to like, okay, that run didn’t work. So let’s try again and try different stats. That’s another cool, unusual pick there. So we’ve got a couple more categories. So the best epic visual novel to lose yourself in, you’ve got one pick here, but it’s one that’s certainly received acclaim in the past couple of years. So I went with The House in Fata Morgana, which is probably my favourite visual novel ever. But I didn’t put it on my list because I think it’s kind of niche and I think it’s quite difficult to get into. I don’t think it’s everyone’s cup of tea. But I think it’s really fantastic. It’s about 50 hours long, so it’s quite a long read. And it starts off with a few different stories. Each one’s about five hours long. And these stories don’t really seem to link together that much until you’re about 15 hours in. So you have to dedicate quite a bit of time to get invested in it. But when you do, it’s so worth it. I really like it. I really like the creepy atmosphere of this. It’s quite a gothic game. The soundtrack is, at first, again, it’s something that’s like, oh, this is a bit weird. There’s vocals in these tracks, and they’re singing in European languages. Quite a lot of the songs are in Portuguese, and it’s very strange. It’s almost like you’re watching an old stage show or something. How the stories all come together is really, really fantastic. It’s very powerful. For a game, well, for a visual novel that doesn’t really have many choices, I think it’s really impressive how it puts you in the shoes of someone else a character that’s going through something. It’s definitely my top one for losing yourself in that world. Have you guys played it? I haven’t. Can you say more about the premise in terms of what the purpose is of what you’re doing? It’s like you go in, a character with no memories, you go into this house and it’s all dark and you meet this maid and she’s like, oh, you don’t remember who you are. Well, let me tell you some stories that should help regain your memory. And she tells you the first one, which is about people that used to live in the house. And every story has a tragedy at the end of it. And then the second story that she tells is quite as horror as the game gets. It’s actually a bit off putting for me. I couldn’t, I took a long time to get through the second story because it was really creepy. And then the third story was like more like in, I think it’s like in the industrial area. So it goes through like a thousand years of like what happened in this house. And the last story is another one that kind of ends in tragedy. And then the main character starts getting like his memories back and understanding like who this maid is and what all those stories meant. And yeah, then it kind of keeps going. And it’s, yeah, I can’t really spoil it if I say much more. I’ve started this several times and I haven’t finished it. It’s got like quite cursed energy to it. Like because of the music and the art style is very like delicate, this slightly kind of like weird, like European setting. It feels incredibly like ornate and like a weird chintzy dollhouse. Yeah. And has this, like the characters are all a bit creepy looking. And I’ve had several runs at this. Enough that like some of the music’s like burnt into my head just from hearing like the opening bit has this like child’s nursery rhyme. Yeah, you hear that a lot. Oh my god, I’ve heard that song a lot. Always intrigued by this one because it had like the highest Metacritic rating on Switch for like a period. Because it had been reviewed by like five visual novel nuts who gave it like 10 out of 10. So it had like a hundred on Metacritic. For a while everyone was like, well, is this the highest rated game of all time? This strange visual novel. But everyone who has made it through to the end, I’ve only heard people say it’s one of their top things ever. It’s kind of like, you know, kind of life changing in a way, which sounds a bit much, but it’s like, it really was that for me at least. Like it really just, it’s a great example of like empathy and compassion in a game, which you wouldn’t expect from this kind of creepy, gothic kind of horror game or, you know, with, you know, creepy music and stuff. But yeah, it really gets there. And I’m really glad that I stuck with it. I don’t think I would have stuck with it if I hadn’t heard all these people saying, like, I’m so good, you know. Like it took me like about three, four hours to finally be kind of interested. And then the second story was just, for me was really quite off putting, like I nearly put it down. And I’m so glad that I didn’t, but, you know, it’s, yeah, it is quite, and also like, is it from coming from a game design perspective, I think the pacing of the game is, it’s a little bit off. Like I would make certain things shorter and certain parts a bit longer and focus. I think sometimes it kind of repeats itself a little bit. It’s definitely not like a 10 out of 10, but it does do something that I haven’t really seen another game do. So yeah, I really, really like it. Yeah, for sure. An epic for anyone out there who wants to undergo one. I feel like this podcast is stopping Matthew from playing this properly, which I feel bad about, but he has to play God of War games, so what can I say? Okay, cool. So last category then, Lucy. The visual novel that best respects your time. So why don’t you run through those? Yeah, put One Night Stand on there, because I think you want something like 20, 30 minutes. You could just play One Night Stand and have a bit of a blast. Maybe try it again, see if you want to do something different. Also, Eliza is, I think, the best short visual novel. And one that we’ve not mentioned, Overboard, which I think that came out, was it last year? It’s like the reverse murder mystery where you commit the murder and then try and cover it up. That’s another one that I think you can play a route in less than an hour. And if you want to do the perfect murder, you can still do that within a few hours, figure out the best way to do things. And again, you don’t have to replay it if you don’t want to. You can just play it once. Great hook as well. That’s like in call at their best, I think, in terms of like, you really know what you’re trying to achieve the whole time. And so it just really focuses everything you’re trying to do in that world. And yes, One Night Stand definitely respects your time. I think I was thrown out naked and then heard the police sirens like twice within 15 minutes. The best one I had, I felt like we were actually really hitting it off. And then a particular photo went viral and I was like… So that was on me for taking it. I like how that one comes 15 minutes later and just bites you in the ass. Yeah, I had sort of forgotten about it and then it was just like, oh no, I know what this is. Out of curiosity, Lucy, when you came up with some of the outcomes in that game, did you enjoy coming up with the ones that were more voyeuristic or taboo? Or did you find them harder to create? I suppose that’s a weird question, but in creating the possibility space, how much of it is about, oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to do X versus well? This is something you can do, so it should probably be in there. I think it was more the former of wanting to just add things. You can see her underwear on the floor, and that’s one of the endings is you can put her underwear on. It was just having a bit of fun with it, really. You’ve got some endings in there that are just normal, like, oh, yeah, we say goodbye and that’s it. And then you’ve got more outlandish ones like that. The one where you just leave, which seems to be the one that people struggle to get the most, is you just spam the leave button. And he keeps saying to himself, I’m not going to go out without clothes. I’m not going to go out without clothes. And then after a while he’s like, well, could I? Would that be a bad thing? And then you just keep pressing it and convincing him. He’s like, right, that’s it. I’m going to go out with no clothes. It doesn’t matter. So it was just kind of like, well, if I can do it, why not add it? I did have to rein it in a little bit. I was thinking of adding more endings where you could jump out the window and stuff like that. But then it’s like, oh, then I’ve got to draw the window scene and animate someone jumping out of a window. That’s probably not a good idea. Yeah, I’m doing an ending where you walk out naked covering your Gentles with the teddy bear, the precious item belonging to the girl. We could theorycraft this all night, I’m sure. Well, awesome. Well, thank you for your additional recommendations there, Lucy. That was awesome. And we come to the end of the episode. So I’d love to encourage people to check out Videoverse. Does it have a Steam page where people can wishlist it, et cetera? Yeah, so Videoverse is on Steam now so you can wishlist it. And my previous game, One Night Stand, is on most consoles and Steam, itch.io as well. That’s an absolutely great use of an afternoon. I can 100% recommend it. And it’s cool that it has this great reputation and seems to be quite evergreen. You see a conversation about it pop up every now and then. Where can people find you on social media, Lucy? Yeah, so on social media, I’m gamesbykinmoku. That’s K-I-N-M-O-K-U. And yeah, that’s what I use across Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. Awesome. Occasionally posting pictures of a cute dog and Simpsons memes. I liked your little tour of your day. That was fun on TikTok. Yeah, I’ve just started getting into TikTok because I’ve been watching TikToks for a year and feeling not confident enough to do my own. But now I’m starting to get into the swing of it. It’s actually really quite fun. So yeah, I’ll hopefully be sharing more of my dev day-to-day life on there and also me creating animations for the game and things like that. Very cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your recommendations and deep knowledge. It’s really appreciated, Lucy. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, sure. I’m sure we’ll find an excuse to talk about Videoverse when it launches. I’m excited to play it. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? MrBasel UnderscorePesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts. This podcast is supported by Patreon. patreon.com/backpagepod. If you’d like two additional podcasts a month, you can follow the podcast on Twitter at Back PagePod. And that’s most of it. There’s also an email address, a Discord. You can find it all on Twitter, though. It’s sort of a gateway to all that stuff. Thank you very much for listening. We’ll be back next week.