Thx - so based on that, I can see some cause for concern. It turns out the game has JP audio regardless, so I’ll probably play with English text on my own time (not my usual MO, but anyway). Note: for anyone who is interested, it’s very easy to switch btwn EN & JP in-game
Anyway I’ll add a note to the nomination comment for it, and probably won’t vote for it, in this case.
Is there a limit on nomination count per member btw?
Nope - no limit
why I nominate it: This is the start of a series of standalone (sfw) romance centric light mystery games. From what I understand, the mystery elements presence really varies depending on the entry and might functionally be not present in this one. In any case this was the sister series of a series I love a lot, the infinity series by the same company, which focused mostly on sci-fi mysteries with little romance. It never gained much popularity in the english speaking side of the internet, but I’ve been curious about it. I feel like the difficulty should be approachable. Also: I find this era of anime girl art very pretty and nostalgic 
And just because my other entries were yuri focused: this is straight romance. Also route based. Not sure how that would work with a book club, I guess we’d go in a set order?
Was updating the Nominations list, and wondering whether I should move Seabed to the “already read” section, since it already has an ongoing club. Or maybe create an Offshoots section for stuff like that?
To put it differently: will it be included in the upcoming vote?
I don’t think it should be included in the vote. It already has an informal club. It’d be strange to have two clubs one with schedule and one without. I imagine there won’t be a ton of people participating anyway so spreading them further feels like recipe for silent threads.
(the higurashi threads make me sad lol)
I was thinking it might be more like if the club voted for it, then this club would just merge into that thread, rather than start a new one. But what you say makes sense
Did Higurashi participation dwindle rapidly or something? I dropped at the beginning, when I realized I didn’t actually want to play a horror-themed game 
(this is why I now watch at least a little playthrough before I vote for something), but it seemed like there were a lot of people at the start.
I wasn’t active on the forums when it was started but I was when the last few threads werre posted, it looks like virtually everyone stopped reading. Higurashi is one of my favorite series, so it was sad to follow from the distance
I think I had just moved when that started, so I also don’t remember. We had decent participation for Marco, but the VN club dropped off pretty immediately after starting Higurashi.
I know myself well enough that I’m probably going to plan to start what gets picked as a stream, and if I decide I need my own experience then I’ll play it. I’ll probably only do so if we end up playing something with multiple routes.
My point was more “I mistakenly voted for Higurashi, thinking I wanted to play it, and then instantly dropped it” - which wasn’t productive for me, nor the people who actually wanted to play it. If I’d watched even like a minute of playthrough, I would have realized that. So now I check before voting. Same with books - esp novels, manga I don’t care as much.
I just have a lot more friction around starting a VN for some reason that I’m just planning on watching the game. There’s not a ton of advantage of playing a single route game on my own, and esp not if not all of the game is voiced. I read so slowly that it feels like really awkward pauses when the protag character isn’t voiced that I’ve dropped a few games just bc of that
They’re a very large time commitment, with ambiguous difficulty - so that’s understandable. Depending on the game, I might also start off streaming
Maybe… but in any case don’t think any game here is 100% voiced - at most it’s “all dialogue”
I totally get that, and have dropped stuff due to slow reading as well - so if streaming helps you continue, then good trade-off
I thought I saw a nomination deadline mentioned somewhere but couldn’t find it. Turns out it’s in the post title. Is 20th July accurate? If so, maybe add it to the top post or the current nomination list.
Against my better judgement I’ll add a nomination. With the possible risk that it wins and I’ll have to add yet another ongoing read/game/series for me to keep up.
Title: STEINS;GATE
Platform: windows, Switch, xbox, playstation
Steins;Gate follows a rag-tag band of tech-savvy young students who discover the means of changing the past via mail, using a modified microwave. Their experiments into how far they can go with their discovery begin to spiral out of control as they become entangled in a conspiracy surrounding SERN, the organisation behind the Large Hadron Collider, and John Titor who claims to be from a dystopian future.
Vndb Link: https://vndb.org/v2002
Language difficulty: average 55/100, peak 65/100 according to jpdb.io (I have no idea what that means both because I found jpdb.io difficulty to be very miss and miss and because they changed their rating system)
Average Game Length: Long 43h20m (233634 words)
Hookable: I think so
Voiced Audio: Yes all spoken lines are voiced
Spoken Lines Replayable: Yes
Trigger Warnings: conspiracies, death, chuunibyou, bad parents, gender bender stuff
I watched the anime and played Steins;Gate Elite in English. Steins;Gate Elite is a remake of the original VN using material from the anime. I’ve nominated this since I wanted to both play the original game and original Japanese.
I quite liked both Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 (both anime and VN). But I’m a bit negative on the SciADV series in Gerneral. I don’t like horror and I hated what I saw of Chaos;Head.
I played Robotics;Notes and it was quite disappointing. Where the plot of Steins;Gate is kind of stupid in a fun and zany way, I felt Robotics;Notes to be just plain stupid. The conspiracy angle was much more prominent. And maybe I just have a higher tolerance for physics bullshit than for computer science bullshit (having a high school education in the first and a college education in the second). The protagonist was an annoying ass (though he was better in Robotics;Notes DaSH). Also, having a high school cast instead of college was kind of lame. Akiho was cute, though.
I’ve bought the original Steins;Gate with some other Steins;Gate games, some of which I’ve played in English. And I’ve also bought Anonymous;Code after watching a YoutTube video from a SciADV fan I thought I should give another SciADV game a try.
I would recommend playing the original Steins;Gate over Steins;Gate Elite, both because that’s what I personally want to play and what’s generally recommended (Elite doesn’t have the original art and is cut for time at some places). Though I think it would be possible to read along with either. Maybe we could even map the anime episodes to the VN chapters and have some people follow that.
It’s a pretty popular game. So I assume there will be plenty let’s plays to follow along, unless the publisher goes after them.
You did:
Anyway, I’ll add it to the OP
Here’s the full jpdb stats:
For comparison:
So I’d interpret that as “slightly harder than Seabed, but notably easier than Fate”.
Amused at the 中二病 TW lol
Looks to me slightly easier than Seabed rather than slightly harder.
Well it can be annoying.
I also added a TW “gender bender stuff”. Wasn’t sure how to call it. I don’t think it was offensive, but I don’t remember perfectly how it was handled.
Could see it either way
Agreed & appreciated, along with the others
I wasnt sure if I should say anything, because personally I don’t remember enough to say (I think I thought it was somewhat annoying but not the worst I’ve seen) but many of my trans friends consider it deeply transphobic.
I think I would probably disagree with that take. But then I would have to hear it first and replay the game.
That makes me sorta curious (And I looked up a little, but it’s hard to get a full sense of it)… I’m probly not planning to vote for it anyway (other titles I’m more interested in)… But I’ll play if it does win
Speaking of votes… @Marifly do you have a plan for how many votes per person?
No, do you have a suggestion? I’m thinking unlimited, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea?
