Hello everyone I am thinking about creating a visual novel club on this forum. The club is aimed at intermediate readers, that means the difficulty doesn’t really matter. We can even read some hard ones if they get chosen. But of course the reading speed of the club will depend how hard a visual novel is. We will read easier visual novels at a faster speed than harder ones.
We are still in the planning phase. I am thinking about having a poll in the beginning of August where we decide which one we want to read and to start reading in September.
This is the Visual Novel Reading Club everyone is welcome to join and participate in this club.
Nomination Rules
You can nominate any visual novel which is available to buy and has a PC version. Of course it would be preferable if it’s also available on other devices beside PC but it’s not a must. One nomination per post but there is no limit on how many posts you can make.
The nomination post needs to provide the following information the game title, on which devices it can be played, a link to the vndb.org entry of said visual novel a short story summary, if it’s voiced and average game length. You can look the average game length on vndb.org or https://howlongtobeat.com/. When available please also provide the information if it’s hookable, difficulty of the visual novel and if you can replay spoken lines.
Sample Nomination:
Title: Game X
Platform: PC, Switch
Places you can buy it from:
Story Summary:
Vndb Link:
Language difficulty: Intermediate if available put a link to the jpdb.io entry of the visual novel
Average Game Length: 25 hours
Hookable: Yes
Voiced Audio: Yes all spoken lines are voiced
Spoken Lines Replayable: Yes
Trigger Warnings: please put them behind spoiler tags
useful Software
Locale Emulator
The software Locale Emulator is pretty useful in my opinion. There are some visual novels which don’t run properly without it. Locale Emulator
Are you interested in a visual novel fan club?
I am interested
Depending which visual novel gets chosen I will join
For me, VNs are books with pictures, so if the story is interesting, the art is decent and the level is within my comfort zone, I am definitely up to joining. While I have android and switch, I would only play on PC as it’s so much easier to potentially look up things. The game might even be hookable.
I’d like to suggest that nominations answer a few important questions, namely:
Is it “text hookable”
Is it fully/partially voice acted
Is there audio replay in the log
I know for myself that the “hookability” of a VN would be one the main factors in whether or not I’d take part since I would want to make anki cards, but that’s just me. I would also assume that having a hookable VN would lower the barrier to entry for a lot of newer readers.
As for lookup related resources I know of:
For VNs that aren’t easily hookable, I tend towards using manga_ocr. I can’t vouch for it as the solution for VNs; It is almost always 100% accurate when capturing individual words but tends to break down a bit with entire sentences, which I think it may have to do with being trained on vertical text and not horizontal. Game2Text also seems to be a popular choice for OCR, though I prefer using sharex/manga_ocr and using the yomichan search page.
I’ve also had some success in manually finding hooks with textractor for certain unity games such as Etrian Odyssey 1 HD, though there is a very specific process to getting those hooks working, and I’m not sure if it’s worth the payoff.
As for hooking alternatives, while I haven’t tested it myself, Agent seems to be able to hook a few common emulators with some success.
is there a resource to look this up? ppl nominating VNs have not necessarily played said VN and might simply not know whether it’s hookable until someone tries.
Textractor will detect the most common VN engines, so your big name VNs are most likely covered. The issue is with lesser known VNs and ones made in middleware engines like Unity.
Like @Megumin mentioned, if there’s no mention of it being hooked anywhere, the only way to know for sure is to try hooking it yourself.
That being said, I suspect most of the VNs that will be recommended will be hookable due to being popular titles, and if an unsupported VN is voted on, there’s always the option to manually search for a hook (though it would be very time consuming unless one were to get lucky).
Okay if the majority here wants to read on pc then lets do that. Of course it would be a plus if it’s also on other platforms but we will make pc the main platform for the club.
@Megumin I think you are a mod here could you maybe turn post two into a wiki. We can make it into a member list for the club.
About hooks if it’s a visual novel I own I can check if it’s hook able.
Has that actually been established? The question in the OP is “which devices do you own”, not “which do you want to read on”. Also noticing that iOS was left out as an option.
I think you could probably leave the “which platform” question down to being part of the voting. If the “which platforms” question is answered for each nomination, people won’t vote for a game they can’t play, or might preferentially vote for games available on platforms they prefer.
I love the idea in theory, but my experience with the vn club in wanikani taught me I am exceptionally bad at playing games on a schedule. I’ll probably pop in from time to time for recommendations.
I think with clubs like these, there is no issue with people dropping in even after the club finished and leaving their remarks or asking their questions. Chances are someone from the club is still around and happy to engage with the topic.
