Recommend a VN

[FelOnyx]

And Brythain, I doubt your cake was much worse than mine.

It is with great and sorrowful regret that I inform you of my crime: I mixed ingredients into a paste, shoved them into a mug, and microwaved till it puffed up. Cake. Didn't taste bad. Looked like a Hiroshima joke of the type that should not see the light of day. I bow in contrition.

Never mind, that's much worse than mine.

[brythain]

And Brythain, I doubt your cake was much worse than mine.

It is with great and sorrowful regret that I inform you of my crime: I mixed ingredients into a paste, shoved them into a mug, and microwaved till it puffed up. Cake. Didn't taste bad. Looked like a Hiroshima joke of the type that should not see the light of day. I bow in contrition.

Never mind, that's much worse than mine.

Here, have a recipe. It looks good with sprayed-on whipped cream and butterscotch bits. However, you need a bigger mug than you think. I was going to say 'bigger cup', but that put me in mind of Shizune jokes. Terrible, I need to cut back on caffeine.

[FelOnyx]

It is with great and sorrowful regret that I inform you of my crime: I mixed ingredients into a paste, shoved them into a mug, and microwaved till it puffed up. Cake. Didn't taste bad. Looked like a Hiroshima joke of the type that should not see the light of day. I bow in contrition.

Never mind, that's much worse than mine.

Here, have a recipe. It looks good with sprayed-on whipped cream and butterscotch bits. However, you need a bigger mug than you think. I was going to say 'bigger cup', but that put me in mind of Shizune jokes. Terrible, I need to cut back on caffeine.

That actually looks pretty tasty, I need to try it sometime.

[SpunkySix]

Spunky, you should try out "Analogue: A Hate Story" it's the sequel and it's better, in my opnion.

Yes! Excellent story, and there's even a sequel where you get to bake a cake.

Y'know, I'm very much interested, but I'm a cheap bastard so it'll probably be a little while until I fork over the cash for them. They're definitely on my 'to read' list, though.

I must say, in Digital, the love elements seemed a little rushed at first since you don't see your messages or feel the extended passage of time that you would in real life, but once it was revealed that *Emilia was an AI and was deleted, she suddenly became the most important thing in my role-playing life for the moment. Especially since I have a soft spot for both poets and AIs, who I feel like would make great partners in real life. That feeling of helplessness near the end when the hope spot passes and you realize that there really isn't any other option than to delete *Emilia was insane. I looked everywhere for a way out and replied over and over hoping something would develop, but it just never did and that was heart breaking. Very well done sequence, miss Love.

Lastly, *Emilia is a great name. I've always liked Amelia as a name, but the author managed to make it even better by giving it the best three letters of the alphabet at the beginning.

[Rylah]

Just played through my second ever VN, Everlasting Summer, which is actually out free via Steam.

It's good.

Would definitely encourage anyone mildly interested to give it a go, it's free. It's certainly not bad.

The game and especially the music score is pretty awesome and also there is the free DLC with another route which is again a new mindfuck warping the things you thought to know. I find it amusing how replaying the different routes is itself part of the background story as are the cliché characters. When using the guide I would recommend first playing all good ends of the girls, then the bad ones, then the "me" routes (both) and only then Miku and Yulya. At last the DLC which brings a new twist again.

[BMFJack]

I finally got around to trying out Everlasting Summer, which is free on steam but has the erotic content removed.

All I can really say is... what the literal fuck was that!?

I mean sure, I got a bad end, but aside from that the whole damn thing doesn't make much sense...

I'm gonna try to go through it again. 'Try' being the operative word.

[brythain]

I finally got around to trying out Everlasting Summer, which is free on steam but has the erotic content removed.

All I can really say is... what the literal fuck was that!?

I mean sure, I got a bad end, but aside from that the whole damn thing doesn't make much sense...

I'm gonna try to go through it again. 'Try' being the operative word.

There's a way to put the NSFW stuff back in, but it shouldn't make a difference. What's interesting is that each route you play sets you up for more mindf-kery. I left that vowel slot blank because it's hard to tell whether you're being f--ked, f-ked, f--ked or what. Truly odd but compelling experience. After Day 1, you really have a lot of very interesting choices, some of which you don't understand unless you've gone through other routes. The characters keep saying oddly meaningless things, but later on you realise what they might have meant or did mean. Argh, hard to explain. Go for ALL the endings.

[BMFJack]

It was even worse the second time through. Not 'worse' quality-wise, but 'worse' in the mind-fuck department.

I'm scared to go through it a third time.

[Silentcook]

Interesting. Now I know that my pet project - you know, the one I will probably take up circa 2025 - has at least a chance to stir up some interest...

[Liminaut]

All things considered, I thought the new DLC in Everlasting Summer made sense and was pretty straightforwards. Compared to the rest of the game.

[brythain]

All things considered, I thought the new DLC in Everlasting Summer made sense and was pretty straightforwards. Compared to the rest of the game.

In retrospect, if I'd seen the new route first, I would have been a lot less confused in what the whole idea was at the beginning.

[AaronIsCrunchy]

Everlasting Summer sounds rather interesting, I might give it a stab. And if it's too confusing, I'll just stock up on paracetamol's

[SpunkySix]

I finally got around to trying out Everlasting Summer, which is free on steam but has the erotic content removed.

All I can really say is... what the literal fuck was that!?

I mean sure, I got a bad end, but aside from that the whole damn thing doesn't make much sense...

I'm gonna try to go through it again. 'Try' being the operative word.

Oh, Steam! I just downloaded that, I should try this... after I finish KS. And read the other three or five VNs on my waiting list.

And SC has my attention now. Hm...

[BMFJack]

Funny thing is that I've heard a bit about this 'Everlasting Summer' being referred to as the "Russian Katawa Shoujo" which, aside from how it was made, makes no sense at all.

Good thing is they just released a patch to fix most of the "Runglish" but there are still some untranslated lines for some reason... I'd wait a few years before picking it up. It has little feels, but it's strangely compelling. I definitely wont play through it more than once, but I'd say I'm enjoying it.

Third time through proved to be far less scarring that the first two times, but dat fourth time got me again.

Oh, I suppose on topic... a good VN (although admittedly I haven't finished the VN, got lazy and watched the anime) is Steins;Gate. From what I've experienced of both, they changed very little between the two mediums. Steins;Gate is my favorite anime of all time. I'll finish the VN one day... when I've recovered from the feels of the anime.

That I watched two years ago.

Edit: Fair warning, it's sad. Very sad.

[Stag]

Everlasting Summer hits hard.

Just completed my first storyline, got Slavya's bad end. The actual romance itself wasn't as compelling, but the character's inner struggle displayed mostly at beginning and the end, but also during the rest of the game, spoke to me in a very direct way.

I suppose it shows the game was made by members of an imageboard community - the protagonist is a typical NEET, a description that would fit me not so long ago. The ending was devastating, not because of the way his relationship with the girl was resolved, but because he failed to learn anything that would help him with his actual life.

UPDATE: Completed the entire thing, I'm unsure of what to think. There seem to be very few explanations, at least in English, right now, and those that are available don't really achieve much. I've been scribbling on a piece of paper during the final stages of the game and drew a picture that represents the ... mechanics of game's reality. But at this point I'm not sure about anything. We really need an interview with a person who wrote this.

One thing I can confirm is that this game isn't about dating the girls at all - it's about self discovery, about deciding what kind of relationship will you have with the world and yourself.

UPDATE 2: Got through DLC, which is interesting enough, but opens a lot of new questions while providing almost no answers. I'm starting to think the writers only had a vague idea of how the game world supposed to function, and more often than not just threw in random stuff. I suppose you could argue that the same is true for the nature of reality itself, we can only glimpse at parts of its mechanism while the true picture may never be revealed ... but this is a game, damn it.