A Quick Look At: Lovely Little Thieves

Ah! There’s nothing like the smell of new EVNs in the morning!

Admittedly, for our little corner of the Internet that’s not a rare occurrence. It seems that, at least for this year, we have plenty of new groups and projects to pick from depending on our own fandoms and interests.  But few of them cover a genre tied so closely to Western popular culture as horror movies. Since the inception of ‘the moving picture show’ there have been horror movies and while it will never be as psychological as it once was, thanks in large part to an industry that doesn’t know the difference between shocking and scaring someone, I am very pleased to see a revival of sort in horror games.

Sound Off Episode 25: AnimeFest 2014

Well after a week of trying to get this right, I proudly present toyou the AnimeFest edition of Sound Off! Now, just to warn you there are audio issues. I’ve cleaned it all up the best I could, but it turned out that the problem was with my second microphone…which I didn’t realize until it finally broke down during my last interview. You can still hear all of the questions and answers so it’s just going to have to be another lesson learned!

Other than that I want to thank everyone who I hung out with and interviewed during my time in Dallas! The EVN community is filled with amazing people and I humbled I was able to spend some time  with some of you! I hope to see more of our community in the near future! Here are the guests for this week!

• Lorelei (Cyanide Tea)
  Py’Tom (Ren’py)
  KomiTsuku (IDHAS)
  Deji & KittyKatStarGal
  Ayu Sakata & Micah Solusod (SakeVisual)

Download the MP3 Here!

A Quick Look At: Devil Gene R

Normally, this would be the part where I try to lighten the mood because I’m about to start off on a rant that will make me question the dental floss that connects my mind to this reality. However, this has not been a ‘JP Relaxes on the Porch with Iced Tea’ Weekend. I make REALLY good Iced Tea when the weather is nice.

Regardless, we must first go over DA RULES! “A Quick Look At” IS NOT an official review! It is simply me relaying my experience with a demo or another short EVN. I have to knock it all out within 1000 words and there will be no score. That’s just my opinion of where everything stands. So, let’s get this pain train on the road, shall we? This is Devil Gene R!

A Quick Look At: Skights, Episode 1

Despite popular public opinion, writing a review isn’t easy.

Not only must the reviewer must be a uniquely qualified, slightly maniacal Internet asshole, but there must also be enough information on the topic to fully flesh out what it either did right or wrong. However, in this particular gaming community, you won’t always get titles that are fit to do a full review on; which has been something I have been trying to address behind the scenes of the HQ. The best solution I could come up with is to just do a few quick points on shorter and episodic titles; mostly without scores and hopefully under one thousand words.

So, let’s get this thing rocking with Skights. What is Skights? Skights is a visual novel developed for Joilly, a flash-based visual novel engine. I have mentioned on Twitter that this game is basically Candy Land: The Game of Thrones Edition. Why? Well, let’s get started and I’ll tell you!

You Asked For It: Kendo Crush!

I’ve had this one on the front burner for a few weeks now after the development team, Pixel Fade, asked for my opinion on their demo. The game attempts to merge two different, and popular, Japanese mediums: sports manga and slice-of-life. These types of mergers aren’t rare, but whether or not they succeed is a completely different story. Currently, Kendo Crush is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign and has under half of their requested $12,000 (Canadian) budget. It boasts not only a vocal cast, but original soundtrack and ‘an abundance of fanservice’….yay….Well JesuOtaku already gave the demo a thorough reaming on a impromptu Livestream (although that video hasn’t been posted anywhere else!), so surely there is nothing else I can add right? Wrong! Welcome back to You Asked For It: the only feature on the Internet where ripping apart hopes and dreams is just another Tuesday!

Second April Interview: KittyKatStarGal and Deji

One thing that I’ve always loved about the EVN Community is how partnerships are formed. Even bad games takes months, if not years, to go from concept to final product and the different members of a team aren’t necessarily sitting in the same room every day. So the connections that form the foundation run a bit deeper than you can put a dollar amount on, otherwise the various teams that make up this community wouldn’t get done. I haven’t completely figured it out yet, but I know beyond the creativity and talent we have here, the Power of Teamwork ( for a lack of better words), is something that we should not only be proud of, but new creators looking to form a partnership to create an EVN should try to learn from.

I knew when I planned out these April Interviews I wanted to talk to a team everyone here has seen in action, but may not know much about. Like another very productive partnership, the artist and the writer are from two different sides of the world: KittyKatStarGal from Canada and Deji from Chile. But the divide only seems to make their team stronger…I’ll have to make a note of that for further research. Both work together not only for Winter Wolves, but under their own initiative to create one of my Most Anticipated EVNs for 2014: Autumn’s Journey. I hope you guys have fun reading the Interview! I did!

First April Interview: Auro-Cyanide

Welcome everyone to April! While it may not feel like Spring depending on your location in the world (looking at you Canada), here at the HQ we want to enjoy this little middle ground between  the Center-Of-The-Earth Heat we’ll be getting in a few months and the Frozen Tundra that was Winter. So this month, you won’t just be getting one Interview; you’ll be getting TWO. (EDIT: Originally it was supposed to be Four, but Two of the Interviews pulled out last minute, so we got TWO!) It’ll be a mixture of familiar faces and new interests: with each story reflecting what makes the EVN Community such a creative place.So let’s get started with an incredible talent. Returning just for NaNoRenO; Auro-Cyanide! Enjoy!

March Interview: Bishop Myers

It is always a special privilege to talk to one of the hardworking developers in the EVN community: especially right now in the middle of a very busy 2014. Originally I had planned to make this a key feature in the newsletter I wanted to start in February, but after a test run I realized that it would JUST be this feature and so we are back to the old format that will, by the will of those greater than I, stick around this time!This month I was fortunate to sit down with the extraordinarily talented Bishop Myers. Bishop leads up Project BC: a collective originally focused on Role-Playing Games, but has begun to branch into EVNs. Their next title, Vacant Sky Awakening, is a hybrid of both genres that promises a tale many secretly enjoy, but rarely admit to: the rise of the villain. I hope you enjoy the interview!

You Asked For It: Starswirl Academy

…My Little Pony…I suppose it was inevitable, really. It really was only a matter of time before the MLP fandom began to encroach on visual novel territory. And to be fair, I don’t necessarily hate the show or the fandom around it. I am not necessarily a feminist (I prefer to call myself an Equalist), but I can recognize the outright aversion mass media has to treating young girls as anything but fodder for the next lifeless teen romance they can pump out. I’ll touch more on the subject whenever I discuss DC Entertainment and Cartoon Network’s continued drive to be crowned King of Douches, but for now just know that while I will never care for the show enough to invest an afternoon’s worth of time to watch, I am glad that young girls are getting the quality of writing and animation I used to get when I was a young boy.This brings me to ‘Bronies’.

You Asked For It: Seduce Me

Well, welcome back everyone to You Asked For It: a feature on the site that is roughly equivalent to downloading a semester’s worth of World Literature 101 directly into your brain. So far in the history of this small feature, we have made it infamous. We were blamed for the failure of a Kickstarter AND demonized by an entire fandom for deriding the porcelain dolls called a cast in Starswirl Academy. But, despite my clever and acerbic wit, I do want to say for the record that this feature isn’t about mocking works in progress…despite the fact that I often mock works in progress.No, this is about a higher calling that will be put on display today as we dig into the festering, Technicolor underbelly that is Otome.