I've been cruising the internets when I'm not busy with mirror moon, work, or writing my own story, and I have stumbled across (with the nudge from Peorth and Graus) about Katawa Shoujo.
Katawa Shoujo (goddammit, I keep typing 'Kawata') is the biggest (known) Original English Language Visual Novel (more commonly known as OELVN) project to date. I believe they are approaching the 200,000 word mark, which is pretty big, considering it's almost a third of the size of Tsukihime, quite hefty itself.
It is an eroge and is under development by Four Leaf Studios. KS was partially inspired by a thread on 4chan's /a/ board, which is fairly amazing in my opinion, as you have to have balls of steel or lack of brains to take a page of doodles, character descriptions and ideas, scenarios and somehow compile it into a visual novel.
Katawa Shoujo's main quirkiness (apart from the easily-typoable name; did it again :/) is that all of the main characters are disabled in some way. The main character you play, Hisao, has a heart condition; some are blind, some are without legs, and so on. The story is set in a school for the disabled. I thought it was initially odd at first to have a visual novel full of cripples, I gradually warmed up to the idea, as it brings out the idea that disabled people have feelings, too.
I have seen some of the character designs and I am definitely already liking some characters more than others (so sue me). Also, the backing music is composed by NicolArmarfi, and after hearing a sample (namely Romance in Andante II), I would have to say the music is probably one of the main things I'm looking forward to in Katawa Shoujo.
A demo is being worked on, although estimated time of completion is unknown.
I'll be keeping an eye on this project, so I guess I'll keep people posted.
Website: http://katawashoujo.blogspot.com/
Forum: http://ks.renai.us/
IRC: #zettai-shoujou on irc.rizon.net
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Wed, 06/02/2008 - 01:33
We'll have a demo sometime after the full game is released ;)
y'know, just for the lulz.
Anyway, thanks for the blog post, chendor, we appreciate it.
"Sleep comes like a drug, in God's country.."
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»Wed, 06/02/2008 - 22:22
Awesome! Thanks Chendo:)
I haven't heard of any progress in a very long time, and i still remember the thread^^
I've been really looking forward to this game since i read the thread a long time ago. And to be honest, i just cant get enough of disabled girls^^
i played the early beta (was it leaked?) a long time ago, and looking forward to an official demo.
Thank you Peorth and Graus for keeping this awesome project alive!
I give you OVER 9000 internets if you complete this project!
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»Thu, 07/02/2008 - 18:03
Wow, what? Disabled people have feelings? j/k
Seriously though, this looks pretty good. I browsed around the blog and forum a bit, and so far I really like the premise and character designs. The writing has me a little worried though - I've never really liked the use of Japanese honrifics in English, and it seems particularly odd to do it in an OEL visual novel; I can kind of understand it considering the setting, and I'll reserve any judgment until the demo, but I'm a little worried that it'll feel more like reading a fan translated piece rather than one originally written in English. Still, I'm intrigued, so I'll help myself to lurking the project until a demo or final pops up.
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»Thu, 07/02/2008 - 21:19
But will there be h-scenes...?
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»Fri, 08/02/2008 - 00:11
There will be, yes.
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»Fri, 08/02/2008 - 05:05
Oh wow this looks interesting, the disabled part seems somewhat odd but it's definitely something new...and that's always fun! Seems like a hard working project that could be very enjoyable.
Hm...200,000 words eh? Just for the heck of it now I'm going to shoot for 250,000 just to compete :'D
~The dream and story one man writes with the tip of the blade, another man can write even better with the tip of a pen~
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