No.5277[View All]
Post and discuss games you're playing that fall into the BL genre.
Prior BL games thread
>>3281 No.6540
>>6539Fr. I don't think that using MTL to play a game and studying Japanese is mutually exclusive either. I was the girl above talking about playing Shingakkou, and I genuinely meant it when I said that I felt my Japanese was improving through it.
What I did was set Lunatranslator so that the translation itself was toggled by a single key. Every new line, I would read it in Japanese, aided by Luna's furigana and one-click word lookup. Then I would toggle the translation to compare my understanding to two seperate MTL ones. You can see the set up here.
>>6415After a certain point, I stopped having to use the MTL even half the time and was able to read a lot of the game fluidly. The MTL tools not only made the game accessible to my friend who had no interest in learning Japanese herself, but also had incredible use to me, who was actively studying.
The MTL wasn't always accurate so of course it is inferior to a human led translation, but it has come a long way in the past ten years so of course more people are going to be using it now.
But speaking of Shingakkou, I've had to put the game off for now since work picked up, but in about a week or two I should have a few weeks off and am excited to dive back in. I originally wanted to do Leonid after Neil, but now I think I'll do Cecil next and save Leonid as a special treat after the fact. My friend didn't care for Cecil as a character at all, but swore up and down his route was great even despite that.
No.6542
Weird one tonight "At First Sight"
Free on itch, about 20 minutes.
https://bobcgames.itch.io/afsThis one is about soulmates featuring a 40 year old bitter man named Grimes who is disillusioned with the whole ordeal. Grimes has dreams about meeting his soulmate at a bar and after pressure from a coworker he goes and finds out his soulmate is not a pretty woman but two men. There are 3 possible endings, in the "good" one your character reaffirms that he is totally straight but he moves in with them and gets off on watching the two men fuck.
I felt like I wasn't the target audience for it, but the game did make me laugh with how "no homo" the MC was.
>>6540Oh yeah I remember you, congrats on improving your Japanese! I remember thinking I was going to try and get Luna set up and then it just fell out of my mind as life got busy, I should look into it again.
No.6543
>>6540>My friend didn't care for Cecil as a character at all, but swore up and down his route was great even despite that.All the routes in sngk are special like that. I like that it doesn’t rely on tropes for its characters. It made everyone feel like real people. It even got me to care about side characters like Jack.
No.6566
>>655810-50, there are longer ones I've enjoyed in the past but once you approach the 100 hour mark it tends to overstay it's welcome.
No.6621
>>6619Hilarious how they keep putting mostly rapists in that trash meme yet they're stanning Fujieda who ain't better than any of them.
No.6625
>>6624I loved the nicknames Sergeant Goldilocks and Sergeant Gaydilocks.
No.6626
>>6603Where is your picrel from? I want to see how this demon smashed.
No.6668
Any nona here that has the latest fanpatch of sweet pool? They took it down from aarin bc it got officially licensed by jast but i dont like that translator so if anyone here has it and can share id be glad thank you!
The one that i have is the version where it wasnt fully edited and had a bug where the saves got corrupted and you could not load a save after a certain point in the game. Thanks in advance.
No.6670
>>6654forgetable, but gameplay is different from the usual
No.6671
>>6668The links here are still alive:
https://blpaca.tumblr.com/sweetpoolOtherwise there is also rutracker (the game is not in English though):
https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1512342(you need an account)
No.6673
>>6672It’s very rushed but I still really like it
The whole game has sort of a dream like logic to it so it makes it easier for me to go along with weird leaps in logic when they pop up rather than being annoyed by them.
No.6674
>>6672>did anyone else think the last route was extremely rushedYes. What was that ending? What even happened?
>Juurou's character extremely confusingI don't.
He was forced into acting and at one point he simply snapped and carried on with the act in the real world. He was originally unhinged, seeing how he reacted to his parents getting killed. Plus him being desperate to reunite with Yomi might have been genetic as well. The affair with the idol was maintaining a tailored persona - that's what expected of celebs, right? No.6678
>>6617Thank you for sharing this, nona. I feel like reviews like this are becoming more rare. I used to love scrolling through blogs like this.
No.6688
https://www.freem.ne.jp/win/category/37 Here's another japanese website with free indie games that has a BL tag. This one doesn't have a built-in machine translation feature so you either have to know japanese already or use your own software. I'm personally keeping this and novelgame in my bookmarks for when I'm ready to seriously practice japanese.
No.6689
>>6688Thank you!
HOLY SHIT THIS GAME RUNS ON WIN 95
https://www.freem.ne.jp/win/game/31499 No.6690
What do you all see in the future for BL VNs? I was thinking about VNs as a whole the other day, and I was reminded of the fact that it seems like a lot of newer VNs aren't taking the same risks as older ones. However, I do think BL VNs haven't seen this same decline as, say, galge. Does anyone else feel this way? I suspect the overall decline is a result of things like gacha and vtubers becoming more popular. I really hope BL VNs don't experience that same decline because they're my favorite medium.
No.6691
>>6690I doubt my opinion is very informed compared to someone deep in the JP BL community but I'll share my assumptions. I heard that in the past you'd have more VN companies with a BL side brand that now aren't around anymore so I'd guess that aside from parade and nitro+chiral BL has been shifting towards indie spaces and that would mean they're sustained more by love and passion than a corporation seeking profit. Game developing tools are more accessible now than ever before so it would be nice if indie BL games flourished. People joked about the new HD2D rpgmaker software being used for porn games but I would absolutely go wild if someone used it for BL.
No.6695
>>6690Hard to say… There are so many short indie BLVNs made in English these days, but that trend doesn't translate to 'big' games made in Japan.
No.6696
>>6690U sure about that ? Even Nitro Chrial seems to have abandoned BL VNs for gacha. And there doesn't seem to be that many upcoming BL VNs.
No.6697
>>6696I thought they were hiring VAs for something, possibly a new VN
No.6699
>>6691I've also noticed a lot of short indie VNs gaining popularity. I know "big" games are resource-intensive, and it may not be worth the effort to invest in those anymore, but I hope passion keeps it alive. There are several titles I'm excited to see in the future, which is more than I can say for some other areas of the VN sphere. I'm more worried about the potential decline in quality as opposed to quantity.
>HD2D rpgmaker softwareGod, I wish. It would be fun if we got more RPGmaker BL games (not even VNs, but I mean even RPGs would be fun).
>>6696>U sure about that ?I'm not at all sure! That's why I posed the question; I feel very uncertain of the future of BL VNs, which is why I wanted others' perspectives. I disagree that there aren't new releases which look interesting, though. Ooe, Lesson, two VNs from Holicworks all released within the past 2 years or so. In the future, we're supposedly getting a Cage remake, another title from Holicworks, that new title by a branch of the company which made Messiah, and another new title from LOVE&DESTROY (aside from the Cage remake). I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm a little worried about the future because I know VNs aren't super profitable.
>>6695Yeah, I've noticed a lot of indie games (not just English, but Japanese and Chinese, too). My fear is whether or not the medium will stagnate in terms of ideas and risks taken. I've noticed a lot of galge have become much more "safe" in terms of plot, structure, etc. in the past, I don't know, 5 years.
No.6700
>>6690I've noticed in western spaces indie GLVNs have really taken off in a way BLVNs seem to not have. The BLVNs tend toward being insincere of the medium or have the stench of trying too hard with inclusive options (or the art is just bad).
It's hard to pinpoint why this is (it could just be I'm not in the right places!) but I've always thought that in western spaces fujos tend to just be happy with great fanfic and don't get the urge to draft original BL because they are already well fed with fandom.
No.6701
>>6700I don't know if I agree most are insincere, I'm the user who's been playing and posting a lot of the short ones I've been playing, ugly art is the bigger issue a lot of them just don't have good character designs in a way that the bigger Japanese ones do. The art seems to be secondary, I assume because unlike a full length VN they aren't shelling out for an artist.
>>6690I'm relatively optimistic about the future, if only because there is an increasing accessibility of VNs both from a consumer perspective, and from a creative's ability to get their game out there.
No.6703
>>6699Cage Remake has been in development for years and there's no news about it, also apparently the Holicworks title that's in development might not even be BL ? At least it won't be NSFW it seems.
No.6763
>>6671Sorry for my late reply. Thank you very much for sharing nona!
No.6769
>>6768The plot is non-existent except for the true route and in the true route the BL is non-existent except for its bad ending.
About the characters the delinquent actually ended up being the sweetest cinammon bun of all shockingly enough, I fully expected him to be the rapist archetype (but he does become that in his bad ending which might be the worst in the entire game), the other 2 LIs are both unhinged in different ways so it depends if you like their type of crazy. I think you really need to enjoy the characters in this game otherwise you'll find it very boring.
No.6770
>>6769Thank you nona for the very detailed reply. I tend to like unhinged love interests but always depends on how they are written. It got an English fantranslation recently so been thinking of starting it.
No.6772
>>6768Really fucking boring sadly.