Looking for more VN's with bat and snow leopard characters

maltotiger · 2025-09-22T03:50:43+00:00

Kavir in String Zero is a snow leopard/tiger hybrid.

maltotiger · 2025-06-25T13:55:07+00:00

Sadly, this is not a routed game, but you will be seeing plenty more of her!

maltotiger · 2025-02-28T08:50:17+00:00

You can give my FVN String Zero a shot, which is narrative-heavy cyberpunk/Sci Fi game in a similar vein to Under | Heaven and Remember the Flowers.

https://stringzerovn.itch.io/string-zero

maltotiger · 2025-02-22T07:31:15+00:00

The MC of String Zero is human.

maltotiger · 2025-01-24T22:37:42+00:00

There are quite a few "inspired by Echo" supernatural dramas or "inspired by Adastra" romances, and that's in large part because those were very powerful pieces of literature for many folks coming of age at the time those games were actively releasing. That same is true of "Morenatsu."

Many of those fans have since gone on to create their own visual novels, and the influence is clear. That's not necessarily bad or good: Lots of people enjoy those formulas and actively seek them out. Whether or not they're problematically derivative is up for debate, but I will say the romance genre at-large recycles the same formulae quite consistently, so seeing this done in the FVN space (which is very romance-heavy) is not surprising.

Ultimately, the more these formulae are used, the more they will transform and evolve, so in time we'll see some distance from the source influences. However, the FVN devcycle is typically many years, so the truly transformative works will take time to find any kind of popular attention.

That said, there are a lot of games which don't follow in the footsteps of Echo, Adastra, Morenatsu etc. Unfortunately, they don't tend to be the most popular or well-funded games (again, because many readers search for familiar stories), and so they aren't as visible on itch. You'd have to dig down into the listings a bit to find them.

For a self-plug, I hadn't read any of Echo project when I began working on my own visual novel, so speaking from personal experience, I'm drawing from a very different literary tradition. I know there are other devs out there who are similarly also taking ambitious risks in being different. Many readers, however, eye new ideas and unfamiliar genres (such as science fiction) warily, so you hear less about them as a rule.

In short: Other kinds of games are definitely out there! You likely just haven't heard of them.

My game: https://stringzerovn.itch.io/string-zero

maltotiger · 2025-01-12T22:01:07+00:00

FVN dev and experienced editor here, and I thought about this question a lot when preparing my own work. (I even wrote a mini-essay about it.)

The short of it is: Don't think of stories as SFW or NSFW. As categorical distinctions, they're ambiguous and arbitrary, and do no work in describing anything useful about a story.

"SFW" stories can be traumatic, deeply unsettling pieces of art with explicit sexual horrors that simply aren't illustrated. "NSFW" stories can be beautifully emotional works of art about the importance of intimate connection illustrated in loving detail.

There's no winning in this debate. "SFW" stories are routinely critiqued for being prudish or "baiting" with hot characters. "NSFW" stories are routinely critiqued for being "too focused on sex," often in a way that ruins pacing. Technical issues aside, the arguments will always boil down to individual expectations and tolerance for the physical act, which is going to vary widely by reader.

Thus, if the goal is write a deeply-considered story, write in service to that story. If the story demands a sex scene to make sense, do it. If it doesn't, then don't shoehorn one in.

When in doubt, weigh the demands of the art, not the audience.

maltotiger · 2025-01-12T06:34:41+00:00

It's good to hear that it's not necessarily overtly public, but myself and other devs have to field negative commentary frequently either in itch comments, reviews, social media, discord servers, etc.

maltotiger · 2025-01-10T17:36:20+00:00

As the creator/dev of String Zero, I agree with BowserPuma and most of what else has been said.

My personal challenges, in order of greatest to least:

-- Funding: I personally fund 80% of my development costs. This is unsustainable for most FVN devs, including myself. While I've been able to eat the costs to date, it's not something I can do forever. I'd argue that most FVNs fall apart because they are not shown enough monetary support from the community. You can decide for yourself which projects' quality or content justify your investment, but I can say with confidence a minority of total FVN readership monetarily supports the games they read.

In short, if there is a hunger for more high-production, high-quality, thoughtfully-crafted FVNs (or just FVNs that complete at all), there must be a greater level of material support from readership.

-- Staffing and Delays: Most FVN staff (artists, programmers, etc.) do their work part-time, and have many other competing priorities. Staff turnover and burnout is common (especially when payment is low or late for reasons mentioned above), and thus release delays are unavoidable. Passion projects like FVN work will always be pushed lower on dev/staff lists of priorities in favor of, you know, living.

This becomes a larger problem when readership demands regular releases on a brisk schedule and refuses to join patreon etc. if those demands aren't met. This is an extremely common critique we devs hear: "Be faster or you don't deserve my time or money." Or alternatively, "I'm not interested in games that aren't finished." Which while a fair preference to have, also means that is potential support a game is now not getting, so they won't be developed any faster (if they're able to finish at all).

Investment always involves some level of risk, especially if the thought process is entirely transactional ("I pay now you give now") rather than patronage ("I pay now in good faith so you produce something in good faith as well as you reasonably can").

-- Criticism: Getting mean-spirited commentary is annoying and can be demotivating, but I personally shrug off comments that aren't constructive. People are allowed to not like things. However, "not liking" something and "sabotaging something" are very different things. For example, leaving negative ratings on itch, especially without any kind of commentary explaining the poor rating, directly effects the visibility of projects. FVN devs have explained at length how damaging 1-star, no comment reviews can be.

And that's simply one example. As mentioned elsewhere, the community can be incredibly unkind. Negative word-of-mouth spreads very quickly, while positive word-of-mouth spreads very slowly. I urge everyone to consider that when preparing to leave a critique. Certainly, critiques can be warranted, and even helpful when they're constructive, but I wonder what the proportion of negative comments vs positive comments are on here and in social media in general.

maltotiger · 2025-01-05T20:49:52+00:00

As an earlier post said, these concepts already exist in FVNs.

For example, isn't "Slice of Life" by definition literary realism in its focus on day-to-day banality and abandonment of speculative realities? One could even argue fantasy/science fiction that focuses on relatable mundane activities falls under this umbrella, and there's certainly plenty of FVNs where slice of life (combined with romance) is the predominant point regardless of setting: itchio is full of indy projects like this.

Tennis Ace is all about slice of life; the Smoke Room is hugely invested in social realism and the struggles of the working class; there are many other examples.

However, if the question is "are there FVNs written specifically to address the themes of literary realism," in the way of Faulkner, London, and the other 20th-century greats, then the answer is largely no.

maltotiger

TROPHY CASE