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About Narcissu 1 & 2's Greenlight on Steam


Barely over a month ago, Sekaiproject initiated a Greenlight Campaign for Narcissu 1 & 2, which Tay wrote about.  A few days ago, the Greenlight blinked to life!   Since then, many enthusiastic supporters of this project have been presenting a plethora of questions; chiefly among them being about the translation itself, and projected milestone dates leading up to the game’s release on Steam.  Sekaiproject released an article outlining their future plans:

Sekaiproject’s tetatively hoping to get everything all done by Q1 2014.
The (incomplete) list of things we need to do before the release, that I can think of right now in my excitement: (BTW. I did say this is totally incomplete and I totally made up this list right this moment right?)

  1. gp32 needs to finish his new translations of both Narci 1 and 2. These will be the ‘main’ scripts of the game. (Then of course the checking/editing period needed for that)
  2. I need to go back and refresh my old Narci 1+2 translations. Not a full rewrite, but touching up things that I feel are weak.
  3. We also have to work the Japanese back into the system and functioning properly (I don’t think there’s ever been a dual-language narci release. Technically it’s possible, but there’s certain fussy engine details that make it delicate.)
  4. Play testing. Lots and lots and lots of it. Because we want the thing to run smoothly when it hits steam
  5. Getting the engine to work across all the platforms we want to support..

Then there’s “nice to haves”…. that aren’t critical, might be dropped without notice if it’s slowing down the main release, or if unexpected surprises come up… or we add it on later on… if things work out.

  1. Even more languages? It’s an utter pain in the butt to integrate even just 2 languages in. Plus we’d need someone to vet the translation quality of the other versions…
  2. It’d be really nice to be able to release a soundtrack. There’s a bunch of hurdles that need to be cleared. Hopefully we can make something happen… but it ultimately depends on the rights holders in Japan to give the final OK.
  3. Steam cards/achievements? (who knows, we still have to look at the SDK and see what the heck is even possible… and if it makes any sense [debate for another day])

This is another huge step to making visual novels popular in the west, which has been Fuwanovel’s goal since it’s genesis.  If more amazing visual novels like Narcissu 1& 2 can get the Greenlight on Steam, then we’ll be looking at a heavy exposure of the west to these games, through a medium where there is no shortage of product.

Extra Information

gp32, an original translator for Narcissu, answered a good many questions about the project in general in a Q&A Session

Tay

I'm the Fuwanovel community admin and a big fan of Visual Novels. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via a PM on the Fuwanovel Forums, by twitter (@ArchmageTay), or by email.

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Bolverk
10 years ago

It’s brilliant that it got successfully greenlit by steam. Also in just 1 month which is quite impressive.

solidbatman
10 years ago

Excited for this! Hopefully the quick greenlight will give Jast USA a little push for a S;G Steam release.

Ruri
10 years ago

They even had place 2 in the batch at the end, so Valve should see that there are a couple people out there who want to play VNs 😉

Mat
Mat
10 years ago

Yeah, more english VN-s the better. 😛
If anyone is interested I came across an ongoing VN kickstarter project which looks very promising at least the demo was really awesome: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1500482054/sunrider