Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Valentine Video Games Festival: Love Cypher Demo (and Kickstarter)

 Celebrating All Things Romantic, Video Games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Feb 182022
 

It’s been a while since we’ve had a crowd-funding campaign to discuss, and during the Valentine Video Games Festival no less!

Love Cypher, currently seeking funding through Kickstarter, is a near-future romance visual novel set in the 2040s. You play a new student at a university studying artificial intelligence advancements.

It is a galge with four romance routes (and the possibility for more if Love Cypher should meet both its goal and subsequent stretch goals).

A demo is also available, and I played it after seeing the Kickstarter campaign. The demo is fairly short and follows the protagonist as he arrives at the university and meets the heroines.

From the demo, Love Cypher comes across as a lighthearted romantic comedy, with some silly situations and classic misunderstandings.

However, the description mentions that the advanced AI technology in this world “re-sculpts one’s identity, while keeping the individual unaware of their transformation,” which suggests there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Alongside the rom-com antics, it looks like it will deal with themes of identity and humanity.

(Nowadays I’m suspicious of anything that looks fun and lighthearted with hints of something else, but the developer has said online that the story will be philosophical, but still fun, so I don’t think we have to worry about this one being secretly depressing.)

Love Cypher will be an 18+ visual novel once it’s complete, although the demo has no 18+ content since it’s the beginning of the story.

The art looks very nice, and all around it looks like it will be a high-quality production. Although it has stock backgrounds for now, the Kickstarter page says they will be replaced in the final version. It’s tough to judge the story from the demo this early on, but the premise sounds intriguing.

So if you’re looking for an upcoming romance visual novel, you might want to check out Love Cypher’s Kickstarter page to learn more about it.

Eiyuden Chronicle Looks Fantastic So Far

 Video Games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 212020
 

If you follow video game news, you’ve probably already heard about Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, the game that has been blasting through stretch goals on Kickstarter so fast you can sit and watch the funding amount go up.

I understand why (and backed it myself), because it looks fantastic.

Eiyuden Chronicle is essentially a spiritual successor to Suikoden, with a script from the writer of Suikoden and Suikoden II, turn-based combat, 109 total characters to recruit and a home base to develop, and lots of cats.

Okay, that last part doesn’t come from its Suikoden inspirations as far as I know, but it’s still worth noting.

So far I’ve only played the first Suikoden, but I enjoyed it a fair amount and look forward to playing more of them, especially the highly-praised Suikoden II.

Getting back to Eiyuden Chronicle, its music will be composed by Motoi Sakuraba (Tales, Baten Kaitos, Dark Souls, among others) and Michiko Naruke (Wild Arms), and possibly others as well.

Everything about this game sounds like it’s going to be great, and they just recently passed their stretch goal to add a 5-10 hour side story DLC (free for backers) featuring Marisa, one of the central characters of the game. With 7 days left in the campaign, who knows how far they might go?

They also released a new combat clip showing Eiyuden Chronicle’s United Hero Attacks.

It looks so good.

Now, Eiyuden Chronicle isn’t even expected to launch until 2022, so I’ve got a long wait before I’ll be playing this one. Maybe I can catch up on the Suikoden series in the meantime…

Don’t forget to check out the Kickstarter campaign to learn more. What do you think about Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes?

Muv-Luv photonmelodies Releases July 30

 Video Games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Jul 032020
 

When the translation of Muv-Luv was successfully crowdfunded, the campaign also met its goals to translate two side story collections.

The first, Muv-Luv photonflowers*, was released last year. Now, the second collection finally has a release date. Muv-Luv photonmelodies will be out on July 30 for $29.99.

This collection contains three stories:

  • Altered Fable: A Shimmering Shard of Spacetime – an epilogue story set after the events of Muv-Luv Alternative
  • Adoration – a story set in Europe, following a Japanese cadet who visits England to join a TSF battalion
  • Resurrection – a story set ahead of Muv-Luv Alternative, following a spy

Although the Steam page isn’t up yet, a short teaser trailer has been released.

Kickstarter backers received photonflowers* ahead of the public release, but I don’t know if the same will happen for photonmelodies. Either way, I’ve heard a lot of praise for this collection, so I’m excited that we don’t have much longer to wait!

That should be the last of the content included in the Kickstarter. There are still some Muv-Luv spin-offs we don’t have available in English (there was a Steam Greenlight page for Schwarzesmarken, but it’s been four years since they said anything about it) and of course the new sequel and spin-offs coming soon. I’ll be looking forward to them as well.

If you’re a Muv-Luv fan, are you looking forward to photonmelodies?

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