Vitklim
Active Member
- Feb 22, 2018
- 910
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Been going through my collection recently, and checking up on threads of visual novels I played at some point. It is mindblowing to me just how many of them are now abandoned. This is a rough estimate, but as I'm halfway through, about 5 have since been fully completed, 15 are still in development, and about 20 have been abandoned.
The in development ones I kind of expect, but so many of the promising games which first appeared on my radar between 2020-2023, have just withered and died, usually no more than a few updates after I first saw them. And most of them were mid range games, nothing special in terms of animation, writing, or sometimes even models, but still clearly projects which had a lot of effort put into them. And most of them got abandoned around 2023-2024, so before the itch.io and payment processor purge hit.
This is saddening for many of them, but frankly it wouldn't be too big of a deal, if new Ren'Py visual novels were coming out in the same volumes. However, the volume of genuine and soulful projects has declined precipitously, and where before you would see 2-3 new promising games a month, these days you're lucky to see 1. Instead, the AI slop floods the tag now, and even if those games have good writing, the uncanny valley of knowing the art was not made by a human is strong.
It's kind of depressing all in all.
Frankly, it feels like it's following the broader trend of h-game development being on the wane. There are very few high quality projects established today, and they are slow on development if they do not die entirely. Mid range projects like these VNs used to be, are lessening in number and frequency of updates. And the low end games, like basic rpgms, html trash and asset flips used to be, have now been joined by the AI art slop and are flooding the zone. On the surface it seems like the quantity and frequency of updates overall is the same. But diving deeper into it reveals a sadder picture.
Times used to be better, and it sucks to realize it.
The in development ones I kind of expect, but so many of the promising games which first appeared on my radar between 2020-2023, have just withered and died, usually no more than a few updates after I first saw them. And most of them were mid range games, nothing special in terms of animation, writing, or sometimes even models, but still clearly projects which had a lot of effort put into them. And most of them got abandoned around 2023-2024, so before the itch.io and payment processor purge hit.
This is saddening for many of them, but frankly it wouldn't be too big of a deal, if new Ren'Py visual novels were coming out in the same volumes. However, the volume of genuine and soulful projects has declined precipitously, and where before you would see 2-3 new promising games a month, these days you're lucky to see 1. Instead, the AI slop floods the tag now, and even if those games have good writing, the uncanny valley of knowing the art was not made by a human is strong.
It's kind of depressing all in all.
Frankly, it feels like it's following the broader trend of h-game development being on the wane. There are very few high quality projects established today, and they are slow on development if they do not die entirely. Mid range projects like these VNs used to be, are lessening in number and frequency of updates. And the low end games, like basic rpgms, html trash and asset flips used to be, have now been joined by the AI art slop and are flooding the zone. On the surface it seems like the quantity and frequency of updates overall is the same. But diving deeper into it reveals a sadder picture.
Times used to be better, and it sucks to realize it.
