Digital Seclusion [Atmospheric][Kinetic][Metafiction][FREE]

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Zalor
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Digital Seclusion [Atmospheric][Kinetic][Metafiction][FREE]

#1 Post by Zalor »

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Digital Seclusion is above all else, an open love-letter to the visual novel medium. To share a little about myself, I have been reading visual novels for around 10 years now, and it is safe to say that they are a part of me. Ultimately I felt the best way to communicate my sentiments for the medium was by working within the medium itself. On that point, I don't think anything further needs to be said, because I think if you read it, you will see that only somebody obsessed with visual novels would have been able to make this. I should also add that any opinions expressed by my narrator do not necessarily reflect my own opinions.


Plot Synopsis: Isolated in a room repurposed into a personal shrine to esoteric Japanese media. Our nameless protagonist has dedicated himself to a collection of retro Japanese computer games, with a particular fondness for early visual novels. Although decaying in a slovenly existence to the untrained eye, his retreat into digital life is enriched by the scripted interactions with various charming 2D girls. His one purpose in life is to chronicle his thoughts and reflections on each of the digital worlds he immerses himself in. However, one day while pulling out another visual novel to review, a girl leaps straight out of the cover art and begins interacting with him, face to face. But perhaps most shocking of all, in a completely unscripted manner.

Information: Digital Seclusion is completely free. While sexual content is not a focus of the VN, themes of lust and temptation are present in parts of the story. In terms of its length, I would estimate it to be between 1.5 ~ 2 hours long. The current version of this VN is version 1.35. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Screenshot Samples:


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Download: https://thezalor.itch.io/digital-seclusion
Last edited by Zalor on Tue Jul 26, 2022 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Kokoro Hane
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Re: Digital Seclusion [Atmospheric][Kinetic][Metafiction][FREE]

#2 Post by Kokoro Hane »

I finally gave your visual novel a whirl! It looked pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a try!

First off, I would love to say the presentation of this is absolutely gorgeous. I love how most of it is NVL-style, but it's on the side, so it does not obscure any imagery. I love how blog entries are shown in classic green text on one monitor, and screenshots from the game in questions are on another. The credit sequence was also neat with your little comments on multiple titles.

Onto the game itself...

The blog entries were really neat, especially since they focused on actual games. I am very interested in the history of visual novels, and quite like the early pixel aesthetics some of those old titles had, so it was nice to get a glimpse into some titles that will probably be impossible for most people (including myself) to play. I liked the discussion of two sides of the coin, being extremely creative and absurd storytelling (which I'd honestly love to see more of again even in the OELVN community) and your basic, run-of-the-mill dating sims which, if written right, isn't all that bad. I also loved how you showed some love for Higurashi! And even touched upon amateur VNs, and how often a lot of people nowadays may shy away from that. It's something I, again, notice in the current OELVN community as opposed to when I first got into Ren'Py and many pieces. There's something I feel cannot be matched by amateur art with passion in the story that carries it, perhaps that is the niche I personally favor haha. So that part really got to me as someone going back to my old favorites, as well as digging through the Ren'Ai archives for interesting pieces.

The atmosphere and story itself feels really heavy. Whilst the narrator's love for visual novels, especially obscure titles, is rather cool and interesting, his complete obsession with them to the point it consumes his very being feels rather sad. And it only feels sadder as what slowly unfolds to reveal how he got into his NEET state in the first place. I feel visual novels are definitely a wonderful and immersive storytelling medium, it's why I play and make them, but I must appreciate how you show the dark side of it. How one may get sucked in all too much. It's not so much that VNs automatically pose that risk, but rather the circumstance one might go through which drives someone to seclude themselves in the hobby. For our narrator, its visual novels, particularly the classics, it can be entirely something different for someone else.

Now onto some spoilers.....
The mysterious "spirit" that morphs into various characters, but more particular, our narrator's favorite heroine just became more ominous and shadier by the minute. At first, I thought she was a mere hallucination, an attempt from his subconscious to maybe even save him and encourage him to look for real love, and experience life outside, to make new memories, and heal from what caused him to be a recluse in the first place. Then she became a temptress, telling him to renounce his life so they could be "one" for eternity and I knew this wasn't going to end well. I had hope, in his narration before the choice, the dream, that ultimately sealed his doom that maybe.... just maybe he would change his mind, realize it was all a trap, and live. But instead, he fell to her temptation, felt instant regret fornicating with her, saw her true demonic nature, and we have a soul stealing text on the screen "Ending 1/1: Bad End" knowing there is no way to change this poor recluse's fate. That he was driven to suicide, be that some kind of demon or his own depression catching up to him, perhaps a culmination of both. A cautionary tale if one's love for a normally harmless storytelling medium turns into obsession and, quite frankly, like a "god" of sorts considering his eerily lit room was a shrine lol. That's what I personally took away from it.
Overall, I really enjoyed the visual novel, it's amazing visual presentation, like the way it was done almost made me forget this was made on the Ren'Py engine (it's amazing how far its come in how you can customize presentation). It was also neat to learn things about the PC-98 and what is merely a handful of old school VNs. Also during description of the denpa genre, that one sudden glitch legit scared me hahaha. I think my only major complain is some of the sexual descriptions that sometimes got a bit more explicit than I was expecting. I know it added to the narrative in what a sad state our narrator was in, but it was a bit much and probably adding a bit of warning to your game's page would be nice, but aside from that I did fully enjoy the game and looking into a bit of the dark side of loving the VN medium. I don't know how you managed for the game to be both a love letter to visual novels whilst also exploring the possible detriment of it consuming your life, but you sir managed to do both and do it exceedingly well, both visually and narratively. You explored why visual novels are so enticing and an amazing way to tell stories and what happens if certain circumstances causes you to seek all your comfort and safety from it in the most unhealthy of ways possible. Perhaps I am looking too much into it, but I walked away with both a greater appreciation of the genre as well as with a good lesson and demonstration of not letting it, or anything for that matter, lead you into a rabbit hole of despair.

Great for a first piece, good luck on your future projects as well! ^^
PROJECTS:
Operation: Magic Hero [WiP]
Piece By Piece [COMPLETE][Spooktober VN '20]
RE/COUNT RE:VERSE [COMPLETE][RPG]
Since When Did I Have a Combat Butler?! [COMPLETE][NaNoRenO2020+]
Crystal Captor: Memory Chronicle Finale [COMPLETE][RPG][#1 in So Bad It's Good jam '17]

But dear God, You're the only North Star I would follow this far
Owl City "Galaxies"

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Zalor
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Re: Digital Seclusion [Atmospheric][Kinetic][Metafiction][FREE]

#3 Post by Zalor »

Thank you very much! I'm glad people are still reading this a over a year since its release. Also I want to apologize for taking a while to write a proper reply!

I always appreciate hearing when people enjoyed reading Digital Seclusion. It's far from conventional, but I made it for a crowd that's willing to try something different, so if it appeals to that niche I'm quite happy. Since one of the goals of the work was to explore VNs in a retrospective way, it seemed that no other medium would be appropriate to do that then the visual novel medium itself.

Without going in to too much detail, since I think a writers source of inspiration is somewhat like a magician's secret, it was time I spent on an obscure forum in my early teens that got me interested in the darker nature of obsession with media. Specifically (and this would have been around 10 years ago) it was reading the posts from people who took the whole "waifu" thing to religious levels of devotion that fascinated me. On some level, at least during the process of writing the script, was a kind of a meditation on that.
Kokoro Hane wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:32 pm I think my only major complain is some of the sexual descriptions that sometimes got a bit more explicit than I was expecting
Interesting you bring that up, since when I first released this I was a bit confused myself how to categorize this aspect of the story. Visually things are obscured in kind of Picassoesque way, but the writing is of course fairly explicit. Ultimately I sided against mention of it though, because by VNDB standards it was categorized under the "no sexual content" tag, and I don't want to confuse people desiring that kind of stuff (it seemed mentioning sexual content would lead to disappointment more than anything else). But I do hear your point and I'll think about that some more.
Kokoro Hane wrote: Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:32 pm There's something I feel cannot be matched by amateur art with passion in the story that carries it, perhaps that is the niche I personally favor haha. So that part really got to me as someone going back to my old favorites, as well as digging through the Ren'Ai archives for interesting pieces.
It's probably no surprise, but I totally get you on that lol. If you don't mind some recommendations of my favorite older EVNs with that amateurish feel, I have to mention Memo by Doomfest and The Dandelion Girl. I still go back to both those VNs every couple of years and they always put me in a warm mood.

Once again, just want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and kind words!

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Re: Digital Seclusion [Atmospheric][Kinetic][Metafiction][FREE]

#4 Post by Kokoro Hane »

You're most welcome for the review! I really did enjoy it and its deep dive, into both the wonders and dangers of visual novels. I do quite agree with what you say about the best way to explore the medium is within the medium itself, there's just something so gripping about it that no other medium outside of it I think could quite do it justice. Also, your source of inspiration sounds very fascinating, and I can only imagine how a bit unsettling such posts would be. So it's interesting to see how it influenced "Digital Seclusion".
Zalor wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 6:31 am Interesting you bring that up, since when I first released this I was a bit confused myself how to categorize this aspect of the story. Visually things are obscured in kind of Picassoesque way, but the writing is of course fairly explicit. Ultimately I sided against mention of it though, because by VNDB standards it was categorized under the "no sexual content" tag, and I don't want to confuse people desiring that kind of stuff (it seemed mentioning sexual content would lead to disappointment more than anything else). But I do hear your point and I'll think about that some more.
Ahh, yes that makes sense. I can see why you decided against it due to how VNDB works with the labeling. It's never a good thing to come off as misleading xD

If I were to make a suggestion, you could label it in a way that ATP Projects labeled Ori, Ochi, Onoe where it is marked as 17+ (or as 16+ on the Ren'Ai archives... in gaming terms, rated M for Mature). Like yours, whilst there is no actual nudity (the closest would be in a shower scene where everything is obscured by steam lol), some of the writing definitely let you know what was going on without getting too explicit. But it was still made clear it was not an H-Game. (It's a pretty well made visual novel too, I think you'd enjoy it if you haven't come across it already).
Zalor wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 6:31 am It's probably no surprise, but I totally get you on that lol. If you don't mind some recommendations of my favorite older EVNs with that amateurish feel, I have to mention Memo by Doomfest and The Dandelion Girl. I still go back to both those VNs every couple of years and they always put me in a warm mood.
Ooh! I've played "Memo", it was pretty good, I just haven't gotten all the endings yet. I should give that one another go. I haven't played "The Dandelion Girl" though, so I'll look that up and give it a try ^^

Anyway thanks for the reply, you didn't take too long at all! I am still very impressed by the presentation of this and look forward to what you might have in store next time you crack open Ren'Py!
PROJECTS:
Operation: Magic Hero [WiP]
Piece By Piece [COMPLETE][Spooktober VN '20]
RE/COUNT RE:VERSE [COMPLETE][RPG]
Since When Did I Have a Combat Butler?! [COMPLETE][NaNoRenO2020+]
Crystal Captor: Memory Chronicle Finale [COMPLETE][RPG][#1 in So Bad It's Good jam '17]

But dear God, You're the only North Star I would follow this far
Owl City "Galaxies"

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