Joilly - a site where you can play free visual novels with..

[kura-ou]

...your own personal library and save in-game bookmarks.

Even though I've never played Cafe Rouge before, I thought this was an interesting idea What does everyone else think?

LINK TO THE INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN

[AngelicBlood]

It seems interesting.

[TrickWithAKnife]

To be honest...

It's advertising a website where people can play large numbers of VNs online (4 or 5 per week), and yet it seems they are looking for funding for their next VN, of which they've basically provided a name and a logo.

It seems they've put out one VN and tried to stretch themselves too far. Would have been better to just seek funding for their new VN and not even mention the future plans until they have a decent library of games, in my humble opinion.

Rewards seem a bit odd too. $20 to be able to reserve a username? They seem to have pretty big expectations for their website.

Perhaps I've misunderstood something from their campaign. If so, then they should have explained it better.

[gekiganwing]

I somehow missed out on hearing about Cafe Rouge. It seems like a decent Flash game.

Joilly sounds a bit similar to Novel EXP. I purchased a couple indie EVNs there around 2011 for $5 US each. The last time I looked at its site, novelexp.com, was a few months ago. There were no updates or price changes, and the forums were filled with spam. This morning, I couldn't even access the site. Is it offline temporarily, or did it shut down quietly?

If Joilly becomes a VN distribution/streaming service that *sells* VNs, then it needs to make sure that customers can always access their content. This was the problem with JManga: if you bought any comics there, you could only view the content on their site, with no downloading allowed. Earlier this year, JManga abruptly ceased operations.

If it's strictly for freeware, that's fine. I know some people like to read VNs in browsers. But how many fans are currently looking for a freeware browser-based VN portal?

[PyTom]

I've commented out the link for the time being.

For the past month or so, we've required crowdfunding campaigns to link to a non-trivial playable demo before we link them from this site. (That's to ensure funders know what they're getting into, and ensure that creators have some skin in the game.)

Once you add the demo to the indiegogo or this thread, you can go ahead and uncomment the link.

[kura-ou]

To be honest...

It's advertising a website where people can play large numbers of VNs online (4 or 5 per week), and yet it seems they are looking for funding for their next VN, of which they've basically provided a name and a logo.

It seems they've put out one VN and tried to stretch themselves too far. Would have been better to just seek funding for their new VN and not even mention the future plans until they have a decent library of games, in my humble opinion.

Rewards seem a bit odd too. $20 to be able to reserve a username? They seem to have pretty big expectations for their website.

Perhaps I've misunderstood something from their campaign. If so, then they should have explained it better.

Looking back at it, what you just said makes more sense, TrickWithAKnife. I was actually wondering why they couldn't get any funding, but thank you for the critique, hopefully, they'll see this and rethink things.

[kura-ou]

I somehow missed out on hearing about Cafe Rouge. It seems like a decent Flash game.

Joilly sounds a bit similar to Novel EXP. I purchased a couple indie EVNs there around 2011 for $5 US each. The last time I looked at its site, novelexp.com, was a few months ago. There were no updates or price changes, and the forums were filled with spam. This morning, I couldn't even access the site. Is it offline temporarily, or did it shut down quietly?

If Joilly becomes a VN distribution/streaming service that *sells* VNs, then it needs to make sure that customers can always access their content. This was the problem with JManga: if you bought any comics there, you could only view the content on their site, with no downloading allowed. Earlier this year, JManga abruptly ceased operations.

If it's strictly for freeware, that's fine. I know some people like to read VNs in browsers. But how many fans are currently looking for a freeware browser-based VN portal?

It does very unfortunate that some websites just die like that after consumers have actually bought their products.

I just thought it was an interesting idea, but what you and TrickWithAKnife said really gave me another perspective. I apologize for not thinking this through before posting it for discussion ><;;;;

I guess I'm okay with sites like this that have a plethora of completed OEL VNs ^^;;; (because the creators at least reply to us and fix whatever is broken )

[kura-ou]

I've commented out the link for the time being.

For the past month or so, we've required crowdfunding campaigns to link to a non-trivial playable demo before we link them from this site. (That's to ensure funders know what they're getting into, and ensure that creators have some skin in the game.)

Once you add the demo to the indiegogo or this thread, you can go ahead and uncomment the link.

Oh, I apologize for that. I wasn't sure of the requirements and just came across this a day or so ago. Thank you for telling me this, and I'll be wary of it for the next time. I'm sorry for all the trouble, PyTom.

[sake-bento]

Don't feel bad - this is definitely something worth discussing. There have been a lot of people wanting visual novels to be playable online, but so far no services have really seemed to take hold. I'd be interested in seeing more about the site, if you can find any information about that. The KS is pretty misleading in that aspect, but if they have some sort of proof of concept (say, Cafe Rouge playable online somewhere), I'd like to see it.

[jack_norton]

I'm not really sure that many people want to play VN online. I have offered Heileen on web with HTML5 but the results so far are far from encouraging. Sure it's an old game, but through tracking I find many people who come to play the web version and then buy the downloadable one. I think is just good as promotional/marketing tool and nothing more IMHO.
I can understand them wanting to play on tablet/mobile devices, but online? If you think about it makes more sense, why they should be always online to play a VN, something that's like a book and definitely single player?
Just my 2 cents of course.

[CSJ]

Having VNs playable online reminds me of the sleuthing I've done to try and see what the complications of hosting pygame-based games on a browser would be. You would need a suitable python plugin and it would probably be a small nightmare to complete. So, if people wanted to design/program their games for online play, they would need to use a rather different set of tools to renpy.

You're on the ball. For online VNs to work, there has to be some sort of benefit from online content. That is probably achievable with some games, but is rather difficult with a VN.

One thing however that would be useful, is the ability to play VNs on more than one device. If I wanted to continue a saved game from my pc when I'm roaming with a smartphone or tablet, a cloud-based game would make that far easier. Or at least the ability to save games to the cloud, then access them on a different device later, to avoid requiring continuous streaming.

[Boomsickle]

i'd feel better about donating if the website was up and working and or this wasn't a flexible campaign.

[pwisaguacate]

I wanted to pretend it was just funding for their next series "Skights". However, the actual attempt at... Joilly just scares me.

Even then, there is zero proof of concept for Skights.

[skipping what everybody already said; I was late to respond shortly after this thread's creation]

canarycharm (Sonya X) at deviantART: [link]

Cafe Rouge wasn't terribly bad; it did catch my interest. However, the minigames can be hard, the arrows were annoying at first until I memorized which to click, and the series was short. Honestly, the separation of each parts and the need to type in a code from the previous feels bothersome too.

[Sonya]

Hey everyone, I know it's been a year now but Joilly is reopen again! I even created a topic for Joilly on lemma here: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 57&t=27279

I hope that clarifies everything!