Analogue: A Hate Story

[Obscura]

This is awesome. Living the dream!

[DaFool]

First, I don't think Steam allows people to disclose their sales numbers.
Second, I think the earnings were further profit-shared among 3 people.

I don't envy Christine Love, she's been in the trenches and had a couple of 'duds'. I envy Raide (and other people who only know the taste of success). He picked two explosive projects -- KS and Analogue. And he's not even that great an artist compared to a few here. He sure chooses well what/whom to be an artist for.

[Blane Doyle]

^Well she did, on her Twitter no less. If that is against Steam's policy she's in big trouble.

That's a very good look at it. Maybe the next game he chooses to do art for will a success as well with his track record.

[jack_norton]

I thought Steam didn't let you disclose sales number too, but I remember Cape Fulgur making a post about Recettear making 100k on Steam last year (I think) so probably they changed the rules?

I had no doubts about her potential and that's why I approached her 2 years ago asking to make a commercial game for me. But she doesn't really make "classic VNs", they are more mystery/horror/sci-fi ones. I mean I'm not sure other VN (like the otome games) could have the same success on Steam, since is still largely a male-oriented portal.
I know on Desura don't for example - Planet Stronghold is outselling all my other VNs there by a large amount.

[Mirage]

^
That's kinda the reason why I am still hesitating of putting my games in Desura. They don't seem to be friendly when it comes to VN, let alone otome games. The comments there so far are rather harsh, and they all like to have 9 usd games.

[jack_norton]

Yes they complain but many bought PS at $24.99 nonetheless
But my other VN games are doing really bad. My stats shows 97% male buyers

[Mirage]

Hmm, I guess I should give it a try, even though I probably won't get any buyer XD
Why do I feel like I may ended up shooting myself in the foot? Oh well XD;;;

[Hijiri]

I had no doubts about her potential and that's why I approached her 2 years ago asking to make a commercial game for me. But she doesn't really make "classic VNs", they are more mystery/horror/sci-fi ones. I mean I'm not sure other VN (like the otome games) could have the same success on Steam, since is still largely a male-oriented portal.
I know on Desura don't for example - Planet Stronghold is outselling all my other VNs there by a large amount.

There's a reason "classic" VN's don't usually do so well: because they're too heavily focused on the ren'ai. If you see some of the sucessful indie games (ex: Angry Birds, Limbo, Minecraft) is because they can appeal to both genders. They don't have you trying to date someone, and if the MC falls in love with a character, it's usualy a secondary story and not part of the main plotline. Bishoujo games have the hentai stigma hanging over their heads while otome games soley focus on dating pretty boys in high school. (pardon the generalization here, but it is the majority of otome games in a nutshell) So really, the way an indie maker can get success is to tap into both markets.

[J. Datie]

FYI: Steam has the game for 40% off for today. $5.99 ain't too bad.

[Obscura]

Thanks for the heads up. I just bought it and decided to finally give a whirl.

I feel pretty emotionally invested in the characters (even those that incidentally, you never really see).

Really well done. I wanna applaud (and shake my fist) at Love for being able to make a VN with the most minimal artwork ever! Pretty clever, that.

Still, makes up for it by probably being extremely well-written. Happy I picked this up.

[Mink]

Got it, played it, wondering

what I have to do to get the *Hyun-ae friendship ending rather than the romantic one.

It's not that that bugs me, but all I did was be nice to her, so now I'm wondering what I have to do different. Okay, probably not telling her

that I care about her rather than the password, and telling her she looks good if I change her clothes. And that point where you can say she's totally right about someone, or feel a little sorry for that person.

Also, I'm wondering how many people were on the ship, because

while apparently it'd have been unacceptable that the emperor and the queen were siblings, how would it be long before they'd have to start doing that to keep up the population?

Which would end rather badly, I imagine, considering

somehow they apparently lost any sort of real medical advances and society more or less devolved, so maybe they wouldn't consider the necessity of genetic diversity at that point. Yeah, the ship was apparently to colonize other planets or whatever, but maybe whatever caused the ship to turn all WTF and lose the advance tech after Hyun-ae was put in stasis killed a decent amount of people.

...Or am I thinking about this to deeply?

[kara24601]

What "pre-digital" works? I thought there was only "digital" and "analogue". I just bought Analogue. I think I've never been a huge fan of "Digital" but have "played" it a couple of times.

What's "KS"?

[Coreyrn]

With permission from the author to work on a Translation Patch for her VN, I can proudly announce that I have finished a German Fan Translation for Analogue: A Hate Story. I don't think the translation is perfect, but hopefully mostly free of errors and I will patch the patch if enough errors are found after some time. Further informations can be found here in the release thread in the steam forums. I hope some more people can enjoy the game when they were scared by reading walls of English text, well at least it is more accessible for German speakers now.

A Spanish and a Russian Fan Translation are in the works as well but as far as I have seen and been told by the translators of these versions, they are far from finished.

[lemonscent]

What "pre-digital" works? I thought there was only "digital" and "analogue". I just bought Analogue. I think I've never been a huge fan of "Digital" but have "played" it a couple of times.

What's "KS"?

Late response, but Katawa Shoujo probably.

[V2Blast]

I got the game on Steam a while back. It is very much a pure visual novel, despite one "command-line" segment. The UI is quite nice. And, of course, it has an excellent story.

I should go back and finish the *Mute route.

The success of Analogue does make me hopeful that more good VNs will make it onto Steam. (...Most of the others on there don't really seem to appeal to me.)