A mainstay in Japan’s gaming landscape, the visual novel (VN) genre of games puts the story front and center, giving players the occasional choice between volumes of text. Western gamers have seen the odd title localized, but Portland-based Taosym and his indie studio Lupiesoft is trying something different with their visual novel Dizzy Hearts: he’s creating one himself.
Marcus Estrada writes: "Of course, as any crowdfunding connoisseur is aware, projects take time. Heck, the oldest successfully funded Kickstarter video game project ever - High Strangeness - just launched this year! What we see occurring less frequently, however, is when a developer releases other games in between the period of crowdfunding a project and getting that project to market in some form. To most, it seems like an incredibly confusing decision at best, and as disingenuous and insulting at worst. Backers can’t help but wonder what it all means. After all, if there’s not enough time to complete a crowdfunding project then how on Earth is there time to put together a seperate game? Beyond that, don’t backers have some sort of expectation of the game they backed being the priority of said development studio?"
