Proof that Free Visual Novels Can be Good

When speaking of Japanese visual novels, probably the first thing that comes to mind is H scenes or something similar, and most of them are fairly expensive to get if you live in the U.S. (of course no one would ever get them through some torrent site or anything like that!) So, being the poor gamer that you are, if you're looking for a meaningful story, quality artwork and good sound track, look no further than Narcissu, a free visual novel by the doujin group stage-nana.

What You can't read Japanese? Worry not, the game has already been translated to English by insani. As for the story, here's a brief summary:

Imagine what it would be like to have your entire life -- your friends, your family, your interests, your loves, your hatreds, your future -- all taken away from you in a single instant. Imagine a hard, lumpy bed, a noise-filled ward, the sharp sting of needles entering your flesh at all hours of the day, the indignity of being woken up just as you are about to fall asleep for incessant vital statistics measurements, the doctors whose names you don't know (but that's okay, because they don't remember your name, either; they just remember you as "the non-small cell lung carcinoma in room 6"), and your own name, your very own name, that you have just about forgotten.

Then you might have some clue as to what it is like to be dying in a hospital.

This is a story of disease and suffering; of medication and adverse effects; of thoracotomy scars and cellular poisons; of the living who cannot help but to die and of the dying who cannot help but to live; of a resting place other than "on 7F" or "at home".

A girl named Setsumi who faces imminent death and has no hope, and a boy who is pretty much in the same boat as her except for the hope part. They decide they don't want to die either at home or in the hospital, so they run away, driving towards a place where white flowers they saw on the TV bloomed (basically driving across Japan to some island). What follows is a story of self-discovery, adventure, and the usual stuff one would expect from a road trip movie.

You can tell the story is trying to get that "movie" feel, even the screen is widened to further that sensation. The game is very short, you can practically finish it in a couple hours, but the story is much better and though-provoking than most of the generic love story found in your run-of-the-mill visual novel.

The first game has been translated into English, Chinese and Korean. There's a sequal called Narcissu -side 2nd-, which is actually a prequal that tells the story of Setsumi before she met the protagonist from the first game (the game also conveniently comes with the first game). English translation is in progress, and was projected to finish by the end of summer 2007, which is obviously long gone...here's hoping that eventually the translation will be finished, since this is such a great game for something that's free.