Root Double -Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition: Nintendo Switch version announced!

As announced today at E3 by publisher Sekai Project, Root Double -Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition, the first title we worked on, will be released in English on the Nintendo Switch in Winter 2019! For those of you who have yet to play it, this will be the perfect opportunity to play the game, and for those who have, a fresh way to re-experience it!

The year is 2030. Business is as usual in the isolated research city of Rokumei–that is until several explosions suddenly go off in the nuclear research facility known as “LABO.” The city sends in “Sirius,” an elite rescue squad, to deal with the situation. But the situation only gets worse when LABO’s nuclear reactor melts down, sending the facility into lockdown–with members of Sirius and survivors still trapped inside. With lethal radiation leaking everywhere and not enough anti-radiation medication to last until lockdown lifts, the survivors make more and more grim discoveries. In their struggle for survival, in a deathtrap full of fire and radiation, they learn that doubt is their greatest enemy, and trust their greatest asset.

The story of Root Double features two different protagonists: Watase Kasasagi, a rescue squad captain who has lost his memories in the hours after the incident, and Natsuhiko Tenkawa, a student piecing together the clues in the six days before. Only through their combined perspectives will the truth and a route to survival finally be revealed.

 

Root Double is a project that become the cornerstone of the formation of Lemnisca, marking our transition from fan-translation to official localization. As fans of the game, we couldn’t have been prouder to work on it, and hope this new release will introduce many new fans to this spectacular game!

 

Raging Loop Announcement!

For those who missed it last week, Lemnisca is proud to announce that it is working in collaboration with developer Kemco and publisher PQube to produce the localization for the mystery/psychological horror visual novel, Raging Loop!

Raging Loop tells the story of a man, Haruaki Fusaishi, who, after going on a motorcycle trip to cope with a bad breakup, finds himself stranded in the remote Japanese settlement of Yasumizu — a place that feels centuries behind modern Japan. While repairing his motorcycle the next day to leave, a mist suddenly pours in, and the villagers all take shelter in their homes. Soon enough, a mysterious creature with the body of a human and the head of a wolf appears and kills him. However, instead of dying, Haruaki finds himself looping back in time to before he died. After managing to avoid the creature this time, he discovers that the coming of the mists marks the beginning of a ritual in Yasumizu. Several villagers have been replaced by ancient wolves that will kill one villager each night, and it is up to the villagers to discover who amongst them are the wolves, and execute them. It is up to Haruaki to survive the feast and discover what the truth is behind it and his looping.

Raging Loop will be released by PQube in both physical and digital editions for the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 4 in the future.

Ever17 Anniversary Interview (Kotaro Uchikoshi & Takumi Nakazawa) unveiled!

Hello, everyone! John Hooper here!

Today is May 1, 2017. In the real world, today may turn out to be just any other day, but May 1, 2017 marks the day that the events of the 2002 KID visual novel “Ever17: The Out of Infinity” begin. The second game of the acclaimed “Infinity” series, preceded by “Never7: The End of Infinity” in 2000 and “Remember11: The Age of Infinity” in 2004, Ever17 was also one of the earliest story-based visual novels to be officially translated in English, released in December 2005 by now defunct visual novel publishing company Hirameki. In both Japan and in English-speaking regions, Ever17 became highly acclaimed at the time of its release for its elaborate plot loaded with twists that used the visual novel medium to its advantage in a way few have ever shown before or since, and is still remembered to this day.

To us at Lemnisca, Ever17 was a key influential work for us, helping to inspire some us to begin our careers in visual novel localization. Here are a few comments from myself, John Hooper (CEO/head translator) and H. Anthony Israel/Blick Winkel (frequent translator collaborator):

John Hooper (GundamAce):
Being new to the visual novel genre, I had found the first few ones I had played fun, but I didn’t really see them as anything beyond electronic “Choose Your Own Adventure” games at the time. But Ever17, with its stunning twists that fully utilized the visual novel medium, gave me an experience unlike anything I had ever faced in my life, and it opened my eyes to the amazing capabilities the visual novel medium possessed. It taught me that visual novels contained creative possibilities far beyond any other medium. As such, I became interested in the Infinity series afterwards, and when I learned that the first game in the series, Never7, was still untranslated, it made me want to translate it in hopes of completing the series in English and share my experiences with other players in English. That project led to the formation of the core team that joined me in the founding of Lemnisca Translations and translating of even more visual novels of similar atmosphere to Ever17, which eventually came to a head when we went official and localized Root Double. And while my days as a fan-translator are long behind me, it was still thanks to Ever17 that Lemnisca was founded and that we ended up the way we are today. I cannot stress enough that my life would have likely taken a very different path had I not discovered Ever17.

H. Anthony Israel (Blick Winkel):
Ever17 changed the way I read visual novels and literature in general. Without the Infinity Series, I would not be the Blick Winkel you know today. I myself would not have gotten as involved in visual novels as I am now, neither in playing, nor in translating, neither as a fan, nor through official means. Though we may come across obstacles along our way, we will always get back up and try again. No matter how long or how many times it takes. Our story is not at an end yet. And we will keep you in the loop.

As such, to commemorate nearly 15 years of Ever17 and the day in which it started, we conducted an unofficial interview with Ever17 original concept/scenario writer Kotaro Uchikoshi, and director Takumi Nakazawa! This interview will take an in-depth look into the development of Ever17 from many different aspects, including stories never even shared with Japanese audiences before! Even if you’re not a fan, the interview contains many interesting details about visual novel development in general, so I encourage those who are interested in the creation process of a visual novel to give it a read. As a note, the interview will be divided into three parts: a non-spoiler section for fans and non-fans to read, a spoiler section diving deep into the games mysteries, and a final section containing closing thoughts (these concluding thoughts are non-spoiler, so anyone can read them without worry). So without further ado, enjoy!

*Interview Part 1 (Non-Spoiler)

*Interview Part 2 (Spoiler)

*Interview Part 3 (Concluding Thoughts)

Big announcements + New official site!

Hello everyone! GundamAce here!

It has been two months now since the official English release of Root Double on Steam. For those of you who have yet to purchase it yet or were unaware of this release, you can find it right here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/438130

For those of you who have already purchased Root Double, I hope you enjoyed or are enjoying the game. This was a very important project and a milestone for us here at Lemnisca, and it was a great honor for us to translate and help officially release this game into English. As such, we hope that you too have shared in the same joy and delight we got out of this game, and that it finds a place in your hearts as well.

That said, we cannot continue our activities as fan-translators any longer, which is why we are moving into the field of official translation and other support for the games you and we love to play. We are no longer Lemnisca Translations, but rather Lemnisca LLC. from now on. As Lemnisca, we will strive to continue or work to provide you all with translations for games that will entertain you all. We could not have made this huge leap without all your aid and support, and we hope you will continue your support as we move on to new ventures and opportunities.

As part of this transition, we will now be officially to a new site: lemnisca.com. We will still be keeping this site up as a blog for our new official site, so you can all still continue to follow us here. Furthermore, our official Twitter account has changed- we have now moved to https://twitter.com/Lemnisca_Gen. Please follow us there for further Twitter details!

On another note, regarding our old projects that were left unfinished, we will not be releasing any further fan-translations. Furthermore, as mentioned in our previous announcements, part of our agreements with our partners involved removing the downloads for our previous work. Accordingly, we will not be providing any updated versions or new downloads for those patches in the future. The best thing all of you can do is to make your voices heard and let us know which games you would like to see localized and released. We too would like to do everything we can to fulfill those requests.

Thank you again for your past and future support.

-John Hooper

Root Double Kickstarter has launched!

The Root Double- Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition Kickstarter has officially been launched! You can check it out and show your support at the following link:

Also, be sure to vote for Root Double on Steam Greenlight!  You can find the page here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=593193737

Root Double Kickstarter Prefundia is now up!

Greetings again to everyone!

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, the Root Double- Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition Kickstarter Prefundia is available to view now at the Prefundia website! Please check it out at the link below and let us know your thoughts on the content!

http://prefundia.com/projects/view/root-double-before-crime-after-days-xtend-edition-heading-west/7236/

 

Root Double: Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition official localization announcement!

We at Lemnisca are proud to announce that we are collaborating with Regista, Yeti, and Sekai Project to officially release Root Double- Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition in English! This is a very exciting opportunity that we are all pleased to participate in, and we hope that you will all look forward to the release and support us in this endeavor. We shall strive to give you all the best quality product available and to live up to all your expectations.

The year is 2030. Business is as usual in the isolated research city of Rokumei–that is until several explosions suddenly go off in the nuclear research facility known as “LABO.” The city sends in “Sirius,” an elite rescue squad, to deal with the situation. But the situation only gets worse when LABO’s nuclear reactor melts down, sending the facility into lockdown–with members of Sirius and survivors still trapped inside. With lethal radiation leaking everywhere and not enough anti-radiation medication to last until lockdown lifts, the survivors make more and more grim discoveries. In their struggle for survival, in a deathtrap full of fire and radiation, they learn that doubt is their greatest enemy, and trust their greatest asset.

The story of Root Double features two different protagonists: Watase Kasasagi, a rescue squad captain who has lost his memories in the hours after the incident, and Natsuhiko Tenkawa, a student piecing together the clues in the six days before. The only key to survival lies in the player’s hands with the Senses Sympathy System (SSS). Unlike traditional visual novels, Root Double does not have clear cut “choices,” but rather, the game uses SSS to allow the player to manipulate the story based purely upon emotion. Your emotions projected upon the characters, particularly your trust in them, shape the progression of the story. Only with effective use of this system and completion of both protagonists’ stories can the player piece together the truth and hope to discover a way out of the facility.

You can view the official English opening movie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdwKxuogBbk

As part of our agreement to partner with Regista and Yeti on this project, we have taken all our patches and assorted translations down. However, we cannot say anything at this point about what will become of our translations. We hope for your understanding during this transition. Also, we will be moving to a new site at some point in the future, but for now, we will still be here. We will make a post about our new site’s location at the appropriate time.

We have also added an RSS feed to the site so that everyone interested can use it to stay updated on our site for now. In the future, we plan to update this into a mailing list where we will send e-mails to readers who are interested in receiving periodic updates about our group.

We look forward to bringing you all this official release of Root Double and hope that you are all eagerly waiting for this.