
The horror visual novel “Homicipher” independently developed by Japanese developer Yatsunagi will be released on PC in November. It has accumulated overwhelming praise on Steam, and the community’s expectations and attention are overwhelming. Yatsunagi (4) Japan claimed that he was under too much mental pressure and decided to end the update after adding a final ending and stop all subsequent plans.
“Literalization” inherits the setting of the heroine from Yamaki’s previous well-received work “MAGICAL DEATHPAIR”. Players will play the protagonist who is lost in another world and communicate with non-human beings. They can infer and interpret by observing expressions, gestures and the objects they point to. language, and at the same time have to find a way to escape back to reality.
The game interprets and explores language from a female perspective. Every link has the opportunity to choose actions. If you are not careful, you may die instantly. In addition, the monsters in the game are deeply loved by fans, and you have the opportunity to fall in love with these scary boys. The contrast between the sweetness of love and the horror elements of death has been widely praised. It sold 10,000 copies on the first day of release and has expanded into various fantasy second creations.
However, a month later, Yamimu shared the price of becoming famous in “Words” in a personal blog post: She had to deal with a large amount of information every day, and the various “demands” of fans were too strong, and various factors exceeded One person can make as much as he can afford.
Yamaki appeals to fans “Don’t bother me with any more messages.”And decided to add an ending and then cancel the update plan. The Switch version porting will be fully handled by the developer. No additional content will be added. The peripheral product plan will also be handed over to others. “Please do not call us again to ask related questions.” ”.
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The sales volume of “Chinese Version” exceeded 100,000 units in about a month after its release, but Yanagi already hopes to end this work and leave. “I will disclose the existing data and hold sales commemorative events, and will also conduct minimum game sales-related activities.” I won’t do anything else other than publicity.”
The physically and mentally exhausted creator said that dealing with fan mail consumes too much time, resulting in compressed creative time. Responding to these private messages is more tiring than the creation itself. The content of the messages includes:
- Bug reports must be processed.
- Important reports also need to be checked, but we continue to receive questions such as “When will it be updated?” “Where is the mobile version?” “Can such a second creation be allowed?” and other questions.
- Even though the announcement has been made, there are still many people who don’t read the instructions and ask the same questions over and over again.
- There are also a lot of licensing requests eager to make peripherals. Although it’s understandable, there are so many that it’s difficult to reply to them one by one.
- English messages need to be translated, a process that is cumbersome and easily misunderstood.
Yamaki said that she is a social worker and has a full-time job. “Literalization” was created in her private time out of interest. She will make the work public in the hope that it can satisfy everyone, and she does not want people to consume it in the same way as commercial works. It says, “I will fix the bugs in the main game, but I can’t deal with problems that are beyond the scope of the game.”
Yamaki complained that if private messages are closed or ignored, netizens will raise questions or requests under irrelevant tweets, and the other party will not consider her troubles and efforts at all. In the eyes of netizens, this may be a 1v1 contact, but to For her, she has to deal with dozens of similar messages every day.
“I have also received a large number of reports from a certain country saying, ‘Someone is drawing BL second creation! Isn’t this okay?’. After the freedom of second creation was announced, people who opposed BL came to complain.”

On the other hand, Yamaki revealed that the changes in the fan base are also unbearable for her, because young fans have increased sharply and their demands are too strong. If they do not respond, this group of people will “break into the kitchen, rummage through the cabinets without authorization, and make more question”, which forced Yamaki to respond.
“When the trial version was released two years ago, players would write feedback, express their thoughts, and make review articles or videos, showing their deep love for “Literalization”. The atmosphere was still the same in the first two weeks of release, but as time went by , there began to be a large number of people requesting new information and urging new content.”
A frustrated Yamaki said that if players have needs, there are already many secondary creations on the market that can satisfy everyone. Originally, she still had many stories she wanted to tell, such as the adventures of the crawling man, the forced cancellation of characters and other subsequent developments. , “But every time I update, I only receive requests and negative responses, which makes me no longer want to continue creating.”
Yamaki made a difficult decision. She believed that she had to end this work personally and turned around and left. She had originally considered launching DLC, or making “Literature 2” with different stages and characters, but this feeling of exhaustion made her She decided it shouldn’t go on any further.
“Literalization” may be updated in the future with X (Twitter) illustrations or comics that will not be overly expanded. The author is also considering turning it into a game dominated by “a system that will not attract too many character fans” .
I hope that the characters will be popular, but the popularity of the characters is disconnected from the game, resulting in this work failing to convey its essence as a personal creation and independent game, and instead being regarded as commercial consumption content.
Not launching a mobile version is the right choice.
I’m not saying that youth per se is a bad thing, just that from an overall perspective, that’s the impression young fans may give. Of course, there are also young and outstanding people. I myself also hope that the character will be popular among young people, but that image is actually an idealized image in my vague imagination, which is wrong.
In the Discord community I manage, it started out as a casual chat and discussion between fans, but soon after the game was released, the number of members surged, and with it, the number of people who didn’t follow the rules and etiquette also increased.
At present, I have handed over the management rights to overseas volunteer members with experience in community operation.
Yamaki finally said that for new players, “Wordization” has just been released and the journey has just begun, but for the author, he has been with everyone for two years (the development process), “I originally thought I could move on. , but now I have to say goodbye here.”
“Literalization” has been released on PC (Steam, Booth, DLsite), and the Switch version is still under development. The developer appeals to players not to send her private messages to inquire about the transplant progress, but to wait for subsequent news to be released.