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Anime VA-11 Hall-A Cyberpunk Bartender Action

dumdum

Arcane
Joined
Oct 23, 2012
Messages
320
Location
Yoshi City



In this world, corporations reign supreme, all human life is infected with nanomachines designed to oppress them, and the terrifying White Knights ensure that everyone obeys the laws.

But, this is not about those people.

You are a bartender at VA-11 HALL-A, affectionately nicknamed "Valhalla." Although it is just a small bar downtown, it attracts the most fascinating people this side of dystopia. Keep your clients lubricated and you will be made privy to the most interesting stories.
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source
steam
 

Durandal

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2,117
Location
New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
It's a VN/Bartending Action game in a world of crime, mystery, corruption, and violence, but instead of being a loner against The Man you play as a bartender in some hell hole in the middle of a concrete jungle, serving drinks and listening to the rants and lives of the local denizens, where you might learn an interesting thing or two. You get to listen to the stories of the people who are all gears in the machine of this rotten cyberpunk society, as you serve the lubricant to keep the story going and the money flowing.
As it is a VN, you'll largely be reading through dialogue, but sometimes customers will request a drink. The bartending minigame isn't anything particularly deep or hard/easy to master, but it fits well within the theme of the game, and helps keep the character interactions interesting by breaking up the conversation so the player actually has to do something other than keep clicking for the next dialogue box, and sometimes the beverage of choice (and how much alcohol you pour in it) can affect the direction of the conversation.
The music of this game is really well done and perfect cyberpunk background music, and you get to choose which songs you get to play on the jukebox. Sometimes costumers will even react on what kind of music is playing.
The dialogue is well-written IMO, it does a good job of setting the mood and bringing up interesting topics for conversation. There's no memes or anything as bad as Borderlands 2, just references. If you don't get it, then you won't notice anything out of the ordinary. It apparently is set in the same world as Read Only Memories (TRIGGER WARNING) as a result of indie (?cliques), but I haven't really noticed it since I never actually played ROM. I hear that ROM is actually pretty good despite the pronoun screenshot, so I might give that a go later.

I can't find anything bad about this game (though perhaps that's just my cyberpunk bias speaking), it does what it sets out to do just right, I'd say it stands out on its own sufficiently, and I'd recommend giving this game a shot. 15 bucks might be a bit too much for the stingy, though understandable if you consider that the developers live in the commie shithole of Venezuela where the probability of the game being developed long enough to the point of completion without the devs getting robbed/raped/assaulted/brainwashed/kidnapped/mutilated/drugged/offended is already a miracle in itself. The Summer Sale is tomorrow anyways. It makes me wish I had a cup of something in my other hand while I'm playing the game, and made me regret never having finished Ergo Proxy. Combatfags and MEN won't find anything of interesting here.
Best played during night time next to an apartment window overlooking the rainy cityscape.
 

skacky

3D Realms
Developer
Joined
Mar 5, 2013
Messages
2,506
Location
The City
Never heard of this game until a few people on Twitter talked about it non-stop. 15 eurobucks is a bit steep but the artstyle is fantastic, reminds me of Policenauts and Snatcher, and I've had the amazing soundtrack on repeat for quite a bit as well.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Sounds like something off Sonic Adventure. Is there a genre name for this stuff?
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
So I played the game(Karwelas recommended) and I loved it. But he said I should finish ROM first, so I'll be doing that. Since I get the game by illegal means, I'll wait this sales ends so I can pay this game what it deserves. Also, the ost is god tier.
 

M0RBUS

Augur
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
206
I'm watching an LP of it, and the writing is pretty fresh (for me) and very cringeworthy every once in a while.
I wanted to know if I'm the only one that find it a bit strange that it's like 90% of girls and 10% of guys? And there's no explanation given as to why. I think maybe their future just saw an increase in females? Or is it supposed to be about catering to guys or something?
I find it odd that it's not explained.
 

M0RBUS

Augur
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
206
Yeah, after a few episodes of the LP I'm watching, it turns out it's just a whole bunch of crap about relationships and feelings and other such nonsense.
Fuck that shit, I like proper fiction.
Then again, I'm definitely not the target audience :P
 

jimmy_pvish

Savant
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
107
Location
3rd world country
Just finish this game.

I'm kinda like it, story feel flesh and real (as much as jap animu inspire VN can be).

Authors are really invest in characters back story and can told these stories without "throwing them at reader face" like many games of late (hello, SR:Hong Kong)

When I play it, I feel like I want to know it more and keep playing.

A good little game for your lazy peaceful evening.
 
Joined
Oct 9, 2015
Messages
2,095
Location
DFW, Texas
Yeah, after a few episodes of the LP I'm watching, it turns out it's just a whole bunch of crap about relationships and feelings and other such nonsense.
Fuck that shit, I like proper fiction.
Then again, I'm definitely not the target audience :P
There are enough witless swine out there who consider the works of Jane Austen to be fine literature that I can't take the phrase "proper fiction" or anyone who utters it seriously.
 

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,874,662
Location
Roanoke, VA
Grab the Codex by the pussy
I played this game 2/3 of the way through and was satisfied with it, although I didn't finish it.

It's the only VN I've ever played and was a unique experience. I mainly bought it because it was cyberpunk, looked like Snatcher et al., had high ratings, and was listed under the "Criminally Low Sales" curator I follow. All things considered, I'm pretty lucky, because apparently there are a lot of gross hentai VN/dating sims out there where your goal is to fuck barely post-pubescent teenage girls, and this isn't one of those.

Cool visuals, fantastic soundtrack, and very serviceable characters and story.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
I played this game 2/3 of the way through and was satisfied with it, although I didn't finish it.

It's the only VN I've ever played and was a unique experience. I mainly bought it because it was cyberpunk, looked like Snatcher et al., had high ratings, and was listed under the "Criminally Low Sales" curator I follow. All things considered, I'm pretty lucky, because apparently there are a lot of gross hentai VN/dating sims out there where your goal is to fuck barely post-pubescent teenage girls, and this isn't one of those.

Cool visuals, fantastic soundtrack, and very serviceable characters and story.
RK47 Corporate_Jew_Master abnaxus
Get the cross
 

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
Patron
Joined
Oct 6, 2012
Messages
1,874,662
Location
Roanoke, VA
Grab the Codex by the pussy
I played this game 2/3 of the way through and was satisfied with it, although I didn't finish it.

It's the only VN I've ever played and was a unique experience. I mainly bought it because it was cyberpunk, looked like Snatcher et al., had high ratings, and was listed under the "Criminally Low Sales" curator I follow. All things considered, I'm pretty lucky, because apparently there are a lot of gross hentai VN/dating sims out there where your goal is to fuck barely post-pubescent teenage girls, and this isn't one of those.

Cool visuals, fantastic soundtrack, and very serviceable characters and story.
RK47 Corporate_Jew_Master abnaxus
Get the cross

"Prosecution by people who jack off to cartoon teenaged girls" isn't terribly high on my list of mortal fears, but I'll let you know how I feel once the wrath of the body pillows has been unleashed.

I should mention however that in reading Steam forum comment sections for some of these VN games/dating sims, I noticed that retards defend censorship of lolicon et al. with accusations like "Why do you need to see those scenes? Are you a pedophile?", apparently not realizing that the games' developers are the ones who implemented those scenes in the uncensored versions in the first place and that therefore, by their own logic, anyone who plays the game at all is still playing a game by pedophiles, for pedophiles.
 
Last edited:

Akasen

Augur
Patron
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
280
Location
The Magicians Lair
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
So to just interject with my opinion on this masterpiece, it's an okay game. I quite liked it overall, I just question a lot if it's even worth 15 dollars. Maybe 10, maybe a little less, but not 5.

The writing is overall fine stuff. Refreshing really. It's nothing amazing, but it was nice to experience. The Cyberpunk themes of this game really makes me want to run a Shadowrun game with some friends.

My one nagging issue is just how the game goes about its endings. In theory, you could get every possible ending in the game with your first playthrough so long as you don't go broke since the "endings" are really just these many "I made good friends with these people" situations at the end of the game.

I dunno though, I'd still recommend giving it a shot.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
https://egmnow.com/va-11-hall-a-n1rv-ann-a-and-the-struggle-to-create-in-a-country-on-the-brink/
Interesting article that talks about the development of the game in a poor country like Venezuela.
VA-11 Hall-A, N1RV Ann-A, and the Struggle to Create in a Country on the Brink
For Sukeban Games, the crisis in Venezuela provided both unimaginable difficulty and inspiration.
October 16, 2019 by David O’Keefe
Earlier this year Fernando Damas, writer at Sukeban Games, penned a blog post on the studio’s website. He began by saying, “Sukeban Games is not fine.”

The post went up on April Fool’s Day, but it was no joke. Nobody was laughing.

Exactly one year prior, the studio had created VA-11 Hall-A Kids, an irreverent parody of its own cyberpunk bartending visual novel, VA-11 Hall-A. Like gasoline siphoned out of a tank, the will to create an elaborate joke had just drained out of the devs this year.

“We are all broken right now, and trying to pick up the pieces of ourselves so we can keep the dream alive,” the post concluded.

Tucked away from the bustle of the most heavily trafficked artery of the Washington State Convention Center during PAX was publisher Ysbrid’s booth. That’s where I spoke with a very tired Damas, who had already been at the buzzing show for several days. It was his first time in the United States, and he was demoing a new build for N1RV Ann-A, the upcoming sequel to VA-11 Hall-A.

The majority of the small team of Sukeban Games hails from Venezuela, Damas included. The people of his country, in recent years, have faced hardship after hardship.

The Borgen Project, a non-profit dedicated to combating poverty, characterizes poverty in Venezuela as an epidemic afflicting nearly 90 percent of those residing in the country. There isn’t nearly enough medicine left to go around. Many are starving, with nearly two-thirds of the country going to bed each night with groaning, emaciated stomachs.

It was once a point of pride that through all of the strife they still managed to develop and release VA-11 Hall-A. Now, with N1RV Ann-A in the works, it finally became too much to bear.

“I can deal with myself. I’ve done it many times and I’ll do it in the future. But the problem is when you want to do something and you can’t because the environment you’re in doesn’t let you,” Damas said.

Thanks to the sales of VA-11 Hall-A, Damas was able to uproot and move to a new home in Japan where he enjoys greater stability—but at a cost. His family and friends are still back in Venezuela. He not only routinely fears for their safety, but struggles with the emotional toll of being physically isolated from them.

The rampant poverty that surrounded him before the move informed the world of VA-11 Hall-A. Patrons often sneer at the austere bowels of the bar, and comment that it stinks inside. There are no windows, just gauche neon signs and the constant feeling that the bar is the relatively calm eye of a churning hurricane of societal unrest outside. Jill, the bartender, uses strange-sounding chemicals like Adelhyde and Karmotrine—implied to be bottom-shelf synthetic ingredients—to mix bootleg cocktails.

On the other hand, N1RV Ann-A’s decor is lavish. The new bar’s interior is spacious. The silhouette of the city’s skyline cuts a beautiful figure against the night sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The bar is stocked with real spirits and ingredients which allow you, as the bartender, to mix real drinks like mojitos and hurricanes instead of knockoffs made with pale imitations of real alcohol.

The bar is classier, and some of the clientele in Saint Alicia seem to have more cash to flash than those of Glitch City. Yet it’s just a different side of the same coin. It’s a class-conscious narrative that still seeks to explore the divide between the wealthy and the impoverished, but from a different angle.

“In cyberpunk everyone talks about the gap between the rich and the poor, right? So everyone talks about the rich, but they’re just weird monolithic entities,” he said.

Tessier-Ashpool S.A. of Neuromancer. The Tyrell Corporation of Blade Runner. Shinra of Final Fantasy VII. Malevolent mega-corporations exist all throughout science fiction and cyberpunk. It suits the purposes of these works to have faceless vanguards of capitalist excess engendering systems of suffocating exploitation and perpetual inequality.

“The thing is, those mega corps aren’t making money out of thin air. They have people working for them,” Damas said. “They might not agree with [the mega corps] but that’s what they do. They work. Not everyone’s a rebel. Some people are just trying to make a living.”


The demo for N1RV Ann-A Sukeban exhibited at PAX West featured Olivia, an employee at a biotech corporation. She isn’t a grunt there, but she isn’t on the board of executives either. She’s firmly a middle-management type forced to ruthlessly compete against her peers for whiffs of upward mobility. She’s a reminder that that nobody on the corporate ladder short of those at the very top are safe from being exploited, and that even the most smotheringly large corporations are full of people just trying to make ends meet.

Very few of the circumstances that made VA-11 Hall-A‘s development a challenge were within Sukeban’s control, and the problems they could solve directly when work started on N1RV Ann-A were relatively minor. Still, they patched up holes as leaks sprung in the boat up even if they didn’t have the power to turn back the typhoon outside.

VA-11 Hall-A was Damas’ first proper programming experience. As a result he went from knowing nothing about programming to having to know everything. By the time VA-11 Hall-A was out and work began on its sequel, something had to change. For example, the first game required each line of text to have a manual line break. This is not unlike writing on a typewriter and having to pull the carriage return to start each new line.

“A smart person would have made a parser. Something that goes after this many characters I’m going to break here. I didn’t do that,” he said. “That’s just the smallest example of how bullshit VA-11 Hall-A was to work on,” he said, putting extra emphasis on the expletive.

This is also why translating the game into other languages is a herculean effort. Even going back to fix mistakes was an unmitigated nightmare. A great deal of time was invested into not repeating the same mistake twice with N1RV Ann-A. “I spent, like, a year on this,” Damas said, “and no one will notice, but I will!”


Unfortunately, backend issues were the least of Sukeban’s woes.

Electricity was rarely a continuously available commodity during the development of VA-11 HALL-A. Damas recounted a story about his mother, a hairdresser, who was forced to mold her shop’s schedule around city-wide blackouts.

Sometimes power outages were announced in advance. Others would unpredictably plunge everyone into an abyssal darkness. When they were predictable, Damas and the rest of Sukeban could at least schedule a time to work on the game. When outages happened randomly, it was chaos for the team. Adaptation was all anyone could strive for in the short-term. Extreme poverty and frequent blackouts became facts of life as routine as sunrise and sunset.

This year has seen the blackouts grow worse as they sweep across the nation, according to a report by the BBC. Hunger and dwindling medical supplies have also become a concern, contributing to an exodus of millions of Venezuelans.

The pungent cocktail of poverty along with starving bellies and sick citizens compounded to seed desperation throughout those who stayed behind. And where there is desperation, there is crime. As with the power outages, violence became just another facet of daily living.

According to a 2019 crime and safety report from the Overseas Security Advisory Council, Venezuela is one of the deadliest countries in the world. The OSAC estimates that there are 81.4 homicides per 100,000 residents—one of the highest rates in the world. Over 23,000 murders took place in the country last year. For comparison, the FBI’s 2018 crime report estimates 16,214 murders took place last year in the United States, a country of over 300 million people. Venezuela’s population is roughly a tenth of that.

“Sadly, you get used to it. Venezuelans, we have a particular quality where we’re really adaptable. But that adaptability also turns into complacency. You adapt so well to the thing that you don’t try to fix it. You just work around it,” Damas said. “It’s a commendable thing, but for the wrong reason.”


In a blog post from 2017, the team disclosed that VA-11 Hall-A had sold over 150,000 copies. Money poured in, and with it came the promise of upward mobility. For a team largely based in a nation blanketed by economic uncertainty like atomic fallout, it was beyond anything they could have imagined. Even success can be fraught, however.

They had to keep hush-hush about VA-11 Hall-A’s success. Kidnapping is a major concern according to the previously mentioned OSAC report, as well Damas himself. If the wrong people catch wind of your newfound success, that makes you a potential target to be ransomed.

Sukeban tried to not flaunt its success, especially given that some of the game’s themes might be interpreted as political dissent, but word still managed to slip out. “That, in the end, did nothing. We kept a low profile and we still got in a lot of trouble,” he said. He elected not to elaborate on the nature of the trouble due to ongoing safety concerns.

With increased scrutiny came an increased threat of violence and of kidnapping. That is, in part, why Damas was forced to flee his home country, leaving friends and family behind. “Right now, I’m talking to you and measuring everything I say just because I don’t want that sort… We still have family there. Because they’re my family and they can be traced back to me, they could get in trouble for something I say.”

Despite the upheaval, the unimaginable stress, the heartbreak of seeing his home in a downward spiral, and having to leave it behind, he said that he will not compromise his art. If anything, it is more vital now than ever for him to speak truth to power through his work.

“I want us to be remembered as the guys who didn’t give a fuck.”
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
5,867
I'm watching an LP of it, and the writing is pretty fresh (for me) and very cringeworthy every once in a while.
I wanted to know if I'm the only one that find it a bit strange that it's like 90% of girls and 10% of guys? And there's no explanation given as to why. I think maybe their future just saw an increase in females? Or is it supposed to be about catering to guys or something?
I find it odd that it's not explained.


We know why that ratio exists brother.
 

Deuce Traveler

2012 Newfag
Patron
Joined
May 11, 2012
Messages
2,899
Location
Okinawa, Japan
Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
This is the first time I ever read a gaming article and decided afterwards to buy a game at full price instead of waiting for a sale. Fernando Damas is a bro. :salute:
 

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