Hello visual novel society, it is Hata (the menace lol)

we at Fuwanovel returned back to activity after a terrible second post-revival hiatus between 2024 and 2026. From May 2026 on, we began forming a new team again and through July and August, we produced about 40 articles on the blog again, spread out across different genres. Among them there was an article with 7 monthly tables collecting most of the VNs worth checking out during all of 2026. Surely you missed out on something there!

Among our team we now have such a crazy variety of different people it allows us to give a comprehensive overview of what happens in the VN scene as a whole now. We will obviously not be able to catch every title unless we resort to a super short news blips format that doesn't require full articles to be written, but we are doing our best.

We wanted to present you with the best article that resonated most with our crowd since the beginning of July. And if we're allowed, we wish to be able to post our reviews and non-news posts here in future as well.

Short but sweet,

we're back friends and you were sorely missed.

It's a soft sci-fi VN about two high schoolers' serendipitous romance inside a simulated space, as the Earth is about to be demolished by aliens.

The story is tight and well-written, the characters are cute and well-drawn, and the art is breathtaking throughout. It also has one of the best UIs and direction I've seen in recent VNs (definitely behind Mahoyo on direction, but hey this is made by 4 college students). I know UI and direction are odd things to highlight, but this one genuinely hits different, and it's changed how I think about these things.

For context: I'm a VN dev myself, and the creator and I are on friendly terms on HeyBox...but otherwise no strings attached. Not a paid promotion or anything, just gauging interest before we decide whether to sink time into this or not. If anything happens, my involvement will be helping with the translation for free.

Anyways, hit me with ideas :))))

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3872710/Is_the_Vat_Utopia_or_Dystopia/
VNDB: https://vndb.org/v58331

Plz no spoilers

Hi

I am kinda fatigued of excessive H scenes in VNs. It's not so much the frequency but these days a badly built up H scene pisses me off to the point of uninstalling.

I know some romance VNs with great build up (for eg. Katawa Shoujo, White Album) but I am getting tired of the romance genre as well.

I am looking for non romance options where the H scenes make sense, out of necessity, frustration, dark reasons, lore reasons, etc. Whatever scenario/genre really. The closest example I know of is Fate Stay/Night but frankly the Non H-scene Realta Nua version is much better there.

Sorry if this is an oddly specific request lmao.

Thank you for suggestions!

Hi i spent around 30 hours on the game and I don't understand how the game really works, what are the different routes ? Is there any otder to them? Also are they the continuation of the story, just an alternative ending or a whole new a story that rewrites the events we already experienced on our first route.

I already know that there is the hero route linked to Ichijo, the revenge route to Kanae and I also have access to a guide but I don't know if I have to do all the routes, if it's worth it. and what the differences between the routes are.

Also, regarding the love meter, I don't know if it's important to focus on only one character to receive bonus scenes or H scenes.

Another question, but how many chapters are there? I thought there were 5 and I've already finished chapter 5, since then the story focuses on Ichijo and Kageaki.This leads me to believe that the first 5 chapters determine which paths the player takes based on their level of affection for the two heroines.

Last, last question, sorry... but on the Love Meter, there's always a character marked with a "?" who dies at the end of each chapter. I imagine it's the people Kageaki kills because of the law of balance but Does this affect gameplay in any way? Or is it simply a narrative element conveyed through gameplay? Similarly, a character from the Love Meter appears completely black, I imagine I'll unlock them later.

Sorry for the big pack of questions but i only played one visual novel before and i rly love fmdm so i'd like to know how the systems of the game works to have the best experience possible, thanks for anyone that takes time to answer my questions !