How did you find out about Visual Novels/Otome Games?

I'm just wondering how you guys found out about these games.

I found out aobut them but looking on youtube and found a video about otome games and
POOF I always play them!My story is pretty plain XD

Youtube. I think I was looking at a Hiiro no kakera video and on the side other videos like Hakuouki and Heart no kuni no Alice were there.

I discovered them through the Alice no Kuni series back when the manga scanlations were stalled. One moment I'm going 'Well, fine then, I'll just read it raw!' the next I'm stumbling on game CGs instead and the rest is history.

I was looking for some manga info and stumbled into an otome game forum. Then my eyes widened and a whole new world of romanceable bishies spread out before me.

.........I was never heard from again LOL.

Lol almost the same thing happened to me I was searching for manga info on youtube for some reason then I saw a video about otome games

Me: O3o

I knew about them when I search up certain titles to references I don't know about [I know that's vague] and I think this happened first with School Days and Clannad. I didn't get into them because I was a little scared of what I saw from the above though, haha. I later got interested through a friend who would tell me lots about a certain game series, and she'd share pictures with me so I wanted to somehow get into this, even though the game series wasn't in english so I couldn't really play it. :]

I learned about otome games through frequenting A Certain Imageboard That Shall Go Unnamed, as occasionally a certain board would post runthroughs of visual novels like Sengoku Rance, Ghost Trick, Ace Attorney, and the When They Cry series. I already knew about BL games and hentai games, and T-Memorial series, but that was pretty much it at the time.

That got me interested in visual novel storytelling as a whole, so I did some more research on the subject. I was mildly surprised to see that there was a genre for heterosexual dating games aimed at women only, so from there I continued to poke around and see what similarities and differences they had with other visual novels.

Quite a complex story, actually:

I had played a few of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on DeviantArt about four years ago. They were interesting, but at the time I didn't know anything about dating sims, and thus my interest in the subject became dormant.

Then three years ago, around the time that I was reading the Hetalia webcomic, my roommate and I watched Miracle Train (a horribly dopey anime about bishounen men that are train stations). Afterwards we had a discussion about series anthropomorphic bishies, and I googled the topic to see if there were any anime series we didn't know about.

This is how I discovered Starry☆Sky.

At the time it wasn't an anime, but the anime adaptation had been announced. My friend and I, curious to know more about the series, read up on it and watched all the intro videos. My curiosity was piqued. In the summer we downloaded Starry☆Sky~in Summer~ (illegally, yes ^^, and clicked through it. We didn't understand the Japanese at all, but the art was pretty! Lol.

Then two years ago I studied abroad in Japan for a month. While in Akihabara, I saw the Starry☆Sky CDs, and, on a whim, bought a couple of them.

You can probably figure out where it goes from here ;P

Gosh, Struggle Town with my memory, here!

I think I first got to know the VN world through Newgrounds' dating sims that incorporate VN elements in between the dating sim parts of the games. I played them with the mindset of trying to see how "deperate these losers who play them are". I actually enjoyed taking a break from my more "gameplay-heavy" titles. I don't really like reading, but if it's accompanied with sounds, music, pictures and stat-building (optional), I'm game (pun intended). Eventually I searched the net for popular VNs and went from there.

As for otome games, I got into them all because of The Great and Wonderful Hirakawa Daisuke. Okay, not him personally, but because I really liked Ivan Fiore from Luckydog 1 (a BL title my sister introduced me to), and wanted to see what else Hirakawa-san has been in. I saw Starry Sky ~in Winter~, realised it was a series, and started from ~in Spring~. It just rocketed from that point.

I was watching La Corda Anime....then when I search for more information...it actually from a game..... LOL...and since then I start playing Otome Games...

rene05 wrote:I was watching La Corda Anime....then when I search for more information...it actually from a game..... LOL...and since then I start playing Otome Games...

That reminds me of how quite a few recent Starry Sky fans got into the SS VNs as well. These anime adaptations must be a better investment than I thought them to be.

LOLz this is hard but....
I got really addicted to watching reverse harem anime and POP! I just found out some of them are otome games and I just started playing them and got addicted to it, pretty simple.

GATHER AROUND FOR THE STORY OF HOW I CAME TO THIS WORLD

Well... I've known about them for awhile and slowly I grew interested as three evil witches would go on and on about them... soon I found myself playing some games and before I knew it the three witches had me in their grasp.
I tried to fight back but it was futile... there was no going back, it was too late to go back.
The initiation ritual began and one of them gave me a red hood and told me that I was one of them now, and if I were to leave I would have to leave behind my bishies.
There was no way I could leave them behind! THEY'RE SO BEAUTIFUL!! ;A; So that is why I am here today. I've sold my soul and emptied my wallet. I couldn't be happier.

I would like you to know this is a completely true story and Ace, Noir, and Voca are the witnesses.

Ame wrote:GATHER AROUND FOR THE STORY OF HOW I CAME TO THIS WORLD

Well... I've known about them for awhile and slowly I grew interested as three evil witches would go on and on about them... soon I found myself playing some games and before I knew it the three witches had me in their grasp.
I tried to fight back but it was futile... there was no going back, it was too late to go back.
The initiation ritual began and one of them gave me a red hood and told me that I was one of them now, and if I were to leave I would have to leave behind my bishies.
There was no way I could leave them behind! THEY'RE SO BEAUTIFUL!! ;A; So that is why I am here today. I've sold my soul and emptied my wallet. I couldn't be happier.

I would like you to know this is a completely true story and Ace, Noir, and Voca are the witnesses.

Or the culprits, but that is up to the viewer, or more importantly, up to the initiated. :twisted:

Hmmm... I think mine started with shoujo anime and manga (Sailormoon was really popular when I was a kid), then the internet came with the flash dating sims. It also helped that I'm a sucker for female protagonists with heart moving plots.

I started with flash dating sims too. xD Then I started searching about other dating sims and then found out Tokimeki Memorial Girl's side and it looked very nice... Not to mention that I was already crushing on some of the seiyuu that were in it (Midorikawa Hikaru and Miki Shinichiro lol). xD Fortunately enough it was on the DS already at that time so I got to try it out immediately.

I don't actually remember how I managed to find my first otoge (TMGS1). ^^;; I was searching for more NDS games then I found it I guess. From there, I got interested to this so called "otome games". I found blogs about it and the rest is history.

There was a part in the TWGOK (The World God Only Knows) Manga where Keima swapped bodies (he's a galge gamer) and as a girl he played Otome games.

So I tried galges but didn't really find them THAT interesting~ and I decided to see if Otome games were a legit thing. They are. I'm happy.

From the manga adaptation of Heart no Kuni no Alice. I just couldn't get enough of it but I was really disappointed on how the plot was going, and seeing you could pick a guy? Sign me up!

It all started when I got my hands on 999: 9 Hours, 9 People, 9 Doors (it's not an otome game, but an adventure game with some visual novel aspect to it) I loved this game so much that I did some research to see if there are some more visual novels (I really want to play the sequel, but I don't have a 3ds or a PSVita yet T.T) Low and behold, I stumble upon a video of Starry Sky ~In Spring~ and the rest is history -w-

Nice story

I found out from deviantArt, one of the artists I was watching was part of a visual novel team and that's how I found this whole new world. XD

I found out about Otoges/VNs way back from an internet friend from Japan who practically forced some games onto me. She was also the person who ended up introducing me to some BL games and Starry Sky in Spring/Summer, but I didn't quite catch on to the greatness of it at that time.

Even now, I'm only trying Clock Zero because of Laramie Castiel. I'm still quite new to this stuff to this day, hahaha.

I've always been a big fan of the Harvest Moon series, and one day while going through google looking for "games like HM" I stumbled upon Re:Alistair. After that I understood what an otome game was and realized that was what I was looking for, so I got more and more into other otomes. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]