Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

RPG Maker Festival 2026 Registration opened

December 5, 2025 at 12:37 AM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

RPG Maker Festival 2026 Registration has opened. Participants have until December 13, 2025 to register!

#gamedev #RPGMaker #RPGMakerFestival #RPGMakerFestival2026 #IndieDev #advanceVN

open.substack.com/pub/advancev...

Participants have until December 13th to register!

Stars and Silence by Tea for Two Game Studios, Mizerable, Celeste, danedalbianco, J. Isaac Gadient, Yamino

November 25, 2025 at 5:16 PM

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Tea for Two Game Studios

@teafortwostudios.bsky.social

Surprise! We did a thing! In 72 hours, no less!

Tea for Two took part in ArcJam to create a sci-fi horror visual novel, Stars and Silence! We're very proud to have accomplished what we did in such a short time! 💚

tea-for-two-game-studios.itch.io/stars-and-si...

Play in your browser

tea-for-two-game-studios.itch.io

November 25, 2025 at 3:19 PM

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The Video Game Library 📚

@thevideogamelibrary.org

A cool new Polish edition of "The Games That Weren’t" has been announced! 📕

This expanded volume adds 40 pages and nearly 30 cancelled Polish games to an already extensive archive of unreleased titles.

Very cool to see @gamesthatwerent.com!

#Gaming #Booksky #VideoGames

The Video Game Library Newsletter - Vol. #027

New FF7 stories, an Elden Ring epic, Amnesia’s haunted history, canceled classics resurrected, and cocktails straight out of Diablo...game books have never gone this hard!

buff.ly

November 18, 2025 at 10:49 PM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

New Post in ADVaNCE Guides:
[Guide] My Leisure Time – Secret Menu Recipes, Featuring text guide and bonus visual guide / cheat sheet.

#advanceVN #MobileGame #guide #MyLeisureTime #YueYooGames

advancevn.substack.com/p/guide-my-l...

[Guide] My Leisure Time – Secret Recipes

[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 4 Recipes

November 12, 2025 at 10:39 PM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

New Post in ADVaNCE Guides:
[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 4 Recipes, Featuring text guide and bonus visual guide / cheat sheet.

#advanceVN #MobileGame #guide #MyLeisureTime #YueYooGames

advancevn.substack.com/p/guide-my-l...

[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 3 Recipes

November 6, 2025 at 9:29 PM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

New Post in ADVaNCE Guides:
[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 3 Recipes, Featuring text guide and bonus visual guide / cheat sheet.

#advanceVN #MobileGame #guide #MyLeisureTime #YueYooGames

advancevn.substack.com/p/guide-my-l...

[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 2 Recipes

November 3, 2025 at 6:43 PM

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arimia

@arimiadev.com

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🎃🍭💜

October 31, 2025 at 7:58 PM

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Ana Valens | 🔞

@acvalens.com

Adult game dev Shame Games just abruptly lost its Patreon. No clear explanation why, and its staff cannot be paid. SG’s Aika literally has children to feed and is reliant on Patreon’s income to pay the bills

shame.games/blogs/trap-q...

Shame Games can suddenly not pay our staff. Not only is this devastating to Aika and their family's ability to pay their mortgage and bills (Aika has two small children if you didn't know, so thanks Patreon), but other people who relied on us are in similar positions with rent and so on.
There can also be no new art drawn for the game until this is resolved. And by resolved, we mean that the vast majority of the nearly 1000 subscribers we just lost on Patreon rejoin us over on SubscribeStar.
This is brutal. It's horrifying. It's causing panic attacks.
But we will endure, and we will recover. But we desperately, desperately need to do so as soon as humanly possible, and so to that end, are experimenting with a new subscription incentive:
Limited Edition Content.

October 31, 2025 at 8:34 PM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

New Post in ADVaNCE Guides:
[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 2 Recipes, Featuring text guide and bonus visual guide / cheat sheet.

#advanceVN #MobileGame #guide #MyLeisureTime #YueYooGames

advancevn.substack.com/p/guide-my-l...

[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 1 Recipes

November 1, 2025 at 12:50 AM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

New Post in ADVaNCE Guides:
[Guide] My Leisure Time – Level 1 Recipes, Featuring text guide and bonus visual guide / cheat sheet.

#advanceVN #MobileGame #MyLeisureTime #YueYooGames #GameGuide #game #guide

open.substack.com/pub/advancev...

Petition e-6695 - Petitions

October 29, 2025 at 11:48 PM

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Aura

@aurahack.ca

If you're Canadian, please sign this! You'll have to confirm your signature via email but for good reason--this is a petition sponsored by an actual member of parliament. These petitions can lead to actual meaningful action here. Doesn't take very long, please add your support!!

Michelle Keep @jmkeep.bsky.social · Sep 3

Canadians! There is a petition to sign to protest Mastercard and Visa's control over the purchase of legal adult content. This is specifically about the Steam & itchio situation, but language protects adult creators.

www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

#nsfw #censorship #canpoli

@acvalens.net

www.ourcommons.ca

September 3, 2025 at 8:47 PM

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Ana Valens | 🔞

@acvalens.com

I'm pretty hopeful about what @saikeystudios.com offers via Saikey Store. Promising storefront for all sorts of games that, for the past few months, have faced an existential threat from paypro censorship. I really like the UI and its curation, very polished, professional

saikeystudios.com/shop/

The Saikey Store, a new storefront created by Saikey Studios that hosts a wide assortment of games targeted by paypro censorship. Many titles are already offered, along with a wide assortment of tags

September 1, 2025 at 3:58 PM

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Retro Blast 💫

@retroblastpod.com

Here's all the different PlayStation logo designs that SONY considered before deciding on the one we all know and love today.

August 29, 2025 at 5:58 AM

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🎀🐰雨谊

@heartmush.pink

I'm done being civil. I highly discourage others from working with Mixam (mixam.com) Despite misprinting ~100 zines between myself and @yanmori.bsky.social, they insist the fault is ours, refuse to reimburse one project, and will only refund the other if we destroy or return the copies we have.

August 28, 2025 at 12:02 AM

Reposted by ADVaNCE VN

adirosa

@adirosa.com

HI EVERYONE!!! I'm so excited to announce that Without a Voice is now available in Korean - DLC included!

Thank you Notberabbit for the Korean translation!

August 26, 2025 at 8:39 AM

Reposted by ADVaNCE VN

Studio Élan

@vnstudioelan.com

Announcing... Fall in Love Festival, a romance visual novel Steam festival hosted by us! 💖

Join us on Steam from September 24-October 1 with 100+ other visual novel developers to celebrate the wide world of romance-themed visual novels💕

Are you a streamer? Collab with us: forms.gle/Ebv2QWtnPavM...

Fall in Love VISUAL NOVEL FESTIVAL
SEP 24 - OCT 1
presented by Studio Elan

August 22, 2025 at 8:04 PM

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Gobsy

@goblinhugger.bsky.social

Hey nerds, wanna look at a visual novel demo that the devs made me aware of by emailing me about it? Giving "Lock and Key: A Magical Girl Mystery" a shot today. I like it when girls is in love, it's cool. And also this is apparently a murder mystery?Which is a neat spin on the genre.

GoblinHugger - Twitch

twitch.tv

August 28, 2025 at 8:42 PM

ADVaNCE VN

@advance-vn.bsky.social

Republishing this article on our substack for accessibility reasons.

🔞 Out of an abundance of caution: if you are too young to play Adult Games you should not read this article. 🔞

#visualnovel #gamedev #Project2025 #censorship #anime #privacy #security #NSFW

open.substack.com/pub/advancev...

Project 2025 and the future of ADVs/VNs, and other "Anime" Games

Or; Why you should be worried about your anime waifu/husbando games