When it comes to Galgame, classic works such as “CLANNAD”, “AIR” and “Little Busters!” will come to many players’ minds. Key, who created these masterpieces, recently revealed a touching news. According to an exclusive interview with Japanese media Gamer, Kai, the person in charge of the script of “anemoi”, admitted that during the development process, they seriously believed that “anemoi” might become Key’s last full-price romance visual novel.
The reason is not that the team has lost their enthusiasm for creation, but that the entire Galgame market has been shrinking over the years, making them once doubt whether there is any point in continuing to produce this kind of work that requires a lot of investment and a process that takes dozens of hours.
Is it getting harder to survive in Galgame?
Kai mentioned in the interview that the pace of the entertainment industry is getting faster and faster nowadays, animations are updated every season, and short videos take up a lot of time. When players hear that a game takes 40, 50 or even 60 hours to complete, many people’s first reaction is “too long.” In addition, the PC Galgame market is gradually shrinking and development costs are getting higher and higher. Therefore, Key has successively launched shorter visual novels such as “LOOPERS” and “Stella of the End” in recent years, hoping to adapt to market changes. Because of this, halfway through the development of “anemoi”, the team once believed that it might be Key’s last traditional large-scale Galgame.
An animation changed the entire team’s thinking
However, things turned around later! Kai said that while participating in the animation of “Summer Pockets”, he saw that many players who played “Kanon”, “AIR” and “CLANNAD” in the past have now become creators in the animation and game industries. This made him realize again that the impact of these large-scale visual novels will not disappear in a few years, but can accompany players for many, many years. Therefore, he also changed his original idea and made it clear that “anemoi” will not be Key’s last full-price Galgame. They hope to continue to launch new large-scale works in the future.
Director Shun Sayuki also revealed that there are even composers in the company who decided to join Key because they played “Summer Pockets”, which makes the team more confident that this type of work still has the value to continue.
Galgame hasn’t disappeared, it’s just getting harder and harder to do
In fact, “anemoi” itself is a rather bold work. The game process lasts for about 60 hours. Instead of shortening the content due to market trends, it continues to maintain the scale of a traditional full-length visual novel. It only adds more nodes to facilitate pause play in the chapter design, hoping to reduce the gaming pressure of modern players. Perhaps the current Galgame market is no longer as lively as the golden age of “CLANNAD”, but at least judging from Key’s speech this time, they have no intention of ending this era.