ValiDate - an upcoming (and unsurprisingly racist) visual novel made by SJW's, for SJW's. Currently MIA.

[Naamaleipuri]

The demo was recently updated to add another route, and it's very exciting - finally we get to play as shitlord Malik, hero of the people, as he pursues whiny trans man Arihi! What's with the recurring pattern of this team continuing to promote and focus on the boring cis dudes who are supposed to be the villains? Anyway, here's the summary (tl;dr it's just Arihi's route again but more boring and with even more gender shit somehow).

View attachment 1502839
Not two lines in and there's already a fried chicken reference.
View attachment 1502842 View attachment 1502845
Apparently Malik visited the BVS to buy diapers because lol deadbeat dad. He's convinced his ex "just wanted money to get her nails done" because the kid is nearly 3 and should be potty trained by now. We get the info that his grandmother is dead, he has a total of two children, and his friends are shitty and rely on him to save them too much. Jesus this man is such a fucking stereotype, almost every text box works in rapping or baby mamas somehow.
View attachment 1502849 View attachment 1502856 View attachment 1502857
"attractive". We have a lot of really forced misgendering as Malik thinks of Arihi as a they before correcting to "his?", then continues to use they. What a monster, not being able to instantly determine the gender of this true and honest man at a glance. Sudden appearance of the native tranny to remind him of an important life lesson, that there is no such thing as looking masculine or feminine (???) and assuming someone's gender is very bad. I guess this means all the routes are canon simultaneously?
View attachment 1502864 View attachment 1502869 View attachment 1502882
Arihi is apparently so damn hot that Malik is questioning his sexuality within two minutes of speaking to him. Arihi refuses a fist bump because of hygiene concerns (haha topical) and Malik just keeps internally debating about whether this person identifies as a dude or not. He tries to hand over a mixtape but Arihi is really fucking rude and basically calls him ghetto trash, which triggers Malik because his dad was disappointed in him dropping out of education to pursue music instead of becoming a doctor. He fights back by flirting with this abhorrent individual but gets called a "closet case", causing him to lament about how hard it is to explore his fluid sexuality. End scene.
View attachment 1502887 View attachment 1502916
Baby mama ends up getting Malik's money because bitch be crazy. Arihi shows up at Bop-eye's - there's been a running joke of Malik calling him an e-boy which is pretty funny. Arihi continues to be an absolute raging cunt and we get a groundbreaking lore revelation - Malik DOES NOT LIKE BOP-EYE'S FRIED CHICKEN. My god. Malik sexually harasses Arihi with a joke involving how many Masters (degrees) are under his belt and laughs about how he's the manager so he can't be reported. He then decides to ease up because he correctly assumes he's dealing with a big ol autist with no friends, gets the dude his chicken. At this point you can choose to have him go seethe in confused sexuality in his office, but you'll still get rerouted back out to deliver the chicken personally anyway.
View attachment 1502921 View attachment 1502928
I'm skipping now because this route is so fucking long and boring, it's just Arihi's route again but padded out with shit about rapping and whether or not this is gay. Malik steals a bit of meat that fell on Arihi's leg (?? or is that a double entendre) and they actually start to get along a bit, Arihi agrees to listen to the mix tape and finally gives his name, Malik goes back to his job and reveals he wrote his number on the tape, route ends. There were only 2 choices in this whole thing.
View attachment 1502956 View attachment 1502965
I went back to get the bad ends only to find that there's only one. If you choose to have Malik flip out at Arihi it doesn't actually do anything, he just rants internally about this "jackass of indeterminate gender" (lol). Going to the office after that will cause Malik to finally snap to his senses and stop caring about this dude who has done nothing but insult and belittle him constantly, and go get some therapy. Hooray.
View attachment 1502949
10/10 perfect quote, this game in a goddamn nutshell.

Is this actual gameplay screens with actual gameplay sprites?
The sprites aren't even animated, right?

I remember one of my friends buying me Go! Go! Nippon! As a crack birthday gift and that had animated lived2 sprites (it's actually a pretty good VN with informative crap about Japan) and that game was and is like 9 bucks.
And now I want to go through the routes again..

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

I know that this has been talked to death, but for anyone who's been to CVS knows that those images were ran through an filter.

And dude never heard of condoms, apparently. They sell those at CVS.

They're really going for that "traced-bitmap-background-in-a-00s-newgrounds-cartoon" chic with this game.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

The demo was recently updated to add another route, and it's very exciting - finally we get to play as shitlord Malik, hero of the people, as he pursues whiny trans man Arihi! What's with the recurring pattern of this team continuing to promote and focus on the boring cis dudes who are supposed to be the villains? Anyway, here's the summary (tl;dr it's just Arihi's route again but more boring and with even more gender shit somehow).

View attachment 1502839
Not two lines in and there's already a fried chicken reference.
View attachment 1502842 View attachment 1502845
Apparently Malik visited the BVS to buy diapers because lol deadbeat dad. He's convinced his ex "just wanted money to get her nails done" because the kid is nearly 3 and should be potty trained by now. We get the info that his grandmother is dead, he has a total of two children, and his friends are shitty and rely on him to save them too much. Jesus this man is such a fucking stereotype, almost every text box works in rapping or baby mamas somehow.
View attachment 1502849 View attachment 1502856 View attachment 1502857
"attractive". We have a lot of really forced misgendering as Malik thinks of Arihi as a they before correcting to "his?", then continues to use they. What a monster, not being able to instantly determine the gender of this true and honest man at a glance. Sudden appearance of the native tranny to remind him of an important life lesson, that there is no such thing as looking masculine or feminine (???) and assuming someone's gender is very bad. I guess this means all the routes are canon simultaneously?
View attachment 1502864 View attachment 1502869 View attachment 1502882
Arihi is apparently so damn hot that Malik is questioning his sexuality within two minutes of speaking to him. Arihi refuses a fist bump because of hygiene concerns (haha topical) and Malik just keeps internally debating about whether this person identifies as a dude or not. He tries to hand over a mixtape but Arihi is really fucking rude and basically calls him ghetto trash, which triggers Malik because his dad was disappointed in him dropping out of education to pursue music instead of becoming a doctor. He fights back by flirting with this abhorrent individual but gets called a "closet case", causing him to lament about how hard it is to explore his fluid sexuality. End scene.
View attachment 1502887 View attachment 1502916
Baby mama ends up getting Malik's money because bitch be crazy. Arihi shows up at Bop-eye's - there's been a running joke of Malik calling him an e-boy which is pretty funny. Arihi continues to be an absolute raging cunt and we get a groundbreaking lore revelation - Malik DOES NOT LIKE BOP-EYE'S FRIED CHICKEN. My god. Malik sexually harasses Arihi with a joke involving how many Masters (degrees) are under his belt and laughs about how he's the manager so he can't be reported. He then decides to ease up because he correctly assumes he's dealing with a big ol autist with no friends, gets the dude his chicken. At this point you can choose to have him go seethe in confused sexuality in his office, but you'll still get rerouted back out to deliver the chicken personally anyway.
View attachment 1502921 View attachment 1502928
I'm skipping now because this route is so fucking long and boring, it's just Arihi's route again but padded out with shit about rapping and whether or not this is gay. Malik steals a bit of meat that fell on Arihi's leg (?? or is that a double entendre) and they actually start to get along a bit, Arihi agrees to listen to the mix tape and finally gives his name, Malik goes back to his job and reveals he wrote his number on the tape, route ends. There were only 2 choices in this whole thing.
View attachment 1502956 View attachment 1502965
I went back to get the bad ends only to find that there's only one. If you choose to have Malik flip out at Arihi it doesn't actually do anything, he just rants internally about this "jackass of indeterminate gender" (lol). Going to the office after that will cause Malik to finally snap to his senses and stop caring about this dude who has done nothing but insult and belittle him constantly, and go get some therapy. Hooray.
View attachment 1502949
10/10 perfect quote, this game in a goddamn nutshell.

Finally confirmation that the reverse route is literally the same thing with a different internal monologue! Those of you following along before may notice those are the exact same conversations from the other route.

We have confirmation that Arihi doesn't pass in universe lol

I remember whats her face talking about how she "dressed on the masculine side" in her route, so she doesn't...even canonically believe that? Maybe? Her beliefs where kinda all over the place.

 

[Next Task]

Arihi is apparently so damn hot that Malik is questioning his sexuality within two minutes of speaking to him.

Fuck that shit. Seriously. This is some real Rhys McKinnon-level, 'the only valid sexuality is pansexuality otherwise you're a bigot', bullshit.

It just reinforces how poorly they're dealing with being a dating sim where everyone can pair with everyone, despite their sexualities. The way they handle that cognitive dissonance appears to be: forget it's a dating sim, have all 'straight' people not really be straight but of course respect the choices of all LGT+ types, call straight male sexuality evil for a bit just because, and of course make all the troons super-desireable even when they're utter cunts.

I wonder if whoever's self-insert is Ahiri realises how much her being a miserable asshole reflects poorly on them.

 

[Reverend]

I wonder if whoever's self-insert is Ahiri realises how much her being a miserable asshole reflects poorly on them.

All of them.

 

[PumpkinSpiceBitchMeringue]

JLongbone is gonna stream this trash tonight.

Additionally, all this talk about different art styles reminds me of this very very short dating sim that's themed around the personality types.


I find the inconsistent art styles here more distracting as they feature stylized characters, but the writing tends to be a bit comedic.

But as it turns out they made 3 other games that have the same theme of different art styles.


This last one though...

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

We have confirmation that Arihi doesn't pass in universe lol

Of course not, passing makes you a transphobic tranny these days, get with the times.

 

[AmarettoPie]

"There's no such thing as looking masculine or feminine"
This bitch is either retarded or in desperate need of glasses. Probably both.

 

[PoisonedBun]

Finally confirmation that the reverse route is literally the same thing with a different internal monologue! Those of you following along before may notice those are the exact same conversations from the other route.

We have confirmation that Arihi doesn't pass in universe lol

I remember whats her face talking about how she "dressed on the masculine side" in her route, so she doesn't...even canonically believe that? Maybe? Her beliefs where kinda all over the place.

Seeing the same route from the perspective of the other character might have been interesting if there were more choices to make. And more monologue. And less characters. And better characters. And better writing. And-

 

[I can't imagine]

Is this actual gameplay screens with actual gameplay sprites?
The sprites aren't even animated, right?

I remember one of my friends buying me Go! Go! Nippon! As a crack birthday gift and that had animated lived2 sprites (it's actually a pretty good VN with informative crap about Japan) and that game was and is like 9 bucks.
And now I want to go through the routes again..

Ren'py doesn't use Live2D (yet, anyway; it's supposed to be in a future update). There are ways to animate sprites in it, but it isn't really designed for the characters to have idle animations or lip flaps.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Ren'py doesn't use Live2D (yet, anyway; it's supposed to be in a future update). There are ways to animate sprites in it, but it isn't really designed for the characters to have idle animations or lip flaps.

"Animations" would have been handled similarly to what I praised Katawa Shoujo for, where you quickly flashed between sprites to give an illusion of action... Although having now looked into Live2D, I want a remake of Katawa Shoujo will fully animated bacon waifu.

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

The demo was recently updated to add another route, and it's very exciting - finally we get to play as shitlord Malik, hero of the people, as he pursues whiny trans man Arihi! What's with the recurring pattern of this team continuing to promote and focus on the boring cis dudes who are supposed to be the villains? Anyway, here's the summary (tl;dr it's just Arihi's route again but more boring and with even more gender shit somehow).

View attachment 1502839
Not two lines in and there's already a fried chicken reference.
View attachment 1502842 View attachment 1502845
Apparently Malik visited the BVS to buy diapers because lol deadbeat dad. He's convinced his ex "just wanted money to get her nails done" because the kid is nearly 3 and should be potty trained by now. We get the info that his grandmother is dead, he has a total of two children, and his friends are shitty and rely on him to save them too much. Jesus this man is such a fucking stereotype, almost every text box works in rapping or baby mamas somehow.
View attachment 1502849 View attachment 1502856 View attachment 1502857
"attractive". We have a lot of really forced misgendering as Malik thinks of Arihi as a they before correcting to "his?", then continues to use they. What a monster, not being able to instantly determine the gender of this true and honest man at a glance. Sudden appearance of the native tranny to remind him of an important life lesson, that there is no such thing as looking masculine or feminine (???) and assuming someone's gender is very bad. I guess this means all the routes are canon simultaneously?
View attachment 1502864 View attachment 1502869 View attachment 1502882
Arihi is apparently so damn hot that Malik is questioning his sexuality within two minutes of speaking to him. Arihi refuses a fist bump because of hygiene concerns (haha topical) and Malik just keeps internally debating about whether this person identifies as a dude or not. He tries to hand over a mixtape but Arihi is really fucking rude and basically calls him ghetto trash, which triggers Malik because his dad was disappointed in him dropping out of education to pursue music instead of becoming a doctor. He fights back by flirting with this abhorrent individual but gets called a "closet case", causing him to lament about how hard it is to explore his fluid sexuality. End scene.
View attachment 1502887 View attachment 1502916
Baby mama ends up getting Malik's money because bitch be crazy. Arihi shows up at Bop-eye's - there's been a running joke of Malik calling him an e-boy which is pretty funny. Arihi continues to be an absolute raging cunt and we get a groundbreaking lore revelation - Malik DOES NOT LIKE BOP-EYE'S FRIED CHICKEN. My god. Malik sexually harasses Arihi with a joke involving how many Masters (degrees) are under his belt and laughs about how he's the manager so he can't be reported. He then decides to ease up because he correctly assumes he's dealing with a big ol autist with no friends, gets the dude his chicken. At this point you can choose to have him go seethe in confused sexuality in his office, but you'll still get rerouted back out to deliver the chicken personally anyway.
View attachment 1502921 View attachment 1502928
I'm skipping now because this route is so fucking long and boring, it's just Arihi's route again but padded out with shit about rapping and whether or not this is gay. Malik steals a bit of meat that fell on Arihi's leg (?? or is that a double entendre) and they actually start to get along a bit, Arihi agrees to listen to the mix tape and finally gives his name, Malik goes back to his job and reveals he wrote his number on the tape, route ends. There were only 2 choices in this whole thing.
View attachment 1502956 View attachment 1502965
I went back to get the bad ends only to find that there's only one. If you choose to have Malik flip out at Arihi it doesn't actually do anything, he just rants internally about this "jackass of indeterminate gender" (lol). Going to the office after that will cause Malik to finally snap to his senses and stop caring about this dude who has done nothing but insult and belittle him constantly, and go get some therapy. Hooray.
View attachment 1502949
10/10 perfect quote, this game in a goddamn nutshell.

Spoiler: VN Spergin

One of the worst sins for a visual novel is just being boring. With most VNs, admittedly, there isn't going to be a lot going on all the time. However, the nature of the genre is that the writing compliments the limited imagery. You show the audience a sense of the environment that the characters are in by using their perspectives and emotions. Then the audience can fill in the blanks and draw their own conclusions. Contrary to popular belief you don't need to explain EVERY SINGLE THING that happens on screen. All you need to show the audience is clear IDEA of what the characters are going through. That's the appeal of VNs because you usually don't get detailed dialogue like that in an anime or even manga because they're more visual mediums. They have their own limitations and that's one of them for the sake of clarity, but with VNs you can explore that as more as both text and imagery is important to a degree.

These creators had a chance to really dive into the characters here and show us something unique. Instead, almost every character is either some sort of asshole, negative stereotype or deadbeat. Sometimes all of them (Malik especially). It also doesn't help that the game constantly tells you how to feel. So many lines of dialogue talks about how the characters feel rather than expressing those feelings. There's a difference between "you feel cold" and "you feel the familiar sensation of your gloves chafing your dry hands." One tells the audience how to feel. Another tells you a story. Again, the idea for a game about a bunch of young adults struggling to get by in the real world isn't a bad one, but at the same time, the writing is far too tedious and clunky to create any sort of coherent flow.

Part of this comes from the fact that there are just way too many characters in this game. You can only make writing certain perspectives interesting for a while before it becomes rather tedious. Dating sims with larger casts usually have to make some sort of compromise whether it's sticking to short routes or having a heavier focus on other elements to keep the game fresh (e.g. an untold story of a certain character, more plot related information, special cgs.). Not only does it keep up the pacing it rewards the player for going out of their way to finish every route.

Validate doesn't give you any reason to complete more routes other than for completionists sake. Even seeing the other routes for the demo, we aren't given any new information that doesn't pertain to said character of that route. Food for thought: what if we learned more about Malik through these routes, but in others he acts different because of said character's actions? The audience is fed the same amount of information the same way every single time. Malik gives you a mix tape and tries to hit on you. What's the reason to do another route when he acts the same way all the time? What's the point when you just get a similar good and bad ending?

It much feels like a quantity versus quality situation. Instead of polishing other routes, they make more when it's not necessary to begin with. There are other issues with the overall writing/pacing and you can clearly tell it's not polished. If they can get thousands of dollars for a white character, they can hire better writers.

To get back to the conversation, animations are a nice touch, but as other users said it depends on the system they're using. I do agree that if the goals are going to be thousands of dollars at the very least there should be more options that aren't as standard.

Though at this point animations are the least of their problems considering how poor the writing/pacing is with the inconsistent art. The demo is just small insight into how tedious and clunky this game is going to be.

 

[NerdShamer]

Spoiler: VN Spergin

One of the worst sins for a visual novel is just being boring. With most VNs, admittedly, there isn't going to be a lot going on all the time. However, the nature of the genre is that the writing compliments the limited imagery. You show the audience a sense of the environment that the characters are in by using their perspectives and emotions. Then the audience can fill in the blanks and draw their own conclusions. Contrary to popular belief you don't need to explain EVERY SINGLE THING that happens on screen. All you need to show the audience is clear IDEA of what the characters are going through. That's the appeal of VNs because you usually don't get detailed dialogue like that in an anime or even manga because they're more visual mediums. They have their own limitations and that's one of them for the sake of clarity, but with VNs you can explore that as more as both text and imagery is important to a degree.

These creators had a chance to really dive into the characters here and show us something unique. Instead, almost every character is either some sort of asshole, negative stereotype or deadbeat. Sometimes all of them (Malik especially). It also doesn't help that the game constantly tells you how to feel. So many lines of dialogue talks about how the characters feel rather than expressing those feelings. There's a difference between "you feel cold" and "you feel the familiar sensation of your gloves chafing your dry hands." One tells the audience how to feel. Another tells you a story. Again, the idea for a game about a bunch of young adults struggling to get by in the real world isn't a bad one, but at the same time, the writing is far too tedious and clunky to create any sort of coherent flow.

Part of this comes from the fact that there are just way too many characters in this game. You can only make writing certain perspectives interesting for a while before it becomes rather tedious. Dating sims with larger casts usually have to make some sort of compromise whether it's sticking to short routes or having a heavier focus on other elements to keep the game fresh (e.g. an untold story of a certain character, more plot related information, special cgs.). Not only does it keep up the pacing it rewards the player for going out of their way to finish every route.

Validate doesn't give you any reason to complete more routes other than for completionists sake. Even seeing the other routes for the demo, we aren't given any new information that doesn't pertain to said character of that route. Food for thought: what if we learned more about Malik through these routes, but in others he acts different because of said character's actions? The audience is fed the same amount of information the same way every single time. Malik gives you a mix tape and tries to hit on you. What's the reason to do another route when he acts the same way all the time? What's the point when you just get a similar good and bad ending?

It much feels like a quantity versus quality situation. Instead of polishing other routes, they make more when it's not necessary to begin with. There are other issues with the overall writing/pacing and you can clearly tell it's not polished. If they can get thousands of dollars for a white character, they can hire better writers.

To get back to the conversation, animations are a nice touch, but as other users said it depends on the system they're using. I do agree that if the goals are going to be thousands of dollars at the very least there should be more options that aren't as standard.

Though at this point animations are the least of their problems considering how poor the writing/pacing is with the inconsistent art. The demo is just small insight into how tedious and clunky this game is going to be.

Regarding your sperging, the lack of racial insecurity is an massive waste of an opportunity.

But hey, actually showing any injustice towards the minorities is racist nowadays.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Regarding your sperging, the lack of racial insecurity is an massive waste of an opportunity.

But hey, actually showing any injustice towards the minorities is racist nowadays.

I don't get it. The standard narrative is how every single group featured in that game is oppressed and being LITERALLY MURDERED DAILY, yet every single character there is confident and proud. So, what is it? Are they confidently and proudly being LITERALLY MURDERED?

 

[Dr. Sexbot]

Honestly, if they're going to make the writing and art so generic, they ought to just make it to where you can import your own "OC" art, tick a few boxes for pronouns, and play with/against that. You know the tumblr kids would go completely apeshit for that kind of self-insert masturbation. It's not like the art has to go together, or the monologues are going to change much.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Honestly, if they're going to make the writing and art so generic, they ought to just make it to where you can import your own "OC" art, tick a few boxes for pronouns, and play with/against that. You know the tumblr kids would go completely apeshit for that kind of self-insert masturbation. It's not like the art has to go together, or the monologues are going to change much.

Impossible, some fucking nazi incel would add in Hitler as an option to date and have their pronoun be "Kill ze jews".

 

[Dr. Sexbot]

Impossible, some fucking nazi incel would add in Hitler as an option to date and have their pronoun be "Kill ze jews".

Oh, I'm hoping they're lurking and run with it. I'd love to see Malik pass mixtapes to a furry.

 

[Elpizo]

It's almost time for the damn fishing minigame to be come a thing.


Oh, and fanfics.

https://twitter.com/ValiDateGame/status/1292595790586826753?s=20

 

[woowie queen]

It's almost time for the damn fishing minigame to be come a thing.


Oh, and fanfics.

https://twitter.com/ValiDateGame/status/1292595790586826753?s=20

they're almost at 80000$? how?

 

[Parthenos]

they're almost at 80000$? how?

Could be me but I think plenty of people just want another trashfire to mock relentlessly. Can't blame them, the developers of this game are much more entertaining than Neil Druckmann is.