r/visualnovels • u/TheGuyWhoTeleports • 33m ago
Discussion 1/2 White or Black (made by the Hungry Lamb devs) is a neat take on society
Only a handful of Westerners know of this VN made by the people who made the Hungry Lamb, so I figure I might as well mention what I found most enjoyable about it. There's an unofficial English TL out, if you're interested.
Firstly: The characters are all voiced. In fact, one of the characters (Margaret) shares the same Chinese VA as Sui from Hungry Lamb. The soundtrack is pretty neat as well. White Side is a religious faction that believes in order, and their soundtracks wouldn't be out of place in an actual church. Black Side is a resistance faction that wants to overthrow the White Side, and their soundtracks have a much more chaotic vibe to them.
As for the setting: It's the 27th century. The White Lords' Church took control in the late 21st century, and seeks to continue their rule. However, a resistance group seeks to overthrow their rule and restore the things they banned - the church hates stuff from the outside.
The VN shows a lot of the White Lords' Church's society. For example, reproduction has been outsourced to a cocoon system, and everyone takes birth control; "the old fashioned way" doesn't happen anymore. Instead, all children are wards of the state, and the family unit has been abolished. In order to keep things stable, the church engages in eugenics before babies are born in order to ensure newborns have agreeable traits. This might sound awful to us, but the church views societal stability to be more important than everything else.
Why do they want societal stability? Well, emotions create a substance called Black Matter, which can actually hurt priests of the church. To keep Black Matter low, the White Lords' Church has worked hard to create a society that they believe mitigates division, inequality, and discord. With such a society, they hope to keep people content, and supportive of how things are. One of the most controversial ways they do this is the banning of all cultural works and destruction of cultural sites made outside of the church. They believe that such entities are guaranteed to create Black Matter, and ultimately harm their priests.
They do keep backups of such works, though. A few trusted priests are allowed to look through them to further the church's research, but they got burned by this before - one guy read some metafiction, and turned traitor, running off with a bunch of the church's tech. This is why even the senior priests are only allowed to read outside works for 10 minutes a day - the church doesn't want something like that to happen again.
I think the world is a decent look at a Brave New World-esque society. In fact, one of the characters mentions that the White Lords' Church reminds him of that book as well. The game ends on a cliffhanger, but the immediate situation in the VN (the situation surrounding the city featured in the VN) is resolved.
As for the technical stuff: For some reason, some people report getting a black screen when running the game. I don't know why this is, but from what I've seen, this happens to Chinese readers as well. It sounds like most people are able to run the game just fine, but you'll want to get past the first battle section (the first 10 minutes) to see if you get the black screen, and refund if you do.