Visual novel initially banned from Steam now available

Translation house Fruitbat Factory, responsible for the English versions of games like War of the Human Tanks and 100% Orange Juice, have released the first two episodes of their new game, Jiangshi x Daoshi, for free. After initially being rejected by Steam, it was altered to suit Valve's feedback. You can, however, download a restoration patch from the Fruitbat Factory website or just get an unaltered version from itch.io, where as always anything goes.

Fruitbat Factory blogged about the process of getting Jiangshi x Daoshi approved, which is an interesting read. As they put it, "There's certainly a lot of offensive content of various sorts (think South Park when it comes to the mature humor of the game)" in Jiangshi x Daoshi, though it "doesn't feature any adult content". After some back and forth with a Steam rep ("we’re fortunate enough to have one, I’m well aware most devs don't") a version with altered graphics was allowed through. "In good news, the Steam version is probably a lot more YouTube friendly", they conclude.

The mature content description on its Steam page notes that it contains, "Graphic violence and blood (example: a thug is blown up into bloody chunks), strong language, references to sexual violence and sex trade, use of fictional drugs, shocking and scary imagery."

Jiangshi x Daoshi is a fully voiced and slickly animated visual novel from Dendo-Denkido about an ex-assassin, a dao priest, and Chinese vampires. While the first two episodes are available now for free, the third episode will be paid DLC, and is scheduled for a summer release.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.