This was originally just meant to be a regular news post, but I think I fell into a rabbit hole.
Today, a remake of a visual novel called Angel Whisper has released. Supposedly developed in 1999 and released by a company called Child Dream, this forgotten visual novel is being remade 24 years after originally releasing.
At first I thought this was some sort of marketing stunt; framing the new game as an obscure title that didn’t exist, but by digging around, I actually did find the 1999 version of Angel Whisper.
The original download links for the 1999 visual novel has been archived, but fail to link to the files themselves. The original 1999 game does have a web browser version, but unfortunately, it’s entirely in Japanese.
Angel Whisper also received a 2013 port for Android devices. The 2013 APKs for the visual novel have been archived by sites such as Apkpure, however, the mobile version is also entirely in Japanese.
There are barely any mentions of the original novel from 1999 on the Western parts of the internet, and it only got a Visual Novel Databse page after being mentioned publicly by a user on Twitter. Curiously, this user has also worked on the remake, seemingly as a playtester.
You can find links for most versions of the visual novel on VNDB, and I would normally link directly to it, but I honestly don’t know anything about the visual novel’s contents, as the language barrier has unfortunately stumped me.
The original 1999 visual novel has a really eerie feeling, using real images for its backgrounds, and realistic drawings for its characters. It supposedly features a meta narrative about a man who develops a game and disappears, but Child Dream also frames the actual visual novel like that, blending reality and fiction together.
The remake has a much more palatable art style, but I do hope we get a translation of the original visual novel, as its eeriness has been seared into my mind, despite my short exposure to it.
This post is mostly meant to serve as a footnote for something completely obscure and unknown in the West. There are barely any mentions of the original visual novel floating around through the internet, so much so that I initially even doubted its existence.
Hiroaki Yushima, Child Dream, and the original version of Angel Whisper remain a mystery to me, as the complete lack of information about this visual novel has enticed me more than any sort of marketing could.
Hopefully the Nintendo Switch version can make things clearer for me, but as it stands, Angel Whisper has thoroughly creeped me out.
ANGEL WHISPER – The Suspense Visual Novel Left Behind by a Game Creator is now available on the Nintendo Switch (through the Nintendo eShop). The original versions can be found linked on the game’s Visual Novel Database page.
