From Anime News Network:

The official X/Twitter account for the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Mei smartphone game in the Higurashi: When They Cry franchise announced on Friday that the game is ending service on February 27.

I read all eight chapters of the main-line Higurashi: When They Cry series (I read the last two after starting The New Leaf Journal). I was not aware that there was a Japan-only smartphone game. According to Anime News Network, the soon-to-be-defunct Higurashi phone game was first made available in 2020 and features an original story. Customers will have a three-month window to request refunds after the game is taken offline. There is probably a good game preservation angle to this story, but I am content for things I learned purposes for noting that I learned the game exists (soon-to-be existed).

[Source: Anime News Network]

A small web search engine called Raw Web[1] showed up in my New Leaf Journal Koko Analytics logs. I am testing it a bit. While testing, I came across Tomas Sedovic’s review of A Summer’s End, a visual novel review from 2020. This caught my attention because I reviewed At Summer’s End, the 2006 localization of a doujin Japanese visual novel Natsu no Owari ni. A Summer’s End is a very different piece, an original English language visual novel released in 2020 and set in Hong Kong in 1986. Mr. Sedovic had some niggles with A Summer’s End, but ultimately came away impressed. I am content with my current coverage of Summer’s End visual novels, so I will not add A Summer’s End to my growing list of reviews, but readers can consult Mr. Sedovic’s review and A Summer’s End’s Visual Novel Database page to see if it looks like something they are interested in reading. For others, the very thematically different At Summer’s End, which I reviewed, is 100% free to download and play.

[1]: https://rawweb.org/ (Raw Web search engine)

I am moving toward finishing my al|together visual novel review project. I just finished reading A Dream of Summer (which had been pending for a while) and one of two translations of Narcissu (I did not realize that the al|together Narcissu was two translations in one package).  This leaves just three novels to read. With Narcissu completed, I am almost entirely sure of what the top of my ranking, which will be published in three parts in November, will look like.  I leave no comment at this time on where precisely Narcissu will rank, I only note that it was the last remaining novel that, based on my pre-reading knowledge, could threaten the top spot.