Collection VN Ren'Py Dharker Studios Collection [2024-04-05] [Dharker Studios]
- Thread starter TheMaker666
- Start date
Yeah I'm wondering what happened to them. Their website appears to have been gutted, barely anything is listed and no adult patches
I could've sworn there used to be individual threads for each game here too but maybe I'm wrong about that
There definitely were individual threads, I've posted in them.
Reminiscing over Dharker's history... they were a tiny British group that started out doing cookie cutter VNs. Then a couple serendipitous things happened. They got Kopianget, popular for his work on HuniePop, to do art starting with Negligee. And they were in position when Steam lifted their ban on explicit sex, so Negligee LS could be the first. But only a year or so later, they started to crack. Changing Steam policies made it hard to get My Girlfriend approved and it had to be modified into Life in the Limelight. Games started to be released with mostly recycled art. CG is a big selling point for VNs, so it's a major failure when they're copy-pasted from an earlier games with hair changed to make it be a different girl. I think Chromo XY was the last with fully-original Kopi art. I'm not privy to behind the scenes knowledge like personal lives or interpersonal conficts, but Dharker was basically defunct by 2021. Only one or two people are around and put out the occasional asset flip.
While Kopi's art is hot and the shared Paradise Cove setting was a good idea, their games never brought the heat. The girls weren't as outrageous as HuniePop's. The plots never got complex or super dramatic like the popular VNs.
- Dec 1, 2019
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While I cannot really disagree with what you said, I still have kind of a soft spot for some of them. Granted, they were among my first, so nostalgia might play a role in it, but I remember some quite fondly, like Army Girls - even though some story elements were outlandish and you really needed a walkthrough to get the final ending. But that was, as you said, not about complexity but about a complicated web of stories with little feedback. (Like e. g. in Beach Bounce, which AFAIR did not give any hints about where to go what day, so trial and error was the way)
- Sep 4, 2017
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Backer of Paradise Girls here.
I believe the ambition for this game is what drove them to fall. I'm pretty sure we hit completely unrealistic goals for routes with an absolute ton (I'm talking 100+) of characters and side content galore including time travel and all sorts of other insane things. All completely voice acted somehow?? They were out of their minds. And instead of pulling the idea of the game back to the core characters and working from there Dharker INSISTED that they'd make the game how they wanted or not at all. With zero funding, because it had all been used on other things.
Promise, promise, promise for literal years and then it was dead. I tried personally to compel them to change direction, they did not. The falling apart of the game and the studio doesn't suprise me, especially after they sold... something to "Maid Games"? I'm still not quite sure what of the company or IP they gave them, it makes little sense to me to this day. Plus they have a spinoff studio under the name "Sakura Royale" which is apparently still making Swim Meet with Cove characters in it, who knows if that will actually come pout and be complete. Also bear in mind, all 3 of the companies I mentioned are shared between people with the same last name on Kickstarter so I have absolutely no idea what the hell they are pulling lol.
Either way, yes, having Kopi's art was a huge boon, they're a fantastic artist. Who knows how much of their woork has sunk in to the abyss and will never be seen now because of this mess. The shovelling out of tiny no content games while trying to make their "super game" a reality might have been bad, but the full blown experiences (like Negligee) were great, vanilla sure but the characters carried them far enough. It's a shame they fell so hard in to mismanagement, they had something and completely failed it, themselves, and the people who gave them cash.
Also Sophie best girl.
