Few names are as well-known among visual novel fans as "White Album," and the legendary love story is finally getting an official English localization.
Shiravune has announced today that White Album: Memories like Falling Snow is coming to Steam in Q3 2023 with English, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese text. Voiceovers will remain only in Japanese.
If you're not familiar with it, this is the localization of Aquaplus' PS3 release White Album: Tsuzurareru Fuyu no Omoide, released in 2010. In turn, that's the all-ages version of White Album, an eroge launched by Leaf in 1998.
While not as popular as its sequel White Album 2, this visual novel is a foundational game beloved by many fans. It even generated a well-known anime series aired in Japan in 2009.
If you're not familiar with Shiravune, they localized the PC version of the latest Utawarerumono JRPG Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten among many other games. Below you can take a look at the first screenshots of the localized version and read an official description from the developer.
WHITE ALBUM is a story of love in many forms.
Toya Fuji is an ordinary college student but for one thing:
His connection to the popular singer Yuki Morikawa.
That popular singer, you see, is his girlfriend...
and the more popular she gets, the less time
the two can spend together.
Will they stay a couple, or will their ways part?
As winter falls and the air grows colder,
the two lay down new tracks in the album of their love...
This album will be as white as snow, and as poignant.Prologue
Strains of a song drift on the cold winter wind,and outside a music shop, my feet come to a stop.
The cathode-ray tubes of the monitor pipe in a picture
and I stand here, on the other side, silently watching.
On my way home from classes, amid the biting chill, she holds me rapt...
It's been as ordinary as every other day of my life.
Ordinary, that is, in every way except one.
We've clung together just as always, even since her debut.
At least so far.
She leads her extraordinary life, and I live my mediocre one.
People meet, and they break up, and get all mixed up together,
but the days spin by all the same
If you're interested in romantic visual novels, you can also read about the upcoming re-release of Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, also known as Rumbling Hearts.