雨ノヲト | ame no oto

[TL Patch Release] The Dark Room (Kurai Heya/暗い部屋)

Cover Art

In a closed room shut off from all outside light, a boy sits by the deceased body of his mother. As he stares, unfazed, at her corpse rotting away, he accepts his own death with a serene calm. But as he collapses from the hunger and the exhaustion, someone opens the door, and so begins the first day of his new life.

Official Website | VNDB

Screenshots

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Hey, hey! It's me, twog.

This is a one-man fan translation for "The Dark Room" (Kurai Heya/暗い部屋), a short-form 2010 visual novel written by Karabe Yousuke, better known by his other penname, Setoguchi Ren'ya. His works are known for their heavy literary themes, flawed characters, and rather chonky but effective prose, and The Dark Room is no exception. Originally intended as a standard literary novel, it was converted into a visual novel due to flying too close to the sun with the book publisher's moral guidelines.

If I had to describe what genre it's in, I'd call it "Psychological Domestic Horror". Unlike normal horror, there aren't any monsters or supernatural elements at play. The tragedy stems entirely from the trauma lurking in the hearts of all the characters. Understandable, everyday people wind up doing horrible things to each other, and it's quite upsetting and disturbing. But there's also a certain catharsis to be had by the end, I feel.

The Dark Room is a rather curious VN. Despite its age and subject matter, it exists outside the standard eroge consumer market, having more in common with arthouse media production than anything else. It has no otaku sensibilities at all really; thick, sprawling walls of text, no anime art style or theming, and no attempts made to fetishize or 'sell' its characters in any way. This is part of the reason I felt it simply had to be translated. I do love my curios.

I've been wanting to put something out into the world for a while now, and a short story like this was the perfect opportunity, frankly. While I am a professional translator, my work is generally focused on non-fiction and technical documentation, and so this was a great opportunity to brush up on fiction writing and character voice. I found it quite rewarding to work on, though I'm glad to be done.

This took me about 6 months of work translating and editing in my spare time, so I'd be over the moon if other people enjoyed it as well.

Content Warning

The Dark Room is a very heavy VN. Though it doesn't contain any explicit sexual content (there are no 'H-scenes' as found in other anime-themed visual novels; the closest you get is the word 'copulation'), it will still be too extreme for some readers. I was quite upset myself on my initial read; I imagine other people will find the content quite disquieting as well.

Be advised of the following elements, and if any are a problem for you I recommend giving this a pass:

  • Graphic descriptions of self-harm
  • Graphic descriptions of dead bodies
  • Bullying
  • Child neglect and gaslighting
  • Child abuse (Physical, emotional and sexual)
  • Incest
  • Suicide
  • Mental illness
  • Implied sexual assault

Obtaining a Copy

There is no digital version of this game, so getting ahold of it might prove difficult. I own a physical copy, myself, and you can get your own on Amazon via the Official Website. They also sell copies through a PC shop in Hokkaido. Of course, what this means is that if you live outside Japan, as I imagine 99% of the people reading this do, then you're kinda outta luck unless you use a proxy service.

I did contact Setoguchi himself on his public email to see if he would be willing to put it up for digital release, but to no avail; he didn't respond. So unfortunately that leaves only the one unscrupulous option for most folks.

If you do end up resorting to other means, can I at least recommend you buy Setoguchi's other works to make up for it? Especially Hira Hira Hihiru is a fantastic visual novel with a professional-grade translation and well worth your money. If you read this and like it, I highly recommend you check it out. It's good for you.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

Do you have any translation notes?

I do! See the TLNOTES file, included in this release.

How long is it?

About 5-6 hours. It's around 70k words, so close to the length of your average novel.

Do saves carry over between Japanese and English?

They do, funnily enough. It seems to just save what line number you're up to, so there's no issues.

I can't get it to start up or work.

This is just a guess on my part, but you might need to use Locale Emulator to emulate a Japanese locale and environment before running the executable. This is a pretty common pain point for Japanese visual novels, annoyingly.

Can you send me the game pre-patched?

No.

What happened to the old review of this game on your blog?

I ended up removing it. I don't really agree with my thoughts on it anymore after going through the story so many times for the translation. I think Setoguchi had more cooking than I was giving him credit for, especially initially, and my initial reaction of distaste was probably too hasty. That's not to say I'm a massive stan of the VN now, but that I think I have a much more level-headed view of the story, and that my previous critique was too brash for my liking in retrospect.

This isn't AI-made, is it?

Nope. LLMs wouldn't be able to output anything on this level anyway; everything you read is typed by my own two hands. However, I did use Cursor to do some of the hacking part for me to get the engine working nicely with English text. I also did get it to read the script for me one time to point out spelling/grammar errors. Did you know it's 'spitting image' and not 'splitting image'? Sheesh.

このゲームの権利者です。直ちにこのパッチの配布を停止するよう要求したい。

2twogie@gmail.com に連絡をお願いできればと思います。

Credits

Translation/Editing

twog. All me baby.

Programming/Hacking

About 50% me, 50% Claude Opus 4.6. What a world we live in, huh?

Proofreading

Special Thanks

  • Setoguchi Ren'ya, for writing this fascinating VN, and for getting me back into VNs in general after about a decade with Black Sheep Town
  • The members of the Glorpouslers discord community for the moral support. I'm glad to have had people on the sidelines telling me they want to see this done.
  • And you!