The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons, avisual noveldeveloped for PC by Japanese studio Laplacian, will be released forSteamin the West onFebruary 17this year,according to a tweetfrom US-based publisherNekoNyan Soft. Best known for having published the visual novel Aokana: Four Rhythms Across The Blue, NekoNyan Soft first announced the international release of The Future Radio in March 2021, and has since been working in communication with developer Laplacian to bring the game to a Western audience.Featuring romance, branching routes, and a narrative defined by the player’s choices, The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons takes place in a dystopian world where the airwaves have been eaten by a global network of artificial pigeons. Approximately 20 hours in length, the game will be NekoNyan Soft’s first release for the year, with later 2023 titles still yet to be announced.
The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons is set to be the second visual novel by Laplacian to be published in the West. The first, Newton And The Apple Tree, was released in 2017 also for PC via Steam, with English translation and publishing overseen by the now-defunct localization group Sol Press.
Sol Press had also initially planned to release The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons in the West, among other projects. In mid-2020, however, an official blog post confirmed that Sol Press had summarily canceled all plans to release any further visual novels by Laplacian in the West, The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons included.
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This statement followed an earlier announcement from Sol Press, which disclosed that the company would no longer be localizing or publishing visual novels. While no explanation was provided at the time, Sol Press CEO Michael Valdez would later state in aninterview with Noisy Pixelthat visual novel profitability had been severely hampered by persistent piracy issues. In late October 2021, Sol Press was suspended and forfeited by the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) for failure to pay taxes. This forfeit marked the closure of Sol Press’s operations, and the company has since become defunct.
Since then, only two localization studios have stepped in to pick up the abandoned Laplacian projects: NekoNyan Soft, for one, who will be releasing The Future Radio And The Artificial Pigeons in February this year — but also Laplacian itself, who last year fully handled the localization and international release of one of its own titles,Cyanotype Daydream — The Girl Who Dreamed the World.
