偶弦(Ǒu xián) is a Chinese RPG Maker Horror game developed in RPG Maker VX ACE by Onion Rabbit in 2014.
It received a Japanese translation that same year by the name of 偶弦~人形の糸~ (Guuzen ~ Ningyo no Ito) and that was the first name I knew the game as, so from this point forward the game will be referred to as "Guuzen". The game is described as a dark fairy tale and has never been translated to English in a playable form.
The game begins with 4 girls waking up in a strange house. After some discussion and something about "Prayer Dolls", you playing as the brunette along with blonde go explore the strange house to discover where you are and why.
To either discover the truth or to escape while solving various puzzles along the way.
I first discovered this game many years ago through a Youtube playlist with various RPG Maker songs, including songs from games not available in English. This game ever since I saw it fascinated me but as it was many years ago I couldn't find it during those years.
After I began to scroll through Freem! semi-regularly, I think I found the game again through that. (Or through furious googling after remembering the game existed) and as I had the tools to do so, I made a machine-translated patch of the Japanese version for personal use. (I have not released it anywhere to download and do not intend to do so due to it's machine-translated nature. Real translators over artificial ones any day of the week.)
As I played the game, I had realized that we on the English-speaking side of RPG Maker have been missing out. The game was really well-made and despite the jankiness of my machine-translated patch, it had a nice story from what I could tell. It was a really solid game especially as it was the developer's first. I think the game could've garnered some popularity here too if it was translated at the time.
So why wasn't it translated to English?
I really do not know. At the end of the day, there might be a reason, there might not be a reason. But I have some theories and I shall share them now.
1. The game is originally in Chinese. Even at the time, there weren't many Japanese-to-English translators. Japanese RPG Maker games were the majority of East Asian games translated so imagine how many Chinese-to-English translators were. Yeah. Not many. (And even if the Japanese translation existed, I doubt many translators would want to translate a translation instead of the original.)
RPG Maker translation is also a hobby for most (especially free games since... you can't get money from those) and thus they choose what they work on. If a translator isn't interested, they aren't translating it. It could've been just that too.
2. The game uses copyrighted music. There are a few parts of the game where copyrighted music is used, and while that may be okay in China, it's not okay in English-speaking territories. The songs could've been changed for the translation, but I don't know.
3. The dev didn't allow it. This should be self-explanatory. Some devs don't want their stuff translated and you just have to respect that.
All of these are at the end of the day theories. They could be true or totally false. I don't know and I just had a few ideas on why.
But I think that's all I wanted to say about this game. I think it's a shame it's not more known in English-speaking circles as I think the game is neat! Although I do request you do not bother anyone about
translating it (including the developer). I just wanted to share a thing I thought was cool. Thank you for reading.
☆ Majority of the images used are from the game itself and are by Onion Rabbit. I do not claim any copyright.
☆ While I never released that machine-translated patch for download, I did make a Youtube video on it if you want to see
what the game is like.(The translation is pretty jank so beware...)
Extra stuff/Credits