‘Dumb!’ Is a Delightfully Demented Visual Novel Parody

You may have noticed lately that indie teams — the entire world over — have lately taken quite the liking to making Visual Novels, and when anything becomes popular enough it will inevitably lead to a backlash from those who think the affair is rather ridiculous. Such was clearly the case with a France based group calling themselves Mushi, whom recently announced to Kickstarter’s community a series of Visual Novels that — quite appropriately — they had entitled: Dumb! They promised that — should their requested €300 be raised — their scathing fast-paced parody (meant to be finished within roughly an hour) would be made available on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

The series was aimed to star a young man — also named Dumb — as he bumbles about trying to overcome his immense lack of wisdom, and it sure doesn’t help when his school is jam-packed with all manners of unlikely danger. Although not much was actually said about what all this would entail, it would seem safe to say — judging from the various bizarre pictures provided — that Mushi was aiming for Excel Saga levels of madness. After all, when was the last time — Visual Novel or not — you played a game where the protagonist’s mother kept rapidly switching back and forth between human and tyrannosaurus forms?

Apparently — despite the demented weirdness — quite a few people were overly ready for a tongue-in-cheek backlash aimed at lambasting the recent Visual Novel glut, for Dumb!’s fundraiser pulled in far more than the humble amount that Mushi initially requested. Therefore — rather than merely producing one madness-crammed entry — Mushi has already announced that their overfunding will go straight towards the development of Dumb! 2, which is aiming to contain double the laughter-inducing content of the original. While both of these should be arriving in the near future, those who can’t wait for more info on this madcap disemboweling of the Visual Novel genre can follow Mushi’s Facebook page for up-to-the-minute progress updates.