Limerence is a freeware original English-language visual novel by Zalor, a solo independent visual novel writer/developer and commentator. It is written in Ren’Py and was first published on March 5, 2026. Zalor describes it in a brief, poetic introduction on its online home, Itch.io:
This is a story of love not quite unrequited but unrealized. Of two souls longing for etheric purity over the grounded. For the subdued comfort of a dreamy haze over the real. It is all that, and a wish granted. Zalor (Itch.io page for Limerence)
This is a story of love not quite unrequited but unrealized. Of two souls longing for etheric purity over the grounded. For the subdued comfort of a dreamy haze over the real. It is all that, and a wish granted.
I read Limerence and will review it here.
Readers who are familiar with my visual novel reviews (this is my 49th review of a novel I had no role in making) may do a double take upon seeing that I am reviewing a “new” visual novel, noting that a majority of my extant reviews have been of novels published in the 2000s. While I do plan to review some “newer” visual novels in the future, there is a special reason Zalor’s Limerence landed on my radar. Moreover, that reason is related to one of the 2000s visual novels I reviewed, as I explain below before the review proper.
## The Backstory of my Limerence Review
From 2021 through 2024, I reviewed the 31 visual novels officially contributed to the al|together visual novel festivals. As to not reinvent the wheel I will refer readers to my al|together introduction and collection articles for a full explanation of al|together, but for a Reader’s Digest version: al|together refers to three visual novel translation/localization festivals which took place in 2005, 2006, and 2008, wherein individuals and circles localized 31 freeware doujin Japanese visual novels into English (unofficially 32, but that is a story for another day).
I had multiple reasons for undertaking the al|together project. One of those reasons was to shine a light on an interesting era in visual novel history and to bring attention to a few genuinely good visual novels that people can read for free in English. I managed to make one concrete contribution in helping make it possible for people to play Midsummer Haze (localization of Manatsu no Kagerou) by finding the original Japanese executable required to use the al|together English patch.
While perusing my backlinks in Yandex Webmaster, I came across a curious link from the forum at agoraroad.com. When I followed the link, I was taken to a March 4, 2026 post by forum member “lain is here” titled Finding Inspiration In The Forgotten Freeware Visual Novels Of The Mid-2000s. “lain is here” begins with an on-point introduction to al|together before discussing how he learned about the festival from yours truly. Not long after I found this forum post, “lain is here” sent me an email after I followed him back on Itch.io from my Circle New Leaf Journal account. There, he linked to the canonical version of his article published on his blog on Fuwanovel Forums under the pen-name Zalor, which he also uses for his visual novel development. While the posts are identical, I will explicitly discuss the Fuwanovel version of the post, Al|together and Sovl: Finding Inspiration In Forgotten Freeware VNs.
How did Zalor stumble upon al|together? I yield the floor:
> # [Zalor’s Limerence, Visual Novel Review](https://thenewleafjournal.com/reviewing-limerence-an-altogether-inspired-visual-novel/)