The Indie Neptunia Wiki, One Year Later

 It's been over a year since the independent Neptunia Wiki went live. I've got almost all the pages forked from the former Fandom wiki onto the new host, kept a lot of pages up-to-date, and got some contributors, new and old to help out too. But it just makes me wonder: how come we're not getting more people to join the wiki?

 Ever since this wiki went live, we've had some issues with bots spamming the site with unnecessary pages and the multiple DDoSes that slowed it down, but thankfully the owner of the site took care of those issues by adding strong anti-bot features to combat them. And although we do get a few legitimate users, half of the time they're just vandals trying to make the wiki unusable, and nobody wants to see a page of their favorite character all messed up by some evading clown. We even tried to get included in the list of independent wikis on Indie Wiki Buddy, and thankfully, we got approved.

 Another reason why we're not getting much users is mostly just Fandom wikis trying to become the first page result of various popular search engines, outshining other indie wikis like the GTA and Minecraft wikis. Although the owner did allow search engines to cache the wiki and not scrape all the pages for AI training, we're still not getting much traffic from real users. But since Neptunia is such a niche franchise, it's somewhat expected, but don't you want some newbies who want to be into this franchise come to the independent wiki, and not let major wiki farms like Fandom screw you over?

 And one last reason would have to be not enough promotion and advertising. We first advertised the wiki on the r/gamindustri Subreddit and established a Discord server and a Ko-fi page to help people support the wiki and keep it alive for the following years, and managed to get a couple people to join and donate. We even got recognition from an independent artist and game developer to promote it, but it still wasn't enough to get more people to come to the wiki.

 Despite all that, it felt somewhat good to be contributing on an independent host with the help of some fans, old and new, even though there were some stressful moments, like session timeouts and the site breaking for no apparent reason. But if we want to become a community, we should at least get more people to contribute and fill in all of the missing puzzle pieces, so that way, I don't have to do most of the dirty work while the admin keeps the site, Discord server and Ko-fi page up and running.

 UPDATE 9/21: Now I realized there's another reason why we don't have much people coming to the wiki, and it's that some of the old fans have moved on to other interests, like a different video game franchise. Seems reasonable enough, but I'll accept it.

My Experience on Fandom

The Hyperdimension Neptunia Wiki on Fandom

 Ever since I joined Fandom on March 21, 2018, I've helped fix up the Hyperdimension Neptunia and Gal*Gun wikis by adding missing information and photos, improving a lot of pages, and adding new templates that would later promote me to being a moderator, and later an administrator in the former. Prior to joining, I've gained a lot of experience working with wiki pages on TCRF since Christmas 2015, which would later adapt to the Fandom wikis. I've helped a few new contributors trying to edit, and even got rid of some vandals attempting to turn the wiki into a wasteland. All of that hard work made me get into the no.1 spot on the leaderboard.

Fandom Neptunia Wiki leaderboard as of 7/18/25

 It was great getting this wiki to be more reliable, until a controversial change from Fandom happened. The site was getting bombarded with a lot of unnecessary ads, surveys and slowdown, leading to fellow contributors leaving the site entirely and migrating to alternative wiki farms and independent wikis. As the Hyperdimension Neptunia Wiki would almost become a wasteland like the other ones, I tried to get this wiki as up-to-date as possible with a fellow active admin, until the latter stopped, and rarely contributed, making me the most active admin on the wiki.

 Later on the Gamindustri Standard Discord server, a fellow user who goes by the name "Guicool" decided to establish an independent host for the new Neptunia wiki, and offered to invite me to be the new bureaucrat for the wiki. I accepted, and on the Fandom wiki, I made an announcement that the wiki would be forked onto a new host without all the controversial stuff Fandom put on there. As the fork was complete, the new Neptunia wiki would go live on March 2, 2025, leading me to say my farewell to the Fandom wiki, and Fandom in general.

The Neptunia Wiki (neptunia.wiki)

 Fandom may be the no.1 host for all known wikis, but all the backlash towards them made them the most hated wiki farm in history. Yes, there are other hosts like Miraheze and wiki.gg, but being on an independent host gives people the freedom to post whatever Fandom doesn't allow, even though there are a few caveats. All in all, it was a pretty nice experience after 7 years of being on Fandom. I hope the original owner is proud that the Neptunia wiki is on a new host.

Neptune Console Ceramic Piece

Here's an old pic of the Neptune console from Hyperdimension Neptunia that I made back in high school.

Link to the photo album of how I made it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/V8e2PfXdrxNeTMo47

Gamindustri Riot Prototype Screenshots

It's been a while since I've posted about my cancelled fangame, so here are some screenshots of various prototype versions of Gamindustri Riot posted from one of my old blogs dating from 2015 to 2016.

Fuka fights a sandbag (4/26/2015)

IF and Fuka (6/23/2015)

Character Select screen (6/23/2015)

Mockup screenshot

Prison level (12/1/2015)

Fuka boss battle (early version)(12/6/2015)

Fighting Baal, the final boss of the game

Fuka boss battle (later version)(1/12/2016)

Inside train (4/3/2016)

Fighting Asagi in the ring (4/24/2016)

Noire and Vert at Lowee Plaza (6/30/2016)

Cutscene test with Shampurus (6/30/2016)

The Troubled Development of Gamindustri Riot

Title screen of the game

 Back in 2015, I had this idea to create the "first ever" Hyperdimension Neptunia fangame when someone at the ChronoCrash forums posted about seeing or creating a fangame based off of Neptunia U. I replied by saying that I can make it happen and development had started.

I first started with drawing the character sprites, taking inspiration from the Kunio-kun series and using some base sprites I found on the internet as a template. It felt pretty complicated trying to do the goddesses in the River City style, going frame-by-frame, but I got the hang of it once I progressed. One of the first characters I've done wasn't actually part of the Neptunia series, but from the Disgaea series. That character was Fuka Kazamatsuri, a character from the fourth game, in which I was originally going to make her a playable character, but I decided to make her a boss character instead. Then, I started to do work on the main CPUs and Candidates, and of course the makers. I've seemed to like the end results of what I've created, but the most challenging part was trying to get IF's hair right. Drawing her hair to make it look like her official art was a real pain, but I did whatever I can to reflect it and went with the final result as shown below alongside the others.

Early sprites of the playable characters

Blanc, her hammer and Gust

Early versions of the heads of the characters in Goddess form

The main eight in sprite form

Early animation of Fuka walking

 After drawing the necessary sprites, I decided to focus on the gameplay. I started using OpenBOR as an engine for the game and did some basic work for it such as adding characters, stages and music. As I was pretty new to coding since I was still in high school taking a computer programming class, I messed around with some custom code created by some users at ChronoCrash with some code of my own to see what would and wouldn't work for this game.

Some screenshots of the game:

 For the story, I originally wanted to make it as a semi-crossover game featuring characters from the Disgaea series. Here's a brief summary on what the story was going to be:

 After a bunch of failed attempts of defeating the goddesses, the remaining members of ASIC thought of a new plan to take over Gamindustri and resurrect their goddess Arfoire: create a super army from another dimension. as the group offered to recruit troops from different dimensions, A lot of them rejected, but only one had accepted to join forces: The Netherworld!

They have agreed that if they defeat the 4 Goddesses and Candidates, they will give them what they want.

Now it's up to the CPUs to stop ASIC's new super army of demons (and Prinnies, dood!) and bring peace back to Gamindustri!

 As this story being bizarre as it can be, I, with the help of a certain someone at ChronoCrash and the Nepboards, have only finished about 50% of it, with most of the stages having some or no scenes at all. There's this one scenario in Stage 3 where the CPUs meet Asagi, thinking that she's a resident of Lowee, but she's actually there to be a protagonist for the next game. This would continue around the middle of Stage 6 where they're at the Netherworld and the end of Stage 9 where they fight her for the final time. This would later reveal that the Asagi they met at Lowee is actually an imposter working for ASIC, with the real Asagi coming out to kill the imposter and join forces with the goddesses. Besides her, I wanted to have other characters join the main eight, like Fuka, Desco, Laharl, Etna, and Flonne.

 For the Final Stage, It would have Gamindustri's super army of their own vs. ASIC right at Spectral Tower where our heroes barge in and reach the top of the tower. As they arrive, they encounter Linda, Warechu and a resurrected CFW Magic standing near Arfoire's casket. The goddesses would then get ambushed by the Prinnies with Linda congratulating them. And here's a plot twist: the Prinnies would tell ASIC about their actual plan: turning Gamindustri into a training camp for the Netherworld by resurrecting Overlord Baal to destroy the world. This would be teased at the end of the previous stage where the goddesses see a prophecy on the wall about defeating the overlord. Continuing on with the scenario: As Arfoire is fully revived with a ridiculous amount of power, she attempts to kill the Prinnies and the members of ASIC, but is stopped by the goddesses who then decide to fight her. After the brawl, Arfoire ascends to Celestia, then the tower begins to crumble with the goddesses and ASIC on it. As the latter make their escape, Flonne appears out of nowhere and opens the portal to Celestia for the goddesses to follow Arfoire.

 The CPUs arrive at Celestia where they encounter some angels laying on the ground, stating that they tried to stop Arfoire from entering, but she was too overpowered. As they reach the final area, they are met with a form of Arfoire, similar to her True form in mk2. Arfoire attempts to make the final blow, but is killed by Overlord Baal.

 For the ending, the CPUs defeat the Overlord with the remaining angels congratulating them for saving Celestia and Gamindustri. As they return to the latter, the goddesses make a peace treaty with members of the Netherworld, and would have scenarios of what happened afterward. The post-credits scene would have Arfoire as a Prinny working for Etna, and teases that she will be back for revenge.

 For unlockables, I planned to have Nisa, Gust, Plutia, and Peashy as unlockable characters after beating the game just once and also a Hardcore mode where the enemies are much tougher and different.

 I didn't have an actual release date planned for this game, but one of them was a planned Fall 2018 release (I originally planned for a 2016 release based on some old files laying around), until I decided to put the project on indefinite hiatus. This was a real pain for me because I had school and work to do, and I didn't have any plans to continue the project along with its sequels and other projects, so I just left it there. I felt pretty disappointed that I never had the chance to do all this during my free time because of these reasons.

 Overall, this was a very nice project to do, except all of the development hell I had to go through, and it may have inspired other Neptunia fans to create fangames of their own, such as Hyperdimension Girl Quest, Exadimension Neptunia and Dimension Breaker.

Planned Neptunia Fangames

 During development of the Neptunia fangame "Gamindustri Riot" (which is currently on hiatus), I had some plans to make sequels and other games to follow it up. Here are the planned working titles:

• Gamindustri Riot: Sisters Revolution
• Gamindustri Riot: Alternative Victory
  
• Gamindustri Riot: Ultimate Revenge
• Gamicademi Riot
• Planeptune Crusaders feat. Sega Hard Girls
• Gamindustri Rumble: The Battle of PC Continent
  
• 4 Goddesses Rumble
  

Neptunia Virtual Stars - Ten Tribute

 As a tribute to one of my favorite Pearl Jam albums of all time and its 30th anniversary, I've made a parody of the album cover featuring Gamindustri's CPUs and Faira.