Shiroi Printer is a freeware horror Japanese visual novel developed by Asaki Yumemishi (published under the banner of Yumemi no Yamai) and published to Freem!, a Japanese platform for freeware games, on May 28, 2018. The vast majority of games on Freem! are only available in the Japanese language. However, Shiroi Printer is a happy and rare exception, having had its English localization (White Printer) simway68 published to Freem! on the same day as the Japanese version.
It can be played (or read) in a web browser or installed on Windows. This is a tricky novel to review in that it is very short and defined by a “twist” of sorts that cannot be discussed in a spoiler-free format, but I thought it would be a fun review to tackle, so let us give it a go.
Shiroi Printer / White Printer Visual Novel Details
Shiroi Printer (Japanese: 白いプリンター) was developed Asaki Yumemishi under the banner of Yumemi no Yamai. He states on the novel’s Freem! page that he made the novel as a hobby project and asked players to be gentle. The novel was created with TyranoScript, an oft-used commercial visual novel engine which also has a builder.1 It was released on May 28, 2018, for both web browsers and Windows. It was updated on January 29, 2019, which remains the current version.
Both versions (they are identical insofar as I can tell) allow the player to switch between Japanese (Shiroi Printer) and English (White Printer) on the start menu, so there is only a single game to run in the browser or on Windows.
- Freem! (Web Version)
Most of the Freem! page is in Japanese, but there is English text noting that the game has an English-language option. - Novel Game Collection
Link to the downloadable version of Shiroi Printer (Windows only). The page is in Japanese, but the game itself has the same English-language mode as the browser version. - Official Website
Japanese language. - Visual Novel Database Entry for Shiroi Printer
According to the Novel Game Collection page (via Firefox translate), the 2019 version of Shiroi Printer was created to commemorate the original version being an honorable mention in the 2018 Tyrano Game Festival. I do not know how the current version of Shiroi Printer differs from the original, but the brief summary on Novel Game Collection appears to imply that whatever changes were made were minor.
As I noted in the introduction, there are very few English-language games on Freem! (one of the others is A Dream of Summer, which I reviewed (I reviewed the 2006 installable version but confirmed that the Freem! version uses the same text and assets)).
Note on Names
The Japanese version of the visual novel is called Shiroi Printer. The English version is localized as White Printer (my understanding is that this is a literal translation). For the purpose of my review, I will usually use Shiroi Printer for the entire package, which includes the Japanese and English versions of the game, but I will use White Printer where I am specifically discussing the English version, which of course is the one I am reviewing.
Running Shiroi Printer in Web Browser
Although there is a downloadable Windows executable for Shiroi Printer, most prospective readers will be best-served by running it in a web browser. My only note (beyond the obvious that mileage may vary in non-mainstream web browsers, with certain blocking applications, or as the developer noted, on mobile devices) is that the “Play on Browser” button on Freem! is buried all the way at the bottom of the game’s Freem! page.
In light of the fact that everything at the top of the page is in Japanese with no obvious way to launch the novel, and the English text does not start until the middle of the page, the button to actually open the novel in the web browser is easy to miss. But rest assured: It is there, but it requires a bit of downward scrolling.
The browser version of ShiroiPrinter works as expected for me in Brave and Firefox on desktop. For reason noted in the next section, I will recommend that most people play it in browser. The developer notes that he only tested it and intended for it to be played on desktop, so one’s experience on mobile devices may vary.
Linux-Focused Notes on Running the Windows Version
I run Linux on all of my computers. The installable version of Shiroi Printer is only available for Windows. I decided to try running the Windows version since taking screenshots of the novel running locally fits my workflow better than running it in browser. While I was able to get Shiroi Printer running on Linux on top of WINE, it was unexpectedly finnicky. I tested a few versions of WINE and Proton that I had installed (via Lutris). The game refused to launch in most. It launched and ran with system WINE-staging, but it took an unexpectedly long time to start up and unexpectedly crashed the first time I made a save (the save registered, but the novel crashed immediately after saving). I also experienced one random crash when I left the novel open in the background, but it otherwise worked but for those two hiccups.
I will note it is possible some of the quirks I had with WINE had to do with my not having the right Japanese fonts installed (text in the Japanese version was not displaying properly, and as we will discuss later in the view there is some Japanese text in the menus even in the English version). However, because I only read the novel in English, it ultimately worked out, so I did not investigate further.
Given that Shiroi Printer is very short, I would recommend playing the web browser version instead of the Windows version, absent some special reason for wanting to run it locally. Linux users may consider themselves forewarned that while it works with some versions of WINE, there may be a few hiccups.
(I do not have any Windows PCs to test Shiroi Printer, but I have no reason to believe that it would not work as expected on Windows.)
Content Warning?
The author warns on the Freem! page that Shiroi Printer includes (per Firefox translate) “violent and grotesque expression,” and gives his own novel a 15-and-up rating.
While I will be careful to avoid spoilers, I will note that one story-line was darker than what I had expected going in, even knowing that it was intended to be a horror story. The novel does include depictions (two images, neither particularly high quality or graphic) and descriptions (after the fact) of violence. With that being said, this is ultimately a proof-of-concept implementation of a horror story in a short visual novel centered on a printer, so we need not go overboard. The author’s self-evaluation (minor warnings, 15+) err on the side of caution and are fair.
My Shiroi Printer Review
Shiroi Printer is a very short visual novel. The developer suggests that it takes about 5 minutes to read. While I am often a “quick” reader (see e.g., my review of Christmas Tina), I think that 5 minutes is a bit ambitious, not least because the text speed is slow by default. I suspect that most readers of the English White Printer version will get closer to 10-15 minutes out of it (especially if going for both endings).
In addition to being a short novel, its presentation is distinctly minimalist. For the most part, the entire story takes place in the protagonist’s small apartment. The apartment is depicted with a simple, stock-like artistic background featuring his L-shaped desk, computer and flat-screen monitor, chair, bookshelf, TV and remote, wall photo, plant, low coffee table and floor chairs, and bed. The text overlays this background in NVL mode, meaning in runs from the top of the screen to the bottom instead of being confined to a text box.
The entirety of the novel is narrated by the protagonist, who is usually alone in his apartment. The first line of the novel reads: “This spring, after beginning full-time work and starting to live on my own in my condominium…” He adds that he started spending money freely because of “the thrill of getting a higher salary than I had at my previous part-time job…” While the novel never states it outright, I suspect the protagonist recently finished college in light of the use of “beginning full-time work” and the fact the Japanese school year begins and ends in April. One of the best visual novels I reviewed, May Sky, featured a protagonist starting his first full-time job after college and going through May ennui as he transitioned into the working world.
Unfortunately for the protagonist, he drained his wallet in between paychecks at his full-time job. How did he burn through his money? “Probably, the main cause was the money I spent on food.” Fortunately, recognizing the problem is the first step to solving it. The protagonist turned to the world wide web and saw that other people in similarly tight financial straits saved money by making their own food. While he had no prior culinary experience, he found some recipes that looked like they were simple enough for him to start with. Moreover, because this novel takes place in 2018, one would think he could have read the recipes off his phone. However, he found this solution to be unworkable: “I had tried cooking while squinting at the recipes on my smartphone screen, but, not being used to cooking, my hand had slipped and I had dropped my smartphone into the pot.”
Oh no!
But the protagonist had a solution, or I should say that he had scavenged a solution. That solution, in a totally unexpected twist, was a white printer: “…I had found this white printer abandoned in the premises of the condominium where I was living and had only just brought it back to my room.”
This printer replaced the protagonist’s old, broken printer (broken printers are totally unrealistic). The printer worked, and the protagonist waxed poetic about the high quality of its output.
The protagonist prints recipe after recipe. Once he is satisfied, he thumbs through his recipes. While all of his recipes printed as expected, he found something unexpected.
A page full of thumbnail-sized scenic photographs that the protagonist had never seen before. The novel’s music changes from its pleasant, generic background music, to something more ominous as the protagonist studies the photographs . However, we quickly return to normal as the protagonist is ready for bed. The next day, he resumes printing recipes with his apparently unexpectedly high quality printer. The protagonist was so impressed with the quality that he decided to print other things, starting with Misaki, his favorite pop idol.
With that, I conclude my summary of White Printer. To be sure, I could keep going, but in light of the fact that the novel is very short and playable in web browsers, I am loath to spoil the small plot, much less the twists. In any event, I think my brief introduction should give readers a general idea of the possible directions the story (admittedly limited) may go. Let us proceed to a more spoiler-free review.
As I noted at the top, the visuals in Shiroi Printer are simple. The scene we see most often is the protagonist’s apartment. We also see the white printer, several print-outs from the printer, and the protagonist’s beloved Misaki on a computer screen. There are a couple of additional background images that go beyond the scope of my review, but I will submit that the quality is on par with the early-game backgrounds seen in my screen captures.
The music is similarly simple. We have a normal, generic background track that plays when nothing exciting is happening (i.e., when the protagonist is discussing how much he loves printing recipes or how good his printer is), a more ominous track that plays when the printer does something unexpected, and an even more ominous track saved for events which call for it. I will note there is one additional track which goes with one of the novel’s two endings.
The game has one special effect and it uses it well. There are a few instances in the novel, including the opening disclaimer, where we see a page slowly emerge from a printer against a black backdrop (the printer itself is not visible). The printing is accompanied by sound effects, or, as I discuss next, a change in music.
The sound effects are more notable than the music. I dare say the sound effect which most defines Shiroi Printer is the printer, which is set to be loud by default (good choice) and sounds like a printer. The printer sometimes prints with the normal background music. Sometimes things go silent when the printer prints. Context is important here. In the early part of the game, there is also a subtle typing sound effect at one point, which is a nice touch.
Now one might think that the protagonist would bookmark the recipes that he wanted to try in his web browser or subscribe to his favorite recipe sites’ RSS/ATOM feeds. But he had a different idea.
Shiroi Printer has a single late-game choice, where the two options each lead to distinct endings. There is no player input beyond that one choice. The novel has the standard built-in skip functionality, and the skip correctly stops on the choice, so it is easy to try one choice, play to the end, and then quickly test the other choice. The developer allows that there are “two types of endings.” In the interest of offering a spoiler-free review, I decline to say more about the endings.
Because I cannot read Japanese, I will only discuss the English (White Printer) version of the script. As the developer cautioned on the novel’s Freem! page, Shiroi Printer is a hobby project, so I evaluate it in that spirit (similarly to how I have covered other freeware novels) rather than as I may a commercial release.
The localization quality is serviceable. The protagonist’s prose is a awkward at times (evinced in some, if not most, of my screen captures), but the script is never unclear save for one issue which appears to be technical rather than having to do with the localization. (Technical Issue Summary: Assume we have choice A and choice B. If I pick choice A, the first line of dialogue suggests we had picked choice B. This is obviously a technical error and confusing, but the next line and all following lines are consistent with choice A.) While the localization is not professional quality or on the level of some of the better freeware localizations that came out of the al|together project, I will note it is higher quality than some commercial translations/localization on Steam, including two that I reviewed in 2020 (Bad End)2 and 2021 (LoveChoice). For whatever it is worth, I found some of what I would describe as excessive verbosity in the localization endearing where the protagonist goes on about his passion for printing recipes and the quality of the printer.
While it is possible for a short visual novel to have some literary sensibilities, see e.g., From the Bottom of the Heart or my own original work in Little White Lies, White Printer is a simple horror (arguably defined broadly here) visual novel with a late-game twist. Bearing that in mind, I am impressed with the care the author put into executing his idea. As I noted, the protagonist describes often mundane things in detail. We learn about how he burned through his first paycheck, how he wants to save money, the recipes he finds online, how well his new printer works, and little things about what his printer prints. Most of the details have no bearing on where the story ends up. However, mixed in with the ultimately pointless details are little observations that, unbeknownst to the protagonist, may be relevant to the solving the mystery of his new appliance. While White Printer is not a difficult mystery, it does well to drop enough hints that a very careful reader could piece just about everything together before the big reveal, but without tipping its hand until the end. In these sorts of hobby projects, I enjoy seeing from the perspective of the reader that the author had a vision and thought about how to realize it effectively.
I do not have many complaints about the script given the game’s limited scope, but I do think a bit more could have been done with both of the endings. One ending feels a bit abrupt (condensing too many things into a brisk monologue). Another ending delivers on the “horror” promise, but it would have been more effective had there been a bit more between the choice and the end result.
Extras
The title screen changes depending on which ending the player reaches. For example, let us say the default title screen (no ending) is X, and we have endings A and B. The title screen will have the X design until the player completes ending A or B. If the player triggers A, the title screen changes to correspond to ending A. If the player then reaches the B ending, the title screen changes to match B. The title screen always matches the most recent ending triggered by the player (so if the player reaches ending A, B, and then A again, the title screen would match A).
Dual-Language and Saving
The post-completion title screen led me to look into how the novel handles saves between the English and Japanese versions. I noticed after completing ending A that while I saw the A title screen when the game was in English mode, the default X title screen showed when it was in Japanese mode. I tried starting a game in Japanese and then pulled up the load menu. I saw that my English-version saves were present. I loaded an English save and was taken to the English version that I had saved in, even though I loaded from the Japanese version. Then I went back to the Japanese version and created a save, exited, and returned to the English version. From the English version, I loaded the Japanese version save and, sure enough, was taken to the Japanese version of the novel.
Shiroi Printer/White Printer has just five save slots. The slots are shared by the English and Japanese versions of the novel. But internally, Shiroi Printer and White Printer seem to effectively function as separate games while sharing the same five save slots.
Fortunately, even for people who play the game in both Shiroi and White Printer modes, it is short enough that it is easy to clear both endings without ever using the save system.
Localization Quirk
As you can see in the screenshots for Shiroi Printer, there are tabs for Saving, Loading, Skipping text, reading text history, and the configuration menu accessible during game-play. In the bottom right corner of the screen during game-play, there is a small white printer icon. What happens when we click the icon?
We see a new menu that is not translated. The first two options pull up the save and load screen respectively. The third and fourth options did not seem to do anything. On the Windows version, the fifth option returned me to the title screen. On the web version, the fifth option crashed the game and forced me to reload it.
Fortunately, the regular Config menu is in English (albeit hard to read due to lack of contrast).
However, I found that I had to click the menu for the settings (the green indicators) to become visible.
Sharing Shiroi Printer
While Shiroi Printer is copyrighted, the Freem! page explicitly allows for posting video play throughs or streaming game-play, provided that the name of the game (I suppose ShiroiPrinter or White Printer) is in the video title and the Freem! or creator URL is in the description.3 The developer also welcomes fan illustrations (I could see some potential with the printer).
Conclusion
One reason I wanted to review White Printer is because I appreciated the fact that the Japanese developer went through the trouble of bundling an English version of the novel with the native Japanese version, and doing so from the moment he published it. This is certainly uncommon on Freem! On the off-chance any Japanese freeware visual novel developers see this review, I hope it inspires some to consider, when possible, having their games translated into English (and perhaps other languages as well). On the off-chance the developer happens across this review, I would recommend uploading Shiroi Printer to Itch.io as well since the version on Freem! comes bundled with the English localization.
ShiroiPrinter itself is a good piece for what it is. The author had an idea for a small horror story centered on a printer, thought about how to make the plot work, and more or less succeeded (that I thought both of the endings could have been a touch longer should be taken as a complement of sorts). In light of the fact that Shiroi/White Printer is short, well-thought-out, and playable in a web browser, it comes with my recommendation for anyone who is interested in these sorts of freeware Japanese visual novels generally. That the author went through the trouble of making it available to English readers with a respectable localization is, in my opinion, an additional reason for English fans of Japanese visual novels to read it on Freem! For any readers who may be curious about these types of work but not so much as to go through the trouble of downloading and installing one locally, I suppose Shiroi Printer is a decent introduction since it can be run in mainstream web browsers (and, I suspect, some more niche browsers as well), granting the “content warning” I noted previously.
Footnotes
- Surprisingly (I think, at least), this is my first Tyrano Script visual novel review. ↩︎
- I reviewed an older version of Bad End that I had purchased from the Amazon store for my Kindle Fire HDX. However, the reviews of the Steam version suggest that the quality-control issues for the localization are still present. But I will grant here that I have not tested the Steam version so it is possible some improvements may have been made in updates. ↩︎
- I thought about posting a video play-through of Shiroi Printer like I did with Google Search’s now-former 2025 Pokémon-catching game, and I may yet post one to Internet Archive. But so long as it is available online, I prefer using my article to encourage people who are interested in trying it for themselves. But it may be a worthwhile project for the “streamers” out there who may be interested in highlighting interesting indie game projects. ↩︎
