Visual novel
A visual novel is a form of digital interactive fiction. Visual novels are often associated with the medium of video games, but are not always labeled as such themselves. They combine a textual narrative with static or animated illustrations and a varying degree of interactivity.
Visual novels originated in and are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles released in 2006. In Japanese, a distinction is often made between visual novels, which consist primarily of narration and have very few interactive elements, and adventure games, which incorporate problem-solving and other types of gameplay. This distinction is normally lost outside Japan, as both visual novels and ADV-style adventure games are commonly referred to as "visual novels" by international fans.
Visual novels are rarely produced exclusively for dedicated video game consoles, but the more popular games have occasionally been ported from PC to systems such as the Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable, or Xbox 360. The more famous visual novels are also often adapted into light novels, manga, or anime, and are sometimes succeeded or complemented by video games such as role-playing games or action games set in the same universe. The market for visual novels outside of East Asia is small, though a number of anime based on visual novels are popular among anime fans in the Western world; examples include Clannad, Danganronpa, Steins;Gate, and Fate/stay night.
Structure
Visual novels are distinguished from other game types by their generally minimal gameplay. Also most commonly included in most visual novels are dialogue trees which reference the points of choice in the progression of a storyline. In interactive fiction, dialogue tree choices are logical and have a significant effect in the progression of the game’s universe. These choices feature whether to ask a virtual person to go on a date or not, hence highlighting the interactiveness and player’s versatility. Visual novels most often feature interactions where the player must be able to impact the story world or the story's progression, with dialogue options, on-click progress, and a particular theme. The majority of player interaction consists of clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving/interacting as if they were turning a page, while making narrative choices along the way. Another main characteristic of visual novels is their strong emphasis on the prose, as the narration in visual novels is delivered through text. This characteristic makes playing visual novels similar to reading a book.Most visual novels have multiple storylines and more than one ending; the mechanic in these cases typically consists of intermittent multiple-choice decision points, where the player selects a direction in which to take the game. For example, in a dating simulator-themed visual novel, the player is prompted to pick different characters to date which, in turn, leads to a different ending. This style of gameplay is similar to story-driven interactive fiction, or the shorter and less detailed real-life gamebook books.
Some visual novels do not limit themselves into merely interactive fictions, but also incorporate other elements into them. An example of this approach is Symphonic Rain, where the player is required to play a musical instrument of some sort, and attain a good score in order to advance. Usually such an element is related as a plot device in the game.
Fan-created novel games are reasonably popular; there are a number of free game engines and construction kits aimed at making them easy to construct, most notably KiriKiri,, and Ren'Py.
Many visual novels use voice actors to provide voices for the non-player characters in the game. Often, the protagonist is left unvoiced, even when the rest of the characters are fully voiced. This choice is meant to aid the player in identifying with the protagonist and to avoid having to record large amounts of dialogue, as the main character typically has the most speaking lines due to the branching nature of visual novels.
Narrative branches
branching storylines are a common trend in visual novels, which frequently use multiple branching storylines to achieve multiple different endings, allowing non-linear freedom of choice along the way, similar to a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Decision points within a visual novel often present players with the option of altering the course of events during the game, leading to many different possible outcomes. An acclaimed example is Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, where nearly every action and dialogue choice can lead to entirely new branching paths and endings. Each path only reveals certain aspects of the overall storyline and it is only after uncovering all the possible different paths and outcomes, through multiple playthroughs, that every component comes together to form a coherent, well-written story.The digital medium in visual novels allow for significant improvements, such as being able to fully explore multiple aspects and perspectives of a story. Another improvement is having hidden decision points that are automatically determined based on the player's past decisions. In Fate/stay night, for example, the way the player character behaved towards non-player characters during the course of the game affects the way they react to the player character in later scenes, such as whether or not they choose to help in life-or-death situations. This would be far more difficult to track with physical books. More importantly, visual novels do not face the same length restrictions as a physical book. For example, the total word count of the English fan translation of Fate/stay night, taking all the branching paths into account, exceeds that of The Lord of the Rings by almost 80%. This significant increase in length allows visual novels to tell stories as long and complex as those often found in traditional novels, while still maintaining a branching path structure, and allowing them to focus on complex stories with mature themes and consistent plots in a way which Choose Your Own Adventure books were unable to do due to their physical limitations.
Many visual novels often revolve almost entirely around character interactions and dialogue choices usually featuring complex branching dialogues and often presenting the player's possible responses word-for-word as the player character would say them. Such titles revolving around relationship-building, including visual novels as well as dating simulations, such as Tokimeki Memorial, and some role-playing video games, such as Persona, often give choices that have a different number of associated "mood points" that influence a player character's relationship, and future conversations, with a non-player character. These games often feature a day-night cycle with a time scheduling system that provides context and relevance to character interactions, allowing players to choose when and if to interact with certain characters, which in turn influences their responses during later conversations. For example, in The Mask of the Rose, the user is constantly making timely decisions as the narrative progresses. Even the outfit the user chooses for an encounter can determine how in game characters respond to you and the dialogue options available, and it's clear Failbetter, the developer of The Mask of the Rose, recommends players to keep replaying the game multiple times to witness the full impact of their choices.
It is not uncommon for visual novels to have morality systems. A well-known example is the 2005 title School Days, an animated visual novel that Kotaku describes as going well beyond the usual "black and white choice systems" where you "pick a side and stick with it" while leaving "the expansive middle area between unexplored". School Days instead encourages players to explore the grey, neutral middle-ground in order to view the more interesting, "bad" endings, e. g. an ending where a character dies or the main protagonist does not advance towards the flow of the story.
Kinetic novels
Kinetic novels are visual novels with non-branching plots, similar to a conventional novel or a graphic novel in multimedia form. Examples of kinetic novels include Higurashi When They Cry, Muv-Luv Alternative, and Digital: A Love Story. The term was first used by the publisher Key for their title Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet.RPG hybrids
There are role-playing video games that feature visual novel-style elements. A well-known example in the West is Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey, an RPG that features a series of visual novel-style flashback sequences called "A Thousand Years of Dreams". These sequences were penned by an award-winning Japanese short story writer, Kiyoshi Shigematsu. Another title is the Arc System Works fighting game series BlazBlue, which plays off of a complex fantasy setting where a one-hundred-year period is reset indefinitely with many variables. The many branching storylines in Story Mode can serve as stand-alone stories, but players must consider them together along with Arcade Mode stories to be able to fully understand the universe.Another successful example is Sega's Sakura Wars series, which combined tactical role-playing game combat with visual novel elements, introducing a branching choice system. The player's choice, or lack thereof, affects the player character's relationship with other characters and in turn the characters' performance in battle, the direction of the storyline, and the ending. Later games in the series added several variations, including an action gauge that can be raised up or down depending on the situation, and a gauge that the player can manipulate using the analog stick depending on the situation. The success of Sakura Wars led to a wave of games that combine role-playing and visual novel elements, including Thousand Arms, Riviera: The Promised Land, and Luminous Arc.