I'm going to make a rather grandiose statement. The invention and release of Ren'Py is the single most important event that lead to the mainstreaming of English-language VNs. When it comes to...
Exemplary
I'm going to make a rather grandiose statement.
The invention and release of Ren'Py is the single most important event that lead to the mainstreaming of English-language VNs.
When it comes to programming skills and video games, making a VN is probably the easiest of any genre. But to be frank that's still a really large obstacle for most people. Ren'Py provided not only a complete framework, but a great set of defaults that will make their game look massively more professional than if they made their own from scratch, alongside nice-to-have extras like the ability for the player to skip text they've already read. And being built on Python you could publish your game for practically any system. Newer versions even let you run your game on web browsers.
Today there are more options to choose from, but it's still basically the premier choice for English language VNs.
In the same vein, Twine pretty much singlehandedly created a new wave of IF creators taking the game genre to new literary genres with new means of expression. It opened up new ways for communicating with players more than just plain text, and the fact that it targets browsers not only made it very easy to distribute, but also to experience; it opened up an audience who wouldn't normally be interested in the genre.
Both of these projects are so entwined with open-source ethos that I honestly can't imagine what it would be like if they were proprietary. If they were, would we have creators like Zoe Quinn and Christine Love today?
Oh absolutely. Yu-No in particular is one of the best VNs of all time, and I personally rank it pretty high in my ranking of literature. It got a remake available in the English language not too...
Oh absolutely. Yu-No in particular is one of the best VNs of all time, and I personally rank it pretty high in my ranking of literature. It got a remake available in the English language not too long ago; I gave some brief words about it a while back and long story short it's a pretty good remake. If you've never heard the name Ryo Umemoto, then it's worth getting just to listen to the soundtrack; it's the other thing this game is famous for.
I'm always amazed that people don't at least know about Doki Doki Literature Club because it got viral for a long time after it came on the scene. While I wouldn't say it's necessary, you might want to play some romance-oriented VNs before you play that game. Though honestly I think the game does a good enough job of introducing those characters that it's not really necessary to have knowledge of the archetypes they fulfill.
Edit: Not everything has to be romantic, of course. I'd also highly recommend Steins;Gate to anyone new to VNs, regardless if you have seen the anime already or not.
Interesting! What would you say it is about Yu-No that you liked better than other visual novels that you've read? (I may or may not have seen references to these before, but I don't remember...
Interesting! What would you say it is about Yu-No that you liked better than other visual novels that you've read?
(I may or may not have seen references to these before, but I don't remember anything specific about them, because I wasn't paying attention at the time.)
Well, I do happen to talk about it all the time here.... Aha.... There's quite a lot that I like about it, but the thing I like the most about it is that it has an extremely well developed time...
Well, I do happen to talk about it all the time here.... Aha....
There's quite a lot that I like about it, but the thing I like the most about it is that it has an extremely well developed time travel mechanic which makes it somewhat rigid and difficult to game. VNs - particular romantic/sexy types, will generally have you, the protagonist, go after a series of people and make some choices that will take you through those character's 'routes'. As a result most people tend to play those games in the completion mindset - you're not done with the game until you've played through all the character's routes (sometimes including bonus and joke endings). The better written ones will have you occasionally crossing paths with the characters who are not on your current route so that you gain interest in them as they come up, but the fact that you are dealing with the regular people in your life over the same time period makes it much more realistic, especially when you see them sneaking around doing things they probably shouldn't be. The fantastic part of this contrivance is that even through there are different routes to travel down, it's still one complete whole; everything that happens is cannon, even when they conflict with eachother.
Yu-No's time travel mechanic means that all of the routes are happening at once, and that can account for both some really subtle storytelling techniques as well as some very complex character writing. One of the more interesting characters you can romance is your classmate, Mio, whom I can write half a novel just talking about how complex her feelings are for the player character. One of the things that I really love about the system, though, is that there are some things that are said without actually talking about them. For instance, you have an ex-girlfriend Mitsuki who has her own route and you can romance her, but there's no way to avoid an unhappy ending if you go down that route. But if you go down just about any other route, you'll have a moment with her where she'll help you out with your social problems and you'll see her as being genuinely happy. The entire time travel mechanic exists as a lesson about the importance of your decisions and the impact that you can have by persisting towards your goal.
Another thing that I really appreciate is that your player character is perhaps the most realistically written teenager ever written. He is smart, but not driven enough to accomplish anything (the time period you play in is summer school, which you exclusively blow off at every chance). He thinks he can win in a fight, but doesn't actually have any experience and fails when he actually gets to blows. And although he isn't actually a virgin, he's incredibly immature when it comes to women and sexuality. The story as a whole is basically a fantasy-wrapped coming-of-age story where the main character learns what it means to be a man.
I'll also warn you that it's kind of crazy, especially towards the end. One of the reasons why I'm actually kind of grateful that none of the remakes include sex is because the last two or three times it happens, it's very... problematic. I choose to view those as symbolic rather than literal. To be honest, you really need to understand the symbolism to get the most out of the ending or else you'll just be left confused.
Finally, it's got one of Ryu Umemoto's most memorable soundtracks. It's worth playing just for that.
Short answer: a text-heavy, typically romance-focused (sometimes erotic) video game genre employing mostly static images. I suppose you could imagine visual novels as glorified slideshows if you...
Short answer: a text-heavy, typically romance-focused (sometimes erotic) video game genre employing mostly static images. I suppose you could imagine visual novels as glorified slideshows if you want to make enemies with /u/Akir.
This is what turns me off of the genre. I just tend not to enjoy those things mixed with my media (be it books, movies, tv, or games). Are there any less horny takes on the genre out there worth...
typically romance-focused (sometimes erotic) video game genre
This is what turns me off of the genre. I just tend not to enjoy those things mixed with my media (be it books, movies, tv, or games). Are there any less horny takes on the genre out there worth checking out? Closest thing to it I've played was "To The Moon", which was very light on mechanics and heavy on story. I absolutely loved it though.
I'm not even sure most visual novels are of the romantic/erotic kind[1]. This is the /r/visualnovels recommendation website: https://sites.google.com/view/rvisualnovels-recs/. [1] EDIT: although I...
Are there any less horny takes on the genre out there worth checking out?
I'm not even sure most visual novels are of the romantic/erotic kind[1].
Honestly, you probably shouldn't dismiss games for having adult content in them. Sure, there are low quality games that are more 'fanservice' than gameplay, but there are a lot of games you might...
Honestly, you probably shouldn't dismiss games for having adult content in them. Sure, there are low quality games that are more 'fanservice' than gameplay, but there are a lot of games you might find surprisingly good that have sexual content in them.
Heck, the first God Of War game had a ton of female nudity and even had a QTE style sex minigame at the beginning, and most people consider that to be a classic.
But I get it. I'm not attracted to the female form, so I also groan whenever I see that kind of content. That kind of thing is more likely to make me skip it, too. It takes a lot of convincing about how good it is otherwise before I play that kind of game.
On the other hand, adult VNs are one of the few places where you're likely to get completely frank talks about real adult relationships and how sex plays into them. It turns a relationship from "lets get married some day" to "I will show you who I am at my most vulnerable because I am willing to give you a level of trust that I can't give to anyone else." It's heartfelt on a completely new level.
That's not to say that there aren't some that are just excuses to make porn, though.
I don't mind nudity or sex scenes here and there, but at a certain point it's just like...if you want to make porn, just make porn. I'm not like clutching my pearls at there being gratuitous...
I don't mind nudity or sex scenes here and there, but at a certain point it's just like...if you want to make porn, just make porn. I'm not like clutching my pearls at there being gratuitous nudity or sex in things, I just don't have any interest in that being so heavily mixed in with my escapism.
I understand and fully agree with you. I just don't want you to miss out on something you might appreciate when there's more to the package than the cheap thrills of porn.
I understand and fully agree with you. I just don't want you to miss out on something you might appreciate when there's more to the package than the cheap thrills of porn.
The Echo Project's novels are all pretty good in this regard. I rather appreciated the variety of meaningful sex in the original Yu-No (since the remakes all cut those parts out); each encounter...
The Echo Project's novels are all pretty good in this regard. I rather appreciated the variety of meaningful sex in the original Yu-No (since the remakes all cut those parts out); each encounter has their own set of meaningfulness, and one of them can probably even be better described as transactional. They're not always wholesome in that game. And while I haven't personally played it, I've heard very good things about Welcome to Pia Carrot!!
That's awesome I'll download some of those. Thanks. Let me make another related question: is it common for visual novels to allow for multiple sexual orientations in the same game? I may be wrong,...
That's awesome I'll download some of those. Thanks.
Let me make another related question: is it common for visual novels to allow for multiple sexual orientations in the same game? I may be wrong, but my cursory understanding is that they're generally somewhat segmented.
In other words, are there VNs in which the player defines an orientation through their choices in the course of a game?
They aren't terribly common, but because there are a lot more queer creators these days there are some options out there. The only one I am aware of at the moment, though, is Arcade Spirits, but I...
They aren't terribly common, but because there are a lot more queer creators these days there are some options out there. The only one I am aware of at the moment, though, is Arcade Spirits, but I don't believe that it has any sexual content. While I have still not managed to finish a playthrough, I will still recommend playing it. It's a very healing experience.
In any case, if you're the type to 100% your games, you might not be very happy with that type of gameplay. Regardless of genre, I have heard from a fair number of players that they don't like them because they consider them to be "horny bisexuality simulators" rather than true representations of what it's like to be gay.
That's interesting. It is great that the LGBT audience has found this way to express their romanticism and sexuality. Personally, I find it difficult to engage with visual novels where I'm...
That's interesting. It is great that the LGBT audience has found this way to express their romanticism and sexuality. Personally, I find it difficult to engage with visual novels where I'm supposed to seduce a dude :P
I thought there would be a bunch of visual novels with multiple orientations because that's an easy way to broaden the appeal of a product, but I guess not.
I imagine that is more the territory of mainstream commercial visual novels, but I don't really like them that much to pay a premium. They're not particularly cheap in my region and currency.
I just started playing the demo for a visual novel about romancing charming plus-size women called A Whole Lot to Love. It is seemingly not overly erotic, but super sweet and romantic. Without sharing more details than is needed, let's just say it ticks more than a few of my boxes lol. The tiny slender characters commonly featured in Japanese and Japan-adjacent culture are not really my cup of tea...
I'll probably get it when it is fully released, even if it is not free.
Keep in mind that VNs are literature. And do you know what you call literature that is really general and unspecific? You call them boring. Literature is all about learning about these interesting...
I thought there would be a bunch of visual novels with multiple orientations because that's an easy way to broaden the appeal of a product, but I guess not.
Keep in mind that VNs are literature. And do you know what you call literature that is really general and unspecific? You call them boring. Literature is all about learning about these interesting people, places, and things. If anyone can be anything, it's just not that interesting. So when you're looking for VNs, just like any other type of literature, dig into those niches!
If you want some good games about lesbians, check out Christine Love's work. Her earlier work was more vague, where the character's sexuality was kind of in the background, but her last two games are unapologitically lesbian affairs. And even though I'm clearly not in that audience, I still admire that she's making this kind of work. Sure, there are a lot of lesbian VNs, but AFAIK there aren't a ton of them that are explicitly for lesbians and not for straight men.
To be fair, that's what I'd call 99.99% of the visual novels I've been encountering as well. However, your point stands. Yeah, I may find lesbian love more endearing. Maybe. It's a shame that...
Keep in mind that VNs are literature. And do you know what you call literature that is really general and unspecific? You call them boring.
To be fair, that's what I'd call 99.99% of the visual novels I've been encountering as well. However, your point stands.
Yeah, I may find lesbian love more endearing. Maybe. It's a shame that there's not as much romanticism for straight dudes. Some of us enjoy romcoms :P. Any recommendations?
Straight dudes are generally the most well served audience! There are tons of options for you. Sadly I'm possibly the worst one to ask that question to because I've got the opposite problem. You...
Straight dudes are generally the most well served audience! There are tons of options for you. Sadly I'm possibly the worst one to ask that question to because I've got the opposite problem. You may have noticed how I basically forgot you guys existed for a minute there. :P
Tokimeki Memorial is a classic for a reason, so I'd probably look into that one first. It's also going to be a bit different than a lot of games because it's technically in a sister genre; you'll have to manage your player character's stats and also deal with some RNG.
I think I mentioned to someone else, I haven't personally played it but I have heard great things about Welcome to Pia Carrot!!
I recommend everyone to play Yu-No, but it's also probably not exactly what you're looking for either.
Oh, I agree with you! I should have been more clear that I'm talking about visual novels you can get easily for free. Commercial VNs seem totally different!
Straight dudes are generally the most well-served audience!
Oh, I agree with you! I should have been more clear that I'm talking about visual novels you can get easily for free. Commercial VNs seem totally different!
In that case check out itch.io. There are tons of independent VN projects out there and I’m sure that you will find some pretty good quality ones out there. Just be warned that some of them are...
In that case check out itch.io. There are tons of independent VN projects out there and I’m sure that you will find some pretty good quality ones out there. Just be warned that some of them are ongoing projects, so read those descriptions carefully.
This is a tangent, but your message prompted me to write a bit about choice in storytelling: I agree that specifics make stories better. One of the reasons I read is to find out about what life is...
This is a tangent, but your message prompted me to write a bit about choice in storytelling:
I agree that specifics make stories better. One of the reasons I read is to find out about what life is like from other perspectives. I think that's why we often value "realism" in fiction, even though it's mostly made up.
However, storytelling of the escapist variety often does the opposite. The protagonist is often a vague person, the better to be easily identified with. (And sometimes, the characteristics they have are there for wish fulfillment: they're not like you, they're better.)
A story that caters overly to audience taste acts more like a (vague, distorted) mirror than a window. Authors tell stories based on what they assume the audience wants. A story that's supposedly set in some specific Japanese time and place can be so unrealistic that we don't learn much about what it was like.
Or at least, not directly. If the assumed audience is a different culture (like with anime and manga, for me) then that can make it interesting, because the mirror is pointed in a different, unfamiliar direction. But it can be limiting too. Anime is usually targeted towards Japanese teens and young adults, and though I haven't read or watched as much as many fans, some audience assumptions are over-familiar to me. Besides, I've aged out.
Telling a story in the first person doesn't necessarily mean you're supposed to identify with the protagonist. The story can be set up so they're writing to an assumed (fictional) audience. But with games, the combination of first-person and being able to make choices for that one character are typically intended to encourage identification. If you were them, what choice would you make?
An author who chooses not to write escapist fiction might decide not to tell their story in the first person, making it more clearly someone else's story, not yours. If they were to choose "A," what might happen? After seeing what happens, maybe you get a better understanding of why they would be so reluctant to choose "A." So, undo.
When the reader makes a decision, we don't learn anything about how the character would make it, because we've taken the choice away from them. (Maybe they wouldn't choose "A.") Instead, you learn something about their cultural and environmental constraints.
An author can even use game choices to illustrate that the character had no good choices at all. That's more grim than escapist, though. A lack of agency is a bummer.
Choosing how much to cater to an audience is a balance. You want enough that people will keep reading or watching, but not so much that it obscures whatever glimmers of reality that they're curious about.
Visual Novel, generally an image based story usually voiced and with some interactive elements like choices and routes. Also with subgenres such as dating simulators. Check VNDB for information.
Visual Novel, generally an image based story usually voiced and with some interactive elements like choices and routes. Also with subgenres such as dating simulators. Check VNDB for information.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors can be considered a visual novel escape room game. It's very popular. Great puzzles for those that like puzzles. Ace Attorney and Professor Layton may also be...
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors can be considered a visual novel escape room game. It's very popular. Great puzzles for those that like puzzles.
Ace Attorney and Professor Layton may also be considered visual novels, but some disagree with that classification.
However, most visual novels are not like those. They're rather more novel than game.
It's a broad format, including "subgenres" such as: "Telltale in 2D", "almost an RPG", and "basically advancing text for 10 hours straight". The majority is seemingly in the later group.
The visual novel engine industry has had strong open source options almost from day one, at least in Japan. I am more amazed that the English audience has grown around Ren'Py rather than translate...
The visual novel engine industry has had strong open source options almost from day one, at least in Japan. I am more amazed that the English audience has grown around Ren'Py rather than translate Kirikiri. Maybe Tyrano arrived too late? English still second class? Either way, always makes me wonder.
I had no idea that Kirikiri was open source. In any case, it takes a lot of effort to run an open source project with people who speak different languages. Perhaps the original author didn't have...
I had no idea that Kirikiri was open source. In any case, it takes a lot of effort to run an open source project with people who speak different languages. Perhaps the original author didn't have very good English skills and didn't want to have to deal with the additional stress of an international audience? I remember looking it up in the past and I couldn't find any official documentation that wasn't in Japanese. Now that I think about it, I think there was also issues with Kirikiri games needing you to set your windows to a Japanese locale in order to get it to display text correctly, so I don't know if the engine ever supported Unicode.
I searched for Kirikiri documentation and found a website in English. Looks as easy as Ren'Py. However, in just a few seconds I encountered multiple sections still in Japanese.
I'm going to make a rather grandiose statement.
The invention and release of Ren'Py is the single most important event that lead to the mainstreaming of English-language VNs.
When it comes to programming skills and video games, making a VN is probably the easiest of any genre. But to be frank that's still a really large obstacle for most people. Ren'Py provided not only a complete framework, but a great set of defaults that will make their game look massively more professional than if they made their own from scratch, alongside nice-to-have extras like the ability for the player to skip text they've already read. And being built on Python you could publish your game for practically any system. Newer versions even let you run your game on web browsers.
Today there are more options to choose from, but it's still basically the premier choice for English language VNs.
In the same vein, Twine pretty much singlehandedly created a new wave of IF creators taking the game genre to new literary genres with new means of expression. It opened up new ways for communicating with players more than just plain text, and the fact that it targets browsers not only made it very easy to distribute, but also to experience; it opened up an audience who wouldn't normally be interested in the genre.
Both of these projects are so entwined with open-source ethos that I honestly can't imagine what it would be like if they were proprietary. If they were, would we have creators like Zoe Quinn and Christine Love today?
What does 'VN' mean?
Visual Novel. Think Yuno or Katawa Shojo or Doki Doki Literature Club.
I haven’t played any of those. Would you recommend them?
Oh absolutely. Yu-No in particular is one of the best VNs of all time, and I personally rank it pretty high in my ranking of literature. It got a remake available in the English language not too long ago; I gave some brief words about it a while back and long story short it's a pretty good remake. If you've never heard the name Ryo Umemoto, then it's worth getting just to listen to the soundtrack; it's the other thing this game is famous for.
I'm always amazed that people don't at least know about Doki Doki Literature Club because it got viral for a long time after it came on the scene. While I wouldn't say it's necessary, you might want to play some romance-oriented VNs before you play that game. Though honestly I think the game does a good enough job of introducing those characters that it's not really necessary to have knowledge of the archetypes they fulfill.
Edit: Not everything has to be romantic, of course. I'd also highly recommend Steins;Gate to anyone new to VNs, regardless if you have seen the anime already or not.
Interesting! What would you say it is about Yu-No that you liked better than other visual novels that you've read?
(I may or may not have seen references to these before, but I don't remember anything specific about them, because I wasn't paying attention at the time.)
Well, I do happen to talk about it all the time here.... Aha....
There's quite a lot that I like about it, but the thing I like the most about it is that it has an extremely well developed time travel mechanic which makes it somewhat rigid and difficult to game. VNs - particular romantic/sexy types, will generally have you, the protagonist, go after a series of people and make some choices that will take you through those character's 'routes'. As a result most people tend to play those games in the completion mindset - you're not done with the game until you've played through all the character's routes (sometimes including bonus and joke endings). The better written ones will have you occasionally crossing paths with the characters who are not on your current route so that you gain interest in them as they come up, but the fact that you are dealing with the regular people in your life over the same time period makes it much more realistic, especially when you see them sneaking around doing things they probably shouldn't be. The fantastic part of this contrivance is that even through there are different routes to travel down, it's still one complete whole; everything that happens is cannon, even when they conflict with eachother.
Yu-No's time travel mechanic means that all of the routes are happening at once, and that can account for both some really subtle storytelling techniques as well as some very complex character writing. One of the more interesting characters you can romance is your classmate, Mio, whom I can write half a novel just talking about how complex her feelings are for the player character. One of the things that I really love about the system, though, is that there are some things that are said without actually talking about them. For instance, you have an ex-girlfriend Mitsuki who has her own route and you can romance her, but there's no way to avoid an unhappy ending if you go down that route. But if you go down just about any other route, you'll have a moment with her where she'll help you out with your social problems and you'll see her as being genuinely happy. The entire time travel mechanic exists as a lesson about the importance of your decisions and the impact that you can have by persisting towards your goal.
Another thing that I really appreciate is that your player character is perhaps the most realistically written teenager ever written. He is smart, but not driven enough to accomplish anything (the time period you play in is summer school, which you exclusively blow off at every chance). He thinks he can win in a fight, but doesn't actually have any experience and fails when he actually gets to blows. And although he isn't actually a virgin, he's incredibly immature when it comes to women and sexuality. The story as a whole is basically a fantasy-wrapped coming-of-age story where the main character learns what it means to be a man.
I'll also warn you that it's kind of crazy, especially towards the end. One of the reasons why I'm actually kind of grateful that none of the remakes include sex is because the last two or three times it happens, it's very... problematic. I choose to view those as symbolic rather than literal. To be honest, you really need to understand the symbolism to get the most out of the ending or else you'll just be left confused.
Finally, it's got one of Ryu Umemoto's most memorable soundtracks. It's worth playing just for that.
Short answer: a text-heavy, typically romance-focused (sometimes erotic) video game genre employing mostly static images. I suppose you could imagine visual novels as glorified slideshows if you want to make enemies with /u/Akir.
Long answer: ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS Tokimeki Memorial.
This is what turns me off of the genre. I just tend not to enjoy those things mixed with my media (be it books, movies, tv, or games). Are there any less horny takes on the genre out there worth checking out? Closest thing to it I've played was "To The Moon", which was very light on mechanics and heavy on story. I absolutely loved it though.
I'm not even sure most visual novels are of the romantic/erotic kind[1].
This is the /r/visualnovels recommendation website: https://sites.google.com/view/rvisualnovels-recs/.
[1] EDIT: although I do believe they're the majority among the fan-made non-commercial ones.
Honestly, you probably shouldn't dismiss games for having adult content in them. Sure, there are low quality games that are more 'fanservice' than gameplay, but there are a lot of games you might find surprisingly good that have sexual content in them.
Heck, the first God Of War game had a ton of female nudity and even had a QTE style sex minigame at the beginning, and most people consider that to be a classic.
But I get it. I'm not attracted to the female form, so I also groan whenever I see that kind of content. That kind of thing is more likely to make me skip it, too. It takes a lot of convincing about how good it is otherwise before I play that kind of game.
On the other hand, adult VNs are one of the few places where you're likely to get completely frank talks about real adult relationships and how sex plays into them. It turns a relationship from "lets get married some day" to "I will show you who I am at my most vulnerable because I am willing to give you a level of trust that I can't give to anyone else." It's heartfelt on a completely new level.
That's not to say that there aren't some that are just excuses to make porn, though.
I don't mind nudity or sex scenes here and there, but at a certain point it's just like...if you want to make porn, just make porn. I'm not like clutching my pearls at there being gratuitous nudity or sex in things, I just don't have any interest in that being so heavily mixed in with my escapism.
I understand and fully agree with you. I just don't want you to miss out on something you might appreciate when there's more to the package than the cheap thrills of porn.
What are some erotic visual novels with a mature approach to sex and relationships?
The Echo Project's novels are all pretty good in this regard. I rather appreciated the variety of meaningful sex in the original Yu-No (since the remakes all cut those parts out); each encounter has their own set of meaningfulness, and one of them can probably even be better described as transactional. They're not always wholesome in that game. And while I haven't personally played it, I've heard very good things about Welcome to Pia Carrot!!
That's awesome I'll download some of those. Thanks.
Let me make another related question: is it common for visual novels to allow for multiple sexual orientations in the same game? I may be wrong, but my cursory understanding is that they're generally somewhat segmented.
In other words, are there VNs in which the player defines an orientation through their choices in the course of a game?
They aren't terribly common, but because there are a lot more queer creators these days there are some options out there. The only one I am aware of at the moment, though, is Arcade Spirits, but I don't believe that it has any sexual content. While I have still not managed to finish a playthrough, I will still recommend playing it. It's a very healing experience.
In any case, if you're the type to 100% your games, you might not be very happy with that type of gameplay. Regardless of genre, I have heard from a fair number of players that they don't like them because they consider them to be "horny bisexuality simulators" rather than true representations of what it's like to be gay.
That's interesting. It is great that the LGBT audience has found this way to express their romanticism and sexuality. Personally, I find it difficult to engage with visual novels where I'm supposed to seduce a dude :P
I thought there would be a bunch of visual novels with multiple orientations because that's an easy way to broaden the appeal of a product, but I guess not.
I imagine that is more the territory of mainstream commercial visual novels, but I don't really like them that much to pay a premium. They're not particularly cheap in my region and currency.
I just started playing the demo for a visual novel about romancing charming plus-size women called A Whole Lot to Love. It is seemingly not overly erotic, but super sweet and romantic. Without sharing more details than is needed, let's just say it ticks more than a few of my boxes lol. The tiny slender characters commonly featured in Japanese and Japan-adjacent culture are not really my cup of tea...
I'll probably get it when it is fully released, even if it is not free.
Keep in mind that VNs are literature. And do you know what you call literature that is really general and unspecific? You call them boring. Literature is all about learning about these interesting people, places, and things. If anyone can be anything, it's just not that interesting. So when you're looking for VNs, just like any other type of literature, dig into those niches!
If you want some good games about lesbians, check out Christine Love's work. Her earlier work was more vague, where the character's sexuality was kind of in the background, but her last two games are unapologitically lesbian affairs. And even though I'm clearly not in that audience, I still admire that she's making this kind of work. Sure, there are a lot of lesbian VNs, but AFAIK there aren't a ton of them that are explicitly for lesbians and not for straight men.
To be fair, that's what I'd call 99.99% of the visual novels I've been encountering as well. However, your point stands.
Yeah, I may find lesbian love more endearing. Maybe. It's a shame that there's not as much romanticism for straight dudes. Some of us enjoy romcoms :P. Any recommendations?
Straight dudes are generally the most well served audience! There are tons of options for you. Sadly I'm possibly the worst one to ask that question to because I've got the opposite problem. You may have noticed how I basically forgot you guys existed for a minute there. :P
Tokimeki Memorial is a classic for a reason, so I'd probably look into that one first. It's also going to be a bit different than a lot of games because it's technically in a sister genre; you'll have to manage your player character's stats and also deal with some RNG.
I think I mentioned to someone else, I haven't personally played it but I have heard great things about Welcome to Pia Carrot!!
I recommend everyone to play Yu-No, but it's also probably not exactly what you're looking for either.
Honestly, just check out VNDB. Here's a search for the top rated VNs tagged with Romance with a male protagonist and an English release - It does technically include gay romances but since it's listed by rating it's not terribly likely you'll find many of them without going down a page or two.
Oh, I agree with you! I should have been more clear that I'm talking about visual novels you can get easily for free. Commercial VNs seem totally different!
In that case check out itch.io. There are tons of independent VN projects out there and I’m sure that you will find some pretty good quality ones out there. Just be warned that some of them are ongoing projects, so read those descriptions carefully.
This is a tangent, but your message prompted me to write a bit about choice in storytelling:
I agree that specifics make stories better. One of the reasons I read is to find out about what life is like from other perspectives. I think that's why we often value "realism" in fiction, even though it's mostly made up.
However, storytelling of the escapist variety often does the opposite. The protagonist is often a vague person, the better to be easily identified with. (And sometimes, the characteristics they have are there for wish fulfillment: they're not like you, they're better.)
A story that caters overly to audience taste acts more like a (vague, distorted) mirror than a window. Authors tell stories based on what they assume the audience wants. A story that's supposedly set in some specific Japanese time and place can be so unrealistic that we don't learn much about what it was like.
Or at least, not directly. If the assumed audience is a different culture (like with anime and manga, for me) then that can make it interesting, because the mirror is pointed in a different, unfamiliar direction. But it can be limiting too. Anime is usually targeted towards Japanese teens and young adults, and though I haven't read or watched as much as many fans, some audience assumptions are over-familiar to me. Besides, I've aged out.
Telling a story in the first person doesn't necessarily mean you're supposed to identify with the protagonist. The story can be set up so they're writing to an assumed (fictional) audience. But with games, the combination of first-person and being able to make choices for that one character are typically intended to encourage identification. If you were them, what choice would you make?
An author who chooses not to write escapist fiction might decide not to tell their story in the first person, making it more clearly someone else's story, not yours. If they were to choose "A," what might happen? After seeing what happens, maybe you get a better understanding of why they would be so reluctant to choose "A." So, undo.
When the reader makes a decision, we don't learn anything about how the character would make it, because we've taken the choice away from them. (Maybe they wouldn't choose "A.") Instead, you learn something about their cultural and environmental constraints.
An author can even use game choices to illustrate that the character had no good choices at all. That's more grim than escapist, though. A lack of agency is a bummer.
Choosing how much to cater to an audience is a balance. You want enough that people will keep reading or watching, but not so much that it obscures whatever glimmers of reality that they're curious about.
Visual Novel, generally an image based story usually voiced and with some interactive elements like choices and routes. Also with subgenres such as dating simulators. Check VNDB for information.
Are they related to “escape the room” games? It seems like a similar game engine would work.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors can be considered a visual novel escape room game. It's very popular. Great puzzles for those that like puzzles.
Ace Attorney and Professor Layton may also be considered visual novels, but some disagree with that classification.
However, most visual novels are not like those. They're rather more novel than game.
It's a broad format, including "subgenres" such as: "Telltale in 2D", "almost an RPG", and "basically advancing text for 10 hours straight". The majority is seemingly in the later group.
The visual novel engine industry has had strong open source options almost from day one, at least in Japan. I am more amazed that the English audience has grown around Ren'Py rather than translate Kirikiri. Maybe Tyrano arrived too late? English still second class? Either way, always makes me wonder.
I had no idea that Kirikiri was open source. In any case, it takes a lot of effort to run an open source project with people who speak different languages. Perhaps the original author didn't have very good English skills and didn't want to have to deal with the additional stress of an international audience? I remember looking it up in the past and I couldn't find any official documentation that wasn't in Japanese. Now that I think about it, I think there was also issues with Kirikiri games needing you to set your windows to a Japanese locale in order to get it to display text correctly, so I don't know if the engine ever supported Unicode.
I searched for Kirikiri documentation and found a website in English. Looks as easy as Ren'Py. However, in just a few seconds I encountered multiple sections still in Japanese.