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Visual novel fans?
Anyone else play visual novels? If you don't know what they are, it's like an interactive story with pictures and sometimes player choice. People called Bandersnatch a kind of visual novel!
I got into them by playing Katawa Shoujo, which is astonishingly well-written and empathetic and funny. Recently I played Don't Forget Our Esports Dream, about two Starcraft pro gamers trying to chase their dreams while facing the realities of their lives. I love how it talks about the soul of esports, and if you ever played Starcraft, this game will bring back all the memories. What visual novels do other people recommend?
I've only played Katawa Shoujo, and that was a few years back at the height of its popularity.
I remember trying to find other visual novels that met the quality level set by that game (in my mind) to no avail.
The characters were so captivating and the game put you in a lot of uncomfortable situations. It was such a rollercoaster ride and it had a profound effect on my teenage years.
Agreed to you and annadane! The first chapter has so many meaningful player choices, it's incredible. And every character has their own great set of chapters. I haven't found another visual novel that does that either, but I can recommend Paul "Cataphrak" Wang's Guns of Infinity, an interactive novel, as a game with fantastic worldbuilding, characters, and an amazing amount of significant player choice.
OH MY GOSH! You just reminded me of choiceofgames, which I used to be absolutely OBSESSED with a couple years back... thank you!!
I will check out Guns of Infinity.
Life of a Wizard and Way Walkers: University are my favorite games made with the engine. I recommend them if you haven't already checked them out :)
Life of a Wizard is very fun and plays more like a text based rpg more than a novel. It's light on the reading and more fun to play through multiple times.
On the other hand, Way Walkers University is very wordy, lore rich and immersive. It's more like a you play it once and digest it afterwords, admiring how well written it is.
edit: I fixed the links thanks to advice from rfr! thank you!
Thanks for the links! I'm noticing a magical theme :) Guns of Infinity has RPG elements while still having very detailed writing -- I hope you enjoy!
A parody is a type of comedy, which I would argue DDLC doesn't quite fit the mould.
+1 for Christine Love though. I like her style so much I wish I could be a lesbian to get the full experience of Ladykiller in a Bind. I personally think that Analog: A Hate Story is her best.
I've got a few to recommend. I'll start with the most recent ones I would recommend, and that would be the three Danganronpa games. It's an extremely quirky series with gameplay that I would describe as "Detective-themed VN has a lovechild with a book of logic puzzles who grows up to be a shooter". It's got extremely cartoonish aesthetic which will probably turn off a lot of people at first, but it's also got a lot of depth underneath it to reward you for sticking with it. These games are not only good for VNs, they're pretty high up in my list of best games of all time.
That being said, there is one VN that I think everyone should play, and that is YU-NO. Yes, it's a porn game; and yes, it has some extremely problematic content in it, but please give it a chance; It has the absolute craziest story you will ever experience. It's so epic that we are still seeing VNs being released today that draw inspiration from it. It's a story where you receive a package from your missing father which contains a time machine. It has a unique take on time travel that allows you to go on branching paths, which you will need in order to get all the character endings, which is also the only way to get the true ending that wraps up all the plot threads.
It's also got a killer soundtrack from the late Ryu Umemoto. Frankly, it's worth playing just for that.
Haven't played YU-NO but always hear the name, so it's high on my wishlist when the remake comes out in the West this year. Presumably the remake will be an All Ages version since it'll be on Switch, PS4, Steam.
It's a great time for anime visual novels. Close to half of the top 10, top 25 VNs on VNDB sorted by rating have official English translations and easily available for purchase on Steam and other stores.
I'm thrilled that CLANNAD is coming to Nintendo Switch as it's one of my all-time favorites and a timeless classic for good reason. Don't let the high school setting fool you, it tells a really emotional and memorable story, and has important things to say about life and adulthood.
I'm a huge fan of the Zero Escape series: 999, Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma. (ZTD doesn't hold up compared to the first 2, but I liked it well enough.)
They are visual novels with escape the room puzzles thrown in. They take the branching paths of visual novels, and use that to create narratives that couldn't be told in any other medium. Without revealing too much, you can jump around to different branches in the story tree, and use information gleaned in certain paths to open up puzzles in other paths. What really impresses me is that even with this non-linear structure, they are actually incredibly well-told and well-paced mystery stories (ZTD somewhat notwithstanding). Virtue's Last Reward in particular is a crazy, fun, dark and certainly well-realized sci-fi mystery. Maybe my favorite game on the 3DS.
Katawa Shoujo is still fantastic.
Thanks for the link! My first impression is that it the premise sounds similar to Yahtzee's Chzo Mythos, which I loved. I'll be sure to play this when I have time!