Visual Novel collections

[Tentacles]

I'm finding I'm more of a short story writer than a novel writer, but all my stories are set in the same city and have similar things. Sometimes characters cross over, as in my novella Voreth's Promise Saga.

Are there any games out there to study from in how to construct a visual novel style story collection?

The problem I'm facing now in my old work to some degree, and more so now is that my stories don't work as novels, but don't really stand alone as true flash fiction. There are to many family members or school friends of the MC that cross over at times.

As in the case of a story collection that is about a single family tree, but each chapter is a self-contained character arc about the themes of reconstructing self identity during a time of familial hardship.

This is also why I have a hard time finding a genre, as each story has a different genre 'style'. By this I mean I don't write romance, mystery, or medical thrillers as an example. Rather I have a character who happens to be a psychologist in his job life we never see, and his brother a crime scene detective in a job we never see, who falls in love with university teacher who is concerned about her troubled student who sees ghosts.

For those unfamiliar, flash fiction is fiction under 1,000 words. Hope that clarifies things.

If I were to get back into visual novels (I want to), I'd have to grapple with different issues than when I was trying to come out with science fiction horror vn shorts.

Edit: A good example is how in my dystopian, they weren't trying to overthrow the power. Rather the plot was focused on mind and body dissonance among social outcasts in the future, and the lack of treatment for conditions among the poor.

[Ozitiho]

That's a tough one. If there are any VN like that, I've never played one. Though it does sound really fun, I'd imagine it comes with way more assets than anyone can handle. But I'm sure you've got a plan for that. Anyway, I can't provide any great examples. But there are things you can research that might help anyway.

I have but one example. "Katahane" features a cast of give or take 8 characters. Each of them are on one big "adventure" but they all have their own unique motivations. The story features a huge amount of switching between POV to tell the same story from a different angle and revealing new bits of plot related to the character. (18+ warning, tho only a little bit)

[somestrangecircus]

I have a sort of idea...Can your stories be read in any order? If so, you could have a choice at the very beginning that lets the player pick which one they want to read, then they read it through, then they get taken back to the main menu and can pick another story.

I was actually thinking about this concept myself recently and how to make it work, so I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts!

[sbester]

I use 6 main characters in my series, each telling their own separate tales, but they do eventually all tie together, so I can't say there isn't an overaching plot...

There are some similarities. Each of my novels is 24 chapters long, so each character gets 4 chapters to themselves. It switches back and forth though, so a character's 4 chapters are not consecutively told. Maybe if you were able to switch it up like that (in a chronologically sound way), that may help your VN to feel more cohesive?