When you see a visual novel, what's your first impression?

[CrimsonMoon]

The first thing I notice is arts, then the summary of the story. If both of them appeal to me, then I download it. I don't like too much voice acting, but Yo-Jin-Bo was awesome to me, fully Japanese voiced. I haven't played one with English voice actors, though I probably won't like it much.

[Redmoonguardian]

The first thing i notice right away is the quality of the music then i start to focus on the art... and after that i start taking a close look at the story and the paths that the visual novel has... Also i have really high standarts about the music... *eheh*... because once a visual novel i downloaded had the music so fast and had a really weird rythm, and that music had nothing to do with the visual novel because it was about romance and the music was about... something i will never understand... :p -_- ...

[Broodelin]

I have to admit that I'm more into the story and concepts of visual novels rather than the actual visual part.

If it's an interesting concept/story or has characters I think would interact in interesting ways, I download it.

I never play with the sound on, so the music isn't an issue to me at all.

[MayPeX]

Characters and story are like the prime factors that I look for. Art is in the eye of the beer-holder, I never like to judge art because it's so objective that I will over look it. Not fair on the creator otherwise. Music can sway me, I normally judge it based on production value rather than it's style/genre. If it sounds good and captures the image on screen then it's a gold star.

However, if there's one thing that will make me smile is sound design. Whether it be ambiance of a space, a location. Sound effects of a door/table/chair, the lights flickered, glass smashing, explosions. Those things really hit home to me as little quirks. If you throw in some 50hz then you've won me over regardless of anything I've just said.

[fioricca]

I'm currently a bit overwhelmed by all the new projects that are being developed/have been developed, and my backlog is growing like the old Snake game. I've become more picky with what I play and these days the first thing I look at is the team -- is the project developed by people I know and those who are well established in the VN community? If not, is there a lot of hype of it, and are people excited about it?

I move on to art and presentation only after that. I'm a visually oriented person and I tend to gloss over writing unless they're in a style that appeals to me. As I'm fairly (really) busy, I don't have a lot of time to read chunks of text and prefer to gleam all the information I need to know through pictures or videos.

These days I prioritise games developed by people I know and interact regularly with on Twitter and so forth, like Autumn's Journey, Basiliska, or Obscura's CooT demo. The rest are pushed further back unless people talk about it so much that I become curious enough to play it (like Guardian's Spell)... otherwise, I'd have to be a rabid fan of your work, like if you're Donmai/saguaro/ludeshka (no order of preference).

I also find that websites/social media presence add a lot more credibility to your group and your project as a whole. Who you are matters about as much as what your project is. If I see a gigantic project with 5+ characters to romance and like 30 endings, and I don't know who you are, I'd assume that you're a newbie dev who might be a little too overconfident about your scope and capabilities.

[noeinan]

The first thing I notice is art. I look our for:

• What is the cast like? (Here, I consider whether female characters are respectfully dressed, whether or not everyone is white for no reason, etc.)
• Is the art high quality?

Then I look at the plot and see if it's interesting. For me, music and other stuff is lower priority, as I'm not particularly picky.

One of the most important things for me is also how well all of these things fit together. If you have really high quality character sprites, but GUI or background art that is considerably lower in quality that doesn't bode well. (Same with, say, high quality art with poor writing full of typos.)

[Taxi]

The first few minutes of the game is what will either hook me or drive me away. If it's too slow or doesn't establish interesting qualities in any characters/a conflict, I tend to quit. Art is less important but I'm of course more likely to find interest in games with high quality art.