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Hello all, as I venture into the world of VNs I have many questions pop up. Mostly about gameplay in VNs. I have played games for quite some time and am only now discovering a few that I have played could be called VNs when I would not have thought of it! Specifically Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk for the DS.

So my question is, what types of gameplay can commonly be found in VNs? And when does it stop being a VN and turn into a different genre of game- Hotel Dusk for example is argued to be a point-and-click adventure game more than a VN. What gameplay in VNs do you like, if any?

I myself am finding I need some type of gameplay to enjoy a vn. Right now I am playing through Roommates and Dramatical Murder. Dramatical Murder was highly recommended and Roommates was just one I picked up to entertain myself at my part time job. Yet I am enjoying roommates more than Dramatical Murder due to the weekly planner and statistics management.

The reason there's such confusion between VNs and other genres is because genre tags usually give information about a game's gameplay characteristics, whereas a VN is a tag denoting a specific kind of storytelling technique.

Take adventure games and visual novels for example. An adventure game is traditionally any which has a) exploration, b) puzzles (dialogue, environmental, logic etc,) and c) a story. A visual novel denotes a story which a) has background images depicting every scene (as opposed to flavour images or none at all,) b) choices in the story and not the gameplay, and c) a novel narrative.

Now you can see that narrative is a critical part of an adventure game, and it's quite possible for that narrative to be in a visual novel format. Confusion comes when you treat the Visual Novel tag similarly to how you treat gameplay tags. It should be a tag used to denote the way a story is presented in a game.

As for me, I'm enthralled by the notion of "choice and consequence," the notion that your character can make very real decisions which affect the story. Most visual novels don't emphasise this, and so I find myself playing more Sims and RPGs than pure VNs.

I like whatever gameplay is done well and is integrated into the concept of the game rather than just pasted in.
Magical Diary has a 3D dungeon crawling section! And it works really well for the concept of the game.

I just want whatever you do to be done intentionally, thoughtfully, and well. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to boundaries. I'll try most anything. I won't get into a huff because your dating sim only has one love interest and I demand a harem, or because your point-and-click adventure had a punch-em-up section, or your RPG doesn't use levels or classes. I'm open to lots of possibilities. There are few things I don't enjoy (though things I don't enjoy do exist)...so make what you want to make and make it well. If it is really well made, I'll probably like it even if it is in one of my least favorite genres.

Pretty much anything, I really don't mind. Unless it's a bullet hell shooter.. I'm bad at those.

PeachPlumPear wrote: I myself am finding I need some type of gameplay to enjoy a VN.

I'm largely the same way.

I need gameplay that is fun in and of itself to really enjoy most VNs. Though this is partly due to a lot of VNs not having a story that is paced well or that holds attention on its on.

But I'm also weird: specifically I find pure VNs lacking as a medium to tell stories with. I've always felt they are a piece hacked from a greater whole - i.e. the same graphics, backgrounds, text boxes, and choices existed first in other game mediums like RPGs. Pure VNs feel a la carte to me. Just a part of a meal.

My first experience with VN-style games were the Dating Sims of the 1990s. The first I played was True Love'95. Ironically, as time progressed, it seemed each game I played was more and more simple. It was breath of fresh air to me when indie creator's like Papillon and Jack Norton starting adding those missing elements back in.

I'm not picky about the type of gameplay - just that it is fun and compelling. But you need to make sure it meshes well with your story, and that your story is compelling, or I'm going to get annoyed that your story is interrupting the gameplay.

I think I'm one of the few outliers that prefers plain storytelling in VNs over adding gameplay elements. (Although my bias could come from the fact that my earliest experiences to the medium include Higurashi) Reason why I'm not fond of the gameplay aspect is because often people add it in to please those that absolutely need gameplay, without actually considering if both the medium they're using or the gameplay they've selected is proper for the story they want to tell. If you absolutely MUST add gameplay to a VN, then gameplay and story should compliment each other, not stand seperate from each other.
That's sort of my beat with dating sims, they're mostly a stat grindfest in the gameplay aspect and then the story stands seperate from what you were doing in the sim aspect.