Anyway, if you'd happened to play a graphic adventure with music, sprites, mostly linear story and all that, would you consider it as a visual novel or just a bit unusual something? After all there are a lot of point-and-click games which allow the player a bit more of interactivity than just making a few choices and advancing the story [e.g. something like Danganronpa, Ace Attorney et caetera, even though they're not exactly what I just said...].
Another example - Miwashiba's game 1bitHeart was done in Wolf RPG editor and the player is able to more or less freely travel [only horizontally, which is pretty important, I'd say] between certain locations. However it's about only pixel-rpg-like alement [excluding the menu] and you do a lot more through the text and choices resembling those in vns. So if you focus even more on the story and a bit less on the mechanics [leaving about only the free traveling], would it make the game a bit unusual visual novel or not really and it's just a text/story-focused game?
You could also make an interactive comic [kinda like Quartett! or these comics in Danganronpa], make something resembling a text adventure [Digital - a love story] or just epistolary-like [Analogue: A Hate Story]. There are a whole lot of options. In some games you're expected to 'time travel' to get all the endings, die a few times or are clearly shown the flowchart and are bombarded with fourth wall breaking lines... I couldn't even possibly list everything.
Taking that into account, what are your thoughts on the topic? What would you still consider a visual novel? Would you be interested in playing these hybrida-like games? Or maybe you just want to share some insight with
