Never-ending Whirlwind Flow

[磯七ラスミ]

Ways to make your story an endless story, that evolves at user pace and has its own way to tell you the story regarding your decisions.

May that still considered a plot? Life simulation games sometimes do this for the player to never stop playing. A sandbox game like Animal Crossing franchise games.

How you as writers manage to write upon this flow of game? Can you think some way out?

[Cakey]

Only thing that comes to my mind is idle or strategic games that makes EVENTS. The problem is the plot between the events. Story can't just have event after event. There should be something in between. And I can't think of nothing that would be interesting enough to keep player playing without putting in HUGE amount of content.

[Mammon]

Ways to make your story an endless story, that evolves at user pace and has its own way to tell you the story regarding your decisions.
May that still considered a plot? Life simulation games sometimes do this for the player to never stop playing. A sandbox game like Animal Crossing franchise games.

I'd say that's virtually impossible for a visual novel. Because it's like a novel rather than exploration, gathering and building etc. the gameplay is limited to what the author made. And that can't be infinite. The closest to this with just VN writing would be a groundhog-day esk plot or some other way to allow the player to repeat the same things over and over again looking for combinations that unlock new stuff. However, that too is merely padding the runtime with the players inevitably making the same choices over and over again because they're losing track of what they did thus far. Take for example the beginning of 'The loop', which can take you a loooooooong time if you don't find the way out. Another way in a VN that can come close is a relationship simulator that also works with a schedule or where your relationship points with someone are gained through grinding. This too is limited however because people won't play the same stuff indefinately and will stop once they reached the ultimate goals.

Therefore, an endless player defined story is always limited. With games such as minecraft where there are massive maps to freely explore and the option to build anything you'd like, these limits are much vaguer and hard to find. With a visual novel, it's limited directly by the scenes you've written. The limitations are therefore quite absolute and easy for the reader determine that they're done.

A story that can develop based upon your decisions cannot be infinite either. You'll actually need to write the story, whether it's a complete route or a jigsaw puzzle of smaller $ segments that are gained and triggered, so this too cannot be without end because you cannot possibly write so much that people will never be able to read it all (unless you make a few too hard to find, so that people either don't bother or don't know they missed some).

[Imperf3kt]

You could include AIleen in your game, but my experience with AIleen is not that great. AIleen can't hold a conversation, she's more of a one-liner response machine.