Is it possible...

[ririruetoo]

To create a visual novel with multiple endings, but almost no decison (dialogue wise) choices? My friend and I have been struggling to come up with an idea that would work, but we can't really think of any.

[papillon]

It's possible, but why would you want to?

You could make a story that randomly determines the outcome.
You could make a story that keeps track of how many times you've played and gives you different outcomes based on that.
You could make a story that bases the ending on how quickly you read it, or how many times you saved, or all sorts of nonsense.

But without a purpose it would be pretty silly.

[ririruetoo]

Well we were thinking of having a interactive map, and depending on if you go to an area enough or not, you'll get such and such ending.

[Junker-Kun]

Well we were thinking of having a interactive map, and depending on if you go to an area enough or not, you'll get such and such ending.

But hey, it itself is a choise to make! D=

[ririruetoo]

True, but I'm mostly just talking about options like:

Mr.Soap just told you off! How do you respond?-

1.Punch him
2. Say 'I love you'

Obvisouly there has to be SOME options ( in order for there to be multiple endings) but I'm basically wondering how would you go about getting the different endings, with little to none of the aforementioned or similar choices.

[MoPark]

In essence, you're still making a choice, it's just presented in a different way.

[gekiganwing]

Ririruetoo, I'm not entirely sure what you wants to create. Do you want a game where the events are only determined by which places the main character visits? Or do you simply want to avoid blindingly obvious choices such as "punch him" versus "I love you"?

If your goal is to create a game where the endings are determined by map movement, then think about...

* Who can the main character meet in specific places?
* How often will map movement happen?
* Will it be important to go to certain places at certain times?
* Why are the locations significant?

There's a number of games in English where this is part of the gameplay. The player's choices of where to go (and when) can make a lot of difference. If you need examples for inspiration, be sure to say so.

But if you just want to avoid incredibly obvious decisions...

* Think about small ways in which your main character can affect what happens. An insignificant action can eventually lead to a significant change.
* But at the same time, you don't want a trivial choice that drastically affects the story. It should not matter if the main character sweeps or mops the floor. What matters is the fact that the main character is cleaning the place.
* Dramatic moments should be portrayed with all the significance they deserve. If the character's life is at stake, then casual decisions aren't relevant.
* When things aren't dramatic, portray the main character's daily life. What is this person doing each day to improve his/her circumstances? Give the main character casual moments to talk with other people.
* Remember, a decision which initially seems good is not always going to result in a good outcome. From what I've read, The Witcher did this, with apparently good moral decisions that would eventually be revealed as having negative consequences. You don't have to make a game quite as bleak as The Witcher in order to do this. A seemingly bad choice like punching a bad NPC might lead to the character seriously regretting their action. Or, saying "I love you" to an untrustworthy person could lead into an abusive relationship.

[Kura]

You could definitely have a game where the only choice is selecting where to go on a map. You could use that once, and each location has a unique ending that solely depends on picking that place, or you could have the player select from the same map a certain number of times and have endings depend on what order places are visited in or have different events occur in a place for each time slot. Maybe your game takes place from 1:00 to 5:00 one day, with a choice of where to go at each of those four hours, and at each location something different happens at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00. This kind of format could work in a lot of different ways--there's one character in each location at a time, and each hour the characters shuffle locations. Or there's a new event at each location during each time slot, and the character enjoys some more than others (this could work for a ren'ai game, like bringing someone on a date and needing to take them to the events they'll like best to get the good ending).

Are you looking for more ideas of how to make a VN using only visual choices instead of textual choices? Some other things you could try are having the player choose an item to use/take from several shown, or showing multiple characters and having the player select which one to talk to.

[LVUER]

Snow Drop is just like that. You are presented with map and you have to choose which place you visit each day (there are 6 game-days total). Which place and at what time (there are morning, noon, and night for each day) determine whether you could pass through the day 4 or not (and if you fail, BAM, "bad" ending).

This makes the game is not enjoyable and very hard without any kind of FAQ/walkthrough. The game still have traditional choice but very minimal.

Dividead also use same concept. There's a map and you have to choose where to go at which time. Again, this game is very very hard without FAQ/walkthrough, especially since Dividead have a large amount of endings and even more bad endings

[ririruetoo]

Thank you for the suggestions you guys! But I think we're just going to go back to the original dating sim aspect ( we sort of based the plot around it being a dating sim, then dropped the idea after we thought it didn't fit with the game, now I think we've realized its the only thing that would work....) (-_-;) This thread can keep getting suggestions though! I really doubt I'm the only one who's wondered about ideas like this....Anywho! Thanks! (_ _)

[sake-bento]

I remember some time back, someone suggested that you make a customizable lead character. You could pick looks, personality traits, etc. The entire story afterwards would be linear, and changes in the story would depend on the type of character you created. So if you said your PC was shy during character creation, then the character would behave shyly during the story, rather than give you the option of "Ask [x] out"/"Watch [x] from the corner."

[Van Knox]

I remember some time back, someone suggested that you make a customizable lead character. You could pick looks, personality traits, etc. The entire story afterwards would be linear, and changes in the story would depend on the type of character you created. So if you said your PC was shy during character creation, then the character would behave shyly during the story, rather than give you the option of "Ask [x] out"/"Watch [x] from the corner."

Working WRPG mechanics into a visual novel could be very interesting. While it would take a large team of competent writers to pull off something like, it would be an amazing game. Not only for dating sims, mind you. I think it could be a very interesting concept in a fantasy novel as well. A system like in the Fallout series for dialogue options could make the novel quite interesting, if a list of perks/characteristics was available when the game started.

I wonder if mechanics like that would attract players that generally aren't interested in visual novels.