Visual Novels for children?

[Despair Girl]

Hello all!

I'm fairly new to the visual novel medium and I was wondering; Are there any visual novels that have been made for children? And do you think that children would be interested in reading visual novels? When I say children I mean 12 and under.

Thank you~

[andrewngn13]

Do you know children that enjoy reading novels who are under the age of 12? Then I dare say that there are children that would enjoy visual novels.

Not to deter you or anything, but generally most visual novels I've read usually address a larger more grand idea, although that may simply be my taste in visual novels speaking. There's certainly many that I imagine young children would enjoy.


Some of the titles in NaNoRenO would probably be perfect.

[Despair Girl]

In this day and age children would rather play video games or watch TV than read a novel. So I thought they might be more interested in reading a visual novel rather than a novel. Since it's like a digital picture book with some interaction. But I personally don't know if children 12 and under would be interested in reading them. I do have a 10 year old sister and I tried to get her to read a VN once, but yeah...that didn't go well. I don't think it held her attention as it wasn't written for children maybe?

Hmmm, yeah I don't know... I guess this is a silly topic haha. But I'd like to write my own visual novel and I want to try writing for children too so I thought, why not do both? Then that made me think if there are any that already exist, or if anyone would even be interested. ;w;

Thanks for your thoughts!

[gekiganwing]

Three Interactive Storybook titles were made for the original Nintendo DS in 2007. They combined public domain stories with occasional minigames.

Never Lonely Again is freeware. In my opinion, it has an interesting combination of illustrations which show something happening, and a few words.

Unfortunately, Cold Nose never got past the planning stages.

I would not be surprised if other examples exist. They might be long-out-of-print computer games, or some other media format.

[SundownKid]

You may want to check various games made for iPad. I've heard of such mobile games and it seems to be a better medium for kids than PC software these days.

I think someone that age would definitely be interested in a visual novel. I probably would have been when I was 10. If it wasn't a really long read, like some 60 hour japanese VN.

[andrewngn13]

Honestly I think you might be able to get them hooked on Key's Rewrite VN, although that would pretty much remain true for only the common route. The common route is a pretty hilarious school life, but the game turns kind of dark after hitting the routes of the girls.

[shwippie]

There are a lot of what would be considered kinetic novels for kids on tablet and mobile. One example would be "The Monster at the End of this Book", but if you search any fairy tale, you're likely to find many choices. Being able to interact with the page by tapping on things seems to help keep a young child's attention better than clicking through a story on a computer.

[BáiYù]

I've actually got a KN that's waiting on art that I wrote as a children's fairytale, but it's more something for the 6-8 year old age range. When I was about 10, I was already reading series like Boxcar Children, The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. The last one was insanely popular at my school as it was an ongoing series. I'm rather confident that if similar stories were to be written in VN format, they would be quite popular in the mobile app stores.

Another thing to consider is the accessibility of this format, especially for younger age ranges and second language English learners. Voiced narration is probably the easiest way to address this, if not a bit expensive.

[Spacefur]

As a kid I was obsessed with Choose Your Own Adventure style books. I think kids today could probably still like them, especially if coupled with nice art and maybe mini games? I assume they'd require a lot more choices to keep the player interested than the average game, though.

[dueceladouce]

I feel like the difficulty in this is more about finding vns appropriate for kids. As someone who despised reading when I was younger, any sort of book with interactivity caught my eye pretty quick. However, some of the stuff on the market for this genre is... rough to say the least.

[Zelan]

In this day and age children would rather play video games or watch TV than read a novel.

Jeez, I hope this isn't really true.

My sister is 11. She enjoys video games, sure, and she often disappears for hours at a time to watch TV, but she also likes to read books just fine. She's actually gotten angry at me because I told my mother not to allow her to buy a particular book; I had read the book and, while I enjoyed it very much, knew that it wasn't appropriate for a nine-year-old.

Relevant to your question, she even begged me to let her play a visual novel after I mentioned them a few times. I finally let her play Sweet and Spices, which was a NaNo game from this year, since most others that I've played wouldn't be appropriate for her. However, I certainly haven't played every VN in existence, so there may well be more that are suited for a younger audience.

[Elsa Kisiel]

There's definitively a lot of visual novel aimed at children, but usually, the term "visual novel" is not the one that is used. It's more often promoted as a "interactive story", "interactive book", "living book". I even saw some promoted simply as "e-book". Some will also integrate more gameplay and are between visual novel and another kind of game. (Like point&click/VN)

Actually, the one I'm working on right now is aimed at children.

Here's a few of my favorite visual novels aimed at children under 12 (even if they can be appreciated by older people too) :

-> Fable of the den https://store.steampowered.com/app/5047 ... r%20animal.

-> Sauvons le Louvre
http://sauvons-le-louvre.francetveducation.fr/

-> Monster loves you !
https://monsterlovesyou.com/

[Mutive]

One more thought -

Even if it's a story isn't explicitly *aimed* at children, children often very much enjoy media geared at adults. (Esp. children in the 8-12 range. I think I was reading Asimov by middle school, and read my first adult novels around 8 or so.)

So while definitely some VN fare *really* isn't aimed at kids, an awful lot probably would be interesting to children even if it's not explicitly for them.

(With that said, I like the idea of creating interactive fiction specifically for children. And even as an adult would 10/10 read the VN version of "Anne of Green Gables" or something similar. Think: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1065 ... ual_Novel/)

[qirien]

My kids played Magical Diary and my own game, Our Personal Space around age 10 or so... though both of those have some light romance.

My kids made a very short VN about a magical LEGO, The Life Brick, and my daughter recently converted her short CYOA book into a voiced visual novel (target age is around 3-5 years old) - Choose Your Own Baby Adventure.

There's a lot of reading programs that are kind of similar to visual novels, but I think having fully-voiced visual novels with choices (and maybe gameplay?) for kids is an untapped market. Since it's the parents who would be buying them, you'd probably have to market them to the parents as educational or something, but it could be great.