As far as I've observed, Visual Novels work best in games that are:
- Visual (obviously; having strong art assets)
- Dialog heavy
- ...
To allow for comparison I'm going to compare them to two other medium of the same general strata - choice based games (Twine, Choice of, CYOA, etc) and RPGs (RPGMaker, etc)
Largely textual story games seem best suited to stories closer to prose -
- dealing with the internal life of the character
- larger passages
- perhaps twistier choice-structures
- Games where exploration of a physical space is key
- Games with, well, combat and leveling
- Certain sorts of visual puzzle
So again, any thoughts on the matter are welcome - and I'm not after what's possible so much as what tools are best put to which use. What the strengths are.
Thanks!