Do most visual novels suck?

[CountVanBadger]

A week or so ago, I mentioned that I was interested in making a visual novel someday. My exposure to VNs is pretty limited. I've played (and loved) the Phoenix Wright games, but those are so different from "normal" VNs that they practically don't count.

I played a couple hours of Doki Doki Literature Club and wasn't a fan, and it kinda falls into the same category as Phoenix Wright where it breaks so many VN rules that it might not even count.

I played through most of the first Utawarerumono game and enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it in spite of a lot of the tropes that are pretty common in VNs--primarily the part where a boring Gary Stu with the personality of a bowl of cold oatmeal accidentallies himself into a harem of beautiful women. Game-with-stupidly-long-name is also pretty well known for being one of the more "professional" VNs, once again putting it in the same boat as the previous two games, even though it's more of a traditional VN than they are.

I wanted to get a better idea of what a "normal" VN was like, so I downloaded Sable's Grimoire on my Switch. It doesn't have any puzzle solving, no Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat chapters, and no...whatever you call what DDLC did. Just a branching story told via static character models. It's not super well known, but what I could find about it sounded promising, so I have it a try and...

Holy crap, it reads like something I would read on Fanfiction.net! It's not the absolute worst thing I've ever read, but I don't think I've read a single line of dialogue that sounds like something an actual person would say. It also has the "Human Oatmeal Gets a Harem" problem, but I knew that going in, so I can't really blame the game for that.

But that's got me wondering. Is this really the standard for VNs? Webnovels and litrpgs I can understand since most of them are free, but are people really okay with this level of quality on something they pay money for, like VNs? Because if so, maybe I should devote some of my time into making my own. If I can be even a little bit better than what's popular, then that should mean guaranteed success, right? (It'll be my fallback plan if winning the Powerball doesn't pan out)

What do you guys think? Are VN standards really this low, or have I just had bad luck picking them out so far?

 

[Worthy39]

A week or so ago, I mentioned that I was interested in making a visual novel someday. My exposure to VNs is pretty limited. I've played (and loved) the Phoenix Wright games, but those are so different from "normal" VNs that they practically don't count.

I played a couple hours of Doki Doki Literature Club and wasn't a fan, and it kinda falls into the same category as Phoenix Wright where it breaks so many VN rules that it might not even count.

I played through most of the first Utawarerumono game and enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it in spite of a lot of the tropes that are pretty common in VNs--primarily the part where a boring Gary Stu with the personality of a bowl of cold oatmeal accidentallies himself into a harem of beautiful women. Game-with-stupidly-long-name is also pretty well known for being one of the more "professional" VNs, once again putting it in the same boat as the previous two games, even though it's more of a traditional VN than they are.

I wanted to get a better idea of what a "normal" VN was like, so I downloaded Sable's Grimoire on my Switch. It doesn't have any puzzle solving, no Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat chapters, and no...whatever you call what DDLC did. Just a branching story told via static character models. It's not super well known, but what I could find about it sounded promising, so I have it a try and...

Holy crap, it reads like something I would read on Fanfiction.net! It's not the absolute worst thing I've ever read, but I don't think I've read a single line of dialogue that sounds like something an actual person would say. It also has the "Human Oatmeal Gets a Harem" problem, but I knew that going in, so I can't really blame the game for that.

But that's got me wondering. Is this really the standard for VNs? Webnovels and litrpgs I can understand since most of them are free, but are people really okay with this level of quality on something they pay money for, like VNs? Because if so, maybe I should devote some of my time into making my own. If I can be even a little bit better than what's popular, then that should mean guaranteed success, right? (It'll be my fallback plan if winning the Powerball doesn't pan out)

What do you guys think? Are VN standards really this low, or have I just had bad luck picking them out so far?

Well, for starters, DDLC is more about psychological horror than story, so I don't know if you should count that one. If you want a good VN game, you should Google some good ones. Are you looking for VN games where you just sit there and let it play out, occasionally pressing a button, ones where your choices matter and affect the story, ones where there's actually a game system outside just the VN aspect? If you want a game where you just click continue, and choices aren't a big deal, then I've heard "Kentucky Route Zero" and "VA-11 Hall-A" are pretty good, and that choices don't have a major impact. At least from what I heard. If you want one where choices do matter, there's couple you could probably look into, like "Clannad" or "Steins;Gate", and while games like "Until Dawn" and "The Quarry" aren't actual VNs, they are pretty similar in that you let the story play out, and just occasionally make choices that effect the game, and pressing a button sometimes to help your characters run or hide (not an actual VN though, so not that relevant to the conversation). If you want a game that's a mix of VN and actual gameplay, "Digimon Survive" is a surprisingly good pick. There multiple major endings depending on your interactions and choices, and throughout the story, there are strategy based battles with a pretty simple combat system.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Yep. This accounts for the mid 00s and early 10s obsession with them from amateurs that flooded and skewed the numbers.

 

[tiaf]

Making a VN is incredibly a lot work. Even just a short one that takes only 10minutes to play through.
If you have the skills then you can add puzzles and other minigames.

The thing with VN is that the script format is different from writing a novel. Not every author can do it. Scriptwriters are actually hard to find.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Most suck but a few I can always recommend as peak is the Steins;Gate series of VNs along with Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child, and Robotics Notes as they are all in the same universe. The only other one I will say is a masterpiece is Higarashi, when they cry as it is still being updated with new routes.

It's like a choose your own adventure novel but every minute choice matters.

 

[Shiriru_B]

Most suck but a few I can always recommend as peak is the Steins;Gate series of VNs along with Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child, and Robotics Notes as they are all in the same universe. The only other one I will say is a masterpiece is Higarashi, when they cry as it is still being updated with new routes.

It's like a choose your own adventure novel but every minute choice matters.

Steins;Gate the Goat.

 

[Arkus86]

Like everywhere popular, you have a lot of slop made by either ambitious fans, or someone trying to make quick cash. If by "Human Oatmeal" you mean bland characters without much defining characteristics, then yes, that is fairly common. It's supposed to make it easier to insert into the character you play by not dictating their entire personality.
As for Sable's Grimoire specifically, I don't remember it having anything like a harem. Multiple girls around the MC from the start, yes, but that's needed to show you the choices before you lock in a route. It's actually a common theme with a lot of VNs where romantic relationships are involved, but after you lock in a route, the other girls usually fall into background (except for actual harem routes, but I don't think those are common). They might still be present and play a role, but are no longer a romantic interest.

If you're looking for good VNs, Katawa Shoujo is famous for a reason, and it's free. Others that were not mentioned here yet but are worth mentioning are The Devil on G-String, If My Heart Had Wings, Symphonic Rain, The Confines Of The Crown and An Octave Higher.

 

[CountVanBadger]

Multiple girls around the MC from the start, yes, but that's needed to show you the choices before you lock in a route.

Even if he only ends up choosing one girl, the fact that he has half a dozen beautiful quirky women showing serious romantic interest in him on the first day of school (most of whom just approach him out of the blue like he has some kind of gravitational pull) qualifies it as being harem lit IMO.

Girl #1 meets him at the train station and immediately imprints on him like a baby bird.

Girl #2 is like "I- I wasn't stalking you, a complete stranger, around the school for no reason because I love you or anything! B- Baka!"

Girl #3 gets a pass because Girl #1 introduced him to her, but the fact remains that she's immediately making moony eyes at him.

Girl #4 goes "Hey you, random person I've never seen before! Let's go skip class on our first day because we are now best friends! Want to know how my human dad impregnated my dragon mom?"

 

[Arkus86]

Even if he only ends up choosing one girl, the fact that he has half a dozen beautiful quirky women showing serious romantic interest in him on the first day of school (most of whom just approach him out of the blue like he has some kind of gravitational pull) qualifies it as being harem lit IMO.

It's been a few years since I tried it, so I do not recall how much interest they have shown from the start in it, fair.

 

[CinnaSloth]

Friends, and I made a few before. You can pump out a few just by making repeating frames.

Each character gets: sad, happy, normal, and shocked expressions.
Each of the "dates" (aside form expressions) get 3 arts: Meeting them. Jumping into their route. And "ending" their route.
Make a few scenery arts: typical school entrance, bedroom (for your MC), classroom 1, classroom 2, School square, Outside/ field. Anything else is purely up to you. cafeteria, library, pool, bathrooms, character family houses. roadways, beach etc..

throw in some dialogue
toss in some music per character
some stock sfx: school bell. desks or chairs sliding across the floor, footsteps, group chatter.

You can make it in something fancy like Premier Pro, or something as boring and old as Microsoft PowerPoint.
Story is as long, or as short as you want it to be.
obviously, the more detailed you make the choices, the longer you'll have to work at it. but if you make the choices just give different dialogue for a single frame or two, then bounce back on to the original story like most of these things do (illusion of choice type crap). It'll be way easier.

making a series is much easier (seeing as you'd already have all the assets above) all you need is to write a new story. Next game in the series.
add 1 extra character to make it feel different each time. Or have characters leave to focus on others. etc etc.

The first game will take lots of time, but once the assets are done. It's beyond easy. The amount of detail is up to you. More detail = more time.

 

[BearlyAlive]

There was a certain law about most of something being bad. Same for VNs. The great ones are really great, and the mid or bad on are really mid or bad. There are mountains of porn and slob, of course, as VNs are relatively easy to produce, at least compared to real games and even RPG Maker stuff, so the entrance threshold is a lot lower, which means, of course, more slop.

Stuff like Umineko and Higurashi are praised as timeless classics, Steins; Gate has a cult following older than steins gate itself (which is funny, as when SG came out, those exact "Infinity series" cultists were the ones calling it shit), Nasu, the guy known for the Fate series, wrote a lot of cool other stuff, which is generally considered at least good. There's a lot of horror stuff ranging from "good" to "help, I need therapy!!!". But Japan mostly uses the medium of Visual Novels to propagate dating Sims or porn games, so that's what it's known for.

There's good stuff for every genre, though. Digimon Survive is a great game that gets pretty effed up, like it's anime season 3 again for those who know. "Cutesy" games like Clannad can get pretty dark, so the key/visual arts stuff can be recommended. If you like effed up stuff, Saya no Uta is worth a look.

Or you enter the rabbit hole and look up stuff you like on sites like vndb.org. There's good stuff for most genres.

 

[CountVanBadger]

even RPG Maker stuff

Don't even get me started on RPG Maker. Getting teenage VanBadger's hopes up about being a video game developer, only to find out that "The easiest way to make a game" is still really freakin' complicated...

 

[BearlyAlive]

Don't even get me started on RPG Maker. Getting teenage VanBadger's hopes up about being a video game developer, only to find out that "The easiest way to make a game" is still really freakin' complicated...

Same

 

[MorgueAnna]

It's entirely subjective.

There's a lot of folks who wouldn't touch a "VN" with a 10-ft pole, but will play stuff with "VN" elements, like Ace Attorney. And there's people who won't go anywhere near either. (See also; walking sims, anime aesthetics, RPGs, or anything that requires reading.) There's a lot of baggage associated with the medium outside of Japan.
Meanwhile, in Japan the terminology associated with these games is different and people don't have the same kinds of hang-ups. "ADVs" are just another kind of game. They've been around for over 30 years, it's not a big deal.

Even within the VN fandom niche, you get purists who hate stuff like Kinetic novels (aka the type of VNs that don't have choices.) Or who will write off anything that doesn't have a specific art style or fit into any number of strict, pre-ordained boxes. Don't even get me started on the people who begrudge anything not-Japanese in the medium...the weirdly loud minority of "glory be to Nippon" types (who are themselves westerners...for reasons that are beyond my comprehension.)

We also get a lot of "let's subvert VNs" from western developers–to various degrees of success. DDLC is probably the most successful of these. Others belay an ignorance of the medium at best, or a sort of soulless, meme-y "~lolol weird Japanese games~" or cash-grabby attitude at worst.

I've personally gotten negative and positive reviews for the same exact thing; one of my games employs the third person omniscient point of view. Some readers found it refreshing and praised the game for it, while other readers found it very jarring because they were expecting first person perspective due to other VNs they had played. This was surprising to me as a fan of several VNs that are also told in third person omniscient point of view, so it really hammered home that it wasn't an issue with the game itself. It really is up to the reader's personal taste and preferences.


There are any number of big-name projects that personally impacted me as a reader; Umineko, The House in Fata Morgana, Saya no Uta. I find getting into those kinds of "the classics" suggestions can open a can of worms, so I'll stop there for now.

I'm not sure what would appeal to you, so I'm going to drop some general recommendations of more niche works that I find particularly memorable or impressive:

• That Cheap and Sacred Thing – short, kinetic novel, poignant writing.
• Digital: A Love Story – short, simulates old BBS hacking, epistolary storytelling delivered through a retro operating system
• Rinjin -Neighbor- – short, kinetic novel, creepy, atmospheric, fantastic art
• Juniper's Knot – short, kinetic novel, great art, well-written
• Locked-In – short, multiple endings
• Shan Gui – short, kinetic novel
• The Shadows That Run Alongside Our Car – short, branching, uses programming tricks to make the visuals of the setting surprisingly interesting, since it takes place entirely inside a moving car
• VA-11 HALL-A – medium length, bartending(drink mixing) gameplay, retro aesthetics
• Digital Seclusion – very short, meta commentary about history of the medium
• Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden – clicker/incremental game with VN story elements
• </reality> – short, multiple endings, multiple protagonists, game-within-a-game elements
• One Night Stand – short, rotoscope animations
• Stop Burying Me Alive, Beautiful! – short, experimental
• When Our Journey Ends – very short, multiple endings, fully voiced, first Western/Ren'Py VN released with animated BGs (To be transparent: I worked on this title. I'm only including here it due to the bit about the animations, since it was notable at the time of release. Otherwise, please disregard.)

Some interesting Ren'Py experiments/demos/game jams:

• Your Swimsuit Jumped Over Its Own Weathercock, You Liar! – short, experimental, dialogue is procedurally generated with Markov chains
• To Libertad – short, kinetic novel
• Diamond Rose – Short, RPG, isometric, crafting
• iios - Desktop Environment using RenPy – cursed but also impressive
• The Dolls' Stories – short, Kinetic Novel. No longer available, but it had fascinating text-input-based gameplay.

I believe you can find VNs you'd like, if you give them a chance. Dropping preconceived notions can do a great deal of good for one's enjoyment, imo. As mentioned before, it really is up to your individual taste/preferences. It's not always easy to find ones that are great or otherwise will suit your fancy, but I do think there are hidden gems just waiting for their audience.

 

[MR_Stranger]

I'm a damn author, yet I'm scared of these long texts.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

Want a spicier one? Look at the Adult Visual Novel side.

I would suggest Once In A Lifetime (complete) or Eternum (ongoing). Same creator.

These AVNs/games are extremely well-written, especially considering they fall into the Eroge genre.

They both have excellent world-building, character depth, and story. It is usually hours of content between any H-Scenes, as that isn't the focus of the stories, just supplementing it.

OIAL is a bit spicier since it contains incest (might have been rewritten to be step, I can't recall it has been a while), but if you get past that, it weaves an excellent tale about school life, dark cults, and a family being dragged into this due to the deceased father's past. It also has a fair amount of comedy in it, and multiple routes you can take, like a choose-your-own-adventure story.

Eternum is about a student returning to his hometown from overseas to start at a prestigious school. He starts playing this DDVRMMO game called Eternum, which is full of AI that makes the worlds within seem real. It dives into mystery and action as he and his friends find more and more inconsistencies within the game, suggesting that the AI might not actually be AI and that the worlds might not be fake. Comedy is also on point in this one as well, giving you breathers from the more serious moments.

 

[MFontana]

A week or so ago, I mentioned that I was interested in making a visual novel someday. My exposure to VNs is pretty limited. I've played (and loved) the Phoenix Wright games, but those are so different from "normal" VNs that they practically don't count.

I played a couple hours of Doki Doki Literature Club and wasn't a fan, and it kinda falls into the same category as Phoenix Wright where it breaks so many VN rules that it might not even count.

I played through most of the first Utawarerumono game and enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it in spite of a lot of the tropes that are pretty common in VNs--primarily the part where a boring Gary Stu with the personality of a bowl of cold oatmeal accidentallies himself into a harem of beautiful women. Game-with-stupidly-long-name is also pretty well known for being one of the more "professional" VNs, once again putting it in the same boat as the previous two games, even though it's more of a traditional VN than they are.

I wanted to get a better idea of what a "normal" VN was like, so I downloaded Sable's Grimoire on my Switch. It doesn't have any puzzle solving, no Final Fantasy Tactics-style combat chapters, and no...whatever you call what DDLC did. Just a branching story told via static character models. It's not super well known, but what I could find about it sounded promising, so I have it a try and...

Holy crap, it reads like something I would read on Fanfiction.net! It's not the absolute worst thing I've ever read, but I don't think I've read a single line of dialogue that sounds like something an actual person would say. It also has the "Human Oatmeal Gets a Harem" problem, but I knew that going in, so I can't really blame the game for that.

But that's got me wondering. Is this really the standard for VNs? Webnovels and litrpgs I can understand since most of them are free, but are people really okay with this level of quality on something they pay money for, like VNs? Because if so, maybe I should devote some of my time into making my own. If I can be even a little bit better than what's popular, then that should mean guaranteed success, right? (It'll be my fallback plan if winning the Powerball doesn't pan out)

What do you guys think? Are VN standards really this low, or have I just had bad luck picking them out so far?

As someone who has played more than my fair share of good ones (and trash ones), if you want a good feel for a Visual Novel, go with the original Type MOON (Fate/Stay Night, Witch on the Holy Night, Lunar Legend Tsukihime) visual novels.
Hell, even the mobile game Fate/Grand Order would actually qualify as a Visual Novel, if not for the Gacha element.
They have real depth, even if the protagonist in Fate/Stay Night (Shiro) is a rather bland character, the storytelling, magic system, and basically everything else about it, was top notch for the medium.
If you're looking for something more like a video game feel, the Utawarerumono visual novels (yes, even the mediocre remake of the original) are definitely worth playing.
I'd recommend the remake only if you can't get your hands on a fan-translated copy of the original on PC. The narrative is the same, but they did change a few scenes, and removed the NSFW CGI's entirely. It was basically a "sanitized" version of the story released on console. (It's not terrible, and they did leave the narrative in-tact, sans 18+ CGI's which really isn't a major issue).

If anything, I'd say those are the gold-standard for quality in the medium, and I haven't really played any others that come close to the same level of quality.

It does, however, take a great deal of work, even if you're just coding it in Ren'py (a fairly common choice for its easy-to-use standard interface and control systems), you still need to do a lot more than just writing, creating the artwork, and coding the game itself, so unless you're already familiar with that kind of undertaking, I'd recommend looking into what goes into it before making any snap-decisions.

 

[HungrySheep]

Making a VN is incredibly a lot work. Even just a short one that takes only 10minutes to play through.
If you have the skills then you can add puzzles and other minigames.

The thing with VN is that the script format is different from writing a novel. Not every author can do it. Scriptwriters are actually hard to find.

It's actually incredibly easy with Renpy. The only difficult part is art.

EDIT: "If it's so easy why don't YOU do it?" If you can find me a good character and background artist who will do this for free, I would be happy to write a VN.

It does, however, take a great deal of work, even if you're just coding it in Ren'py (a fairly common choice for its easy-to-use standard interface and control systems), you still need to do a lot more than just writing, creating the artwork, and coding the game itself, so unless you're already familiar with that kind of undertaking, I'd recommend looking into what goes into it before making any snap-decisions.

Not really, honestly (outside of the art). I made a 10 minute long VN for a university project I had to do a couple years ago using p5.js (HORRIBLE coding language with ZERO industry use, by the way. I'm not sure why this PoS language was even taught in my university). It took me a couple hours using CC assets, but it wasn't difficult at all despite the coding language and engine sucking ass. On Renpy it would've went way faster.

 

[tiaf]

It's actually incredibly easy with Renpy. The only difficult part is art.

EDIT: "If it's so easy why don't YOU do it?" If you can find me a good character and background artist who will do this for free, I would be happy to write a VN.

Is the edit directed at me or general audience?

It’s the coordination as a team that is hard imo and finding teammates that all like the same theme (or have time). It can be easy if you have suitable teammates.

 

[HungrySheep]

Is the edit directed at me or general audience?

It’s the coordination as a team that is hard imo and finding teammates that all like the same theme (or have time). It can be easy if you have suitable teammates.

General audience. Also yeah, making the thing itself is pretty easy. Just finding a team who wants to do it for free is the hard part.