All posts by Josiah

About Josiah

Josiah Lebowitz is a writer and game designer. He currently operates his own indie studio (Pen and Sword Games) while teaching game design and doing contract work for various other companies. His past projects include tie-in novellas for EverQuest Next, the game Car Washer: Summer of the Ninja, and the books Interactive Storytelling for Video Games and The Verities Silex trilogy.

A Strategy Guide

Visual novels don’t really need much in the way of walkthrough or strategy guide. Though sometimes the more complex ones, such as Fate/Stay Night, are easier to navigate with a flowchart or some such that shows how all the story scenes and decision points connect. To be perfectly honest, while I usually don’t use strategy guides my first time though a game (with the Pokémon series being the main exception), I’ll often use a flowchart when I go through larger visual novels to make sure I don’t miss any scenes. Especially ones that have complicated triggers.

Once Aurora’s Nightmare is finished, I’m kind of tempted to release the flowchart I made for development, since it will work just as well for players. I don’t think I’d include it with the game, or even on the official web site, but I might stick it on GameFAQs… Or I could just wait for players to make their own. Well, I’ve still got some time to think about it…