{"id":925,"date":"2022-03-19T21:25:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T02:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/?p=925"},"modified":"2022-03-19T21:25:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T02:25:13","slug":"repost-what-is-a-visual-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/repost-what-is-a-visual-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Repost – What is a visual novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog has been going on for a long time so I’ve decided to repost some of the old blog entries for those who may have missed them the first time around.<\/p>\n

What is a visual novel?\u00a0 Visual novel (aka. sound novel, depending on whether the focus is more on the art or music) is a video game genre.\u00a0 They\u2019re extremely popular in Japan, though mostly unknown in the US.\u00a0 There are a lot of reasons for why visual novels rarely make the jump overseas, but one of the main ones is that visual novels are often made by small indie studios without the knowledge, connections, funding, and the like to translate and successfully market their games in foreign countries.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, visual novels have made a little bit of headway in English speaking countries.\u00a0 Both JAST and MangaGamer license, translate, and release a number of visual novels in the US, with XSEED and NIS releasing the rare title as well.\u00a0 There are also a number of translation groups creating free translation patches for popular visual novels that have yet to see an official localization (which is most of them).\u00a0 Though it\u2019s still rare for anyone other than hardcore fans of Japanese anime, manga, and\/or games to know about them.\u00a0 However, even if you\u2019ve never heard of visual novels, you might be familiar with some of the many popular anime and manga series based on them, such as Fate\/Stay Night, Higurashi, Umineko, Kanon, Clannad, and Stein\u2019s Gate, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

But enough background.\u00a0 As the name implies, a visual novel is in many ways similar to a regular novel.\u00a0 The player spends most of his or her time reading text, though visual novels are typically written in first person present tense in order to help the player identify more with the main character.\u00a0 Despite that, the main characters are rarely blank slates, and tend to have distinct personalities and backstories.<\/p>\n

But visual novels are far more than text.\u00a0 The \u201cvisual\u201d portion comes in the form of high quality drawings of the characters and locations featured in the story.\u00a0 While they often stop far short of true animation, your typical visual novel tends to include a considerable number of illustrations, which change to match whatever the player is currently reading.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the sound.\u00a0 In addition to the art, visual novels contain sound effects and background music to further enhance each scene.\u00a0 Some go a step further and include voice acting for some or all of the characters.<\/p>\n

But visual novels are more than just extra fancy ebooks, they\u2019re video games. And, as such, there\u2019s gameplay involved.\u00a0 If you\u2019re familiar with the old kids\u2019 Choose Your Own Adventure book series, you already have a good idea of how a visual novel plays.\u00a0 As the story progress, the player will often get to choose what the main character will do, with those decisions changing the way the story progresses.\u00a0 Some visual novel have only a handful of choices throughout the course of the story while others have dozens.\u00a0 The effects of a choice could be minor, only making a small adjustment to the current scene, or they could completely change the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

But, compared to Choose Your Own Adventure books, the stories in visual novels are considerably longer (often on par with one or more full length print novels), with deep plots and well developed characters.\u00a0 In my opinion, they provide some of the best examples of player driven storytelling to be found, and some of the best stories I\u2019ve seen in any medium are visual novels.\u00a0 So, inspired by my favorite Japanese titles, I decided to make one of my own\u2026but that\u2019s a story for another time.<\/p>\n

A few side notes to further clarify things\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Text heavy adventure games (such as the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney and Zero Escape series) are occasionally classified as visual novels here in the US. While they are text heavy and contain various choices for the player, they also have a heavy focus on puzzle solving, something you won\u2019t find in a traditional visual novel. That said, the visual novel genre is occasionally combined with others such as adventure, RPG, and strategy.<\/li>\n
  2. Visual novels are not to be confused with dating sims (another mostly Japanese exclusive genre). While some visual novels have very romance heavy plots, dating sims focus primarily on time management and learning the likes and dislikes of the various characters so you can win their affection with the proper words, gifts, etc. Visual novels lack those elements, and tend to have much more complex plots.<\/li>\n
  3. A number of visual novels are decidedly \u201cadult\u201d in terms of content, and can be quite graphic. In some games, such events and scenes are the main focus on the plot. In others, they\u2019re simply tossed in because it\u2019s expected (such as the token sex scene in most R rated movies), and have little importance to the story.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s important to note that many visual novels are appropriate for all ages and even a lot of the more popular adult games go on to get an all ages rerelease.\u00a0 For the record, Aurora\u2019s Nightmare will not contain any such content and will likely have a T rating.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This blog has been going on for a long time so I’ve decided to repost some of the old blog entries for those who may have missed them the first time around. What is a visual novel?\u00a0 Visual novel (aka. sound novel, depending on whether the focus is more on the art or music) is … Continue reading Repost – What is a visual novel?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penandswordgames.com\/AurorasNightmare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}