Visual Novels
A visual novel is an interactive, text based video game.
Gameplay
Visual Novels typically have minimal gameplay. The majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving as if turning a page (many recent games offer "play" or "fast-forward" toggles that make this unnecessary), while making narrative choices along the way.
A distinction is often made between pure visual novels (NVL), that consist primarily of narration and have very few interactive elements, and visual novel adventure games (AVG or ADV), that incorporate problem-solving and other types of gameplay.
A huge part of Visual Novels are dialogues. For pointers on how to write good dialogue, see Write Dialogues. Dialogue Designer and Twine are both useful tools for writing dialogues for Visual Novels.
Narrative Branches
Non-linear branching storylines are a common trend in visual novels, which frequently use multiple branching storylines to achieve multiple different endings, allowing non-linear storytelling. For example, in a dating simulator-themed visual novel, the player is prompted to pick different characters to date which, in turn, leads to a different ending.
Kinetic Novels
Visual Novels with non-branching plots, e.g., Higurashi, Planetarian.
Hybrids
Some role-playing games incorporate visual novel-style elements, e.g., Digimon Story Cybersleuth, Sakura Wars. There are also games that incorporate plot devices such as playing a musical instrument to attain a good score in order to advance, e.g., Symphonic Rain.
Related genres include:
- Point and Click Adventures
- Role-Playing Games (RPG)
- Interactive Fiction (Text Adventures)