For my senior thesis, I plan to create a demo for a visual novel and after talking to some inquisitive minds I realized that not a lot of people know what a visual novel is.
A visual novel (often abbreviated as VN) is a form of digital semi-interactive fiction that are often associated with and used in video games, but are not always labeled as such. This form of media combine a textual narrative with visual elements that can be either static or animated in order to illustrate the story. There is also a varying degree of interactivity that separates it from the typical webcomic or graphic novel.
This interactivity mainly comes in the form of choices that players can make for the play character that typically allows for the story to change and different outcomes to be reached at each "ending." Many visual novels have at least two.
Some visual novels truly "gamify" the experience by including minigames along with the text.
There are several types of visual novels and not all exist in the same genre (although slice-of-life and romance tend to be the most abundant in quantity).
Examples of Visual Novels:
and many many more!
Visual novels originated in and are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles in 2006. A number of popular anime were also adapted from visual novels such as Clannad and Steins;Gate and saw success internationally in both mediums.
The history of these games are long and expansive. The community of creators and fans for these games seem to grow daily with several people starting their journey into video game development with pieces of interactive fiction that are mainly text based.
As a long time player of visual novels, I thought that it would be fun to learn the ins and outs of actually creating one myself. This blog will serve as a place for me to catalogue my process as well as hopefully shed some light on the genre itself.
Hope you enjoy :)
コメント