Posted December 16, 2023 by milky bone
visual novels have some core pillars, the history is in general linear and don't have player input.
"Thats not true! a lot of visual novels have choices and different paths! and it uses my input to do it"
yes! my game also have, but what I mean with general linear is:
this is basically a line, but I not saying this in a bad way . And chose something is a low effort input, still give the idea that you are doing something but is kinda whatever
Make a good plot with real path bifurcation that will be consistent for the entire history and nice to read is just delusional most of the time.
if you have a choice in the middle of the game, for example "do you wanna kill this EXTREME important character?" you need to create 2 different games at this point.
"But, it's like 2 cool stories right? sounds good to me"
Well, making 2 stories 1-ish hour long is plausible. But and the long stories? you put a 2x work load already, and the longest the game are more people will want another path.
*math some times is cruel*
Developers work around this in a loot of ways, like end the game if a specific choice is made, create a local path that will return to the normal flow state or make a lot the bifurcations close to the end.
What I wanna to say with these thoughts is: I don’t think that big main plot choices moments are a good way to take some input. The bigger they are more limitant the game become.
But I want options to kill important characters or other cool stuff.
So I will follow the pillars: