Oh Monokuma, you never get tired of your murder games.
I enjoy many different types of games, but I always look for one thing first: a story. It doesn't even have to be a good story. I just need something to tie it all together; something to give me a reason to take that next step, make that next jump, and move forward against the odds. It doesn't take much. It barely has to make sense. But even the flimsiest, most halfhearted attempt to frame a game with any kind of narrative is often enough for me. After a point, the game itself is almost irrelevant.
Thomas Was Alone is a great example of this. The gameplay revolves around basic platform puzzles, and the characters are colored blocks of different shapes and abilities. Your objective is simply to get every block to the exit of each level. The characters don't have faces—they don't even have voices, as the written portions are delivered by a single narrator. You might as well give the original Tetris a plot. This game did not need a story.
But it got one anyway, and without it I doubt that I would have played past the first few levels. The squares and rectangles were given personalities and motivations, and a larger world was formed. The game was not about a bunch of blocks mindlessly solving puzzles—it was about a group of unique individuals struggling to survive and understand the nature of their existence. Each chapter revealed more about the greater world, and the puzzles, while interesting on their own, became (to me) a distinctly secondary feature. Something important was happening here, and I was willing to platform my way to the answer.
Don't make this weird, Chris.
Thomas Was Alone is especially interesting to me because, stripped of the narration, it's a blank sheet of paper. One entertaining creative exercise is to take a comic, remove the text, and replace it with your own in an attempt to fit your own story onto the page. There's a natural limitation, though—the story has to fit the drawings. Conversations have to flow naturally, emotion has to match the expressions of the people speaking, and dialog has to be relevant to the action depicted. Thomas Was Alone can tell any story, with one limitation: for some reason these blocks are moving forward, relentlessly, stage by stage. But most stories are about moving forward, so that's barely a limitation at all. To quote Homer (not Simpson): The journey is the thing.
So I love stories, but I'm also fascinated by balance between story and gameplay. There are games where the story was forced into the experience with the grace of a jackhammer; games that balance it a bit better, shifting back and forth at an even pace; and games where the experience is the story, all atmosphere and events with no dialog or exposition at all (Gone Home and Journey come to mind, as well as a handful of horror games). I've played plenty of each, and they all have their pros and cons.
Then there are games that go in the other direction, and forsake gameplay almost entirely in favor of the story: the visual novel. I haven't played many of these, and this whole post is a roundabout way of saying that my curiosity has been piqued.
Visual novels are traditionally Japanese, and usually told from a first person point of view, with you (the main character) experiencing and guiding the story. They're seen through 'your' eyes, with art and basic animation serving as the visual piece, and text at the bottom of the screen relaying conversations, your character's thoughts, descriptions of events and so on. Similar to comic books in a way, but mostly from your perspective.
I dunno...sounds like something a dirty wolfman would say.
Formats for the visual novel vary as well, but they all have one thing in common: text. Lots and lots of text. The emphasis is on novel, and the word count of many of the games can greatly exceed that of a typical book. This is the opposite of most story/game dynamics, where the story is only there to justify the game; the story is the master of a visual novel, and gameplay is secondary at best. You really are sitting down to read a book when you start a visual novel, even if the chapters are broken up with puzzles, dialog choices, battles, whatever. It's an interactive fiction, in a way. You may be the main character, but you're mostly just along for the ride.
That level of interaction can vary wildly. Some visual novels barely have any player input at all. You make the occasional dialog choice that may or may not impact the story, and that's about it. Some are more like choose-your-own-adventures, where your decisions have significant impact on the story, taking you down different branches with every playthrough. Some are a bit heavier with gameplay, with puzzles to solve and even combat mechanics. I would argue that the Persona series is a borderline visual novel—especially the single player sections of the Arena games, but even the main series has a more pronounced focus on story and character development than the once-monthly combat sections. You're not playing to hunt shadows. You're playing to build relationships, eat beef bowls and save the day.
Visual novels have as many themes are there are books. There are relationship simulators, dramas, murder-mysteries, tragic romances, epic sci-fi end-of-the-world stories, survival horror scenarios, paranormal investigations and more. God help us all, there's even a dating game about a human girl who lives in a post-apocolyptic world where birds have rebuilt society. It's just like the old human society, except now it's mostly populated by pigeons. Also, you (the human main character) live in a cave. I don't pretend to understand, but you better believe I bought Hatoful Boyfriend.
Everybody say hello to Ryouta. Isn't he dreamy?
Aside from Hatoful Boyfriend (and I haven't played it yet), my only experience with visual novels comes from a few games released on the 3DS and the Vita. I've played both games in the Zero Escape series, as well as both Danganronpa games...and that's about it. Both of these are a mesh of murder-mystery/survival/sci-fi horror, which combines my favorite genres into one. They're also much heavier on the puzzles and dialog options—the 'gameplay'—than a traditional visual novel, which is probably why they were released over here at all. But they tell fascinating stories, and they opened the door to other possibilities. Visual novels have started appearing on Steam, some translated from Japanese and, increasingly, those written in other countries. It's time to see what there is to see.
So now I'm going to try some of the more traditional games. Steins;Gate looks interesting. I am determined to get at least three endings out of Hatoful Boyfriend. I'm playing Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters on the Vita right now, because busting makes me feel good. They all may be terrible! But I hope to enjoy the stories anyway, because that's what I do.
Odds are I'll write about them, or maybe record a video. Keep an eye out if you're curious, or give me some pointers if you're in the know. Until then:
You suck so much Sakuya.