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[Armageddon]

So I'm wanting to make a sort of visual novel game with world exploration between conversations/characters. Problem is I find a lot of visual novels boring/tedious. They're also hard for me to deconstruct/figure out how to make them because you're rarely told when choices matter and you have to replay them so many times to discover everything.
I think Snatcher would be the closest to what I want to do, but I've never beaten it because I always get stuck. I have no idea how the game progresses, is it always just talking to people and then they unlock the next person to talk to after you finish? Or do you look at the environment. It always gets tedious/not enjoyable to try and figure out what the developers want you to do next.
Or take Omikron, you explore a city and go to your apartment, and then you're told to go to a police station and then they cram in Street Fighter and First Person Shooter elements because they think it's boring. I imagine making a game that is carried 100% by how good the story is could be very nerve wracking if you don't know how good of a writer you are.
Or Kentucky Route Zero, it's all dialogue and the puzzles are mostly, 'Go here, flip that switch, come back and let's talk some more and I'll tell you where to go next.' I mean I love these games but it's hard for me to understand what they're doing/how they did it so that it's engaging.

What makes a narrative based game interesting for you? Does it all really have to rely on how invested it can make you in the story? Or is the world a big part of it for your interest.

[gimymblert]

Direction and anticipation, and play with expectation using them.

Let say you have a serial killer, he is tracking an unaware girl, there is direction (closing to the girl) and anticipation (something will happen to the girl) and expectation (he is a serial killer, serial killer kill therefore he will kill the girl). The direction is set by the stake of the scene (getting to the girl) so it create tension through anticipation of consequence "something will happen". Thanks to direction you can check and set the pace, things get tenser the closer the serial killer get to the girl and less tense the further he got. Now teh girl being unaware,every of her action will be weighted in how it help the serial killer getting close to her, even a casual chit chat with the hot dog vendor get dramatically tense as it slow her down for him to catch her up. You can toss all sort of things, like police men looking for him being more or less aware of his presence, a kid that nag him to get his cat on the tree and put pressure on you since he can cry and attract the police men, etc ... then finally when he close the girl, you get to reveal the consequence ... he offer her flower, she was his girlfriend, you break expectation.

So why I'm talking about it? The way to write your visual novel is to segment the story into scene and to verify what is the contribution of each of them down to the screen unit, does it have tension? does it have pace? what is the stake, where is the direction (what character should be doing), anticipation (what roughly will happen). It also apply to choice, stake can be optimal (win/loss situation) or dilemma (right or left), it should be state at the beginning of a scene and resolve at the end (the actual choice), and while progressing teh scene adding information that move the stake, build anticipation (through hint), and modify direction (twist revelation).  You can have convexity (ie lot of branch that converge to a few endpoint or a single one) bear in mind that each path can have or not crucial information, as such you impact the perception of teh stake with different information ie building different anticipation and direction. Final interpretation can completely change based on what information he was fed, even though you don't have many ending.

Because VN have such a determined scale (one screen, one text box) you have a clear metric of the pace, determining how many textbox and screen the player must see before something happen and density of information, revelation and choice. Because you have set the stake clearly you also know precisely what is teh dramatic impact of each screen is. If a scene is too complex and need to many information, lengthening path to action/revelation, you can set shorter sub scene with their own stake to balance this, ideally setting the stake around a vital piece of information. using my example, you could have an entire setting the character as a serial killer as a revelation, prior to the girl scene. The important thing is to know how to balance fluff and flavor with important scene, ideally any information and functional scene should have flavor embedded instead of having purposeless scenes hanging in air and derailing the pacing.

[swordofkings128]

A lot of the problems you're talking about can be solved with good game/puzzle design. Don't make it so you need to rummage through trash randomly for an ID card or something, make it so the player is able to observe someone throwing something away be it visually or being told through text about it. Put yourself in the player's shoes and ask "what am I supposed to be doing?" it might be hard to get rid of that developer bias though.

Also, add multiple solutions to puzzles. The goal of a puzzle is to unlock a door, right? Well, maybe you can have the character read a book on lock picking, and all you need is the correct inventory items to pick the lock(like, a bobby pin, a lock pick, other ordinary items that can be used as a lock pick) that are found in multiple locations in the game. Or, maybe you can sweet talk an NPC into giving you a key. Or, maybe you can steal a battering ram from the police station down the street...

If you make vague goals like crossing a barrier like a locked door, just make it so different players with different mind sets can come to a logical conclusion how to accomplish this goal.


Also, the story MUST carry a game in a visual novel! That, and well, the visuals. You don't have to be the best writer to tell a great story. In games, or any multimedia, stories can be told with more than just exposition in the form of text. you can use visual symbolism, sounds, moody music, movement, color, lighting... you name it, it can work for you! It just requires a bit of thinking and understanding of how different elements of a movie/game work to create mood and atmosphere...

Don't make something boring and generic, do something unique- maybe a visual novel about a chimp that falls in love with a chimp from another zoo, and you need to get there somehow. You can talk to a bunch of animal NPCs, and they all have fun things to say. Maybe your character is a philosophical animal- and says things about the universal want for a greater purpose. or something.

The point is, focus on things that your game let the player do that haven't been done too often or ever before! For example, Incredible Crisis is an entire game doesn't unique and crazy things... it's like a surreal dream. It is WaCkY and ZANY but it's strikes a nice balance between surreal and real.




Japanese games tend do this kind of weird spin on things, and imo it was done best during the 90s-early 2000s. It doesn't have to be a mini game like this, but look at the situation. A middle aged business man(Taneo) dancing with his coworkers. Starts out odd, but pretty normal. But then the dancing gets pretty crazy! The situation is interesting- it's both comical, and impressive. Nice animation on the characters, weird situation, funky music- it's a great segment. But, look at the gameplay- it's typical rhythm button pressing! Not very original, yet it's dressed up so well that you wouldn't really care.

Ask yourself this- how many games let you make a middle aged office guy dance?

I don't know if you know anything about Deadly Premonition or Twin Peaks, look them up. Deadly Premonition carries itself almost entirely on it's story alone. The combat is horrible, the graphics are bad(though I think it was an intentional choice, which im quite fond of) but the story keeps people coming back. I never would have played it through to the end multiple times if it weren't for all the stuff you can do and see in the game! And the way it all unfolds... it's well written yes, but it's also got an interesting setup, and a great cast of unique characters to make a very unique and well crafted experience.

THAT's how you have the story carry your game. Make it interesting. Doesn't have to be zoo animals, dancing, or weird FBI agents, but it does have to catch the player's attention by being something off the beaten path.

Visual novels can't do a whole lot in terms of gameplay, which gives you a great position to tell a cool story, or make a game about human struggles. Things like coping with the loss of a loved one, dealing with an addiction of some kind, trying to get famous, I guess what I'm trying to say is have a main theme! A simple problem that many can relate to, or at least one many are interested in, told in a manner that unfolds in a cool way and surprises players.

don't be afraid to be "edgy" too! A little bit of edge isn't bad, just not too much angst... Maybe the game has some weird explicit content. It's okay to make the player feel uncomfortable at times- we feel that way at some point in our lives. Strange discomfort. Just don't rely on being edgy, then the game will seem immature...

I don't know if any of it makes sense, and it's a disjointed rambling, but this is the mentality I have when thinking of a game.

[gimymblert]

Also puzzle should be the story and story should be the puzzle, both work through hints and information, insight and revelation, the difference is that the sanction is automatic in a movie while it is solve by the player (see phoenix wright) in a game.

[Jordgubben]

So I'm wanting to make a sort of visual novel game with world exploration between conversations/characters. Problem is I find a lot of visual novels boring/tedious. They're also hard for me to deconstruct/figure out how to make them because you're rarely told when choices matter and you have to replay them so many times to discover everything.

Your sort of answering your own question here. Make the short term effects very clear for every possible option. Then make sure the the combined long term effect of multiple choices make logical sense – or are at least predictable based on previous in game experience.

[valrus]

I think the biggest pitfall for a "visual novel"-style game is pretty much just as you say.  It's enjoyable to blaze your own trail through a story, not enjoyable to try to anticipate what the devs think the story should be.  If there's only one or two viable paths to a particular goal, that's just a puzzle, and if it's a puzzle that's only knowable by trial and error, that's a poorly-designed puzzle.  If it's a puzzle that you only realized you lost six hours later, or on a subsequent playthrough, that's a *terribly*-designed puzzle.

I've really been enjoying the Steve Jackson's Sorcery! adaptations for mobile.  In part that's because I don't always feel like I have to make the "right" decision every time; there are a bunch of valid paths through the game and you don't have to get every single thing right.  Something interesting happens regardless of the decision I choose, so I can make the decisions I actually want to make.  (And if it kills me, well, rewinding is easy.)

Regarding investment in the story, I'm not invested in it at all; I have absolutely no interest in the main magical MacGuffin nor any of the SubGuffins you need in the meantime.  Nor are there any particularly compelling characters; it's not the kind of story in which you meet an NPC more than two or three times at most.  But the writing is consistent and confident, and doesn't break style, and that's important.  (If at any point a game turns to the camera and metaphorically says "VIDEOGAMES AMIRITE LOL yeah we know we're not very good at this", then yeah, good point, game, I should probably move on to something else.)

[Armageddon]

Thanks guys, you've given me a lot to chew on.