After finishing Disco Elysium, I felt like I wanted to play some games that were purely focused on their stories. As much as I enjoyed DE, there were times when the game mechanics felt like they slowed the pace down.
So I started playing some more visual novels. What other game genre puts all of its focus on story? There are many VNs that don’t have any mechanics to speak of.
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| Higurashi When They Cry (Chapter One) |
Next I played Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet. It’s a sad story. I enjoyed it, but don’t have much else to say about it. Only the HD version remains on Steam.
Higurashi When They Cry is likely one of the most famous VN series nowadays. The author goes by the pen name Ryukishi07 and is attached to write the upcoming Silent Hill f. While I’m lumping this one in the VN category, the author marketed the games as “sound novels.” He might have done so to compensate for his artwork? I mean, I like the quirkiness of it but I can understand why he would have chosen to emphasize another element of the games. The series is divided into “chapters,” with the first one available for free on Steam. There’s a fan mod called “07th-Mod” that adds a bunch of features to the Steam version. I’ve only read the first chapter but I’m looking forward to eventually reading the rest.
Recently, I played Kara no Shoujo after looking online for lists of the best horror visual novels. It’s a murder mystery story where the player takes the role of a detective investigating a series of murders in post-war Japan. Those interested in reading it should probably check a content warning list since it’s pretty dark with a fair amount of explicit imagery.
While I have enjoyed the story, I found the crime scene investigation sections a little unforgiving. The player has a limited number of actions per section, and it’s unclear which parts of the scene need to be investigated to find the best clues. I’ve reached the main bad ending and still intend to go back to get one of the other endings.
There’s a full HD-remake currently in development, so it might be wise to wait for that instead of buying the version currently available on Steam.
Finally, I played through Doki Doki Literature Club. Most folks have likely heard of it. It’s worth checking out. There are two versions of DDLC, one that’s free and one that features more content.
Background Artwork
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| Higurashi When They Cry (Chapter One) |
I noticed after reading some VNs that I really admire the background artwork. The character artwork tends to be the main focus of VNs. With that said, there is usually the same amount of care and effort put into some gorgeous backgrounds. I was interested in finding out how the artists put these backgrounds together. There’s a uniformity to the backgrounds seen in, for example, DDLC that made me wonder whether the artist was using 3D modeling in the process. While I don’t know for sure, I browsed online and stumbled across a VN development blog for a project called Aurora’s Nightmare. The blog post titled “How Backgrounds are Made” offers some insights into one artist’s process. It’s pretty informative and I hope to find more artists pulling back the curtain.