are a video game genre of Japanese origin focused on presenting a story. Progress is made via means such as clicking, tapping or pressing a button. Some descriptions of the genre suggest that they present the player with choices that branch the narrative. The aesthetics of visual novels are often conveyed through static images of characters, background art, with soundtracks and sound effects for feedback. Both the narrative and interactions in the games are commonly presented through text boxes and often employ forms of interaction which include menu-choices to control player actions or dialogue that represent the player's character speech or thoughts.
Visual novels draw gameplay elements from 1980s Japanese and Western-made adventure games. The term "visual novel" originated by the later-half of the 1990s, while in Japan they are often called noberugēmu () for short. Releases in the 1990s such as Otogirisō (1992), Yu-no (1996), and Kanon (1999) would establish the gameplay and visual elements that would become common in later visual novels. Being narrative-focused, the stories and themes explored range from various narrative genres, with Japanese-made games often emphasizing romance. Visual novels are made with lower cost and in shorter periods of time compared to other game genres. This has led them to represent the majority of PC video games produced and sold in Japan. As they are easier to develop than other game genres, most Japanese erotic games were developed as visual novels due to their low-budget nature.
The genre grew more attention in the West with the belated release of games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001) in 2005. This coincided with the rising popularity of anime in the West in the 2000s, which led to players discovering visual novels from their anime adaptations, which led to Western developers developing visual novels more prominently in the 2010s. Through the release of free and open-source software such as Ren'Py, developers outside of Japan began developing more games that adapted visual and gameplay elements of visual novels such as the American Butterfly Soup (2017) and Chinese The Invisible Guardian (2019). Other Japanese games would adapt to newer technology such as virtual reality headsets or artificial intelligence in the second quarter of the 21st century.
The genre has historically maintained a strong presence in Japan's video game market and otaku culture with hundreds of titles produced yearly. In the Western world, there is debate whether the titles are games at all due to the limited interactivity. Publishers have said these debates had led to slower adaption to mainstream digital distributors such as Steam to release visual novels. In 2015, academic Mia Consalvo said that visual novels remained one of the most "Japanese" genres of video games, due to their use of Japanese tropes, themes and settings and described them as the least exported styles of games coming from Japan. Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel, authors of The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels (2023) wrote that they expect the visual novel to remain at least a fringe level of popularity due to the changing tastes of Western game audiences. They described these audiences now finding the "Japanese-ness" of visual novels as being a "selling point, not a cultural obstacle".
Etymology The visual novel video game genre originated in Japan. The commonly used term for them in Japan is noberugēmu (, short for visual novel game). The expression "visual novel" emerged in the mid-1990s and has been applied retroactively in the Western world to a vast corpus of games.
Some games from the late 1980s promoted themselves as novel games first appeared in the Japan in the PC game market. The first of these was which was released by System Sacom in 1988. The game was marketed as "Novelware" and released for the Japanese home computer market. Several other games marketed as "Novelware" were created by 1991, but have what Japanese video game historian Yuhsuke Koyama described as little impact on what would be later be known understood as a visual novel. The Japanese video game company Chunsoft used the registered trademark "Sound Novel" to describe their early 1990s games Otogirisō (1992) and Banshee's Last Cry (1994). The first commercial video game to be described as a visual novel was Shizuku (1996) which was created the Japanese company Leaf listing their game as being part of a similarly named "Visual Novel Series". The next year, the term "visual novel" was used during the development and release cycle of Tactics's Moon (1997). Video game journalist Koji Fukuyama wrote that while he lacked empirical data, he believed that companies such as Leaf, Tactics, and Key may have spread the common usage of the "visual novel" term.
Characteristics
Game genres are commonly conceptualized and occasionally named after, specific sets of control schemas, mechanics, player goals, and narrative structures. Janelynn Camingue, Elin Cartendottir, and Edward F. Melcer published their research of academic and commercial literature of what was considered a visual novel in 2021. They found that most definitions of visual novels as a genre only contained a small number of elements of what would define the genre. Their studies showed existing academic writing on the genre had a variety of definitions that could vary wildly with no clearly defined consensus on what set features defined the genre.
In an attempt to create a core definition pulled from the various sources and played through a corpus of 54 visual novels, the three proposed a definition based on the re-occurring elements as described by previous academic research and how regularly the elements appeared in at last 95% of their selection of games. They described visual novels to be digitally-based narrative-focused games. These games require players to be able to impact the story's progression or world.
The story and interactions in the games are commonly presented through a text box and often employ forms of interaction which includes menu-choices. These menu options often employ additional forms of interaction including choices with set actions the player can perform or dialogue options that represent the player's character speech or thoughts. Visual novels have their stories progress when the player clicks, taps, or presses a button to see the next part of the story. The aesthetics of visual novels are often conveyed through static images of characters, background art, soundtracks, and sound effects for feedback. They said that games presenting themselves as visual novels which did not feature these core features would likely confuse players or violate their expectations. The two most common textbox formats are ADV (short for "Adventure"), in which the box occupies only a part of the screen, and NVL ("Novel") in which the textbox fills almost the whole screen or the whole screen.
Camingue, Cartendottir, and Melcer said nine of the thirty definitions of visual novels said the genre contained branching stories. This can be seen in games like Steins;Gate 0 (2015), which has six different endings and two main story branches while 428: Shibuya Scramble (2008) could result in 85 endings. They said that linear structures were notably prevalent, with 18% of the games not having branching narratives such as popular games Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (2014) and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017). Choices in visual novels may have no immediate effect on the narrative, contributing instead to a complex system of potentialities and character relationships that resolves itself toward the end of a playthrough. A small portion of these titles, such as Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet (2004) and Higurashi: When They Cry (2002), feature no branching path choices at all and are completely linear.
Camingue, Cartendottir, and Melcer found that their that visual imagery varied in definitions of visual novels. Some definitions described static images or illustrations. Others specified the use of images as backgrounds and character art. Several definitions specifically identify the Japanese influence on both the art and general aesthetics of visual novels, with four definitions stating that visuals have anime-inspired aesthetics. Nine definitions did not specify an art-style to the genre, which Camingue, Cartendottir, and Melcer attributed to the genres growth in development outside of Japan. Academic Mia Consalvo said that visual novels remained one of the most "Japanese" genres of video games, due to their use of Japanese tropes, themes and settings. One of the characteristics that the genre shares with anime fandom is discussion of the genre often infuses terminology and tropes that have become loan words in their adopted languages, such as doujinshi, nakige, and utsuge.
Regional genre differences The English use of the term "visual novel" is often used for games that have Japanese aesthetics and copious amounts of text. Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel, authors of The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels (2023), described this description as potentially "confusing and misleading" as Japanese creators would note there are distinctions between a "true visual novel" and Japanese adventure games. Japanese video game journalist Koji Fukuyama echoed this, saying that the term "visual novel" had different meanings in Japan and in the West. In Japan, visual novels are considered a sub-genre of adventure games. Fukuyama continued that audiences outside of Japan might describe games like The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001) as visual novels, while Japanese gamers would likely find them inappropriately categorized.
For most Japanese gamers, the term "visual novel" would bring to mind the novel-like bishōjo games of the late 1990s. These were games like gameplay that featured many anime-styled girls, which had begun appearing more on the market at the time. Kazutaka Kodaka, the creator of the Danganronpa franchise, echoed this saying there were two originating paths of the visual novels; games rooted in The Portopia Serial Murder Case, whose lineage led to games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, and the second being the bishōjo games. Game developer Jiro Ishii expanded on this, saying that the two major Japanese adventure game trends were titles that originated with "command-based" adventure games like Zork and The Portopia Serial Murder Case and titles with novel-like formats beginning with Otogirisō and Machi (1998). Ishii said that Japanese adventure games like Jesus (1987) and Snatcher (1988) may appear to be novel games but were linear, concluding that when one breaks down the systems of gameplay mechanics, the differences become more apparent.
Status as games