Visual novel
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Visual novels 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 (lit. 'novel game') 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 represent the majority of PC videogames 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 videogames, 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 a 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".