The Visual Novel

An explanation on the history of visual novel games

Introduction

When hearing the term “visual novel,” some know what it is, while others are left puzzled, perhaps interpreting it as books adapted into a visual format or another name for comics. Despite being popular for decades in Japan, the visual novel video game genre is only recently starting to gain serious traction amongst Western audiences. Its newness to certain communities has caused confusion about what exactly a visual novel is. This essay will discuss the history of visual novels to help clarify and define the genre. 

Choose Your Own Adventure, Dungeons and Dragons, and Other Predecessors

First originating in Japan, at its core, a visual novel is a text-based video game with interactive story elements, often allowing the players to make choices creating several narrative branches leading to different endings based on user choices. Looking at it this way, you may already be familiar with the visual novel format from its earlier physical predecessors. Choose Your Own Adventure began in the late 1970s producing a line of children’s gamebooks where the reader steps into the role of protagonist and, as the name suggests, allows them to choose their own adventure by flipping to different pages on instruction. According to the history page on the Choose Your Own Adventure website, the series has been credited for increasing the popularity of role-playing games, such as the tabletop fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons, and as an influence in the evolution of visual novels describing them as “taking on characteristics of highly detailed Choose Your Own Adventure novels” (para. 6). While the similarities are apparent, Choose Your Own Adventure may be taking too much credit in the birth of the visual novel genre. Not only does Choose Your Own Adventure name physical role-playing games as its own predecessors, some consider that the visual novel genre is more closely related to Western adventure games. 

Adventure games are video games driven by exploring, puzzling solving, and other interactive story elements. The first adventure game is attributed to Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure or simply Adventure. The entirely text-based game, inspired by physical role-playing games like Dungeon and Dragons, is considered the prototype for the new genre of games dubbed interactive fiction, where the story evolves based on player choices (Lowood, para. 3). Adventure went on to inspire Zork, a more sophisticated adventure game developed by MIT students who, from there, developed the software company Infocom. The video essay “The Origins of Visual Novels” explains that Yuji Horii, creator of one of the first Japanese adventure games, credits Western text adventures, namely Infocom game Deadline, as inspiration for his game, The Portopia Serial Murder Case (7:47-7:50). As evidence shows, the path from RPGs and Choose Your Own Adventure stories to the beginning of the visual novel’s development is largely interconnected, and one source cannot take all the credit. It appears the visual novel was just the next step in the evolution of interactive fiction.  

The Portopia Serial Murder Case and Early Visual Novels

Released in 1983, The Portopia Serial Murder Case is a murder mystery where the player must solve the case by interviewing characters and solving puzzles. Portopia introduces many of the foundational elements now commonly associated with visual novels, including a first-person perspective and a three-part screen setup of a visual window, a dialogue window, and a window for player choices. In addition to being inspired by titles like Deadline, Yuji Horii was interested in making a game where players could essentially communicate with the computer. To simulate this, Portopia is built around interactions with non-player characters (NPCs), differentiating itself from the Western adventure games of the time that focused on environment navigation (“The Origins of Visual Novels,” 7:05-8:13). This departure from Western adventure games’ environment-focused format to an NPC-driven narrative has ultimately become what defines most modern visual novels. Later visual novel-like adventure games would simplify Portopia’s model leading to the creation of the modern visual novel. For example, games like Dome from the company Novel Ware focused more on delivering a complete story over puzzle solving, making the narrative act more like a novel than a fully-fledged video game (11:39-12:52). While some contemporary visual novels still choose to incorporate puzzle-solving, environment exploration, or other interactive game elements more closely associated with adventure games, these elements are an extension of the larger storytelling, the key differentiator between visual novels and other video games. 

Otogirisou, released by Chunsoft in 1992, would further help to define the visual novel genre. Marketed as a “sound novel,” Otogirisou overlays sound and text onto static backgrounds, occasionally using simple animations to focus more immersive storytelling without much aid of visuals. “The Origins of Visual Novels” claims, “Otogirisou was basically a gamified Choose Your Own Adventure book and was the title that created the visual novel genre in all but name, featuring all the characteristics and presentation of a modern visual novel” (16:03-16:15). Despite calling the genre visual novel, it is clear that the genre places emphasis on novel. By focusing more on rich storytelling than visuals by simplifying or completely discarding other adventure game mechanics, developers created and introduced a new genre in gaming: the modern visual novel. 

Leaf

Chunsoft went on to release another sound novel, Kamaitachi no Yoru, which became a massive hit, inspiring copycats from other companies. One such company was Leaf, who, in 1996, released the horror mystery title Shizuku, the first in a series of adult sound novels. Looking to create a unique iteration of the hit game, Leaf upgraded their “sound” novel with visual elements, such as character sprites and scene illustrations. Leaf branded Shizuku as the first in the “Leaf visual novel series,” redefining this genre of video game (“The History of Leaf: Pioneer of the Visual Novel Genre,” 11:11-11:15). It can be argued that Chunsoft created the modern visual novel while Leaf helped refine it into what it is today.

 In response to the success of their visual novels and desire to branch out into the romance genre, Leaf released To Heart in 1997, achieving another massive hit and becoming the first to use the sound novel format to “explicitly make it about romancing different characters” (16:30-17:28). To Heart inspired other creators to develop romance visual novels. Today, romance remains one of its most popular subgenres.  

Visual Novels as Literature 

Visual novels fit into the scene of digital publishing not only because they are digitally published projects but also due to their unique storytelling format acting as both a video game and a novel. However, despite their text-heavy nature and a strong emphasis on storytelling, it is no surprise that there is debate on whether visual novels count as literature. While it is more understandable that a product often classified as a video game would not often be considered “literature,” I believe it ties into the larger issue of works of visual storytelling not being taken seriously as literature. 

In the summer of 2022, the popular webcomic platform Webtoon ran an ad calling comics “Literature’s fun side hustle,” immediately sparking backlash from both readers and comic creators. While the company released an apology, the controversy revealed that even the comic and graphic novel publishing giant did not see the works of their creators on the same level as traditional literature, likely due to the graphic-reliant nature of their creators’ works. In the opinion piece “Graphic Novels Lack the Qualities of Literature,” author Ryan Duggan claims that based on its Latin root “litteratura,” meaning “writing,” literature should consist of words. He argues, “Without a doubt, graphic novels have words in them… However, just because something has this quality doesn’t make it literature. I’m 10 percent German, but I don’t I identify as German, nor do I think I could” (para. 4). While I do not believe that Duggan’s argument is necessarily wrong, it unfairly limits what literature can be without good reason; even the Latin root of the word literature only outlines that literature is writing. Additionally, if the argument is made that if a graphic novel is only partly words, perhaps 10 percent like in Duggan’s example, then that conveys the idea that what counts as literature can be dictated by length, excluding short-form works, like poetry from the title of literature. This is not to argue that single phrases or sentences are also literature but to point out how exclusionary Duggan’s definition can be. 

Though I do not believe in a right or wrong definition of literature, the term is often associated with works considered “serious” or “important.” Grouping text-based works into “literature” or “not literature” exemplifies this practice’s exclusionary and subjective nature. In the article titled “The Value of the Visual Novel as Literature,” author Harper Klotz offers a more modern perspective on visual novels and literature, “Complexity alone is not the measure of what is deemed literature; enjoyment and depth are equally important. By this logic, visual novels (due to their focus on text) should easily fit in this category” (para. 5). By this definition, visual novels, and graphic novels, for that matter, can be classified as literature, depending on how readers respond to the narrative. This definition of literature aligns more closely with my thoughts, emphasizing that defining literature is subjective. 

Furthermore, reducing a work of visual storytelling to “not literature” undermines its value to readers. An article on graphic novels in the classroom by CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator Leslie Morrison argues that “when students learn to read graphic novels with an analytical eye, depth and complexity are added to the reading process” (“The Research Behind Graphic Novel and Young Learners,” 2017). When it has been stated that pictures are worth a thousand words, it is hard to imagine this being any different for literature.

Conclusion

After learning more in-depth about the history of the visual novel, I think it can be argued that this genre’s history is a piece of the larger history of RPGs and interactive fiction, a natural progression of interactive storytelling that evolved with advances in technology and consumer interests. Although many may choose not to recognize the “novel” part of visual novel, the genre and all the visual narratives as a whole can be read through the lens of literature as the debate of what is and is not literature can be boiled down to tradition and personal biases. All in all, as long a story can move you as a reader (or player), then who is really to say it is not “literature,” not “important,” or not “complex.” 

Would you play a visual novel? >YES  >NO

Works Cited

Duggan, Ryan. “DUGGAN: Graphic novels lack qualities of literature | Opinion | dailynebraskan.com.” Daily Nebraskan, 24 August 2012, https://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/duggan-graphic-novels-lack-qualities-of-literature/article_9141bea7-afd5-5ae2-91ca-eee5e9530e6c.html. Accessed 11 December 2022.

“History of Choose Your Own Adventure.” Chooseco LLC, https://www.cyoa.com/pages/history-of-cyoa. Accessed 11 December 2022.

Klotz, Harper. “The Value of the Visual Novel as Literature.” The Michigan Daily, 2 June 2021, https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/the-value-of-the-visual-novel-as-literature/. Accessed 11 December 2022.

Lowood, Henry E. “Interactive fiction” Britanncia, https://www-britannica-com.proxy.emerson.edu/topic/electronic-game/Interactive-fiction. Accessed 11 December 2022.

Morrison, Leslie. “The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners | Northwestern Center for Talent Development.” Northwestern Center for Talent Development, 13 April 2017, https://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/blog/research-behind-graphic-novels-and-young-learners. Accessed 11 December 2022.

“The History of Leaf: Pioneer of the Visual Novel Genre.” Bowl of Lentils, YouTube, 7 Nov. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5GoykMJLYk&t=60s.

“The Origins of Visual Novels.” Bowl of Lentils, YouTube, 19 Feb. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOtv-J7tOI&t=470s.