Adventure Gamers - Forums

By now, I have learned to accept that the West uses the word “visual novel” (or “sound novel”/“novel game”) differently from Japan. It has almost turned into a term that is used for all Japanese adventures. From ‘real’ novel games like Kamaitachi no Yoru (Banshee’s Last Cry) and 999 (hybrid), to more traditional adventure games like Hotel Dusk, Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, which are never called “visual novels” in Japan. Everyone is calling practically everything from Japan a “visual novel” nowadays.

But what I wonder is, do people here perceive a difference between “real” visual novel games and games like Ace Attorney or Jake Hunter? Because I never understood why people are using the term “visual novel” for those Japanese adventure games that have their roots in the point & click adventure and have nothing to do with a novel…

To clarify the difference: the first “novel” game was Chunsoft’s Otogirisou and looked like this:

So just plain text like a real novel, accompanied by music and visuals. It was basically the old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, with the player being given the option to make choices at select points that determined the outcome of the story. Chunsoft dubbed the new genre they had created “sound novel”, which became the common nomer for the genre in Japan (not “visual novel”; “sound novel” and “novel game” are the common terms used. “Visual novel” and “novel games” are used because technically “sound novel” is trademarked by Chunsoft. Kinda the “Walkman” story).

While other novel games do feature character art/dialogue screens/etc, the emphasis is always on the story and the player is only given the choice to infuence the flow of the story, and seldom has direct influence on the characters (no commanding the protagonist to talk to X or Y or examine A or B when the player wants to).

In comparison, games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa are based on more traditional adventure games; they are just more streamlined at some points. Console gaming is more prevalent in Japan, and the interface of point & click adventures was often streamlined for use with controller (as opposed to a mouse or keyboard). Jinguuji Saburou (Jake Hunter) for example is a famous traditional Famicom adventure, complete with all the normal commands like “talk”, “examine” and “use”. These style of games are referred to as “command-style adventures” in Japan. Here for example the commands are on the left, and you use them like you’d do in Maniac Mansion. Choose an action, choose the object of that action (if available).

Games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa are also based on the command-style adventure and thus never called “novel games” in Japan.

I think the biggest difference between the games is the position of the player: in adventure games, you are often assuming the role of a character in a game, and act as him/her. In most adventure games you are given the freedom to do stuff within the framework (“gameplay”). Whether that is “talking to people”, “using item X” or “objecting” or “smoking”, you are using gameplay functions to interact with the story.

Novel games however place the emphasis on the flow of the story and because of that, player interaction is very, very limited. You are assuming the role of something like a minor god who can vaguely guide the story in a certain direction, but doesn’t have direct control. That’s why in novel games, you don’t command “character A/B/C” to do “action X/Y/Z” with “item 1/2/3”, you are only given the choice between actions that are already set: Option 1: “Character A does B” or Option 2: “Character A does nothing”. The player can only see how the story develops and how the characters in the story will act, but not directly command them. You simply move from node to node in the flowchart of the story. And that is quite different from ‘traditional’ adventure games, I think.

TL;DR: So why call games that aren’t “novel games”, visual novels?

We do get a few pure visual novels from japan here - Xblaze for one.

To me, games like Corpse Party; Book of Shadows have elements of both adventure games and visual novels.

The term “adventure game” is often misused by western media as well, including games like Zelda.

Thanks for the definition, interesting reading to say the least.

I’ve always made a quite clear distinction between visual novels and adventure games. But then again I am a person that actually plays a lot of visual novels so I’m probably more familiar with the differences. (It never even crossed my mind to think about VNs when I was playing Last Window for example.) I usually talk about a hybrid when the game is very visual novelish but you can do a couple of things in it. The whole dating sim scene is a bit confusing too, they tend to have some gameplay that is not purely visual novel style but otherwise they fit the genre to the tee.

I consider Telltale Games and Heavy Rain etc. to me interactive movies, as they clearly are more like movies than novels, very simple. Gone Home is neither, you control your character and interact with objects more than in many regular adventures. I’d say it’s “lite adventure” or something like that.

Overall it doesn’t matter horribly though, I don’t mind if people confuse the terms or disagree with them (as long as it’s not bashing) as I enjoy all the types myself. If I find the game interesting, in the end I will play it whether it is a VN or any other adventure (yes, I count them as adventures, sue me).

I wouldn’t mind seeing more Japanese VN’s here. The few I’ve read have been pretty good.

Interesting. I more or less used the term ‘visual novel’ correctly, but apparently made the mistake of considering Jake Hunter one as well. Having read the descriptions in the OP I now think it’s weird that I consider Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past (an awesome game, btw) to be a visual novel, yet not the Phoenix Wright games…

Bogi - 24 February 2015 03:48 AM

I don’t call all Japanese non-action games visual novels, but I call like that some non-Japanese, like Telltale products, Gone Home, Dear Esther…

That makes little sense to me. Where’s the ‘novel’ part? You’re never doing any reading in those games, everything’s animated and voiced over. Why not do like millenia and go for “interactive movies” if you want to call them “very low on gameplay and/or very high on cutscenes”?

Origami - 24 February 2015 10:38 AM

Yes, I’d call Ace Attorney and Jake hunter a visual novel as well. For me it depends on the degree of freedom and gameplay you get within a game. In said games there is very little way of getting stuck let alone screwing up because of their super linear nature and 90% of the time you are busy reading text. Hence they are, as the name implies, visual novels.

That’s more or less my reasoning for Jake Hunter. Not Ace Attorney, though. Perhaps playing that while tapping items on the screen made it feel more point-and-click-y to me? In comparison, for Jake Hunter I was using the DS more as a controller (without using the touch screen)...
Well, for the regular chapters, not the ‘Unleashed’ ones…

999 had items right?

Not in the visual novel part of the game. The inventory items were in the escape-the-room sequences. Hence why 999 is a hybrid: it’s a visual novel with escape-the-room sequences…



On the other hand, people who call Hotel Dusk or Last Window visual novels as well are just ignorant, imo. They’re the closest thing to a traditional point-and-click you’ll find on the DS (at least where exclusives are concerned, I’m not counting stuff like Secret Files: Tunguska or Syberia).

I own many interactive movies that have no puzzles or minigames of any kind.

POV is the perfect example, you can make a few selections and that’s all.

So pure interactive movies and visual novels are not adventure games per se.

However, many games are hybrids, like Persona 4 Golden with JRPG, dating sim and even visual novel elements.

Gabriel Knight 2 can be called a hybrid - interactive movie and adventure game.

I tend to put the game in the bucket that makes the most sense, despite whatever other elements it may have.

TimovieMan - 24 February 2015 06:07 PM

Origami - 24 February 2015 10:38 AM

Yes, I’d call Ace Attorney and Jake hunter a visual novel as well. For me it depends on the degree of freedom and gameplay you get within a game. In said games there is very little way of getting stuck let alone screwing up because of their super linear nature and 90% of the time you are busy reading text. Hence they are, as the name implies, visual novels.

That’s more or less my reasoning for Jake Hunter. Not Ace Attorney, though. Perhaps playing that while tapping items on the screen made it feel more point-and-click-y to me? In comparison, for Jake Hunter I was using the DS more as a controller (without using the touch screen)...
Well, for the regular chapters, not the ‘Unleashed’ ones…

I can definitely understand why people consider Jake Hunter (or to be more specific, the one DS version released outside Japan) to be very lineair and thus closer to a novel game, but at the core, it’s no different from The Secret of Monkey Island? You use commands to move between screens and interact with characters and environment. Jake Hunter: Memories of the Past is obviously a lot more linear and gives you less freedom (i.e you usually have few people to talk to, few screens to go to, use of items is locked until the right time), but gameplay-wise, it’s a lot closer to The Secret of Monkey Island than Banshee’s Last Cry.

(I wish more of the JH games were released so more people would familiar with them. The PSX games were fantastic…) Memories of the Past was also extremely linear because most of the game was ported from (pre-smart phone) mobile phone games.

“Degree of freedom” is experienced in a rather subjective way (i.e. freedom of a two-button layout VS text parser), but at the core, I think that gameplay between the novel game (vaguely steer story in certain direction) and adventures like JH (freedom with the framework of the gameplay to follow the story, even if limited) work quite differently.