Visual Novels - What should we play?

[Meh]

Yes. It's not a fantastic game, but it fills in some gaps, isn't too long, and some parts of DR3 will make you go "wat" without it.

 

It's creepy as FUCK, though, in a very not-good way. One of the side-characters is literally a paedophile.

[strawdonkey]

Ultra Despair Girls is a very average "action" spin-off. It felt more like fan service than a useful addition to the story, and unless you are desperate for any and all Danganronpa content I would suggest giving it a swerve.

 

It's not awful but that's not exactly a recommendation.

 

[edit] to echo the creepy comment above - it gets very uncomfortable in places, not in a good way.

[Meh]

It's in no way a good game at all, but it's playable. It's pretty fucking dark with its themes.

 

But it has an amazing soundtrack, as usual.

[b00dles]

Ok thanks all. I'll go with V2 and see how I feel, UDG doesn't really sound like I'll enjoy it if it's more of an action spin off and not to mention creepy paedos. 

Cheers for clarifying though!

 

Edit: lots of THH makes you go wat? as it is and that's half the fun although i did also play that a while ago so v2 might confuse me anyway but I'll go for it, I remember enjoying thh quite a bit. 

[Wiper]

8 hours ago, b00dles said:

I should probably put this in AtF but does anyone know how to make a game like this? I've got a whole idea and the majority of the 'story tree' planned out but even though I could do the basic thing in visio, it would end up being a huge amount of duplication when you go down different routes in order for the game to know what choices have been previously selected. Anyone know what could be used?

 

There are a few different options, with no real objective 'best' choice; as with so many things it very much depends on exactly what your design calls for and what you're comfortable working with.

 

On the 'simpler' end of the scale you've got Twine, which will give you a nice web-based output. It's simple to use, is often chosen as a game design teaching tool, and is a great starting point. However, as you start heading towards more complex games (i.e. heavier graphical elements, 'gameplay mechanics' beyond branching dialogue and simple variable tracking) Twine becomes less viable.

 

Ren'py is a nice Python-based visual novel engine; particularly convenient if you're used to Python, as you might expect. It's more fiddly than Twine, but a lot more extensible - within reason. I've used it to prototype a life simulation-style visual novel (i.e. a visual novel where you spend a lot of time allocating 'tasks' to your character to level up various stats which then feed into the options you can take; think Long Live the Queen or the Princess Maker series), and it's well suited to that sort of game.

 

Alternatively, you could go with ink, the open-source tool developed and used by Inkle, the studio behind 80 Days, Heaven's Vault and the Sorcery! games. It's a nice and elegant scripting tool - a bit more complex than Twine to learn, but more powerful and, frankly, more elegant than Ren'py - but it's not an engine in and of itself. That is to say, the idea isn't really to output a game on its own: rather, it's designed to be bolted into another game engine (like Unity). Great if you want a visual novel attached to something more involved - as, e.g., Inkle's own games tend to be. Somewhat less useful if you don't already know/want to use another game engine, of course. That said, it can be used to output a raw web output like Twine, but at that point you're probably as well using Twine.

 

There are other options out there, but those are the ones I've experience of (outside of designing my own framework to use in the older version of GameMaker Studio years ago, which I can heartily recommend not doing).

[b00dles]

7 minutes ago, Wiper said:

 

There are a few different options, with no real objective 'best' choice; as with so many things it very much depends on exactly what your design calls for and what you're comfortable working with.

 

On the 'simpler' end of the scale you've got Twine, which will give you a nice web-based output. It's simple to use, is often chosen as a game design teaching tool, and is a great starting point. However, as you start heading towards more complex games (i.e. heavier graphical elements, 'gameplay mechanics' beyond branching dialogue and simple variable tracking) Twine becomes less viable.

 

Ren'py is a nice Python-based visual novel engine; particularly convenient if you're used to Python, as you might expect, it's more fiddly than Twine, but a lot more extensible - within reason. I've used it to prototype a life simulation-style visual novel (i.e. a visual novel where you spend a lot of time allocating 'tasks' to your character to level up various stats which then feed into the options you can take; think Long Live the Queen or the Princess Maker series), and it's well suited to that sort of game.

 

Alternatively, you could go with ink, the open-source tool developed and used by Inkle, the studio behind 80 Days, Heaven's Vault and the Sorcery! games. It's a nice and elegant scripting tool - a bit more complex than Twine to learn, but more powerful and, frankly, more elegant than Ren'py - but it's not an engine in and of itself. That is to say, the idea isn't really to output a game on its own: rather, it's designed to be bolted into another game engine (like Unity). Great if you want a visual novel attached to something more involved - as, e.g., Inkle's own games tend to be. Somewhat less useful if you don't already know/want to use another game engine, of course. That said, it can be used to output a raw web output like Twine, but at that point you're probably as well using Twine.

 

There are other options out there, but those are the ones I've experience of (outside of designing my own framework to use in the older version of GameMaker Studio years ago, which I can heartily recommend not doing).

Thanks very much, I think I might give twine a go in that case as it's more a story I've come up with in homage to VLR and the like, a visual novel with branches that will remember what choices you may have taken in another branch rather than a purely linear one. Although I can't really draw very well so it will have to start as a text adventure if I can figure it out

thanks again.

[Alan Stock]

Re: Danganronpa - I just played the three main entries and didn't feel like I missed out on anything. That's Danganronpa 1: Trigger Happy Havok, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. None of the animes or side games are considered essential and honestly the overall concencus is that they're not that great, whereas the main games are awesome.

---

Shibuya Scramble is an entertaining, cheesy romp with quite a lot of humour, but its great presentation and interesting timeline mechanics really make it worthwhile. It's a solid 8/10 game, its story never reaches the heights of the best visual novels but its so original and charming its a joy to play. My main issues with it were some poor pacing with long-winded descriptions, and repetition when you're going back through the same scenes to find a different outcome. Most of all though it really brings Tokyo to life, a place I've only ever really experienced through RPGs or anime.

---

I started playing Root Double: Before Crime a few months back. It's one of the main visual novels on the "best of" lists that I've not played. I got a few hours in and honestly it didn't really grab me, although the premise is cool. In the first "route" you play as a firefighter with total amnesia (yeah...) trapped in a dodgy secret lab complex with your fire fighting buddies, where the reactor core has exploded. It's very anime with some awful big eyed character designs (you do get used to it eventually). It's directed and written by some of the guys who worked on some of the early Ukioshi games like Ever 17 and Remember 11, so the whole vibe and setting is immediately familiar.

 

For the route choices it uses this bizarre system where at critical points you decide how "strong" the main character personalties are compared to each other. You have a slide bar for each character and you adjust it based on how much you like them, how assertive you want them to be, etc. It sounds confusing and it is. You'd think setting your own character's bar high and his teammates low would make your character more assertive, but it's almost impossible to predict how they will react. Sometimes these choices only change minor dialogue but in other cases it's life or death. Anyway, the whole thing kind of drags despite the situation they are in, and having played so many other disaster/trapped room visual novels I'm struggling to find anything really new, the story really needs to start stepping up. Unfortunately though my laptop died and so I haven't played for a while as I try to recover the save file. It would be really annoying to have to skip through all that text again and try to recreate my decisions from the start. Has anyone else tried Root Double, and what did you think?

 

[Meh]

Danganronpa 3 does kind of finish off a HUGE amount of dangling plot threads, though - but sometimes pretty badly. It's worth it just for Despair Arc's opening song, though.

 

Danganronpa V3 was the most insane shit ever. It's hard to talk about without experiencing it for yourself.

[Wiper]

3 hours ago, b00dles said:

Thanks very much, I think I might give twine a go in that case as it's more a story I've come up with in homage to VLR and the like, a visual novel with branches that will remember what choices you may have taken in another branch rather than a purely linear one. Although I can't really draw very well so it will have to start as a text adventure if I can figure it out

thanks again.

 

Yeah, Twine's a great system - particularly if you're going to start as purely text-based adventure, as it's well-suited to making illustration-free games look nice!

[b00dles]

4 minutes ago, Wiper said:

 

Yeah, Twine's a great system - particularly if you're going to start as purely text-based adventure, as it's well-suited to making illustration-free games look nice!

Awesome. I'll give it a look tomorrow to see if I can figure it out/ make the game I've planned actually work. 

[Billy Brown]

I started Danganronpa (THH) this week and it's definitely going some way to filling that Zero Escape-shaped hole so far. I'm up to the first trial and my only issue so far is that it's been obvious from early on who the culprit is, so many of the characters are lagging behind and having revelations that I picked up on a while before. Hopefully it's just easing the player in early on and things will get more tricky further in.

 

I love the idea of trying to build something in Twine. I might well have a go at that too.

[Meh]

2 hours ago, Billy Brown said:

I started Danganronpa (THH) this week and it's definitely going some way to filling that Zero Escape-shaped hole so far. I'm up to the first trial and my only issue so far is that it's been obvious from early on who the culprit is, so many of the characters are lagging behind and having revelations that I picked up on a while before. Hopefully it's just easing the player in early on and things will get more tricky further in.

 

I love the idea of trying to build something in Twine. I might well have a go at that too.

 

Mind PMing me who you think the culprit is? 

[Billy Brown]

I think I've worded that badly leading to crossed wires but I'll PM you anyway!

[Hideous Kojima]

The first Danganronpa was utterly ridiculous but I enjoyed it. The second went far beyond that for me, and I never finished it as a result. I'd love a more grounded story with the Danganronpa mechanics though. 

 

The original Ace Attorney trilogy is the king of the genre in my eyes. Apollo Justice is good too. I've started Dual Destinies but one of my favourite bits of previous games was the dynamic between Phoenix and Maya, so I haven't quite got the same drive with DD. I'll manage it sooner or later though. 

 

 

[Meh]

The only problem I had with DR2 was the fourth chapter. It went on for literally ever, and I was just bored as a result. After that, though? Holy shit.

[rafaqat]

What's a good/great one to play on Switch.   I have a Vita but Switch with TV goodness would be ace. But only if the Switch games are significantly better than the Vita ones.  

[SozzlyJoe]

Got Shibuya Scramble based on this thread as it is on sale at £7.99 and I really like it. The timeline switching gives it a tremendous energy, something often lacking in VNs which can become a bit of an X-pressing snoozefest. The live action presentation works very well.

 

Psycho-pass: Mandatory Unhapiness is a good one too, and it was on PS+ once so you may already have it (Vita version only maybe).

[mdn2]

I got Raging Loop for Christmas on Switch, which - while a bit on the basic side - was actually pretty decent. It's a Groundhog Day- scenario where a small Japanese village goes through a ceremony every random number of years. Certain people are cast as wolves and they murder the villagers at night. Through the day you have trials where the village tries to figure out who the murderer's are. If you die, your character resets to the beginning, but the murderer's roles change as well. 

 

I enjoyed the basic concept and some of the characters are great. It kind of fell apart towards the end, but the journey to that point was worth it. 

 

I've just bought Shibuya Scramble based on this thread. 

[Jolly]

1 hour ago, rafaqat said:

What's a good/great one to play on Switch.   I have a Vita but Switch with TV goodness would be ace. But only if the Switch games are significantly better than the Vita ones.  

 

I still think Virtue's Last Reward (which I played on the Vita) is the absolute pinnacle. You've also got the Danganronpas and Steins;Gate so the Vita is pretty spoiled, really.

 

On the Switch I thoroughly enjoyed VA-11 Hall-A although I do recommend that with the caveat that it's proper laid back. I've not played AI: The Somnium Files which is done by the same dude as Virtue's Last Reward. I've heard good things, although I've also read that the Switch version was a bit dodgy.

[b00dles]

I'm nearing the end of shibuya scramble and it amazes how it somehow works despite the tone being completely all over the shop. The localisation is really well done and some bits have been actually quite moving in regards to familial relationships, virus pandemics and so on but it still contains the bat shit insanity of cat mascot and some very, very silly characters. 

It has maybe got a little bit too coincidental at times with how things are linked but it still works and has had a few clever milder kerblammo! moments when a twist or connection is revealed. 

It's good, thanks for the recommendation whoever first suggested it!

 

P.s. If you played persona 4, it's novel to see shibuya in photos, I went ages ago but didn't appreciate what "the green frog" was and so on at the time. 

 

Edit: as much as I am enjoying it, @Jolly is totally correct though, VLR is still better than this. Despite the multiple "jumps" and story block moments, VLR is much more satisfyingly brain melting in how it all works, this is a more regular tale and everything links in chapters whereas VLR goes off on huge tangents before linking back on itself for instance. 

I think I probably expected too much from AI: somnium files when I played it because of this. 

[mdn2]

I loved A.I The Somnium Files, it's part VN, part puzzle solving similar to Virtues Last Reward. I got no issues with the Switch version apart from random pauses during conversations as the game loads some information. It got pretty annoying, but it's nothing deal breaking. It's a great game though. Shamefully overlooked last year when it came out. 

[b00dles]

Oh another thing, even shibuya scramble shows how incredibly lacklustre a very similar structure but with a much higher budget didn't make Detroit: too human anywhere near as clever as it should and could have been. I know a lot of people enjoyed it but it's a pale imitation of the more interesting narrative that can be made using this sort of "flowchart" gameplay imo. See also until dawn and man of medan for overly simplistic versions of a similar narrative structure

[therearerules]

I’m playing AI Somnium files on Switch- it’s currently on sale. It is batshit insane 

[Thwomp]

I loved the 999 series, but couldn't get along with Danganronpa because I didn't like having to walk around to explore. If I'm playing a graphic novel I don't want to be doing any exploring. 

 

I also tried Hakuoki, but that was a bit too anime novel for me. I'm too picky 

[michael]

On 12/02/2020 at 13:41, therearerules said:

I’m playing AI Somnium files on Switch- it’s currently on sale. It is batshit insane 

 

Where is it on sale? I'd love to pick up a copy, but even the download is £54 on the e-shop!

[Alan Stock]

On 12/02/2020 at 13:49, b00dles said:

Oh another thing, even shibuya scramble shows how incredibly lacklustre a very similar structure but with a much higher budget didn't make Detroit: too human anywhere near as clever as it should and could have been. I know a lot of people enjoyed it but it's a pale imitation of the more interesting narrative that can be made using this sort of "flowchart" gameplay imo. See also until dawn and man of medan for overly simplistic versions of a similar narrative structure

 

Yeah, so the cool thing about Zero Escape and Scramble is how the flowchart actually ties into the gameplay. Games like Until Dawn and Walking Dead rely on the unknown and the consequences of your choices for their hook. You pick your route and then see how it turns out with the choices you made. You might play it again to see a different route, usually from the start. But in general you could play them once and be done with it.

 

Zero Escape and co actually require you to see multiple routes in order to get "good" endings, where you use information from one route to progress in another. The flowchart is effectively part of the gameplay. In Shivuya Scramble its literally a puzzle challenge where you pick the right actions for each character to manipulate the timeline to progress the story. You have to experience failure to understand the right choices to make.

 

Although I also love games like Detroit, I agree that visual novels which use the flowchart as a gameplay tool are much more clever, and at the end of them you feel like you know the story and characters inside out.

[b00dles]

18 minutes ago, Alan Stock said:

 

Yeah, so the cool thing about Zero Escape and Scramble is how the flowchart actually ties into the gameplay. Games like Until Dawn and Walking Dead rely on the unknown and the consequences of your choices for their hook. You pick your route and then see how it turns out with the choices you made. You might play it again to see a different route, usually from the start. But in general you could play them once and be done with it.

 

Zero Escape and co actually require you to see multiple routes in order to get "good" endings, where you use information from one route to progress in another. The flowchart is effectively part of the gameplay. In Shivuya Scramble its literally a puzzle challenge where you pick the right actions for each character to manipulate the timeline to progress the story. You have to experience failure to understand the right choices to make.

 

Although I also love games like Detroit, I agree that visual novels which use the flowchart as a gameplay tool are much more clever, and at the end of them you feel like you know the story and characters inside out.

Yeah that's my point. I genuinely think it's a much better way of telling a narrative in a game, the super massive games could be played on a smart TV for a TV show as it's so linear. I think this flowchart style makes much better use of the medium in regards to you as the player knows more than the avatar. Whereas in the other style, you're as clueless as the characters you play. 

[therearerules]

5 hours ago, michael said:

 

Where is it on sale? I'd love to pick up a copy, but even the download is £54 on the e-shop!

e-shop- I picked it up last week for £30 something pounds. Must have been a short sale that!

[Jolly]

What I'm particularly enjoying about Shibuya is the points of interlocking. Something that seems completely irrelevant in one characters thread is of vital importance in another. It's a different kind of smart to Virtue's Last Reward (even if the drama all seems a bit less KERBLAMMO! and a bit more kerpuft)

[Marlew]

428 Shibuya Scramble is currently on sale for £7.99 on PSN. Even if I don't get round to it for months, it's got to be worth a punt at that price.