What’s the good word on Western-made visual novels? Beyond Dream Daddy and Doki Doki Literature Club.

st-just:

prokopetz:

Sure thing. Straight examples of the type are relatively rare from Western developers (well, unless you’re willing to delve into the porny ones, anyway), so most of these are going to be “visual novel plus [something else]” deals – I’ll note when that’s the case. A few personal favourites:

• 2064: Read Only Memories – A visual novel/point and click adventure hybrid. The gameplay is largely along the same lines as the investigative bits of the Phoenix Wright franchise; i.e., you wander around poking stuff and bothering people in order to collect plot coupons, and most NPC interactions are with your designated sidekick.
• Analogue: A Hate Story – One of the few pure VNs on this list. You play as an investigative hacker trying to figure out what happened to an abandoned generation ship, and come face to face with a pair of guardian AIs in the process. Content warning: scenes of extreme misogynistic violence, albeit only in text-based flashbacks.
• Black Closet – A visual novel/RPG hybrid, though I mean “RPG” in the tabletop sense, not the Final Fantasy sense; it even has simulated dice rolls! You play as the mastermind of one of those ludicrously powerful anime style student councils. One of the few visual novels I can think of with a lesbian of colour for a protagonist, incidentally.
• Long Live the Queen – A visual novel of the “princess raising” subgenre, save that you play as the princess herself, rather than her guardian. Notable for its incredibly unforgiving gameplay and remarkably diverse array of ways to get yourself killed off. I think at one point it’s possible to die because you failed to level up your fashion skill.
• Open Sorcery – This one’s not strictly a visual novel on account of having no visuals (it’s pure text), but it adheres to a lot of the same tropes. You play as a fire elemental who’s been bound as a spiritual firewall, protecting her human charges from metaphysical predators. Content warnings for suicidal ideation and self harm.
• Oxenfree – A visual novel/walking simulator hybrid. Existential horror themes with a heavy dose of metatextual brainfuck, but if you’re citing Doki Doki Literature Club as good example of what you’re looking for, that’s probably a selling point! There’s a fair bit of replay value, too, as there are a lot of variables that play into the ending.
• Pyre
  – This one is perhaps the oddest genre mix of the lot: a visual
  novel/sports sim hybrid. Its premise has been described – jokingly but
  not inaccurately – as “playing wizard basketball in Hell”; picture
  Dante’s Inferno meets Space Jam and you’ll be remarkably close. Wonderful soundtrack, like all of Supergiant’s titles.

• We Know the Devil – Another pure VN, this one is about a trio of girls who’ve been sent to confront the Devil one night during summer camp. Content warnings for homophobia, transphobia, gender dysphoria and body horror (the last depicted largely but not entirely via text).

If protagonist gender is a big deal for you, 2064, Analogue and Pyre let you pick, with the first and the last supporting nonbinary genders. All the rest have female protagonists.

Okay, so I picked up Open Sorcery because a) the pun, and b) it was going for basically nothing. A playthrough was a really nice way to kill a few hours (and the achievement list nicely suggests a few further plays). Really just wish it was longer/had more character interactions. Which is one of those good problems to have, I suppose. 

(Also, Long Live the Queen is hilarious and everyone should play it)