On this page we will give you an overall instruction and explain you what Visual Novels are, where originated from, how you can obtain them and even show you how to make your own. It is intended as a overall overview page. Under each section you can find links to more specialized articles.
What they are
Visual Novels are type of media which is somewhere located between video game (especially classical adventure games), books and anime. Like with video games, you buy them via common gaming stores like Steam or EpicStore and install them on you PC. Like with books, the major part of “playing” the game is reading and enjoying the story. Many (but not all) games use anime-style graphics for characters while the story is also often located in Japan or at least a Japanese setting.
What makes visual novels different from books or anime is the fact, that you can influence the way the story develops, often by click on multiple choice buttons (although there are many other systems as well). Because of this, most visual novels have different (story) routes, often revolve around a certain character. But there are also static, chronological variants of visual novels in which you aren’t able to make any choices.
Genre-wise you can categorize Visual Novel horizontally (story style) and vertically (presentation style).
Although there is a huge variety, you can differentiate between 2 major kinds of presentation when it comes to Visual Novels: Adventure style games (ADV) and Novel style games (NVL): Adventure style games tend to be rather dialogue based and to have more game play features. The story text is often at the bottom of the application interface whereby text is often in a character specific color. Overall, most games fall into this first category. On the other hand, Novel style game tend to be more literary (well, at least their fans claim this). Text is often stretched over the entire application interface so the text is in a layer above the background and character images. There is a huge overlapping between this kind of game style and so called Kinetic Novels, which is the term of games without any interactions or routes.
How you can get them
The easiest way to find and buy some Visual Novels nowadays is probably to open Steam, navigating to the Visual Novels section, find something interesting in hit the buy button. Still there are good reasons why you should know and visit other places as some Visual Novels containing adult content which is pretty often cut-off in the Steam version. Also you might be wondering how to obtain a still not officially translated game.
There are 7 major publishes of Visual Novels in the west: JAST USA, JAST BLUE, Aksys Games, MangaGamer, Sekai Project, NekoNyanSoft, PQube, Kagura Games and Moenovel. Many of them running their own store where they sell uncensored and often also DRM free versions of their games.
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JAST USA Store: JAST USA was founded as the game branch of the popular J-Culture store J-List. Already since the 1996 on the ground, there is the JAST USA Store which evolved into the biggest Visual Novel dedicated store not only selling JAST USA’s own titles, but offering many more from many other publishers and translation companies. Game versions sold on JAST USA Store are usually DRM free, means can play them even without Steam.
MangaGamer Store: Founded in 2008 as a branch of the Japanese game company Overdrive, MangaGamer quickly became on of the most successful Visual Novels publishers and, together with JAST USA Store, one of the biggest Visual Novel selling platforms. Especially if you’re interested in Hentai games or some iconic titles like Higurashi or School Days, MangaGamer can be an option for you.
Sekai Project/Denpa Game Store: Sekai Project started as fan translation group. After a joint-venture with JAST USA, Sekai became a legal publishing company and also started their own store, primary for their own games.
Johren Store: Johren started as a Chinese store for Japanese games, especially adult games. Since a couple of years, they target an English-speaking customer group and offering most their titles also in English language. Especially Shiravune prefers Johren as their main selling platform.
Fakku! Games Store: Fakku! started 2006 as a website for Hentai Manga scanlations (fans translated Manga scans). Later in 2014 they became a legal brand, only selling licensed Japanese Hentai Mangas. Since 2018 Fakku! started its game brand Fakku! Games.
DMM Store: The DMM Store is a Japanese only store for Japanese video games. They offer a broad range of Visual Novel – indie games and AAA titles alike. If you have a credit card, it is possible to buy Japanese Visual Novels from there. Please make sure that there is a translation patch available before you buy. Remember: The games are all in Japanese.
Itch.io: Itch is a huge online shop and distributor for western indie games, among them are many Original English language Visual Novels. Apart from Steam, it is the most preferred store by western developers to sell their games.
How to make your own
What their history is
Historically, Visual Novels are a major branch of the classic text adventure games of the 1970s and 1980s. Similar to visual novels, classic text adventures had a pretty similar kind of game play and were extremely text based. The story often revolved around solving some quests in dungeons, which is also the kind of story you can find still today in many modern 3D adventure games. While the classic text adventure genre is pretty much dead in the west, the development in Japan was different: Many Japanese companies took the text adventure framework, added graphics and sounds. But most importantly: They changed the story stile from solving questions in dungeons towards to porn. Yes, you read right: The first successful visual novels of the 1990s were, in fact, Hentai games and Hentai still plays an important role today.
In the 1990s, IBM-PC compatible Personal Computers were extremely unpopular in Japan since they lacked of support for the Japanese language which resulted in some Japan-only Personal Computer Architectures, like the FM Towers from Fujitsu and PC-98 Architecture from Nippon Electronic Company, whereby the latter one becoming extremely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some people tend claim that the availability of Hentai adventures/Visual Novels were the real reason why the Japan-only NEC PC-98 Personal Computer architecture became extremely popular around that time.
At the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, when x86 Architecture based Windows PCs became also popular in Japan, the genre started to change: Companies like Key/Visual Art’s or 5pb (later known as MAGES.) were founded and Visual Novels became more and more diverse, resulting in drama/romance based titles like Kanon or Clannad, sci-fi based titles like Steins;Gate or Chaos;Head or horror based storys like Higurashi no Naku koro ni and Uminko no Naku koro ni which got extremely popular Anime adaptions. At the same time, a western fan scene emerged with a lot of motivated members who made their own Visual Novels by creating and using game engines like Ren’Py. Since then the Original English Visual Novel (OELVN/EVN) community produced a wave of different games, many of them available on Steam or even for free, like the famous 4Chan-developed Katawa Shoujo. Differently from the Japanese originals, Original English Visual Novels tend to be extremely diverse: From classic anime style games, over LGBTQIA+ centered titles to games with tackle social issues of our modern society.
Apart from some exceptions, most Japanese Visual Novels weren’t available in the west for a long time and people were dependent on a handful of unofficial fan translations and a set of software hooking and translations tools like ATLAS or ITH. This was, among other, one of the major reasons why Fuwanovel was founded in 2012: To help lost people from the west to find and play Visual Novels in a language understandable from them. Beginning with the 2010s, more and more western translation companies were founded. Many of them branched from long-established fan translation groups while some were established by Japanese companies who looked for new markets. Today, there is a broad selection of Japanese Visual Novels (JVN) in the English language people can choose from. Companies like MangaGamer or JAST USA established online-markets specialized in the distribution of Visual Novels in the English language.
