A Quick Guide to Creating a Visual Novel. Part 3: Game Design
In the new article of the series on visual novel development, I will share the tools, solutions and logic of gameplay design. Most novels are extremely limited in game mechanics and focus on storytelling and creating a unique atmosphere. Today we will see that VNs can also give the player an exciting gameplay and add interactivity, turning a linear narrative into a truly interactive one.
Previous article “screenwriting”: https://habr.com/ru/companies/miip/articles/838680/ about the approach to writing a script for a short story.
Introductory
I think there is no point in discussing why gameplay is needed. Even in a visual novel! Most games have a game loop – a sequence of game mechanics that are interconnected, the repetition of which creates the basis of gameplay. This is the basis of almost any game from hyper-cage to single-player AAA. For example, the game loop of many single-player games can be described at the highest level as follows:
When talking about gameplay loops, I usually give my students an example of my favorite horror game, Dead Space. The player runs through a location to a goal specified by the plot, encounters enemies along the way, and fights them in order to run further through the location.
This is a very simplified scheme, because the level design of locations, the structure of the plot and the mechanics of combat are separate complex cycles of many elements or mechanics. If this topic is interesting to you, write in the comments, and I will prepare material on the design of game cycles.
Speaking about visual novels, it is important for us to understand that it can also have its own game cycle. Or it may not =) Many players and developers do not even consider VNs to be games as such. And there is some logic in this. Personally, I still treat novels as games, and therefore my game Azrael, the messenger of death I do it primarily based on gameplay.
When developing the mechanics, I had the following goals:
Entertain the player (isn't the pleasure of gameplay the main thing in any game?);
To reinforce the narrative and atmosphere;
To diversify the progression of the plot.
What I definitely Don't want from game mechanics in a visual novel:
The length of the game is determined by its scenario. Artificially protracted gameplay is often needed by developers to raise the price tag of the product. The longer the playthrough time, the more expensive the game usually is. I believe that it is better to have a short and exciting game than a long and boring one.
Gameplay Design Logic in VN
In game design, game mechanics are usually divided into complex and atomic. Complex ones, such as combat, consist of atomic ones, such as jumping, shooting, aiming, etc.
Separate complex mechanics that include other complex ones are called systems: combat system, economic system. Game balance is also a system. The area of game design that deals with creating a game cycle from high-level mechanics and designing systems is called systems design (or systems design).
The logic I use when developing a visual novel Azrael, the messenger of death is actually quite versatile and works when designing games in other genres as well. So, to start, I write out the systems I want to see in my game. This could be a quest system: issuing tasks, tracking progress, rewards for completing tasks, a quest tree, etc. It could be an economic system or a combat system. How do you decide what is applicable to your visual novel (or game in a broader sense)? The decision is made based on:
The needs and expectations of the product's target audience;
Team/developer capabilities;
System requirements for the game;
No conflicts with other elements of the game.
So, the audience of mobile battlers has very high expectations regarding game mechanics. Making a battler without leveling, combat, PvE, a tower and a bunch of other mechanics means giving in to competitors from the very beginning. Players are used to seeing a variety of possibilities in this genre.
For visual novels, this is not the case. Here, players do not expect an abundance of various mechanics, which means that any addition of them has a chance to distinguish your product from other novels.
I think there is no point in explaining the team's capabilities. If we have tight deadlines, few resources and insufficient experience, it makes sense to postpone complex mechanics until the next game. Many cool guys with glowing eyes that I meet want to make their own Witcher, GTA or WoW. This is commendable, ambitious and completely inappropriate. To understand this, it is enough to start counting the budget and development time of such projects. However, I myself started with creating a browser analogue of World of Warcraft in a team of two people. At that time, smart people had not yet explained to me that my project was doomed to failure, and therefore it became a success. By the standards of two students, of course =)
A more important task is to justify the need for a particular system in a visual novel. If we are talking about an RPG, the explanation for the need for an inventory is trivial. A role-playing game is based on playing the role of a character or a group. It must be dynamic, allowing the character to evolve during the game. And one of the important ways of such transformation is equipment. It affects not only the strength, but also the appearance of the character. Equipment, in turn, needs to be stored somewhere. Hence the need for an inventory. Yes, we can imagine an RPG without inventory mechanics. But this simplification will remove a part of the role-playing element from the game.
In a visual novel, you can easily do without an inventory, as well as without combat and most of the other mechanics we are accustomed to. Therefore, it is important to answer the question “why should this mechanic be in my game?”
And finally, it is extremely important for a VN to concisely integrate mechanics into the gameplay. Each mechanic in a visual novel is narrative, i.e. it reveals the game world, advances the plot, or tells a story. In a mobile game, the narrative component of mechanics usually fades into the background, giving way to monetization justification. In a novel, there is no need to increase LTV (lifetime income per player), but there is a need for a coherent narrative. Mechanics that can disrupt it create ludonarrative dissonance.
Example: Having to fight monsters in an erotic novel can have a very negative effect on the atmosphere. The player expects romance, character development and relationships, or at least nude pictures. But here you have to kill someone.
Types of VN mechanics
We have understood that mechanics can be complex and atomic. The latter in turn are divided into:
Physical (repeat some physical action that can be imagined. Example: move character, attack with weapon);
Economic (affect the game's economy or complex mechanics. Example: pick up loot, send a resource to a building, pay for something);
Mental (happen more in the player's head. Example: make a choice, find an object on the screen).
All of them are applicable to VN to some extent. However, mental mechanics are more common in visual novels.
An important feature of a visual novel is the absence of core mechanics. In regular games, core gameplay (a cycle of core mechanics) is a part of the game whose removal would break the entire gameplay or change the genre. Try removing battles from Call of Duty, location movement from The Witcher, and city building from Sid Meier's Civilization.
There is no game mechanic for visual novels that, if removed, would completely break the game. Remove quests? Well… ok, it would be more boring, but you could still play. Remove the ability to make choices? Well… the game would become linear, but you could still progress through the story. Remove the ability to skip to the next line? That's not a game mechanic, it's a control element.
Visual novels also don't have to have meta-gameplay. Achievements, side quests, and other mechanics can simply be absent from your novel, and that doesn't make it a bad product. However, there is one meta-mechanic that greatly improves novels. It's the suspense mechanic. I think you've already figured out that it falls under the mental category.
Example: in the game Tiny Bunny, the story is told from the perspective of a little boy named Anton. His sister Olya is very afraid of a scary owl that flies to her window at night. The parents think the owl is Olya's imagination running wild, but the girl claims that the owl is real.
And there are many such situations in the game. The player does not know how it really is, which means that the real game is not happening on the screen, not in the text or in the pictures, but in his head.
Azrael, Deathbringer Game Mechanics
For my game, I chose several mechanics at once. As we have already said, they should reveal the world and give the player a break from reading the text. There are studies that show that casual game players generally do not read the text. Even among midcore fans, the share of those who read texts does not reach 50%. Visual novel players are people who came for the story, text, pictures and atmosphere. Therefore, it is extremely important that our mechanics do not distract them from the main thing – the plot. Otherwise, we risk getting a situation like in casual games, where the text and plot distract the player from the gameplay.
All VN mechanics can be divided into:
Basic (suspense, moral or plot choice);
Mini-games (puzzles, find the object, click somewhere);
Meta-mechanics (achievements, quests, scoring).
Among the main mechanics of my game, the main one is the non-linear choice that determines which mission we will play and forms the appearance of the protagonist.
Reputation
The reputation system can also be included there. It affects the player's capabilities, the heroes' attitude towards the protagonist and the possibility of choosing one or another ending. If you have any ideas on what else to tie to reputation, I would be grateful for them in the comments!
The possibility of defeat can also be considered a separate mechanic. Some mini-games, wrong choices and bad reputation lead to defeat in the game. For example, the loss of reputation with your leader, the first hierarch Ozymandias, leads to Azrael being sent into exile.
I put this into a separate mechanic because it is not typical for visual novels to have a defeat in the game.
Inventory
On the screenshot you can see the inventory window with the relic lying there. The inventory interface is in the process of development. The inventory solves the following problems:
Add a sense of ownership to the item;
Remind the player of the presence of the item so that he takes it into account in dialogues.
Mini puzzle game
Simple gameplay that requires you to spin the patterns until they all line up with the cutouts on the relic. A complication of this same gameplay is the addition of a timer, requiring you to beat the game within the time limit.
Quests
The game is divided into three blocks, and one of them allows free movement around the world. Here the protagonist meets different characters who will be happy to shift their problems to the ancient god. Helping mortals can be both beneficial for us and just help.
Mini strategy game
It is necessary to manage resource extraction wisely in order to stay in the black and restore the mining colony, completing all mission objectives. However, my game It wouldn't be a visual novel if the economy couldn't be influenced through trade, treaties, and reputation with other characters.
Timed games
An event appears on the timer. You need to choose one of three options to react to it correctly. The longer the game goes on, the faster you need to make choices.
Demon Fight Mini Game
Azrael gets random spells every turn, and the generator produces a nano-swarm. Azrael has 100 HP. At this time, demons and elves fight. You need to use spells correctly so that at least some elves survive until you destroy all the demons. At the same time, it would be nice to survive yourself.
Trade
The mechanics of buying and selling resources and items are also in development. For example, it will be possible to buy a building template and, if you have the resources, build a particular building on a planet you like in order to receive resources or other benefits from it.
Collection of heroes, missions and pumping
I consider the culmination of game mechanics in my novel to be the mechanics of gathering a squad of heroes and sending them on missions. In fact, this is an analogue of the mobile battler or garrison that appeared in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. Gathering a squad is closely connected with the mechanics of quests, since in order to obtain many heroes, you must first complete their task.
The interface has a list of missions. When hovered over, a tooltip with a lore description is displayed. When clicked, a list of available heroes appears. The player's task is to match the mission conditions with the heroes' abilities.
Each mission has two parameters: weather and enemy type. For example, the mission of fighting renegade shamans takes place on a hot desert planet, so heroes who do not tolerate heat well will receive a penalty to strength there. In the mission of fighting a crowd of demons, it is good to have mass spells that are effective against the crowd. The enemy type, weather, and hero abilities are displayed by an icon. The icons are still in the process of drawing =)
The more missions the heroes complete, the more experience and level they have. The more rewards we receive and the more difficult missions we get. And now we have mathematics and balance in a visual novel!
The mechanics I put in place make me doubt the genre of the resulting game. Some say it's more of a quest, a simulator, or an adventure, but definitely not a visual novel. What do you think?
I hope this material was useful and will help many to make even cooler games! Thank you for reading to the end! I will be very grateful for likes, so I will understand that it is worth continuing to talk about the features of visual novel development.
To learn more about the gameplay, story, characters, and to keep track of the game's progress, join:
The experience of novels is new to me, but I talk about game design for large PCs and mobile games in my course “Game Logic” as part of the educational program Game Project Management.
As early as September 10, you will be able to chat with me and my colleagues online at Lecture evening on game design. We will cover the topic of how to come up with your own game and how to write a good concept document. Participation is free.
I will be glad to hear any questions, your opinions and experiences in the comments.
