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Visual Novels - A Beginner's Help guide a Genre of Game

In the Western World, we're familiar to videogame genres like first-person shooters, console role-playing, and puzzle games -- games like Halo and also the Final Fantasy series dominate the Western gaming market. However, there's one genre of game that is relatively obscure in the West -- the visual novel.

The visual novel (VN) can be a popular genre of game in Japan, dominating the Japanese gaming market using its a large number of available titles. Since it's name implies, the key focus of a VN is its story. They are generally characterized through its vivid anime-style artwork, juxtaposed with text, static backgrounds, music, sound effects, and voice acting. Gameplay is minimalistic -- the majority of the interaction is achieved through clicking the screen to succeed the tale. A VN might or might not have decision points, from which your decisions may affect the result of the tale.

The majority of VNs are renai, or having romantic themes, usually in a very school setting. During these VNs, you take on the role of an male character with one or more female romantic prospects. The "otome game" reverses this role -- a girl character with one or more [http://hentai96.weebly.com/hentai-tube.html hentaispot.net] male romantic prospects. However, there are lots of VNs where romance is not the primary focus; a good example includes the Phoenix Wright series. The VN genre features a number of themes, including, however, not tied to: mecha, yaoi and yuri (gay and lesbian relationships, respectively), magical girl, and medieval themes.

Numerous VNs contain hentai, or adult scenes. A VN containing them isn't just bad; inside a romantic-themed story, it may improve the relationship between two characters. However, you can find VNs where the primary focus lies in the hentai, by having an "excuse plot" to justify it. Conversely, there are VNs with no such content. Whether where you will play a adult or all-ages VN, they're able to have equally great stories.

There is VNs both for PCs and videogame consoles. If you play a Japanese VN on your personal computer, you could have to modify your system's locale to Japanese, or use AppLocale if you are using Windows; otherwise, you'll get garbled text. However, there are translation groups who have translated several Japanese VNs to English.

A sensible way to get a feet wet inside the VN scene is to play some homebrewed ones; there are many free English VNs made out of Ren'Py, a free VN creation software. As you prepare, you can try several Japanese professional VNs at the Visual Novel Database; demos of the games is available at their respective developer's sites.

Visual novels functions as a break from today's action-oriented games. Try one today -- engaging plots, vivid anime-style art, and captivating characters help keep you looking to play more.