Recent searches
Search options
I'm not really all that familiar with visual novels but I want to play a few to learn about the conventions of the genre, because I might want to make one 
Anybody got any favourites?
I went looking for some on itch.io, and by god that's a lot of porn 
@hyperlinkyourheart What kind of visual novels? Any particular genre?
@erosdiscordia I suppose sci-fi would probably be the ideal, but I'd consider anything you think is good.
@hyperlinkyourheart my personal favorite was advertised as a dating sim, but the world-building and story behind it does all the heavy lifting. It's called The Arcana, and while it does have dating wim moments, its so much more than that (and in visual novel fornat!!)
@fireandgrimstone Sounds interesting, thanks.
@hyperlinkyourheart I really enjoyed the original Steins;Gate VN (not Elite) and The House of Fata Morgana #visualnovel
@becca Thanks, Steins;Gate sounds like my kind of thing alright, but I will check them both out.
@hyperlinkyourheart A little warning, for the good, "true" ending in Steins;Gate you will need a guide. I made my first playthrough blind and then started the second one with a guide. If you enjoy it, you could also check out Chaos;Head Noah and Chaos;Child. Have fun!
@hyperlinkyourheart 
you really weren't familiar with the genre were you?
@hyperlinkyourheart omg it really made my day 
@hyperlinkyourheart lol if you're not looking for porn recs you should specify, adult content is common in VNs for a variety of reasons
@hyperlinkyourheart since you said you're looking for sci-fi:
planetarian is a highly rated classic that's a fairly short read (2-4 hours, no choices) and gives a good representation of some themes, aesthetics, and storytelling tropes of the genre
Time travel/time loops are a recurring theme in the genre, partly since it messages well with the meta context of the player making different choices to find different endings and having knowledge of previously played routes.
Steins; Gate is a great example, as well as an example of a less straightforward mechanism for choices and branching, but it's pretty long (30+ hours, with multiple sequels. Not especially long as VNs go, but as a newbie you might want to start with shorter titles.)
her tears were my light (<1 hr) is a space romance that plays with the meta of being able to skip and rewind text.
Rail of Mobius (~10 hours), which I think is really underrated, is a Chinese VN about a time looping underwater train. (The English translation has issues though, and I'd recommend grabbing this unofficial patch https://vndb.org/r130396)
Fyi when searching on itch.io, you can edit the URL to add other tags, e.g.
https://itch.io/games/duration-minutes/free/genre-visual-novel/released/tag-science-fiction (you can tweak the other filters in the left sidebar). If you want to hide NSFW games, you should be able to edit that in your user settings.
@kimchitea Thanks for the detailed recommendations! Knowing the length is handy, I think it would definitely be preferable to start with something shorter...