Sunday, June 18, 2023
Divergent Paths To The Future
For
the longest time when you wanted to know how to get to a specific
route in a visual novel the only options open to you where trial and
error or looking up a walkthrough. However, in more recent years
there has been a trend to include built-in flowcharts that fill out
as the player progresses through the game. These help the player
understand the structure they are working within as well as the
consequences of each choice. More importantly it opens up an
interesting design space for visual novels to interact with and set
up their narratives around to increase the player’s engagement and
sell these games as a total experience. It is rare for a game to
have such direct avenue to show its internal workings and this offers
a unique opportunity to examine how a player reacts to having this
knowledge. With all this said, the built-in flowchart’s biggest
benefit is also its biggest weakness as all mystery about action and
consequence is lost which is a killing blow for any visual novel
focused around those things. There is definitely a fine line to be
found here so let’s trace the paths of destiny and discover what
this design element means for visual novels.
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| Complicated narratives demand fancy flowcharts |
The Utility Of The Flowchart
By
far the most common reason for the inclusion of a built-in flowchart
is the developer’s desire to provide a tool of convenience that
allows for an easy presentation of the visual novel’s structure.
This feature allows the player access to information that would
normal be hidden and removes the need to look for external sources of
information to help complete the game. These flowcharts often include
a function to select and jump to one of the displayed scenes which
Yuzusoft games, such as Senren * Banka, have made a core part of
their accessibility features. Despite how simple these games are
structurally, the ability to jump where the player needs to go frees them from needing to sit through the same common route content that
they have already played through, and instead get to the next route
without unnecessary delays.
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| Yuzusoft flowcharts are clear and easy to parse |
For visual novels which aim to keep the
player engaged through emotion rather than complicated plots, this
removal of downtime is a great benefit as it ensures the player will
not lose their bond with the characters that might occur while they skip through material.
Standing on the opposite side are the plot heavy game who benefit
from the flowchart in the clarity it brings to their intricate plots
and the way it gives the player a set of guidelines to follow what is
going on. Sorcery Jokers is a good example of how this is implemented
as it has two protagonists who act separately from one another and
they are often doing things at the same time as each other. It can be
difficult to conceptualise how the two protagonists’ stories relate
to one another with the constant jumping back and forth between them and
this is where the flowchart comes in. Through showing the
relationships between events in visual form the game brings an order
to the plot which can be easily understood at a glance even as the
big twists are revealed.
Flowcharts As Narrative And Mechanical Tools
While
many visual novels simply use built-in flowcharts for utility
purposes, their representation of the narrative’s structure offers
an intriguing angle through which the player can be addressed and
the very structure can be put to use to tell the story. The way that the
flowchart often grows as the player explores the game space not only
gives them a sense of forward momentum in sync with events and
characters, but can also do the opposite and provide a sense of being
trapped in a maze and constantly running into dead ends. For the sense of
confinement that the flowchart contributes to, there can be no better
example than the Zero Escape games. These visual novels all focus
around characters being trapped in an unknown place and forced into a game for
their lives. Everything in these titles rotates around feelings of
isolation and loss of control, this includes the flowchart which
invokes these emotions through showcasing the blocked and spider web
like paths available while daring you to overcome them. On a similar
level of narrative complexity we have 428: Shibuya Scramble, but
rather than trying to sell an oppressive feeling the flowchart instead works to
give the game a sense of constant progress. In combination with the
switching between characters the flowchart facilitates, its stream of
newly revealed scenes and how they relate to one another pushes the
player forward on a tide of new information that stimulates them at
every turn. These two contrasting uses of the narrative incorporation
of the flowchart demonstrate the degree of flexibility it has as a
means of targeting the player’s perception of events in a meta
context.
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| Do you feel trapped yet? |
Incompatible With Immersion
Despite
the many opportunities and benefits that having a built-in flowchart
provides the developer, it is not something all visual novels find
desirable to include due to its effect on the player’s immersion in
the narrative. Between the complicated web like narratives of games
like the Zero Escape series and the simple structures of a Yuzusoft
game are a set of visual novels focused around telling a story
interested in emphasising their plots but only offer a limited axis
for player choice. If these games where to include a flowchart they
would lose any ability to derive tension from their choices as the
player could easily see at a glance their extremely linear and
simplistic nature. Since choices are one of the primary methods of
engagement for visual novels, this makes the flowchart a poison for
this subset of games and has led to their continual absence from many
titles despite the increasing adoption in many others.
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| Is this a major turning point? Probably not, but you do not know that for certain. |
We can see in
Steins:Gate a visual novel with a relatively simple structure that
attempts to obfuscate the exact effects of its choices by presenting
them in relation to the phone rather than standard boxes and by
constantly shifting timelines. This gives the game a disempowering
quality as the player is swept along through events while being
unsure if they are making a choice or just taking a phone call. If
Steins:Gate were to have a built-in flowchart all of this tension and
mystery would be lost since the player would know exactly where they
stood and what actions have consequences, potential killing their
interest in the game’s attempt to get them into Okabe’s mind set.
Think of your favourite plot centric visual novel and ask yourself,
would this really benefit from a flowchart? You will find that there
is often just as much of an argument against their presence as for
it.
Conclusion
Presenting
the game’s internal structures to the player has a surprisingly
diverse effect on how they perceive it. The built-in flowchart
provide a developer with not only a useful utility but also a strong
meta narrative element to engage the player. It is a clear method of
presenting information and ensures the player knows the actions and
consequences available to them while also giving them a means to jump
to a desired scene. Within a narrative context it offers a visual
means of conveying an emotional tone without any need to specificly spell it out
and instead have it seep into player’s mind on a subconscious
level. Of course, as with all tools it is not a fit for every game
and those which rely on mystery or the concealment of the action and
consequence economy would be harmed if they where to include one since it
undermines a key strength. So should you include a built-in flowchart
in your visual novel? If your game is not aiming for a tone which
would be damaged by its presence then it should be a definite
consideration. The flowchart is a tool of convenience many players
are coming to expect from their visual novels so they do not have to
rely on external sources to complete your game.
