Sunday, June 9, 2024
Making Yourself Desirable
Many
outside the visual novel space often make the mistake of referring to
romance visual novels as Dating Sims and at a glance it is easy to
see why given their shared focus on pursuing a chosen heroine or
hero. The two types of game have had a long and connected history
with Dating Sims utilising visual novel elements to sell their story
sections and building up a sense of who the player is romancing. This
leads to some interesting interactions between the two aspects as the
emotive narrative is placed next to the cold stat checking without
either coming across as out of place. Both sides carry themselves
with an understanding of how they fit together to form the final
product where the pursuit of love is quantified but never detached for
the character’s humanity. Let’s plan out our day and discover
what this hybrid brings to the table.
Common Pursuit of Romance
Presenting
a believable build up of love between two people is always a
challenging prospect and this is even more prominent under the
restrictions of Dating Sims. The event centric structure found in
them could lead to the execution of the romance feeling bitty and
uneven if the pacing is not controlled with proper a escalation in
their frequency near the climax. Using visual novel elements for
these events helps alleviate these problems by promoting a focus on
the scene in front of the player with a personal perspective on the
intimate moments of this blossoming love. These scenes also tend to
increase in length over the course of the game to simulate the
growing time the pair are spending together and this allows for a
showcasing of their compatibility from both a mechanical and a
narrative level. From moment to moment, there is an effort made to
shape a unity between the player and player character via an aligning
of the protagonist’s emotions with the intent of player in order to
close the perceived gap between the two. Together the two styles of
gameplay form a concise reward loop for the player that provides them
with the advertised love story without negatively impacting the stat
management side which Dating Sims are well known for.
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| So many choices |
We can look to
Amagami in order to see what this looks like in practice. This a game
with a wide selection of heroines and different ending to each of
them and its open structure means it has to rely on the strength of
individual events to contextualise these abstract connections. As
such it leans heavily into extended visual novel sequences for the
build up and pay off to the arcs of each heroine, which gives it the
flexibility it needs to express its roller coaster of feelings
through the common focus on romance both elements share. This creates
a much needed consistency and pacing to the whole experience by
alternating between the two parts in order to ensure the player never
quite knows what they are going to be faced with next. Here the
visual novel aspects allow for the Dating Sim developer to carefully
craft how they want individual events to be perceived with a subtle
shift of the length of each section.
Quantifying Love
Numbers
define how a Dating Sims interacts with its themes of love and
relationships. They are by nature an attempt to systemise the process
of dating and romance which presents a unique blend of opportunities
and consequences due to subjects being highly emotional rather than
detached like many other sim type games. It is difficult to feel the
love between two characters when you are doing the equivalent of your
dating tax returns. As alluded to in the previous section, the
addition of visual novel elements helps to return a human touch to
the game’s tone and progression. These events are not as entirely
detached from the number based nature of the Dating Sim as they might
at first appear. Take Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side as an example,
here the build up stats with player has been working on is often
acknowledged by making the unlocked event be somehow related to it, a
related location or through characters talking about the changes in
the protagonist. While each one does not amount to much more than a
simple nod on their own, in their totality they form a feedback loop
that communicates to the player how the stats they have been working
on have a meaningful impact on the shape of the narrative. This acts
as a powerful motivator to continue to push towards the requirements
for future content as they know it holds some meaning within the
context of the protagonist’s personal story.
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| The complexity of the stat system varies from title to title |
On
the flip side it provides a connection to the player character
through the process of self improvement they undergo with your
management. It can also feel like you are shaping the protagonist to
match the preferences of the heroines and through this demonstrate a
commitment to them. This link with the player character is further
reinforced in the visual novel sections such as in Love Plus where
they utilise the unbroken protagonist perspective to sell the idea
that the heroines are talking to the player and lower the barrier
between the game and reality. Achieving this requires the abandoning of more intricate narrative trappings like complex introspection or scene
descriptions and instead adopting a stream lined approach, much like
the Dating Sim itself. This is done in order to remove as many
distinguishing features possible and give the player a large space to
insert themselves into and by extension bond with their chosen
heroine. A romantic fantasy such as this is at the core of the Dating
Sim’s appeal and other forms of event presentation would lack the
needed intimacy for the desired results.
Stat Checks and Deadline
Love
is not all fun and games when it comes to romance in Dating Sims as
the player will have to pass certain stat tests and milestones to
process or risk losing their chance to impress their chosen heroine.
This is how much of the difficulty is implemented in order to provide
a pressure to the time management element of these games while still
focusing on their stat based nature. In doing so weight is added to
the narrative events by presenting the possibility of failure and
allowing it to hang over the otherwise bright and upbeat atmosphere.
Rather than undermining the visual novel sections it instead helps
support the sense that this romance is genuine through the hardship
and risk that exists on the path to its ending. This form of
mechanical dramatic tension is key for the pacing of Dating Sim and
how it escalates alongside the growing demands for higher stats.
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| I hope you have been balancing your activities |
Sunrider Academy provides a good example of this practice through its
mixing of club and stats management. Here the player is assaulted on
two fronts for stat checks with the club demanding ever growing
members while the personal stats demand upkeeping in order to pass the various
tests the game throws at you and this is all before considering the
pursuit of a heroine. This creates a sense of frantic progress which
peaks around each deadline and sells the intimate moments with the
heroines in the visual novel sections as a breathing room valued by
both the player and the protagonist. Through this lens the
relationship between the pair is contextualised as an important but
fragile thing in the face of the chaos around them and invests the
player in ensuring it blooms into something more concrete.
Conclusion
Given
the close relationship between visual novels and Dating Sims it is no
surprise that the two have developed many interesting interactions to
complement each other. Their common focus on romance allows the event
focused nature of the Dating Sim to avoid
feeling narratively disconnected by constantly presenting a consistent core tone
which meeting the player’s expectations. Deadlines and stat checks
offer tension and a fail state in order to give a sense of
consequence that is reflected in both halves of the game and helps
invest the player in the value of the relationship when it is
threatened. The quantifying of the romance inherent in Dating Sims is
played by the visual novel sections as a manifestation of the
player’s achievements so a connection can be formed between player
and player character. As natural bed fellows there is much for an
aspiring Dating Sim developer to gain through integrating visual
novel elements into their game and maybe you too can achieve the
heights of the titles showcased here.
