Sunday, September 8, 2024
Into The Depths
Dungeon
diving into winding mazes filled with danger and treasure has been
a persistent fantasy and a genre of game seemly at odds with visual
novels due to its high emphasis on its own mechanics. Looking at
titles like Etrian Odyssey might lead to you to believe that this is
a genre which does not care about story. However, among them are a
subset striving to reach for a greater narrative complexity and these
choose visual novel sections as their means of do so. For them its a
method of presentation in line with its already regular and orderly
construction and can be dropped in and out of without it feeling too out
of place. They are uniquely positioned to capitalise on the space
between the itself and the visual novel elements while also offering
the story progression as an important form of momentum over the long
term. Let’s conquer another floor and find out how this hybrid
works in practice.
Regular And Orderly
If
there is one thing which defines the Dungeon Crawler it is the way
its structure adheres to a rigid framework. From start to finish,
everything has a regular and orderly place within the game and it
rarely moves outside of itself and relies on these established
mechanics to push complexity forward while making the changes
understandable for the player. As such the limited presentational
elements available to visual novels feel right at home alongside the
restrictiveness of all the other elements and slot in as another one
of the game’s systems. This way it can be used as a complete
narrative tool all to itself or be overlaid on top of the active game
world gives it the modular nature to respond to the Dungeon Crawler’s
need for story without having to grind everything to a halt. It is
also closer to the feeling of the gameplay than a more extensive 3d
cutscenes since it reflects the orderly nature of the gameplay
experience rather than appearing entirely detached from what has come
before. Its relatively simple production makes it suitable for the
bitty but long narratives these kinds of games like to tell and it
provides the necessary flexibility to keep the focus squarely on the
Dungeon Crawler half of the game while still having a meaningful tale
to invest the player into.
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| Interest choice of words there little lady... |
The longer the game the more pronounced
this structural synergy becomes and Yumina the Ethereal presents a
good example of how it works over its eighty hour play time. As a
game with multi paths, one for each heroine, it intends to be
completed more than a single time and as such it needs to keep things
fresh yet consistent with what came before. It achieves this effect
through enhancing or escalating parts of its existing material rather
than offering any type of radically different experience. Yumia is a
title reliant on its over the top nature and escalation to keep
people engaged and as such it is key that its various elements
showcase this throughout. The visual novel sections are part of this
overall change as they carry the narrative of the selected heroine
forwards which sits snugly next to other alterations like changing in
difficulty and new enemy encounters. By ensuring a constant place
for the visual novel, it can present the story as an extension of the
other existing systems and something that compliments the tone and
direction of the game. It finds a degree of freedom in its orderly
nature and can use its limitations as a means to set player
expectations for the spread and pace of content.
The Space Between
Not
everything a game want to present needs to be spelt out in either
mechanics or narrative, sometimes the gap between each can
be played with for an interesting effect. Due to the regular nature
of how the parts of a Dungeon Crawler interact and their someone
abstract nature of their mechanics there are a lot spaces where the
player is asked to imagine what must have happened. For example in a
grid based title, the game does not expect the player to actually
believe that the whole party is crammed onto one tile and are moving
one space at a time and instead it is presented as a representation
of what is really happening in the world used for the sake of
gameplay. It is into gaps like these that some games have chosen to
place things implied but never spelt out in order to let them sit at
the back of the player’s mind to linger there until it is time to
bring them into the light.
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| Something is wrong here and it not what it at first appears |
Let us examine a hybrid which makes use of
the technique to see what the practical benefits of it are for all
parts of the title. Mary Skelter 2 is a game which revels in the
things which are present and absent and the gaps between them. In
particular in it utilises its re-framing of the timeline from the
first game while omitting key elements and making the player question
exactly what has gone so wrong to result in this outcome. Here is a
place the gaps between the visual novel and the other game systems is
put to good use by subtly implying the importance of what is missing
in their interaction. The comparison between Jack in the original
game and this one is the strongest use of this implication since the
narrative presents events which lead up to this change and yet does
not directly expand on what that means for a long time. All the while
the battle systems showcases the far more violent and temperamental
nature of this new Jack and the unspoken gap between these two
presentations of the same idea creates a tension that causes the
player to be more aware of it.
Progression As Momentum
Providing
a sense of forward movement within a game is a major way in which
they retain the player’s attention for the long term. For Dungeon
Crawler’s this can be a difficult task due to their inherently
repetitive nature and the way their structure encourages multiple
dives into the same dungeon leading to these aspects blurring into
one another in a way which can lead to a loss of momentum. Enter the
visual novel sections, these give an important feeling of context and
progression to the work the player is putting into the dungeons. By
their nature as narratives they have an in built sense of forward
momentum as all stories are inherently moving towards a conclusion
and so anything attached to it gains the same effect through
proximity. Spacing these visual novel chunks over the long term and
making sure they are regular enough to be a constant presence but not
so frequent as to interrupt the follow of the game’s other systems
is key to ensuring the effectiveness of its impact. Here the modular
and regular nature of the Dungeon Crawler gives it a helping hand, it
is already constantly moving between its distinct and segregated
elements so the transition and presence of the visual novel does not
seem at odds with everything else and is instead just another of the
plethora of options it can dive into.
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| Narrative as momentum is an effective trick to keep player engagment |
Take Labyrinth of Refrain:
Coven of Dusk for example, this is a highly mechanics focused title
where the repetition of dungeon diving is core to its appeal and
there is a clear divide between the dungeons and the surface where
all the preparation happen. This is title which risks falling into a
loop where the player feels as if everything is the same so Coven of
Dusk brings in visual novel sections to alleviate this issue. In
order to keep them in line with the rest of the game they are mostly
confined to the surface sections where the plot relevant characters
stay while puppets they control do all the dungeon exploring. Doing
this prevents the narrative from being too invasive into the game’s
core appeal while also having access to the sense of progression
offered by its inclusion. Coven of Dusk is not a story centric title
and yet the inclusion of this element helps the overall package
maintain its needed pacing.
Conclusion
Narrative
has always been an element which Dungeon Crawlers have struggled with
and so they often turn to visual novels for help. At first it might
seem that the two are incompatible due to the regular and orderly
nature of the Dungeon Crawler but this actually works well with the
limited nature of visual novels so it can easily slot into this
existing framework. Momentum is a key factor in the importance of
visual novel sections to the experience since it add a feeling of
progression to what would otherwise risk being a repetitive
environment. The gaps created between the two halves due to their
regular nature work as a great place to interact with what is left
unsaid in the narrative or mechanics and imply ideas which come into
relevance later. This hybrid showcases how much visual novel elements
can contribute even in a style of game which is otherwise mechanics
heavy instead of being concerned with narrative.
