Sunday, May 11, 2025
Pursuing High Numbers
As
a mechanical backbone for a game Management Simulators create a
distinctive focus on numbers and long term organisation which at
first glance might make it appear incompatible with visual novels.
Despite the contrast between the two styles of game, there have been
many titles merging them and it has revealed some interesting
interactions between how they function. On the most basic level the
visual novel sections act as a means to soften the hard of edges of
the Management Simulators’ dry tendency to hyper fixate on numbers.
The Sim also naturally construct a journey which a narrative element
can weave in and out of in an organic manner while adding weight to
process of advancement. It is common for them to be accompanied by
another style of gameplay in order to add variety to the content and
this offers the visual novel parts an opportunity to play off two
complementary sets of mechanics. Let’s crunch some numbers and find
out how this hybrid’s interactions work in practice.
Softening The Edges Of Progress
By
their nature Management Simulators are extremely distant and
impersonal even more so than other sims like raising and dating. This
is due to a combination of the wider scope of their subject
matter and the inherent number based nature of such sims. Rather than
the systematising of the struggles and growth of a single individual
found in raising and dating sims, Management Simulators instead
present the bigger picture of running an organisation or business
over the longer term and require the player to engage with this far
seeing approach to succeed. As you might imagine this leads to some
sharp edges when it comes to how this big picture relates to the
people directly involved in it and how it influences their lives.
This is where the visual novel element comes in as a means to soften
this issue and bring these abstract systems down to a level the
player can easily understand from an emotional perspective. In
particular the simple presentation of visual novels makes them an
easy way to show the story while not being a massive leap away from the
menu based nature of Management Simulators and allows for the game to
easily transition between them without either side appearing out of
place. Looking at it in reverse the visual novel gains a larger
perspective on events it might otherwise struggle to accurately
capture due to its personal and direct narrative style and so the sim
can frame it to provide the developer’s desired impact.
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| Management does not need to be complex |
Let’s
look at a couple of examples which showcase the differing approaches
to utilising this interaction between these two parts of the game.
Kamidori Alchemy Meister has a sizeable focus on managing the
protagonist’s alchemy shop and the creation of items to
restock it which underpins much of the sense of progression in the
early game. There is a keen sense of this shop as being a cosy home
for the characters while also a place of business and balancing these
feelings is key to its presentation. This is achieved through several
avenues chief among them being the various small events which take
place in the shop and frame how the space should be interpreted by
the player. Each of these visual novel sections acts as a break from
the mechanical elements of the title and adds some extra flavour to
the people living there. The same characters are also available for
the player to assign to run the shop and offer a variety of benefits
appropriate to their personalities to tie what is experienced in the
vignettes into the gameplay. On the opposite end of the spectrum we
have Astra's Garden which treats its Management Simulator element as
a minor secondary concern. Here the focus is on the protagonist
Astragalus and the interactions they have with their customers. The
Management Simulator elements are very basic and simple in nature due
to the game’s desire to use them as a framing device for the
narrative encounters. By doing this the game is able to communicate
to the player a sense of what it is like to run the shop and how the
meetings with customers feels within that context. In many ways this
version of the Management Simulator is merely a narrative device
through which the visual novel sections can express a more abstract
set of ideas they would have difficulty conveying in the precise way
it can.
From Economics To A Journey
The
line must always go up in something so focused on management and
economical aspects and the graph it ends up creating the natural
outline of a narrative. It is a journey through the various perils of
running whatever organisation is at the game’s core and this has
its ups and downs yet it broadly trends upwards towards the final
goal. Of course not ever Management Simulator has a set ending point
and some continue as long as the player desires to engage with them
but such titles are generally entirely divorced from any form of
direct narrative. Those which do include story elements can take
advantage of their natural tendency to end up with the rough outline
of a journey which enables them to seamlessly weave in the visual
novel parts. Achieving this is generally done by triggering these
events on key milestones in the upwards trend and relating the
player’s achievements to the characters’ own progression and
growth. This rewards structure is interspersed with self contained
vignettes to ensure the narrative is never gone for so long that the
player might forgets it exists or loses track of what is going on. This
is especially important as the goals set by the game become
increasingly large and the time between each major story beat becomes
longer.
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| I hope you are good at bartering |
Take
the pair of DS Spice and Wolf games, My Year with Holo and The Wind
that Spans the Sea, they are good examples of how this can be implemented.
Mechanically they trading style Management Simulators where the aim
is to spin up a profit by buying low at one place and selling high at
another based on the rumours and other information on the best price.
This leads to an open structure where the player travels from town to
town following profit and as such they will regularly go back on
themselves and will not progress in a predictable manner. As such the
majority of narrative beats are attached to the player’s arrival in
specific locations or to them meeting key goals along the journey.
Shaped like this, the story follows a broad structure which accounts
for the possibility of them being experienced out of order or after a
long gap since they are singular on their point and isolated enough
to be clear no matter when they are experienced. Splashed in between
these major beats are numerous smaller interaction when travelling
between towns or after certain periods of time. These offer snapshots
of Holo and the cast’s interactions in order to reminds the player
of the people their choices are influencing and keeping them
emotional invested in them.
Rarely The Whole Package
Pure
Management Simulators are not common and they often utilised
alongside other gameplay elements in order to create a diverse and
balanced experience. It is predominately mixed with some other kind
of big picture mechanic such as strategy since they do not conflict due to their similar overall perspective. This combination is an
opportunity for the visual novel sections to tread the line between
the two and play off the differing emotional qualities of each.
Ordering a man to build a market and sending him to die in a battle
have different impacts on the player even if they operate on the same
higher plane of organisation. The narrative acts as a means to bridge
the two by showing the same characters acting across the whole
spectrum of what the gameplay presents going from dealing the effects
of management to those of combat. Having them deal with the fallout
of the player’s management lends a common sense of personal
investment to these higher level gameplay systems and prevent the
feeling of bouncing backwards and forwards between segregated parts
of the game. Madou Koukaku is a prime example of this merger with its
city management and strategy. The story is segregated down this line
and big actions scenes are found around the battles while the quieter
moments are gathered around the city building since this matches the
tone and content of the mechanics they are connected with. Yet there
is a lot of overlap in the characters and key events as they grow and
develop throughout to match the escalation of mechanical difficulty.
This consistency allows for a coherent picture of emotional impact of
the gameplay on the characters to emerge over time as the player’s
actions within them become more dramatic to match the escalating war
across the Melkia empire.
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| A city is the heart of its people |
Conclusion
Putting
something so focused on the big picture in Management Simulators next
to the intimate and personal format of visual novels might seem like
a terrible match at first but the extreme nature of their differences
works in the union’s favour. The narrative element provided by
visual novels can act as a way to offer emotional context to the
actions the player performs while managing and this helps keep them
invested. Since Management Simulators are rarely the only style of
gameplay present, the story can work as a bridge between the different
mechanics and connect the impact they have on the characters. As a
sim progresses it naturally forms the outline of journey with its ups
and downs where the player has to deal with various trials and it
makes for the perfect space for a visual novel scenes to slot into.
For those looking for a way to find a balance between higher level
mechanics and story there are few better ways to achieve it than
through this memorable hybrid.
