Sunday, November 16, 2025
On The Case
From
Sherlock Holmes to Columbo, Detective Fiction has a vice like grip on
the popular consciousness so it is no surprise to find visual novels
making use of such stories. The way visual novels play into the
strengths of video games and written mediums results in a unique
blend of roleplay while still having the strong personalities key to
a good detective. When the focus is around the detective within an
officially sanctioned organisation like the police the story tends to come with
more authority for the characters and the struggles at having to
navigate red tape. Stepping into the private sector and the detective
gains a more scrappy mentality where they have to work to unearth
clues in a less direct fashion compared to their official
counterparts. Then there are characters put into the role of
detective out of no choice of their own and this lack of experience
alongside them often being directly connected to mystery they are
solving gives them a wider emotional and narrative range at the cost
of much of the detective fantasy. Let’s put on our deerstalkers and
deduce how these traits of the genre influence its presentation and
what stories it tells.
Official Police Business
Working
in an officially recognised organisation like the police or some form
of special unit gives the detective a greater degree of authority to
wield while also demanding they be accountable to regulations.
Narratively this often manifests as some elements of the police
procedural style where the characters have access to a wide range of
other professionals in various field who can provide information they
would not otherwise be able to know. Another common feature is a
fixation on the crime scene from an analytical perspective where the
detective picks over every detail of the area beyond what is
necessary to solve the case in order to sell the idea of just how
capable they are and many resources they have at their disposal. In order to
create a sense of the authority available to the detective they are
able to get access to restricted locations and make people they are
interviewing feel as if they have to talk which both feed into this
idea of the borrowed power they are wielding. Red tape is a part of
any large organisation and at some point the detective is going to
have to be shown engaging with it. The exact extent of the paper
pushing and regulation which appears depends on the extent it leans
into being a fantasy with the grounded tales tending to have more
mundane work and the action focused ones being less interested in
breaking the story’s flow to accommodate it.
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| Got to get all the details of the crime |
This divide between
the kinds of police detective fiction defines much of this side of
the genre in visual novels so let us look a pair of games which
exemplify each end of the spectrum. AI: Somnium Files is not a
realistic depiction of police detective work in any way with the
futuristic sci-fi tech and the special branch dedicated to use it. There
is a strong through line of drama where the Detective Fiction is a means of
presenting a complex narrative rather than an attempt to engage with
the realities of solving crime. Date Kaname never has to sit down and
do paper work and spends as much time goofing off as he does working
to the point you could be forgiven for forgetting he is in-fact in a
position of authority. Yet he does have to work within the bounds of
the police’s structure such as not being able to arrest or hold
people without evidence and this is used as a
dramatic device to build tension and tie his hands. It also acts as a
means of easily presenting him in a heroic light as he struggles to
do what is right while also balancing his role as a representative of
a group far bigger than him. Crime scene investigations is a core
aspect of AI: Somnium Files identity and over the course of the game
the player will investigate them in great detail as they try to piece
together the mystery. Here is where the appeal of the detective
fantasy is at its strongest in AI where the fragmentary clues
tantalisingly place the truth within reach, but only the detective
has ability to reach that conclusion. On the other hand CollarXMalice
is much more interested in the day to day operations of the police
despite it also have an outlandish premise. The protagonist spends a
lot of the common route performing the routine actions required of
the police from filling out paperwork to taking calls to patrolling
the streets. Through these actions the game’s world is
contextualised within a sense of normality the police are trying to
maintain despite the circumstances around them. Returning to this
normal is a key motivator for the protagonist and their mundane
actions showcase her vision of such a life which remains potent as
the antagonists attempt to take it away from her. Since she is not a
detective by position but instead circumstance, this causes the
mystery solving element of the detective to move away from the crime
scene itself and into the way each crime paints a picture of what the
antagonists are after as she works towards the truth about each
one. Being part of the police does give her access to specialists, in
a more grounded way than AI’s sci-fi magic, with the most notable
of these being Shiraishi Kageyuki of the crime lab who regularly
gives her useful information his department has gained. Everything
aims to sell the police in this setting as a believable version of
their real world equivalents and sell the lumbering nature of this
organisation which the detective belongs to.
Private Eye
A
private sector detective is free from the constraints and
responsibilities of the police but in exchange do not have access to the
professionals or the ability to pressure people for information
through their authority. This leads a lot of such detectives to be
characterised as scrappy underdogs who have to use their intelligence
and creativity to the evidence they need to solve the crime. It
pushes the super smart end of the detective fantasy where they are
utilising their cunning to pry truths out of people which they would
otherwise never speak. Having some connection to the
police is a relatively common means to get the detective the
knowledge he need, either because they were once part of the police
or through a friend on the force, yet there is careful balance here
since it could easily undercut the scrappy element of the fantasy and
so the source of the information often only reveals a limited amount
since they are bound by confidentiality. Interactions with the
criminal underworld or shady information brokers is another angle
this style of detective can bring as they tread the line between the
light and dark sides of the world in pursuit of the truth. This plays
into the more morally grey tendencies of a detective working for an
inherently selfish motive in money where their compass might lead
them to do things the player may not agree with.
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| Finding all those tiny clues |
As a genre this type
of detective is deal with in one of two ways, either it is treated
with the utmost seriousness and leans into the darker side of human
nature or it goes the opposite way and makes the lack of restrictions
of their activities the source of a light adventure with a free-form
structure. The Kara No Shoujo series is sits decidedly on the side of
the former with its horrific murders and generally dark tone.
Tokisaka Reiji is not initially hired to solve a murder but rather to
go undercover as a history teacher to investigate a series of
disappearances at the behest of the vice principle. This is an
important part of the narrative set up as it establishes the for hire
nature of the detective and as he pokes around to try and solve the
disappearances the player gets to see the cunning way he uses the
minimal resources he has at his disposal. His lack of detachment from
the people he interacts with and his willingness to get personally
involved in their lives marks him as a less professional and more
human version of the detective. Given the small cast of characters
this focus on them allows the game to place the horror of the murders
on a personal level where the player will witness the effects it has
on a wide spread of the cast. It also highlights how compromised the
detective is when he acts in accordance with his emotions rather than
the logic more befitting his status and this makes his struggles and
successes feel personal to him. A lighter take on the private
detective can be seen in Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands
Behind where the protagonist assumes the role after being taken in by
a more experienced detective. The young age of the protagonist allows
them to fit into the school setting where they are tasked with
investigating the disappearance of a young girl and it makes his
naivety and inexperience blend into a coming of age story which
steers clear of anything too dark for its broader target audience.
Witnessing the growth of a detective on the job is a part of the
genre this game plays heavily into as the player gets to witness the
protagonist grow and find the skills he needs to solve the mystery
and discover the spark of genius which defines him as a detective.
Following this growth is one of the main ways the narrative gets the
player invested in seeing the story to its end and gives another
emotional avenue to the mystery beyond the desire to see it solved.
It also leads to a story about building a future and is hopeful for
the people involved in contrast to the spiral downwards which defines
Kara No Shoujo.
Amateur Hour
The
final type of detective fiction is one where the detective is an
unwitting everyman who lacks any spark of deductive genius. They are
drawn into investigating the mystery when circumstances compel them
rather than as part of their profession. By the end of the story they may have picked up
the skills of the detective but they do not start out with any of
them and struggle against what is asked of them and even at the end
their abilities are something they want to never have to use again.
These detectives possess likeable and familiar traits of people the
player might meet in their day to day life giving them by far the
most grounded starting point for the genre and it tries to keep them
within this core identity so they never lose their connection to the
world they came from. Due to their origins they have no way of
accessing the information necessary to solve the mystery like other
styles of detective and instead the game adopts a contrivance, such a
some form of magic or a contained environment, in order to provide
the clues and resources need to solve the mystery. This need for a
strong justification for the detective’s engagement and ability to
solve the mystery does lead to this end of the genre tending to be
far more wacky in premise with it stretching the limits of the genre.
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| Naegi is an extremely over the top version of the everyman |
Danganronpa is perhaps the poster-child of how distinctive this side
of the detective genre can be in visual novels. Its detectives are
always confused participants in the death game which demands they
solve various murders with the minimal skills at their disposal.
Their deer in the headlights reactions to what is happening around
them firmly places them as an everyman who has to stand up to the
task in order to survive no matter how unsuitable they might be for
the job. Focusing on confining the cast inside a limited location to
incite the death game also serves the double purpose of ensuring the
clues the detective needs can be found despite their limited skills. Meanwhile their captor, Monokuma, serve as the specialist who can provide
the detective with information they could otherwise not know even if
they might present it in a misleading fashion. While not as comically
over the top as Danganronpa, Umineko’s use of magic in its setting
gives it a legitimate reason to be able to supply Battler with all
the details of the case from his vantage point outside of time and
space. Battler himself is the definition of an unwilling detective
when he is thrust into the role when people start being killed around
him and he raw reactions to events and way he struggles to adapt make
him start out being an everyman. Eventually he does take to his new
role as detective which is in the game’s best interest given how
much it plays of the idea of the detective and the cliché’s of Detective Fiction, but even then it is careful to keep his motives of
saving his family and friends front and centre to utilise this
contrast between actions and motive to fuel his character growth. He
is not the only detective on the case with Beatrice acting as a
detective who seeks to prove magic as the cause of the mystery as
opposed to Battler’s realistic perpetrators. The pair’s vastly
different views on events are a core part of Umineko’s appeal since
it understand the qualities of a good detective and has each of them
take on a form of this fiction to better comment and engage with its
troupes and conventions.
Conclusion
Detective
Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes within visual novels as they
try to adapt its malleable genre mysteries and strong personalities
to the stories they want to tell. Police detective narratives stress
the structures the detective is working within both in terms of the
authority it gives them and its restrictions to sell the power and
struggles it brings. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the
everyman detective is dragged into the mystery against their will and
has few resources to aid them in order to make the success of solving
the case all the sweeter. Between them is the private detective who’s
connections to the police and the underworld give them the
information they need but results in a more morally grey narrative.
As you may have noticed from the examples from each part of the genre
there is a lot of overlap between these kinds of Detective Fiction
since this approach allows these games to take the aspects they need
to tell their mysteries. Such a varied and adaptable genre is perfect
for those looking for a way to create a mystery visual novel with a
focus on a single or few deductive individuals.
