Sunday, October 18, 2026
Answering The Pressing Questions
An
often overlook yet extremely common mechanic in games is the Quiz
with its simple multiple choice questions demanding the player rack
their brains. The tendency visual novels to focus their entire structure and identity around presenting various options means
Quizzes have often found themselves a home as part of their overall
means of engagement. Rather than being an outlet for trivia, which a
Quiz game might be on its own, it is instead repurposed to push
in-universe ideas and concepts through a familiar lens. This can be
as simple as being a tool to make sure the player has been paying
attention and knocking them awake. More often than not it is utilised
as a means of simulating the process of deduction in many mystery or
detective games which can exist alongside or in replacement for other
mechanics pushing the same idea. They can also create a form of tension when the visual novel suddenly asks something designed to
unsettle the player or require them to be answer in a short window if they
want to survive. Let’s get ready to press that buzzer and find out
how this pairing works in practice.
Poking The Player
In
its most basic form a Quiz serves the function of checking the player
has been paying attention and tests them on facts about what they
have witnessed. It acts as a shock to the system to signal the player
should be paying closer attention if they do not want the game to
hand out a failing grade. Despite this being a basic
motivator it can be surprisingly effective since nobody likes to feel
like they are dumb and the everyone wants to believe they are smart
which is what a Quiz inherently feeds its mechanics on. This carrot
and stick approach is tame enough to not make the player feel as if
they must have a perfect score but it is has enough teeth so that
they are likely to have a greater awareness of the narrative going
forwards. Such Quizzes tend to be infrequent in nature due to how
they completely break up the flow of events and are mostly
concentrated at the end of distinct sections of the story where they
occupy a nature pause in momentum.
XBLAZE LOST:MEMORIES is the poster
child for this kind of Quiz in visual novels. At regular intervals it
takes the player into a space separate from the narrative where it
has its cast act out of character and it has the protagonist be part of a quiz
show about the story events they have just witnessed. This exists so
the game can ensure the player is keeping up with its increasingly
complex plot points and concepts by repeating them and highlighting
which ones are important through their questions. A similar concern
about the player’s understanding of complex narrative beats can be
seen in Schrödinger's Call where Mary will stop after every call and
quiz the player in the form of an internal monologue about what they
just witnessed. What these two games showcase is how the Quiz can
break down ideas and events into more manageable chunks to keep it
from becoming overwhelming. However, it also risks appearing to
patronise the player by treating them with a sense that they lack the
intelligence to follow these narratives without assistance which can
accidentally antagonise them.
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| Language lessons made fun! |
A way to mitigate this is to frame it
as being related to what the protagonist is learning alongside the
player as is done in The Expression Amrilato. It regularly asks the
player to apply the bits of Esperanto they have learned to help
Takatoo Rin on her journey of communication. Focusing on a positive
and productive aspect of Rin’s story allows the game to add some
weight to the Quizzes through a gradual escalation in what they are
asking both parties to achieve. Esperanto is not a commonly taught
language so the player is likely to be learning it through the game
for the first time and this lets the game side step the issue of
patronising the player since all this will be new to them. All three
titles here present their Quiz elements in a simple fashion which
sits somewhat to the side of the rest of the visual novel where
success or failure is ultimately not the point of their existence and
so treats it in the same detached manner.
Stand-In For Deduction
When
taking a Quiz you are being tested on your knowledge and ability to
recall details about information from past experiences. By extension
any kind of deduction starts with a series of questions to establish
the when, where, who, what and why of a situation which nicely covers
the requirements of a Quiz. This means it is easy to overlap
answering questions and the process of logical reasoning leading the
Quiz to be a common means of systematising a detective’s path to
catching a criminal or uncovering a mystery. Rather than presenting
it as a series of questions, this style of Quiz is mingled into the
character’s internal dialogue to frame it as them breaking down a
problem into solvable chunks. It also serves the purpose of making
the player feel clever since they are the ones who are answering the
questions which even the detective is struggling with so allowing
them a feeling of being intellectually superior. Their simple structure gives this kind of Quiz the ability to fit into any space
where the illusion of deduction is needed without having to dedicate
time to implementing more complex mechanics which may not be
appropriate for the kind of story being told.
Since this is so
flexible and often makes up a small part of the overall mechanical
landscape, it is best to cover a broad spread of examples in a simple
fashion to best demonstrate this trend. Let’s start with the two
most obvious visual novels employing this kind of Quiz, Danganronpa
and Phoenix Wright and compare their similar implementations. Both
include Quiz elements intermittently as part of a series of mechanics
which symbolise the process of deduction. They are mostly applied
to questions with obvious answers or those with big dramatic effects
which the player needs to witness immediately rather after a separate
play area has finished. They use the Quizzes during their respective
‘trial’ sections and this leads them to being a means of pushing
forwards to the truth giving the sequence a sense of momentum when
needed to keep the player engaged.
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| Fire, it is always fire. |
In some games the Quiz can end up
merged with other gameplay mechanics and it does in Yurukill: The
Calumniation Games. Here the Quiz takes place in and around the main
mechanic of being a top down shooter where the player is asked to answer
questions using the top down flight to go into the answer they want.
Seamlessly integrating it like this allows the game to maintain its
core focus and identity rather then bringing everything to a halt to
present its options and creates a greater sense of flow as a result.
Of course making the Quiz stand out is also an option and one which
FLOWERS -Le volume sur été- embraces to sell the stages of
deduction. It uses them to very directly signal significant jumps in
logic presented through the overall lining of flowers to keep it from
feeling too beyond the rest of the content. Being so direct gives
FLOWERS the ability to provide the feeling of intellectual catharsis and cleanly reward the player for their keen attention
with a pat on the back.
Asking For Tension
When
a person is suddenly asked a question they were not expecting there
is a moment of panic before their brain pulls up the answer and
capitalising on this through a Quiz can add extra drama to a scene.
In order to make this possible the choices are often accompanied by a
timer ticking down to create a sense of pressure to forceable induce
the desired anxiety and maybe even have the player commit to a
mistake. Picking the wrong option can often result in the death of
the characters in order to give the player’s actions and panic a
sense of weight and consequence. However, there is no doubt this is a
cheap trick to pull and risks annoying the player since they will
feel they were not given a fair chance to pick correctly. As such
this kind of Quiz is rarely used and is only really found in horror
titles where the pacing and demand for tension allow it to nicely
slot into a wider suite of mechanics. Even here it has to tread
carefully or fear can give way to frustration at the inability to
progress due to an artificial barrier and this is mitigated through
providing the information needed to solve it almost immediately
beforehand. After all the point is to create tension not to actually
test the player’s ability to recall past details so avoiding
anything too mentally taxing in this stressful situation prevents
unnecessary friction.
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| Even the spirit fights like to use little bits of Quizzes |
A title which demonstrates the both the
strengths and issues of this use of Quizzes is Death Mark. It
regularly picks at the player’s brain under a tense and time
constrained pressure where the monster of the day is breathing down
their neck. Sometimes failure in these results in an instant game
over while in others the negative effects are delayed in order to
keep the player on their toes and prevent them for growing
comfortable. For the most part the game
carefully chooses information for its Quizzes from recent areas so it
is easy to recall and allows the feeling of tension to not boil over
into anger. However, for some later sections it assumes culturally
specific knowledge not present in the game itself and asks the player
to answer its questions based on it. To
its original Japanese audience this would have been a reasonable
expectation but when transferred into another culture all of this is
lost and the only thing left is confusion and a bad taste in the
mouth. Future games in the series make sure to never repeat this
mistake and it shows just how aware the developers are of the fine
line they were treading in Death Mark leading to chances being made
to avoid overstepping again.
Conclusion
Twenty
questions might not a first glance seem to be something compatible
with visual novels yet their common choice based nature opens them up
to a flexible overlapping. Their main purpose is to act as a
mechanical way to stimulate the player without having to go into more
complex systems and they help break up any feels of monotony. Add some
timers and a death if the player does not get the answer right and
the Quiz can create tension during the scramble to recall the correct
information. It can also be an intellectual stand-in when dealing with deduction where the player gets to feel smart and puts themselves into the
head space of a detective. Overall it is an extremely adaptable
style of gameplay which every developer should consider using if they
want a small addition to the standard choice based structure of their
visual novel.
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