Recently I’ve been playing several visual novels, thus delaying my productivity along but oh well…
In these games, sometimes you have to make a choice that might change drastically the game storyline.
Something has been bugging me since then…
How does one guess which choice leads to the story one wants to be told ?

I mean, the very concept of visual novel is to convey stories, based on a player’s choices.
To make a choice, one generally has to bathe into the story’s atmosphere, identify to the main protagonist (which is sometimes really hard because in most cases, the anti-hero/heroine personality is quite weird) and take the right decision about what to think or say.
By comparing several visual novels, I’ve kinda sorted out most of the choice systems.

The obvious choice range

In this category, you have very accurate choices that make one know the consequences of the selected choice. It’s mainly used firstly to prevent too much brain damage due to overexposure to insane choices and secondly to prevent players from using “kouryaku” notes, that is to say, walkthroughs.
There’s also more a significant increase in the player’s attention and involvement. Because there, thanks to these obvious choices, one can focus into the story being told, rather than the consequences of a misclick with undesired results.
The downside may be this lack of surprises, because you can much figure out how the story goes, but only to a certain degree.

For example, the game Sekirara uses this type of choice system, which makes the game rather enjoyable, because after a series of choices that ponderate towards the desired character story, you end up with a huge development of seven chapters. It’s somehow a mix of visual novel and kinetic novel.

The cryptic choice range

Plain choices might lack suspense and players might want to have surprises. That’s the role of this kind of choice: to provide players some sort of logical in the following script, with one detail modifying the whole course of action.
There, extensive use of walkthroughs is a must (if they exist when you play the game) to get the story one desires.
The obvious downside is that one will have to replay a considerable number of times to get to that.

For example, the game Cross Channel uses this kind of choice range. Actually most visual novels use this system because it’s somehow more artistic.

The timely choice range

When one makes a decision, it is often set in a short span of time. This IRL concept is being put into a visual novel choice range, that is to say, the player is given an array of choice and must select one before the alloted time.
Sometimes there’s no need to interact and the story still goes on.
This is obviously a figurative style where the player incarnates the role of main character.
The obvious downside is that people read at different speeds and might cause problems to people who read slowly, and might be a handicap if the game is written in a different language.

There are lots of games that still use this sort of choice range, with a visible or a hidden counter.
For example, Symphonic Rain, Chaos Head, Sakura Taisen3, use this kind of choice system.

I hope this article will help people devising their own choice system. I’d say it’s difficult to make a choice when you don’t really know where it gets, so simplicity is best when you begin.