SimonZephyr: So what exactly are the gaming aspects here? Are they just dialogues with picture that tell stories? Is it just like a visual choose your own adventure story telling?
Well... again, all VNs are on a spectrum between having gameplay and being kinetic:
On one end you have dating sims/stat management games, or VN hybrids (like Idea Factory's games).
On the other end you have kinetic VNs - no choices/input/stats/minigames. The point of these is focus on story.
In the middle you have ones which are more like a choose-your-own adventure, or have some other kind of gaming aspect to them (point-and-click, text based adventure, investigation, etc).
The one constant for all visual novels, regardless of gameplay content or not, is that you primarily spending your time
reading. SFX, music, voice acting, and art also make part of the experience.
If a title has you spending more time in gameplay (excluding making choices, I'm talking like RPG segments), then the definition gets fuzzy and eventually it's a "game with VN segments" rather than a VN.
So using the list I gave you as examples:
- Higurashi: kinetic
- Fata Morgana: choices and branching plot
- Corpse Party: gameplay affects outcomes
- VA-11 HALL-A: bartending gameplay and stat management affects outcomes
- eden*: kinetic
- Da Capo: choices and multiple character routes
tl;dr VNs can have many aspects to them, but primarily time is spent reading. If you don't like reading, you're gonna have a bad time.
Hope that helps.
Ancient-Red-Dragon: Those games are certainly not "completely without erotic content." They definitely have some stuff that would qualify as that (I'm not saying they are AO type games, though, which they aren't).
Thanks for pointing that out! Though I feel like this topic is very easy to devolve into arguing semantics and content ratings. I don't want to derail the thread anymore either.
I'm still not sure what's the best way to refer to them. So I've gone with "without 18+ content," and that'll just have to do. xD