Visual Novel

A visual novel (ビジュアルノベル bijuaru noberu) is a type of Japanese video game centered on romantic interactions with attractive young girls (bishōjo; 美少女). These games are a subgenre of dating sims, similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books, in which the player may make choices to alter the narrative outcome. Featuring text-based stories with interactive elements, most visual novels employ anime-style art and (occasionally) three dimensional animated footage.

General history
Dating sims began to appear in Japan in the early days of personal computers. One of the first games to hit the Japanese market was Night Life by Koei (1982). The first visual novels were none too popular, being limited to 16 color graphics. At the inception of the genre, almost all the games were pornographic.

A notable landmark was Jast's Tenshitachi no gogo (1985), a precursor to the modern dating simulation. Among early visual novels, it had a degree of polish that previous games lacked. It was also the first to have recognizably modern anime-style artwork: its characters had very large eyes and a tiny nose and mouth but were otherwise basically normally proportioned, characteristics which today are found in virtually all forms of Japanese animated media.

By the beginning of the 1990s, the industry had moved away from proprietary Japanese hardware to the burgeoning DOS platform, and then later in the decade to Windows. From that point on, dating sims (and computer games in general) underwent a technological revolution as the market expanded beyond East Asia. With the advent of the world wide web, Japanese popular culture gained widespread popularity in Europe and America, spurred on to some degree by the rise of the so-called "otaku" community.

Throughout the 2000s, the VN industry resisted the transition into 3D graphics due to the blocky and distorted nature when viewed in extreme close up. In 2001 Tokimeki Memorial 3 became one of the first to break this trend. However, low sales make it likely that other companies will stick with the traditional 2D graphics. In the present day, most publishers making releases for Windows, including download-only files.

Game engines
Throughout the early 2000s, Adobe Flash was the most common gaming platform within the online community (see Flash Games). After the software was superseded by HTML5, Flash began to fall out of favor with game makers and enthusiasts. One of the more popular game engines to emerge in recent years is Ren'Py (レンパイ). Originating in Japan during the late 1990s, Ren'Py includes the ability to create branching stories, complete with scene transitions, full-screen movies and animated sprites. Designed specifically for visual narratives and graphic storytelling, the format allows the player to interact with various characters from either first-person or third-person perspectives. This versatility of gameplay has contributed to its overwhelming popularity in Japan and its increasingly high profile in the West.

Gameplay
As transgendered themes are comparatively rare in mainstream visual novels, TG narratives are largely the purview of amateur game makers. A number of trans-themed VNs have been proposed through online communities such as Newgrounds, with actual production meeting with varying levels of success. Many were text-based interactive games supported by minimal graphics; a few of the more ambitious projects utilized high resolution images and animated sequences.

Theoretically, a user could assume any role within a transgendered storyline. A well-designed game can also offer sound effects, animation and high-resolution illustrations to enhance gameplay. In the present day, 3D models and backgrounds may be imported onto the game stage, allowing for hyper-realistic rendering and figurework.

Wikipedia articles

 * Visual novel
 * Dating sim
 * Bishōjo game
 * Ren'Py