Comments on: Danganronpa and The Hundred Line creator Kazutaka Kodaka thinks domestic visual novel games are stagnating. Developers can’t hope to compete with novelists with story alone

By: Luvsta

Luvsta — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:41:23 +0000

Personally I never saw visual novels as games. I don’t mind dialogue heavy games, I play a lot of RPG’s, a visual novel has dialogue overstay it’s welcome and it only leads to short gameplay segments.

By: Sibi

Sibi — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:34:37 +0000

Quite an illogical take from Kodaka. I don’t believe that visual novels require any video game elements to be good stories or worth getting into. The problem is the lack of quality stories being written.

Why do people love Muv Luv Alternative or Mahoutsukai no Yoru? Because they were good stories. These are kinetic visual novels, they have no gameplay or routes. The element of these games that distinguishes them from novels is their ability to use art, graphics, and music in a skillful fashion. Ofc you can have game elements on top of this, but this alone makes it a different medium. Asking why you would play a visual novel instead of read a book is like asking why you wouldn’t just read a book instead of reading a comic or watching a TV show etc. It’s a different medium.

By: Colin

Colin — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:59:29 +0000

Personally I prefer games being more story heavy than gameplay heavy. I hope traditional visual novels never fade out.

By: Verdant Wind

Verdant Wind — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:21:14 +0000

I’m working on a visual novel but I’m writing the script first as a webnovel and will add more endings later into the game, the visual, musical, and interactive aspects of video games I think are the edges they have over normal book