Visual novel
Article
May 19, 2022

Visual novel (ビジュアルノベル, bijuaru noberu, sometimes called "visual novel" in Vietnamese) is a type of interactive novel with the most obvious feature being static graphics, often using the art style of anime. or sometimes real photos or some video footage. As the name suggests, it is possible to imagine this type of work as a novel or a vivant animation. The visual novel is similar to a digital version of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook. In Japanese, there is often a distinction between the traditional visual novel (referred to as NVL), which consists mainly of narrative elements with very little interaction, and the adventure game (adventure game, referred to as AVG for short) or ADV), which may incorporate gameplay and problem-solving elements (active gameplay). This distinction has been largely erased outside of Japan, where both NVL and ADV are often referred to as "visual novels" by international fans. Visual novels and ADVs are especially popular in Japan, where they accounted for 70% of locally produced PC games in 2006. Most visual novels are very rarely reproduced for consoles, but Popular works are sometimes ported to the Saturn, Dreamcast, PlayStation or Switch. More popular visual novels are also often adapted into light novels, manga, or anime. The market for visual novels outside of East Asia is small, however there are several anime based on visual novels that have become very popular in the Western world.