Top 5 Useful Sources for Creating a Romance-based Visual Novel

"Ninja Love+" is an otome game, or a story-based video game targeted towards women, and is available on both Google Play and the iTunes App Store. The character you play as is chosen as the ninja princess, a symbol of ninja clans joining together in preparation for war. You are instructed to travel to Iga and must choose one ninja to accompany you as a bodyguard. This visual novel is a perfect example of what you should aim for when creating a romance-based visual novel. It has several possible endings that are heavily determined by the choices you make in dialogue, which in turn affects your character's relationship with your ninja-of-choice. The prominence of the eight possible romance "routes" in this story - each of which has three of its own potential endings - makes it an excellent model for a visual novel of the romance genre.

"Skights" is told from the perspectives of three different women - a peasant girl, a vagabond, and an heiress - who live in the fictional land of Sugaria. It follows their interactions with various other characters, especially potential love interests. Unlike in "Ninja Love+," however, the relationships in which the three women find themselves is ultimately set in stone and cannot be decided by you, the player. While "Skights" presents a number of elements that are key to the romance genre and is a good read overall, it lacks the feature of a "route" for each character. Therefore, this visual novel serves better as a source of inspiration than a complete model for a romance-based game.

The year is 2017 and you're a member of Chaldea, a somewhat secret organization established by the U.N. to guard the future of humanity. According to Chaldea's technology, the human race is doomed to go extinct by the end of the year, and you must travel back in time to prevent this from happening. "Fate/Grand Order" is a combination of a visual novel and a traditional video game. The visual novel itself occurs in the form of episodes before and/or after each segment of gameplay. While this game serves as a wonderful example of visual novels in general, it focuses solely on fantasy and adventure and is therefore not an ideal model for a romance-based story.

"The Role of Visual Novels as a Narrative Medium," which is actually a master's thesis by Dennis van der Geest, provides a thorough explanation of what visual novels are and what their genre conventions consist of. Van der Geest draws attention to three visual novels in particular, providing an in-depth analysis of them in relation to visual novels as a narrative form. Featured in the picture above is a screencap from "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies," which is one of the visual novels he examines. While this article isn't very helpful when it comes specifically to romance-based visual novels, it's incredibly useful if you're brand new to the world of visual novels and want to learn more about what they are and why they're so cool.

This article, which was presented at the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games in May 2012, sets forth a proposal for a new visual novel aimed at making patients feel more comfortable in a hospital environment. Called "The Time Mage," the story is meant to empower patients to become self-efficacious. "Using an Interactive Novel to Promote Patient Empowerment through Engagement" is barely useful at all if you're looking to write a romance-based visual novel (or even a visual novel in general). It only briefly describes what visual novels are and instead focuses on how this form of story-telling could be useful in the medical world.