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Regarding Horror Visual Novels


Happiness+

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I’ve been reading horror VNs for about a decade now. Oddly enough, there is so little of them. Why? I mean there’s Higurashi. Saya no Uta. Kara no Shoujo. Phenomeno. Devi-Dead. Corpse Party. DDLC. And that’s from the top of my head. I feel like there’s really isn’t that many horror VNs. Especially, EVNs, or translated....  What’s going on? It’s such a struggle to be an otaku who doesn’t know Japanese and wants a damn good scary experience. Because Kara no Shoujo 2 is more funnier than KnS1. The only scary part of Devi-Dead is that there’s no text log. Corpse Party is flat out stupid. Saya no Uta is more disturbing than scary, but damn, it’s more a love story than a horror VN. Highurashi is old as dirt by now, but since the days of Higurashi, there really isn’t a VN that can scare the shit out of people. Maybe I am wrong here and there’s a VN out there that has been translated into Murcia’s english and can truly give me a good time.

Edited by Happiness+
I meant the sequel to Kara no Shoujo
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There isn't just a lack of horror VN's, there is a lack of story VN's in general. Most VN developers seem to stick to an annual release cycle nowadays, because a longer development time is usually too expensive and risky. And creating a 'good' story VN with decent length in just one year is almost impossible to do, especially since you also need a skilled writer for that. But a typical slice of life VN with little to no plot, but backed up by some decent H-scenes can be easily produced in one year and you don't necessarily need a particular talented writer for it - just a good artist. And story VN's often don't sell that well, which is another problem.

Just look at Innocent Grey's list of releases on VNDB. KnS1 and especially KnS2 did take several years to make, but with their yuri series Flowers, they changed to a fixed annual release cycle as well, while KnS3 is in development for probably more than five years now. It's not hard to guess that they use Flowers to finance KnS3. And Innocent Grey is already one of the more popular story VN producers. Others like Propeller already did bite the dust.

There's probably a better chance for shorter story/horror VN's like Saya no Uta nowadays, but that doesn't change the fact that some cheaply produced moeges still sell even better.

Edited by ChaosRaven
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53 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

There's probably a better chance for shorter story/horror VN's like Saya no Uta nowadays, but that doesn't change the fact that some cheaply produced moeges still sell even better.

I think it has to do with more people getting into visual novels for Moe and Ero content than those who do it for complex stories and horror. Simply the market for VNs itself appealing to what most people get into VNs for and want from VNs.

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To make a TRUE horror story, you need to make the reader immerse on the story, most of the times that is done by explaining quick what is happening and in a interesting way, but that's how books works, VNs are different, you don't need to explain everything that is happening to the reader because he already have a good idea based on the images. Images, that's how you make someone immerse on a VN, of course, having a great story is also a part of it, but to make the person immerse on the VN, you need to make him feel like he's inside the universe of the game, a good story and images is a good way of making it, and that's where the problem is, making illustration of a Horror VN Game is much more harder, complicated and risky than a non-horror, since the illustration will have a great impact on the overall immersion, the cost to make it is much higher than normal ones (Be the cost money or time).


In the end, we have to remember that Horror VNs isn't that much popular, so people that make VNs normally don't want to take the risk on a "high-risk high-reward" sort of VN, you also need to remember that not everything has a english translation, so most of the Horror VNs aren't translated, not only because its harder, that because even a "meaningless" word on a Horror/Mystery VN can end up being important in the end, what makes the translation more risky, for a game which the genre isn't really popular, so its risky for the one that will make the VN and the one who will translate it, be a fantranslate or not.

Just to remember, i do not have any experience in making/translating VNs, everything i wrote above is something that i learned after talking with a lot of Light/Visual Novel creators and fantranslators that i know since i used to work at a website about Animes/Mangas/Light Novels/VNs/Live-Action news for a couple of years, when you devote your life to those things, you end up learning one thing or another. Ah, and i also worked as a voluntary in a few indie games as a writer, so i know how hard it is to make a horror or mystery story.


You can also check the vndb list of VNs with Horror TAGs if you want to.

Edited by Sekan Orochi
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I personally think that VNs are simply not a good formula for horror, at least not the "scary" type - you can have suspenseful moments in an average-lenght VN, but you can't reasonably keep it like that all the way through like you could with a movie. "Disturbing", on the other way, is something that VNs can do amazingly well, as evident by Saya no Uta, Lynne, Soundless, or even Clock Up titles (I don't think calling euphoria or Maggot Baits horrors would not be that much of a stretch). 

So, you'll more often see good VNs with horror themes/elements than straight up horrors, unless it's some kind of short, indie stuff. Also, what others said is very valid - it's moe and ero content that sells, you have some niche fetishes that work with horror, but generally, it's not what's the most profitable or "safest" to make. 

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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Hmm I've heard that VNs and even anime are not a good medium for terror a lot, and yeah, I agree to a certain degree, but I think it also depends on how you are to define "terror". There's also the fact that what is scary or not obviously is a completely subjective experience, so I can only speak for myself. Honestly I don't think I've ever consumed any form of media or literature that I found genuinely scary. Fear is a very strong emotional response to a threat or danger, and there's no way in hell I'm gonna feel threatened reading some piece of fiction. That's not to say that I can't feel uneasy and uncomfortable on my seat reading something that is meant to be scary. In that sense, I can't see why VNs can't be as effective as your typical novel. Anime is different in my opinion. One reason people often give for its uneffectiveness in terror is that the animation makes it easier to separate between reality and fiction, and I tend to agree. VNs however don't have that constraint since they can decide what to show at any moment and what to leave in the dark or up to the descriptive narrative. The only thing that isn't really available to VNs are obviously the freaking jumpscares you see in Hollywood movies, but yeah, that's a very cheap and shabby way to scare people. There's absolutely no merit in that. 

So TL;DR, as for me a piece of fiction can only make me uneasy, and both VNs and books have accomplished that, I can't really understand where people are coming from when they say they don't get the same reaction from VNs compared to other mediums. Another different matter is the fact that there are not many terror VNs (translated, at least) in comparison to other genres like fantasy, sci-fi or romance, but I don't know if it's necessarily because the medium is less suited for terror :michiru:

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Yeah, I think it is a shame that there are so few horror titles out there. When October comes around I'm going to try and play as many as I can. I think the people that can make good horror titles usually stick with making rpg maker games because I think it is an easier system to use.

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On 15/09/2018 at 9:09 PM, ChaosRaven said:

There isn't just a lack of horror VN's, there is a lack of story VN's in general. Most VN developers seem to stick to an annual release cycle nowadays, because a longer development time is usually too expensive and risky. And creating a 'good' story VN with decent length in just one year is almost impossible to do, especially since you also need a skilled writer for that. But a typical slice of life VN with little to no plot, but backed up by some decent H-scenes can be easily produced in one year and you don't necessarily need a particular talented writer for it - just a good artist. And story VN's often don't sell that well, which is another problem.

Just look at Innocent Grey's list of releases on VNDB. KnS1 and especially KnS2 did take several years to make, but with their yuri series Flowers, they changed to a fixed annual release cycle as well, while KnS3 is in development for probably more than five years now. It's not hard to guess that they use Flowers to finance KnS3. And Innocent Grey is already one of the more popular story VN producers. Others like Propeller already did bite the dust.

There's probably a better chance for shorter story/horror VN's like Saya no Uta nowadays, but that doesn't change the fact that some cheaply produced moeges still sell even better.

Well, the first thing they need to do when creating serious story vn's is to stop using ntr and rape as a way to get you angry and maybe invested? It backfires with me, and likely many others. If i see tags such as unavoidable rape/ntr etc in story vn's, especially if it concerns the main heroine, its a instant skip. Worse is it if they make a h scene out of it for fetishists to fap to.

Ohh, and romance in most things. Weave it in somehow and make it good. It feels so wasted when you play a story vn and you have the main heroine and the vn just ends with hints of it. Why even bother then? Romance sells and good satisfying romance in a story vn is a recipe for success if you ask me.

Edited by Stormwolf
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