Why are visual novels suddenly so popular?
If you've visited Steam in the last decade, you're likely already acquainted with visual novels. Though games like Famicom Detective's Club saw the inception of the visual novel in the 1980s, they've reached a particular zenith on Steam, thanks mostly to a plethora of very horny games.
But hidden among the shovelware is a wealth of original and interesting pieces of interactive fiction that demonstrate the continuing potential of the medium. Hatoful Boyfriend and Doki Doki Literature Club stand out as visual novels that gained a mainstream appeal while remaining part of that niche market. And it can be argued they were early contributors to the golden age of visual novels in which we now find ourselves, as more and more start to find their way into the mainstream.
In the past few months alone, we've seen the release of Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly, Sega's The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Square Enix's Paranormasight, and most recently Varney Lake. It raises the question, after forty years of visual novels, why now? What's making visual novels so popular with developers and players alike?
Nguồn: Eurogamer
