No dating or weird parasocial shit. I'm talking about a literal visual novel. Doesn't even have to be a game. I'm talking about a picture book that has animated pages basically lol

Fantasy/horror/sci-fi preferred

  • Dewot523 [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Higurashi and Umineko, both by the same author.

    Higurashi was a guy looking at all those weird dating porn games you were talking about and saying "what if the base emotional response you went for with one of these wasn't horniness but pants-shitting terror?" There's like one scene per chapter that's anime cringe but the further you get into it the less of that there is.

    Umineko, the follow-up, is the current argument for narrative video games as capital A Art and I'll leave it at that.

    • Cromalin [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I think Higurashi was specifically a response to the movement of dating sims that started out as cute rom-coms, people expected them to get horny, and then they got super depressing instead. Think Clannad, if you're familiar. But yeah. Umineko is probably my favorite game ever, and is definitely the one that I think about the most.

      spoiler

      It's like 50% critical thoughts about the themes and the structure and how the mystery works from a technical standpoint and the other 50% is my crying about pretty much the whole cast. And also some laughing at Battler.