Best Visual Novels 2022 - Reading Is Playing

Visual novel is a video game genre, whose land of origin was, surprisingly, America, but its popular modern incarnation comes from Japan. These games usually have little to no interactive gameplay (though there are exceptions to this rule), their main forte being characterization and storytelling, but one thing they have in common with literature is they do not shy away from adult content. As an ardent reader (both in English and Japanese), I’ve prepared for you a selection of some of the best visual novels available, now or soon, on the market. Although not all of them are officially available in English (some were translated by their fans, some other are either said to be translated officially or considered for translation in the near future), these are all superb games, perhaps even worth learning a new language for. The order in which the titles are presented is insignificant, so sit back and grab a bite, my fellow bookworms.

Best Visual Novels in 2022:

• Fate/Stay Night
• Full Metal Daemon Muramasa
• Muv-Luv / Muv-Luv Alternative
• White Album 2 ~Introductory/Closing Chapter~
• Steins;Gate
• Baldr Sky
• Wonderful Everyday ~Diskontinuierliches Dasein~
• Umineko When They Cry (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)
• Clannad
• Ever 17 -The Out of Infinity-
• Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Witch on the Holy Night
• The House in Fata Morgana
• Doki Doki Literature Club
• Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Hachimyoujin
• Kara no Shojo Trilogy
• Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows (Shiei no Sona-Nyl)
• Katawa Shojo

Fate/Stay Night

Fate/stay night is a bona fide adventure game in the same sense as Stevenson’s Treasure Island is an adventure novel, and a good one at that. The story takes place in a modern urban fantasy setting, where magic is real and powerful, but hidden from the society. It’s got a well-defined (but damaged) protagonist, it’s got beautiful girls you’d be willing to fight and die (you know, the thing people do when they are killed?) for, and it’s got you set up as an unwilling underdog in a battle between powerful mages and even more powerful mythical heroes, so tread lightly. On the bright side, you get a sticker every time you kick the bucket, so there’s that.

The game’s protagonist, Shiro Emiya, is a young man with a knack for mechanics, living alone after the death of his foster father, who saved the boy from a catastrophic fire that befell the city 10 years ago. The plot twist is that his savior was also an infamous renegade mage and an assassin, who participated in a magic battle-royale contest known as the Holy Grail War, which took place in that very city and was the cause of the fire he saved the boy from. The old man was understandably unwilling to teach his son the tricks of the trade, even though Shiro had a great respect for his foster father. Due to the lack of formal training in the art of magic, the boy’s only decent skill is a seemingly useless strengthening ability, which he nevertheless practiced throughout the years. His normal life continues, until one day, a magical brand appears on his hand, heralding the beginning of a new Holy Grail War...

The game is divided into three routes, branching early on in the story, which need to be completed in a predefined order: first “Fate”, then “Unlimited Blade Works”, and finally “Heaven’s Feel”. In theory, all of them are just alternate retellings of the same story, but due to the choices we make, their plotlines diverge so much, that each becomes a unique scenario. The one thing that binds them together is the discussion about what it means to be a hero and an altruist in the context of dealing with survivor’s guilt.

Originally released in 2004 on PC, the title was translated to English by the fan community. So far no official translations of the game have been released. As the upgraded PlayStation 2 edition became available, various teams have ported visuals and content such as adult scenes, which culminated in the Ultimate Edition 0.9.1 patch, released in February 2019, enabling us to access graphics, music, and languages from all available editions of the game in a single complete package with widescreen support.

1. Fate/Stay Night on VNDB

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa (not to be confused with the 2009 console title Muramasa: The Demon Blade) is considered to be one of the best adult visual novels out there. The title sports an intriguing alternative-history setting, in which 19th-century Japan (or Yamato), ruled by a fictional shogunate, was conquered and occupied by America under British rule. An essential, unique element of this quasi-historical background are the Tsurugi – flight-capable suits of powered armor forged by smiths and donned by warriors known as Musha.

The story follows Minato Kageaki, a mysterious man snatched out of prison to do some dirty work for the shogunate – take down a powerful rogue Musha who tries to spread chaos throughout the realm. As meek and unfit for the job as he may first seem, the protagonist has a dark secret that made him accept the shogunate’s offer – he pursues a quest for atonement using his personal Tsurugi, one of the few remaining masterpieces of old craftsmanship, the crimson Muramasa. The armor is said to be cursed and has caused a massacre in the days of old, making it no better than the one, which it is supposed to help killing.

Muramasa features 3 major scenarios, so called routes, one for each of the protagonist’s love interests, and several endings. The storylines are dark, they love to subvert heroic cliches and provide us with many opportunities to die, if we make a bad decision in one of the story’s numerous choices. This definitely isn’t a title for everyone, as it brutally deals with such topics as justification of vengeance, heroism, love, loyalty, and pursuit of justice at all costs.

One more thing that needs to be remembered is the fact that the developer Nitroplus usually does not shy away from explicit adult content in their titles – and Muramasa is no exception to this rule. After many years of being available only to proficient Japanese users, the game was officially released in English by JAST on August 21, this year.

1. Full Metal Daemon Muramasa on VNDB
2. Full Metal Daemon Muramasa on JAST Store

Muv-Luv / Muv-Luv Alternative

According to VNDB, the largest western resource on visual novels, Muv-Luv Alternative is the highest-rated visual novel there is. As you might have noticed, there are two titles listed under this entry, but there is a good reason for that. The first game, originally released in 2003, is divided into two chapters (Extra and Unlimited) and together with Alternative they were supposed to form a trilogy. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of content was too much for a single game, hence the division. They should, however, be considered a single piece of narrative.

Muv Luv Extra is, at best, a decent, if cliche romantic comedy set in high school, featuring more or less stereotypical characters (class rep, childhood friend, quirky girl, high class girl, mascot, trap). You, playing as one Takeru Shirogane, may or may not enjoy it, but there are better stories out there, that’s for sure. To unlock the second chapter, you’re only required to complete the routes of the two main heroines, Sumika and Meiya. The remaining four are optional, but the story will reward you later on if you complete them as well.

Muv Luv Unlimited begins by dropping a bomb: the school romance is gone. You wake up in your bed, like you did yesterday, except the rest of your street is gone, the rest of your town is gone, most of humanity is gone, and there’s a military base where your school used to be. Also, there be mechs, lots of mechs. Unlimited chapter is a military SF focusing on the desperate struggle against an alien life form that invaded Earth, and borrowing a lot from Starship Troopers in the process. The plot twist comes as a shock to both the protagonist and the player, as they have to become a military cadet, adapt to new rules, and learn the hard way that they are only a powerless pawn in the hands of the world’s generals and politicians.

3 years layer, Age released Muv Luv Alternative – the final piece of the puzzle. The protagonist once again wakes up in his room, the world is still a mess, and mankind is still on the ropes. Only one thing is different – the main character remembers everything: the peaceful world of innocent romance, the months of harsh military training, the despair of a dying world, and the regret of not being able to do anything to change the final outcome of the story. And so does the player. The final route of the story begins, answering all the questions we did not want answered, providing a glimpse into multiverse theory and paying homage to a myriad of SF classics.

Steam editions of both games have been funded through an extremely successful (over $1,250,000 collected) Kickstarter campaign. You might also be interested in a patch that will bring the Steam edition of MLA up to par with the original Japanese release.

1. Muv-Luv on Steam
2. Muv-Luv Alternative on Steam

White Album 2 ~Introductory/Closing Chapter~

White Album 2 is, as the name suggest, a sequel. It has, however, little in common with the previous part and might as well be treated as a stand-alone for the purpose of this summary. The story told in White Album 2 is divided into two independently released chapters. ~Introductory Chapter~ is much shorter and works as a direct prequel, presenting the events that unfolded three years before the action of ~Closing Chapter~, and setting up the premise for the main story arc. While reading it is not required, it will help us understand the underlying situation of the protagonists.

The introduction focuses on the honor student Haruki Kitahara, a third-year high-schooler in the first chapter, whose hobby was playing guitar. His life becomes much more complicated, when he needs to recruit two girls – Kazusa Touma, daughter of a famous musician, and Setsuna Ogiso, a natural vocal talent – to save his club’s school festival concert from certain doom. In time, the three become friends, hoping to become something more. The feelings of the young protagonists experiencing their first infatuations lead to a dramatic climax.

The main story takes place three years later. Haruki becomes a university student, but the events from the past cast a shadow even on the beginning of his adult live. He forms a new social circle, remains in contact with his good friends from high-school, and tries to move on with his life. As per visual novel standard, that’s the point when the player can deepen the relationships with potential love interests, leading on one of several available story routes. Things get complicated, however, when the protagonist learns that Kazusa Touma, a painful piece of his past, is coming back to Japan after having studied abroad...

Essentialy a romance, White Album 2 presents a realistic story with convincing characterization, good dose of drama, and music-themed storyline, considered top-class among visual novels. Music plays an important role in the plot, providing a common ground for the three protagonists, and the game uses this opportunity to insert some really decent music tracks to complement the interactions between the characters. It’s also one of the reasons why the game is classified as a “nakige”, a tear-jerker. The story has the potential to punch you right through the gut if you let it. For the time being there is no official translation available, but rumors are that some publisher will pick it up in the near future.

1. White Album 2 ~Introductory Chapter~ on VNDB
2. White Album 2 ~Closing Chapter~ on VNDB

Steins;Gate

Steins;Gate is a high-profile title in the West, and it was translated rather quickly by industry standards; perhaps due to the anime adaptation from 2012.

The story focuses on a group of friends led by the spirited protagonist Rintarou Okabe. He’s also an otaku, an amateur physicist, a believer of global conspiracy theories, and a self-styled mad scientist calling himself Kyouma Hououin. The group, going by the moniker Future Gadget Lab, initially includes only his childhood friend and a computer whiz, and is based in Akihabara – Tokyo’s famous district of otaku culture and cheap electronics. Their current “research” project is to experiment with a method to achieve time travel by sending a text message to a specially modified microwave.

On July 28 in-game, Kurisu Makise, a genius girl, university graduate at 17, acclaimed in the scientific community for her research on brain’s memory retention system, is giving a lecture, which Okabe attends. Their discussion about the possibility of time travel leads to a heated debate, after which the protagonist is politely asked to leave. Sometime later, he finds the young scientist dying in a pool of blood. Shocked, Okabe texts his friend about the morbid discovery. And that’s when their time-travel experiment succeeds... In time, the group is joined by a gallery of peculiar characters, and the protagonists must face both an actual global conspiracy and the numerous convoluted timelines they’ve created through the infamous butterfly effect.

The game follows a branching storyline divided into eleven chapters. Several of them offer side routes which can become an ending dedicated to one of the characters. To reach the true ending, we must keep to the main storyline and make correct choices along the way. As the story revolves around otaku culture and text messages (the player’s choices are implemented as cell phone interactions), sending or not sending some of them will yield different results within the story.

There are several English editions available on the market, with the latest Steins;Gate Elite reusing the footage and voices from the anime series in place of the original graphics, which, as they were rather unique, have met with mixed reception. A sequel, Steins;Gate 0, was released on Steam in 2018.

1. Steins;Gate official website
2. Steins;Gate on Steam

Baldr Sky

Baldr Sky is one of the relatively few visual novels that contain interactive gameplay, offering numerous isometric arcade shooter sequences.

The focal point of a bloody war that engulfed the world in the past was the existence of powerful supercomputers known as Baldr machines, a single one able to govern the infrastructure of entire countries with ease. After many twists and turns, the war was won by an organic AI created specifically to counter them, and the devastated world was united. Since then, the AI has become a separate entity, much to the disdain of certain groups, and developed a supportive stance towards humanity and its attempt to move their lives to cyberspace, allowing for the creation of advanced digital bodies to conserve Earth’s depleted resources. While there is still life beyond cyber, few would want to experience the world ravaged as it is, unless, like many, they are too poor to afford a decent life.

Wars and conflicts have also moved to cyberspace – soldiers and mercenaries employ combat digi-bodies, known as SMCRUM (or Simulacrum), installed as software and used in digital skirmishes and large-scale battles. That said, the best way to defend from a hacker attack is to physically pull the plug on your machine (unless, you know, Wi-fi?), and even the best pilot is helpless if you riddle their non-digital body with bullets while they’re out – hardware remains a viable argument in a software battle. All in all, the title draws heavily on the atmosphere of early cyberpunk classics, such as Neuromancer, having the player constantly shift in and out of in-game cyberspace.

The game’s protagonist, Kou Kadokura, is a seasoned mercenary suffering from amnesia. He regains his memories across the six story routes, eventually discovering the fate of a certain figure from his past. The game is divided into two parts (Dive1 and Dive2), each contaning three main routes. If we own both parts, Dive2 will support our saved game files and include the contents of the first game.

The game offers an extensive combat system, with dozens of unlockable weapons and melee techniques, which we can master and chain into devastating combos tailored to our personal style. You want a kicking melee build? Done. Or maybe a rocket- and laser-spamming artillery powerhouse? Not a problem. The combo system is also quite intricate – we have access to 12 weapons/moves on the battlefield, with sets of 3 being available depending on the distance from the target and whether we are moving or not.

A western release of the game was announced in 2016 by Sekai Project and the translation has been completed. The game was released on Steam in December 2019 with optional uncensor patch available around the Internet.

1. Baldr Sky Dive1 “Lost Memory” on VNDB
2. Baldr Sky Dive2 “Recordare” on VNDB
3. Baldr Sky on Steam

Wonderful Everyday ~Diskontinuierliches Dasein~

“Good morning, Alice. Thank you for choosing the galactic railroad as your rabbit hole operator. We will send a confirmation to your dead friend’s cell phone on July 20, right after the predicted end of the world.”

Makes no sense? No worries, Wonderful Everyday can (and will) get you confused like that at first. It’s a difficult story and an ambitious game to tackle, but believe me – it will make you think.

The action of the game takes place in Japan, beginning on July 12, 2012, and deals with various themes, beginning with internet social media, through religion, psychology, perception of the world, and all the way to testing your knowledge of western philosophy and eastern literature.

Yuki Minakami is a high-schooler who likes to read on her school’s rooftop, smoke and play piano at a bar. Not the most diligent character, but certainly not a bad person. She couldn’t care less when her school becomes abuzz with rumors of Web Bot, a computer program able to predict the future (which really is a thing), who prophesizes that the end of the world will come on July 20. Instead, she focuses on her peaceful everyday with her two friends and Zakuro Takashima, a girl she met recently. Subsequent chapters take a very different turn, as a dark mystery involving many other characters is slowly revealed. To disclose anything more at this point would be a crime, so let’s just say that later on the prophecies of Web Bot become disturbingly accurate as teachers and students start dying as predicted by one of Yuki’s classmates. Startled by such turn of events, Yuki decides to get to the bottom of the classmate’s identity and the secret behind Web Bot Project.

Storywise, the game is divided into seven chapters, focusing on a different retelling of the story and featuring different protagonists, each with a limited perception of the game world, which tends to add to general confusion. Access to subsequent chapters is unlocked by completing previous sections, which in turn enables us to gain a new perspective on the events we have witnessed earlier. It needs to be said that this isn’t a game (nor a book or anything else for that matter) for everybody; the adult content can be disturbing, sometimes gratuitous. And one more thing: certainly not everyone will enjoy references to 19th-century philosophy books.

An official English release appeared on Steam in 2017 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, joining the few really good visual novels that were officially translated in the West at that point. What is available on Steam is the first chapter of the story, and a free adult content patch is provided, expanding the game to its full version.

1. Wonderful Everyday on Steam

Umineko When They Cry (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)

The year is 1986, Kinzo, the dying head of the wealthy Ushiromiya family, invites his offspring to the secluded island of Rokkenjima to an annual family conference, where the family members plan to divide family assets between themselves. The island is inhabited by Kinzo, three other members of the family, his personal physician and five servants, in addition to the eight Ushiromiyas who will come to the conference.

But there is one more person rumored to live on the island. According to family lore, a Golden Witch known as Beatrice lives in the dense forests of Rokkenjima. She is said to have given Kinzo 10 tons of gold to restart the Ushiromiya family after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. Her portrait is exhibited in the entrance hall of the family mansion, along with a puzzling epitaph. The story goes that whoever solves the mystery of the witch’s epitaph will receive the gold and become the next heir. Soon after the family members assemble, a typhoon traps all parties on the island. Not long after that, mysterious things begin to happen and six persons die in quick succession. According to the epitaph, if its puzzle cannot be solved, more people will die and the witch will revive, which is exactly what happens.

Battler, the game’s protagonist and the only surviving member of the Ushiromiya family, is a realist who doesn’t believe in witches or magic. The resurrected witch challenges him to a twisted game of logic where he must attempt to explain all of the mysterious events on Rokkenjima from the standpoint that they are caused by a human, while Beatrice attempts to explain everything with supernatural occurrences. One of the recurring motifs is usage of the locked room mystery, and several logical arguments are presented to explain the mysteries including the Devil's proof, the Raven paradox, and Schrödinger's cat. If Beatrice can get Battler to ultimately surrender and accept the supernatural, Beatrice wins.

The developers describe the game as a sound novel. What differs it from a typical visual novel is the fact that the game requires no player interaction, comprising only text dialogues. The title focuses on sounds and atmosphere rather than visuals, which explains why character designs and artwork are simplified, compared to most other representatives of the genre. The ultimate goal is to solve the multi-thread mystery, determine where the gold is hidden, figure out a solution in which everyone survives, and discover who the true murderer is in each chapter and whether it is due to supernatural events or human actions.

Fan community has prepared patches that add voices and port visuals from the console version to replace the modest graphics of the original PC release. Can’t say I blame them.

1. Umineko When They Cry Question Arcs on Steam
2. Umineko When They Cry Answer Arcs on Steam

Clannad

Clannad is an all-time classic, which gained a cult following both in Japan and among the Western community. The game is a respected coming-of-age drama, but also a comedy, whose striking themes are finding one’s purpose and happiness in life, enduring hardships, the importance of family, and making lemonade no matter what kind of lemons life gives us.

Tomoya Okazaki is a high-schooler who verges on being a delinquent, after his promising sports career as a baseballer was cut short before it even started due to an arm injury. His relationship with father, his only living parent, is strained, and he begins a new school year with little hope and even less perspectives for the future. Nagisa Furukawa is a meek high-schooler who had to skip some years in school due to poor health and lost her chance at joining the drama club, as all of its members have graduated. She hopes to spend the time that was given to her on new experiences.

They meet with the beginning of a new semester on the road at the foot of the hill, on which their school is located and, by a chance, begin to climb it together. Having found a kindred soul, Nagisa ventures to restart the drama club, recruiting Tomoya, his friend Youhei, and several other characters in the process.

The action of the game takes place mainly in high school and is divided into several routes, each dedicated to one of the several possible romance interests, which the protagonist encounters during his high-school years. The routes explore various themes and characters, some of them being full of humor, but each of them generally culminating in a tear-jerking finale that tackles a serious theme, such as terminal illness, loneliness, isolation, the importance of having a family, or becoming a responsible adult despite our shortcomings. What is considered the main storyline, focuses on Tomoya and Nagisa, following their lives throughout high school and into adulthood, when they have to face new challenges and tragedies as they become a family.

Clannad was one of the first high-profile visual novels to be released on Steam, becoming a breakthrough on the market. The game’s publisher, Sekai Project, funded the release via Kickstarter, collecting almost 550,000 dollars. Up to that point, such games were available mainly through fan translations or niche publishers, whose portfolio also included numerous cheap-quality porn games.

1. Clannad on Steam

Ever 17 -The Out of Infinity-

The title focuses on six (or is it five? or seven?) individuals who are trapped within the underwater marine theme park called LeMU, 51 meters below the surface, after an incident floods almost half of the facility. The path to the surface and all communication lines are cut off. In addition, severe water pressure is constantly damaging LeMU’s structure, limiting time to find a means of escape to 119 hours. Escape is not the only concern, as many questions arise as to the legitimacy of the accident and whether or not those trapped inside the facility were brought there for a purpose. As the end of LeMU grows nearer, the mysteries and relationships forged by the situation grow deeper. Ultimately, it is up to the characters not only to survive, but to discover the truth behind LeMU and themselves.

Ever 17 is an adventure game, whose story is much more than it first seems. What appears to be a plot directly inspired by The Poseidon Adventure, eventually turns into a convoluted time-travel story with quantum physics and sinister pharmaceutical companies in the background, making it one of the biggest mind screws among visual novels.

The plot is told through multiple storylines that ultimately intersect. The player must reach the "good ending" for each of the initially available storylines in order to unlock the final storyline that weaves the previous stories into a single narrative. The game has two main protagonists, Takeshi and the Kid, each of them having a unique path through the game, featuring four different storylines and several endings in total. Obtaining each of these endings relies on making the correct choices throughout the scenario. After the player has completed all four of Takeshi's and the Kid's endings, the final path of the game will open.

Ever 17 was one of the first ever visual novels to be officially translated and released in the West, by the now defunct publisher Hirameki International. Unfortunately, the English 4-CD version of the game is very hard to acquire legally at this point (there are some copies floating around Amazon or eBay from time to time, but they can cost from $60 upwards), making the fan-made translation patch along with an imported (for a dozen dollars or so) Japanese copy of the game the only sensible option for someone who would like to read it. That’s definitely a title GOG.com should be interested in, if you ask me. The fact that the original English translation had its share of mistakes is a whole other can of worms.

1. Ever 17 ~The Out of Infinity~ on VNDB

Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Witch on the Holy Night

Mahoutsukai no Yoru is another work from Type-Moon and a piece of the so-called ‘Nasuverse’, named after the team’s writer Kinoko Nasu. This, the Fate series and Tsukihime are all set in the same meta-verse and some characters appear in more than one title, although rarely as major players. Chronologically, Mahoyo is one of Nasu’s earlier works and focuses more on the aspects of magic, magecraft and its users.

The game’s protagonist is one Soujuurou Shizuki, who has just moved in from the countryside and many things are strange to him in a big city, a good deal of which would be pretty obvious to someone with a bit of common sense. The problem is, Soujuurou’s common sense is… quite uncommon. For example, when he witnesses something few mortals in the world have had the chance to see, say, a young female mage battling some undead, his first reaction is like “wow, these townsfolk sure are something else”. This becomes his blessing, as otherwise the mage in question would kill him without a moment of hesitation to protect her secrets. Lucky him, because she’s also the “guide” assigned from his new school, the facility being blissfully ignorant of what the girl does at night. The girl is Aoko Aozaki, an aspiring mage learning the trade from an actual witch, who lives in a mansion located deep in the mountains overlooking the city. But witches have secrets, and so do their apprentices, and what could a presumably mundane human do against magic…?

Two things are striking when playing this game. First, it’s got beautiful audiovisuals; the illustrations are dreamingly gorgeous when they want to and turn into dark gothic when they need to. The scenes are richly animated, a rare feature among visual novels, and the music by Hideyuki Fukasawa is simply excellent. The second thing is the total lack of voices, except for sound effects. This gives off the impression of reading a beautiful sound book, and the creators confirmed it’s intentional. As a consequence, Mahoutsukai no Yoru features no player choices. It follows a linear plotline from the beginning to the end, but it does so with style, treading on the boundary between the natural and supernatural. Long periods of everyday school life and passing seasons contrast with short, intense action sequences, where fairy tales come to life. And the eerie thing is, the main character’s lack of common sense makes this entire division irrelevant from his perspective.

Originally released in 2012, the game waited almost 10 years for a fan-translation to take shape, but it seems like we will get it in a reasonable timeframe. A partial English translation by Mcjon01 (first 7 chapters, which is around 50% of the game) was released in 2017. Currently, a new group has picked up the work and are roughly at 65% (chapters 8 and 8.5 were released), but a good portion of what’s left requires only editing, giving us hope for a full release some time during 2022.

1. Mahoutsukai no Yoru on VNDB

The House in Fata Morgana

The House in Fata Morgana is one of the younger games on this list. It went pretty much unnoticed by the global community until it was translated into English, but once that happened, it was instantly appreciated. Now, almost eight years after the initial release, Fata Morgana is the 8th highest-rated visual novel on VNDB and one of the higher rated games of 2021 on Metacritic.

The game’s narrative follows a mysterious protagonist. Having awakened without memories, he is greeted by a maid claiming him to be the master of the house and herself his servant. Hoping to restore his memory, she takes the protagonist on a tour across door to 3 rooms located in the house. This gives us a chance to experience the lives of residents inhabiting this, as it turns out, cursed mansion during their respective time periods. Each episode (door) is a complete, independent narrative, with a three-act structure, while at the same time comprising part of a larger, overarching story. To reveal anything beyond this point, however, would be a spoiler.

I must admit, with regret but nevertheless, that I have yet to finish this game. My experiences so far, however, are conveyed perfectly in a review by user kaisouroku on VNDB, a fragment of which I quote below:

One more thing should be added. The game’s soundtrack is excellent and an integral part of the experience. It hits vastly different styles and tones, from Renaissance music to jazz, but always knows which is the best for a particular scene. It's a shame though that its audio is highly compressed and has some very noticeable artifacts, e.g. glitching.

If you’re one of the people who could get hooked on Fata Morgana’s gothic atmosphere, a fan disc (basically a DLC) titled The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence, is also available on Steam, but as it expands some (and spoils some other) threads from the base game, I do not recommend it for starting your experience with the franchise.

1. The House in Fata Morgana on VNDB
2. The House in Fata Morgana on Steam
3. The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence on Steam

Doki Doki Literature Club

Here’s the first natively English position on our list. This inconspicuous little indie game does one thing and one thing only – preys on player expectations. And boy does it excel at that.

The basic premise of Doki Doki Literature Club is founded on a popular, stereotypical even, young adult fiction scenario – an unwilling male protagonist gets dragged into what appears to be a school club. What’s more, lo and behold, all of its members other than the main character are female. Seems familiar enough, right? Surely, we can expect some comedy here. Goofy scenes with weird characters, followed by an inevitable romance plot, maybe with some love triangle, and eventually a dramatic occurrence leading to a happy ending. Well, I’m not saying the game doesn’t have them, it does for quite a while as we spend our time with Sayuri, Natsuki and Yuri, but it also has one more thing – Monika. And when it looks like the player may get involved in a romance… strange things begin to happen. It’s hard to write about the mindboggling and disturbing things this game does to you and itself without spoiling everything, but let’s just say it pulls the rug right from under your feet.

Doki Doki Literature Club is the work of just 3 people, banded under the flag of Team Salvato. Gameplay-wise it’s pretty much a typical visual novel, with backgrounds, character sprites, dialogues and occasional choices. The game branches into different scenarios dedicated to particular girls. So far so good, but it’s the narrative and its bait-and-switch play that provides for the game’s forte. Unfortunately, I cannot share anything specific without completely ruining the surprise; the game is not very long so I recommend that you simply play it.

Shortly after the original release, the community prepared unofficial ports for mobile platforms and consoles. An expanded edition called Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! was released 4 years after the original, offering additional content and official support for next-gen platforms, as well as Switch, so you can play this little game pretty much on anything right now. That’s said, it’s just a paid expanded edition with some extras. The first release with its unique experience is still available for free, both on the game’s official website and Steam.

1. Doki Doki Literature Club - official website
2. Doki Doki Literature Club on Steam
3. Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! on Steam

Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Hachimyoujin

Here’s something a bit different from most of the titles presented so far. Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Hachimyoujin (or just Senshinkan) is a representative of the so-called chuunige sub-genre. What’s a chuunige? It’s “a visual novel that likes to concern itself with things like dark, mysterious organizations, magic, superpowers, power levels and various similar concepts”. In theory aimed at people who like to live in their fantasies, it may be equally appealing to those of us who like action-packed adventures. For example, Fate/stay night could be classified as a chuunige as well.

Protagonist Yoshiya Hiiragi was able to experience lucid dreams ever since he was a child. While his mind does not rest at night, he does not suffer from any negative effects. If anything, he is brighter and more capable than majority of people his age. Currently a student at the former pre-WWII military academy known as Senshinkan, he’d taken his peculiar “night condition” in stride and intends to live a normal life. Things start to get interesting when he meets Mizuki Sera, who not only has the same ability, but can “share” his lucid dreaming sessions. What’s more, Yoshiya can become a “host” for such experiences and ends up enjoying joint night adventure sessions with a group of friends inside his dreams. They even develop some “powers” to have fun with. After all, a lucid dreamer can do anything he or she wishes while in the dream…

One day, however, the way out of the dream world vanishes. Trapped in what they thought was “their space”, the group visits some familiar places from the “real world” and discovers that they were caught unaware by a critical fact: the dream world beyond their usual meeting spot wasn’t the same one they lived in. Making their way to the school, the group encounters a person claiming to be Senshinkan’s founder and first director. This reveals some bad news: first is that they can die while in the dream world; the second is that what they call “dream world” is a twisted reflection of a period when a mysterious freak event destroyed the academy and led to a disaster known today as the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. To make things even worse, she reveals that there is only one way they can get out alive – they need to survive the inevitable disaster. Under Yoshiya’s lead, the group is determined to escape the nightmare and return to their old modern-day lives.

The game is a classic visual novel with a branching structure. In this case, individual scenarios need to be completed in pre-defined order to reach the true ending. The characters are likeable, the visuals quite nice and partially animated, and accompanied by a good soundtrack. While it may be not be as exceptional as the rest of the list, it’s well above average and provides a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, so far no plans for a translation, be it fan-made or official, have appeared.

1. Soushuu Gakuen Senshinkan Hachimyoujin on VNDB

Kara no Shojo Trilogy

"You can't expose other people's secrets without being a little cruel. It's my job."

Here’s another “bundled” entry on our list. You may already be familiar with Kara no Shojo, or Girl in/of the Shell, as it’s been available on Steam since 2018. What you may not know, however, is that it’s only the first part of a thrilling noir story spanning across three games.

The year is 1955. Reiji Tokisaka is a private eye based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. He lives with his younger sister, knows a cute bar owner, and had had a wife. He also still has some friends in the force, who sometimes call him when they’ve got a particularly tricky case on their hands. For example, when the dismembered bodies of two young women are discovered in quick succession and very peculiar circumstances… But shortly before that Reiji lands a new, seemingly unrelated, job. Touko Kuchiki, a student at Ouba Girls Academy, also attended by the protagonist’s sister, hires the detective to “find her true self”. There were, however, two more persons who used to attend the said school – the now dead girls he was asked to investigate. Taking up a temporary job as lecturer at the academy, Reiji intends to get to the bottom of things. If only he knew where this decision would lead him…

You probably can’t come up with a better description for this series than ‘brutal, sad, brutally sad’. The three games are very loosely based on themes from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Love and sin are both important topics, and the story’s structure can be divided into similar three counterparts to Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paraiso. The ending of the first game sets up a foundation, on which the remaining two are erected.

Gameplay wise, the series is much more than a simple visual novel. The first game introduces the so-called “Detective System”, dividing the gameplay into 4 distinct segments: story, exploration, investigation, and deduction. The first one plays like a typical VN, with dialogues, choices and static backgrounds. During exploration we have to choose which part of the city to go to, leading to various story scenes. Investigation sequences, in turn, resemble classic point & click adventure games, i.e. pixel hunting at crime scenes. Last but definitely not least, the deduction segments are a synthesis. The games asks you to answer questions and back your answers with evidence and testimonies you’ve acquired. And here’s the tricky part of the system. One: the game doesn’t tell you whether your deductions are correct – if they are, the game will proceed, if they’re not… it also has bad endings. Two: what you find depends on where you go and how thoroughly you look. Which makes it quite possible to miss some critical piece of the puzzle. The system grows across the three games, but I had to resort to a guide to reach the true ending of the first one.

The music is one of my favorites and does a great job at building mood. Just check out the track “Reasoning”, which plays in deduction segments, or the melancholic “Kara no Shojo”. The visuals are becoming progressively better with each game, reaching stunning levels in the last one. Also when it comes to brutality… The Kara no Shojo series has some truly gory scenes that are hard to watch, so consider yourselves warned, ye who enter here. That said, the overall quality is exceptional and heartily recommend the games, if you can stomach them.

The original KnS received an HD edition in 2019, adding full voice over and enhanced graphics. This put it a bit more on par with its successors. The first two games are currently available in English on MangaGamer, and we will probably also get the third one, eventually. Chances for a fan-translation are slim, however, as MangaGamer’s release was a fan-translation project that got a C&D letter from the company before being taken advantage of in the official release. Not many groups would undertake the work given such a record.

While the first game was also released on Steam, the sequel, unfortunately got hit by collateral in a VN ban wave some 2 years ago, which also hurt the overall sales. Admittedly, most of the banned titles were shovelware trash, but KnS2 did not deserve such fate. And how is it that the first game is still being sold on Steam without anybody having an issue with it?

1. Kara no Shojo on MangaGamer
2. Kara no Shojo - The Second Episode on MangaGamer
3. Kara no Shojo on Steam (visible only to registered users)
4. Kara no Shojo - The Last Episode on VNDB

Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows (Shiei no Sona-Nyl)

New York City – the Engine city – was the heart of the steam industry, under the leadership of the brilliant scientist Thomas Alva Edition. Until a mysterious disaster struck. Nobody knows exactly what happened that day, other than it made the people disappear and left the city itself in ruins. One of the vanished residents was Alan Akeley, Edison’s assistant. Soon after, the US government decided to seal the area off from the rest of the country. All that remains now are wrecks, abandoned buildings and a heavy overcast of grey clouds…

Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock…

Five years have passed since the cataclysm. Alan’s fiancé, Elysia Wentworth, is making her way through the ruins, aiming for the old Manhattan, the alleged epicenter of the disaster. Unbeknownst to her, or anyone else on the surface, there is another New York City, deep down below the ruins. It is a world of black and violet shadows. Unbeknownst to her, its buildings, while warped, are still standing, and their residents, while transformed, still live. Unbeknownst to her, another girl, Lily, begins her travel to the heart of the “underground New York”. The girl has no memories, does not know her purpose, but she knows her path - towards the underground violet sky that covers the old part of Manhattan. The one to take her there is a man calling himself “A”, claiming to be a conductor on the New York subway.

In terms of gameplay, Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows is a typical visual novel with dialogues and a few choices in the form of puzzles at the end of each chapter. Solving them correctly enables us to see the rest of the story, while bad answers lead to bad endings. The game’s strongest point is the dreamlike atmosphere of two parallel stories taking place in two different dimensions of the same plane, a bit like in Returnal. While Elysia’s journey is more spiritual, e.g. she relives many memories from the time she met Alan, despite being the one taking place in reality, her underground “shadow” encounters various people and creatures, travels using a subway and battles strange beings with A’s help. The unreal one is physical, the real one is psychological. But which one is true? Both, maybe none? They are vastly different, but parallel, and hope of seeing moment of them finally converging is what keeps us turning the pages. The writing style is also quite peculiar. It uses lots of poetic expressions and often relies the on artistic effect of repetitions, be it ticking of the clocks, the sounds of the rain or humans being magically compelled to repeat words, the meaning of which they do not understand. If you’ve read Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath you’ll get similar vibes from Sona-Nyl. We have an oneiric journey, in this case mirrored by another traveller on the surface, we have cats (sort of) and we have tons of strange events, not necessarily in this order.

No fan translation of the game was completed, or even started as far as I know, but MangaGamer is working on an official release, including the game’s bonus content. The game is scheduled to be simultaneously released on Steam. While no specific date has been provided, the project’s page on MangaGamer has been up since quite a while, so we shouldn’t have to wait much longer.

1. Sona-nyl of the Violet Shadows page on Mangagamer
2. Shiei no Sona-Nyl -What a Beautiful Memories- on VNDB

Katawa Shojo

This one is a special case. Second natively English title on our list and at the same time the first OELVN (Original English Language Visual Novel) game that made people realize that the concept could result in works that are actually good. Here’s how it all began: in 2007 an offhand single-page concept art created by Raita Honjou, also known as the lead character designer for the Valkyria Chronicles series, found its way to the web. Using it as the foundation, a group of creators from 4chan decided to make a dating game… And five years later, much to everyone’s amazement, they delivered.

Katawa Shojo puts us in the shoes of Hisao Nakai, a high-school student who one day finds out that isn’t as healthy as he thought he was. Diagnosed with heart arrhythmia, he gets transferred to Yamaku High School, a special facility adapted to the needs of people with disabilities. Once there, he slowly gets to terms with his condition and forms bonds with some of the school’s other students: deaf Shizune and her sign language translator Misha, Emi, who lost her legs in a traffic accident, Hanako, who suffered severe burns in a fire and has a lingering trauma, blind Lily and finally Rin, who due to a birth defect has no arms. Each of them brings her own story, and something you would call a “baggage” of a particular disability and how it has shaped their world views and experiences. The game’s moral, though, is that none of them of does not deserve to be loved. It’s just that sometimes such relationships are a bit different than being with a healthy person.

As this a primarily dating sim, we are expected to enter a romantic relationship with one of the girls at some point in the story. If we don’t want to… well, give it a try and see what happens. That said the relationships is where the game’s storytelling truly shines. Gameplay, like in most VNs, is based on a system of scenarios unlocked by taking part in certain scenes and choosing the right answers, which in turn determine on whose path we will end up on. But that’s just the beginning, because the scenarios can and will end badly if we act like we have all the answers or tell people to just ‘get a grip’. Traumas are no trifle matter and require sensibility, and despite the appearance Katawa Shojo approaches the topic with a surprising amount of sensibility. It’s a game that tackles difficult topics and manages to do them justice. What’s more, in addition to all the romantic/traumatic drama, the game holds it ground as a satire for some archetypes related to disabilities, characters or relationships in general. Overall, a solid proposition.

The game is available for free on the developer’s official website, offering several editions localized to various languages. It has become an iconic title for the western VN community, so if for some strange reason you haven’t played this one yet, I heartily encourage you to do it. Many stars had to align for us to see this game released and for it being as good as it is.

1. Katawa Shojo - official website
2. Katawa Shojo on VNDB

There are scores of good visual novels out there, some of them translated and some of them not, even this somewhat extensive summary does not exhaust the supply of titles worthy of your time and attention. If you have your own suggestions for the best visual novel, feel free to share them in the comments.

1. The Visual Novel Database
2. Steam
3. Mangagamer - official website
4. JAST USA - official website
5. Sekai Project - official website