One of the reasons I love visual novels is that they don’t play by the traditional rules of video games. In almost every other genre, games cost a lot to make, so most will try to make something marketable, immediately understandable, and that attracts an audience. They’ll often be focus-tested within an inch of their lives, which leaves you with something perhaps too flavourless or familiar.
But visual novels
aren’t expensive to make. There’s a die-hard group of visual novel fans who will buy a lot of them (some of them even contribute to the project), and that frees the writers up to explore unusual topics. I had a good time reviewing