The Games I Used to Play

 

After deciding to make a visual novel, something strange happened. Before looking into how to build one, the games I used to play surfaced first.

To understand a genre, you analyze its structure. AI can handle that. But "why this genre pulls people in" isn't something analysis can answer. That was stored in memory.

The First Visual Novel I Played

I can't remember exactly when. Probably high school. On a friend's computer, or at my desk in my own room. There are games whose titles I can't quite recall. Games that would turn up with a search, probably. But it's not the titles that stuck — it's the feeling.

I remember the setting was a school. Characters in a classroom. Lunch breaks. After-school hours. When a choice appeared, I'd pause and think. Which option would this character like? What dialogue would follow? I saved and loaded over and over, trying different choices.

Looking back, it's almost laughable. Agonizing over raising a 2D character's "affection meter." But at the time, I was serious. Genuinely serious.

The Emotions Were Real

It's a strange thing — real emotions emerging from fake relationships. The other person is a programmed character. The dialogue is pre-written text. The choices are just predetermined branches. No matter what the player picks, they're following one of the paths the writer laid out.

But the emotions were real. At least, that's how it felt.

When a character smiled, it felt good. When they told a sad story, I sank with them. When a scene showed them getting close to another character, something felt uneasy. When an ending meant separation, the disappointment was genuine. Even after turning off the screen, the feeling lingered.

Why? Looking back now, a few reasons emerge.

First, I invested time. Visual novels aren't quick games. You spend hours — sometimes dozens — following one character's story. During that time, you share their daily life, their conversations, their conflicts. The accumulation of time starts feeling like a relationship.

Second, I chose. I wasn't passively reading — I was actively picking. Every choice was a judgment: "What would I do here?" Because those judgments reflected in the story, the story became mine, not someone else's.

Third, I was alone. Visual novels are mostly single-player. No competition, no cooperation with other people. Just the character on screen and me. A closed space. That closeness paradoxically creates immersion.

Scenes That Stayed

I've forgotten the specific plots. But scenes remain. Scenes with emotions attached.

A scene where just the two of us are left in a classroom after school. Sunset streaming through the window. A moment where the conversation pauses. I don't know why that silence felt so good. Nothing was said, but it felt like something was there.

A scene walking together in the rain. Sharing an umbrella, or just running through it. Cliche. Predictable. But at the time, "predictable" didn't cross my mind. The physical closeness created by the situation felt like closeness in the relationship.

A scene preparing for a festival together. The process of building something together. The goal isn't completion — the process itself builds the relationship. I learned later that this is actually clever scenario design.

And the endings. The bad endings stayed longer than the good ones. "What if I'd chosen differently?" — that thought continued long after the game was off. That was the first time I learned that regret applies to fictional choices too.

After Time Passed

It's been over fifteen years since I played those games. Since then, I've played countless games, watched films, read books. But strangely, the emotions from visual novels had a different texture than emotions from other media.

Watching a sad scene in a film makes you sad. But it's sadness as a viewer. You're watching the character's sadness from outside.

Reading a tragic ending in a novel hurts. But it's a reader's pain. The story was written that way.

Getting a bad ending in a visual novel is different. "If I'd picked something else, this might not have happened" — that thought surfaces. It's not a viewer's sadness but something closer to a participant's regret. Because I chose. Because this is the consequence of my choice.

I only clearly recognized this difference — the unique emotional structure of visual novels — when I started trying to build one.

Looking back, even in the early 2000s when I was building game libraries from scratch during the DOS-to-Windows transition, visual novels held a special place. They were among the technically simplest games, yet the reactions they provoked were the most intense. Just text and a few images, and real emotions came out. That was fascinating even then.

The Nature of Wistfulness

If I had to capture those old feelings in one word, it would be "wistfulness." Not quite longing, not quite sadness, not quite nostalgia. An unclear emotion that remains unclear.

I tried to figure out what it was. Probably incompleteness.

Relationships in visual novels are always incomplete. Even in a happy ending, when the game ends, the relationship ends too. In a bad ending, the relationship ends before it's fully formed. In any ending, there's a sense of "I wish there was more." This feeling of incompletion doesn't fade with time — it ages into wistfulness in your memory.

Real relationships can be similar. Perfectly concluded relationships are rare. Most relationships drift apart with something unfinished, which is why they suddenly surface in memory later. The fact that visual novel emotions resemble real relationship emotions might mean the structure is closer to reality than you'd think.

A Creator's Perspective

Back then, I was a player. Now I'm trying to be a creator. The perspective is completely different.

As a player, I just felt things. If it was good, it was good. If it was sad, it was sad. I didn't think about why those emotions arose.

A creator needs to understand the "why." Why did that scene move me? What elements created that emotion? Was it the text, the choice, the timing, the atmosphere? You have to deconstruct emotion into structure.

Only then can you design emotion intentionally.

This is a bit frightening, too. If I analyze the emotions I once felt, does the magic break? If I understand the structure, can I never be immersed again?

Just as a film director watching a movie notices the editing and camera angles, someone making games will start noticing the systems and branches. Whether that damages the authenticity of emotion or leads to deeper understanding — I don't know yet.

What AI Can't Tell You

The content of this entry didn't come from asking AI. It came from memory.

If you ask AI to "categorize the emotions people feel in visual novels," you get a clean answer. Excitement, attachment, sadness, regret, longing, immersion. None of it wrong.

But "why that after-school classroom scene with sunset streaming in felt so good" — AI can't answer that. It's personal experience, memory, sensibility. A domain that can't be reduced to data.

Making a visual novel means handling both. The structure and analysis that AI can provide, and the sensibility and experience that AI cannot. Both must converge to produce a scenario that moves the player's emotions.

So the next question is natural. Is it just me, or is this universal? Why do people play visual novels? What's the mechanism behind real emotions emerging from fictional relationships? The questions that came from memory — this time, I want to dig deeper.

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Next: Why Do People Play Visual Novels? — The Reason Real Emotions Come from Fictional Relationships