Abstract
Throughout the history of game studies, scholars have reflected on the essential features of games. In the past decade, these discussions have extended beyond academia to the broader gaming community, where certain genres have been elevated as “real games.” Walking simulators, dating sims, visual novels, and hybrid forms are often at the center of these debates, criticized for their simplicity, lack of challenge, or sometimes overtly sexual content. Despite this, the popularity of these genres is undeniable: since 2007, over 50,000 titles have been documented on the Visual Novel Database, and thousands of walking simulators are available on Steam and other platforms. Many of these titles also appear on MobyGames and have been referenced as “games” throughout history. In this article, we delve into this vast and often overlooked corpus to examine the qualities that can elevate gameplay to unreal levels.
Keywords
“Need everything be so real? The synthetic has its place in the order of things” Pawpaw, the Ditch Man Norco, Geography of Robots, 2022 “Hey, why do you want to be the best in the galaxy so badly? There's really no point in fighting people over that…” Yuna, great Savior of Light Galaxy Fräulein Yuna, Hudson Soft, 1992
Introduction
Norco (Geography of Robots, 2022), a gothic science-fiction novel game mimicking the style of 1980s graphical adventure games, was released in 2022 to great critical acclaim. It won Tribeca film festival's first video game award in 2021. The supersized pixels of this nostalgic throwback invite us to get closer to the madness of an actual Louisiana town dominated by dirty politics, the pollution of an oil refinery (a Shell refinery in real life Norco), and a farcical male-dominated sect. The ominous Ditch Man tries to elevate Catherine and Kay—utterly powerless playable characters—as central figures in a dark and suicidal rebirth fantasy (Figure 1). The requirements to win the game are quite minimal: click through all the options, read attentively, and you will most likely get through. It ends with the message “thank you for playing,” but many players would question its status as a game.
Norco (Geography of Robots, 2022).
Galaxy Fräulein Yuna (Hudson Soft & RED, 1992, henceforth referred to as Yuna) is a PC Engine Super CD-ROM2 game released in 1992 by Hudson Soft, one of the major Japanese studios at the time. The digital comic game invites us to play Yuna as she learns to manage her idol status and behave like a real dignified fräulein (a young miss in German language), defeating the 13 evil fräuleins of darkness along the way. While this coming-of-age interactive story fits within the magical girl genre, addressing the shōjo demographic in some regards, it also features power suits and raunchy evocative images of the evil fräuleins as players “defeat” each of them, a sort of spectacle reward presumably attuned to a male heterosexual gaze (Figure 2). Save for its lack of a mouse-driven interface, the overall game feel is similar to Norco. As the epigraph taken from the game illustrates, learning to be a real fräulein actually implies an ability to let go of the obsession of winning and being the best.
Galaxy Fräulein Yuna (Hudson Soft & RED, 1992). PC Engine Super CD-ROM2.
While Norco and Yuna appear unchallenging, both still require nontrivial effort to explore the game world and move forward. Surprisingly, they use ludic conventions in combat scenes that you can win, most of the time, by clicking through. Signaletic feedback (such as health points and other common game state indicators) works with textual elements to reinforce the narrative tension of specific scenes. In these examples, the mimicry of game language is used to tell stories more effectively.
Is the mimicry of a game still a game? In this article, we are going to show that “borderline” games have led players to gratifying experiences, sometimes up to hardcore levels of engagement. These experiences are not limited by minimal challenges or even the simulacra of ludic conventions, and one might argue that their engaging nature even relies on these unreal qualities. The small corpus presented will reveal how unreal designs have emerged in Japanese and American contexts throughout video game history, and how these games were received with an open ludic mind.
Academic Context
lacking in reality, substance, or genuineness: ARTIFICIAL, ILLUSORY also: INCREDIBLE, FANTASTIC (“Unreal Definition & Meaning” Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
In Handmade Pixels (2019), Jesper Juul's study of pixel aesthetics and other signifiers of independence and authenticity, the contentious case of walking simulators is discussed over two chapters. According to Juul, such games represent a “radical departure in game history”: “walking simulators are aesthetically independent in rejecting the gameplay and strategy optimization that characterize most games” (2019, p. 189). Here, Juul centers the experience of deep strategic involvement as the most common form of gameplay, highlighting the contribution of the WS genre as an oppositional form. This centering evokes the classic game model defined in Half-Real (2005, p. 23–54). In this model, ludic designs that leave out any of six core elements—such as player effort and valorization of outcome through explicit winning states—are relegated to borderline cases.
The ongoing research on the VN lineage seems to contradict the idea that minimally challenging designs should be seen as a recent and radical turn, in video game history at least. Since 2007, fans of these text-heavy novel games have contributed to the Visual Novel Database (henceforth VNDB). It currently documents more than 50,000 games from the early 1980s up to this day, with hundreds of titles released before the year 2000, and hundreds more with unspecified release dates. In The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels (2023), Mark Kretzschmar and Sara Raffel propose a useful overview of this massive production. They trace the origins of the genre to Japanese personal computers, highlighting the influence of popular manga and anime genres on early adventure games and what we now refer to as VN. Kretzschmar and Raffel present many typical visual and textual features shared by famous VNs (2023, p. 4–10). Beyond these common aspects, navigating the VNDB reveals a great diversity of designs and challenges. While the authors point out that the “very lack of choice has become a hallmark of visual novels” (2023, p. 11–12), they do not hesitate to discuss these objects as games, and their users as gamers.
A brief inspection of debates emerging in the tabletop role-playing game community reveals that the “real game” dispute was already active as early as the 1970s, and was built along similar arguments. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson describes tensions between Dungeons & Dragons players coming from the wargaming tradition, who were adept at “crunching” numbers in competitive scenarios, and a community emerging from science-fiction fandom who saw TTRPG as a means of jointly constructing narratives that went beyond the game stakes of victory or defeat (2022, p. 20–21). The influence of the “real game” faction was very strong; when Sandy Petersen designed Call of Cthulhu in the early 1980s, inspired by the notion of tragic investigation, he was forced to add combat characteristics (2021 [1982], p. 85). Dragon Magazine criticized him for not offering a more substantial weapon list and more combat rules (Cook, 1982, p. 70). Veteran gamers developed a dismissive attitude toward “munchkins” (younger gamers) over their enjoyment of easy power fantasies (moving into the story without the burden of heavy statistical engagement). Gatekeeping played out at the expense of some player attitudes and marginalized groups, most notably women. Today, Petersen's Call of Cthulhu remains one of the most popular and respected TTRPGs.
In this article, we seek to engage with a specific lineage of games highlighting how unreal features—such as apparent lack of challenge or the absence of univocal winning conditions—have led to culturally celebrated games a long time before the emergence and critical success of the WS genre and other “borderline” experiments. Our selection also goes beyond the Japanese context and well-known titles associated with the VN lineage. By demonstrating how engaging unreal games have been, and continue to be, we seek to help the community defuse arguments that cannot really hold up to historical scrutiny, and move beyond these heated debates that keep repeating and risk brushing off real accomplished gamers—understood as anybody who embraces the large spectrum of video game experiences.
Methods
One of the difficulties of conducting a historical investigation on our object comes from the generic imprecision of games with unreal features. In her contribution Literary Gaming, Astrid Ensslin inspects literary-ludic hybrids emerging in the context of art games, including generative literature, literary 3D environments, hypertexts, and poetry games (2014, p. 43–50). Her corpus rarely intersects with the VN lineage, with one notable exception: the Inanimate Alice series is also listed on the VNDB. As with other examples of “ludic hypermedia literature,” it “features a range of minigames that have to be played to progress with the story” (2014, p. 47, 48). The expression “visual novel” emerged in the mid-1990s and is now applied retrospectively on the vast corpus documented on the VNDB. Many titles in this lineage integrate a strong affective, relational, and sometimes overtly erotic or sexual component and can be referred to as “dating sims,” or even “life simulators” when more dimensions of the human experience are integrated in their ludic models. It intersects with other common generic tags, such as “otome games” and “bishōjo games.” 1 Before these expressions became prevalent, other expressions such as “digital comic” and “adventure” were also commonly used. Nowadays, a single game might be associated with many of these generic markers.
Our presentation of “unreal games” does not seek to replace other generic terms that have been associated with these titles. The proposed moniker aims to emphasize, simply, the co-occurrence in this corpus of the two common meanings associated with “unreal” (presented above from Merriam-Webster), namely that (a) these games are not real according to specific definitions of games, leading to a form of marginalization of liminal objects enacted by multiple voices in the gaming community (from scholars to gamers) and that (b) these unreal games are nonetheless fantastic, have been embraced historically as games by a seemingly important portion of the gaming community, and in some instances can even afford a type of hardcore gaming performance. By adopting the term “unreal,” we also hope to draw the attention of community members who might be more familiar with a. than b. The overlap with Epic games’ popular franchise is deliberate: it seeks to raise awareness about this neglected corpus (and, more trivially, to point out how easy it was to integrate “unreal” games into our canons already).
The aforementioned VNDB currently lists over 50,000 titles, ranging from the most linear games to complex simulations. More than 4,000 games on Steam are associated with the tag “walking simulator.” Ensslin's study potentially adds thousands of objects with unreal ludic features, presented as art or literature. Inspecting such vast corpora extensively through firsthand experience is impossible at this point. But these numbers in themselves are useful to our argument and should raise questions about the alleged “borderline” nature of unreal designs. Our goal is not to provide an exhaustive account of unreal games and features in videogames, but rather to highlight how original and engaging titles built around unreal features emerged early in video game history, to the point of questioning the normative view of gameplay emerging during the same period.
The scattering of all this culture over multiple documentary resources and inconsistent integration of metadata (such as genre) greatly limits the interest in using data visualization, especially in the case of VNs released before the 21st century. Since our goal is to inspect a vast lineage in a way that highlights the continuity of unreal features and the engaging nature of these designs, we had to move closer to specific games to perform deep readings, knowing that these readings could not be presented in complete detail in the final article. Consequently, this article proposes a form of middle or intermediate reading; as Rochat and Triclot explain, “The principle of intermediate reading is to work backward from the close reading and ‘augment’ it, using mathematical methods” (2017. Our translation). While our contribution did not reach the level of data encoding and clustering, it used database resources to augment our approach to individual case studies.
After defining our lineage (the centrality of unreal features in game design), the main arguments and case studies of this article were refined in weekly team meetings over 6 months. While our team already possessed significant knowledge of the elusive genre, the inspection of large datasets directed us to specific titles and informed our lived encounters with the lineage. Fan-curated resources such as the VNDB and PC Engine Software Bible have provided essential information in this process, allowing us to “speedrun” video game history, directing us to important cultural features and the reception of specific games. The selected titles end up forming a network; they are presented throughout the article not as individual case studies, but as cultural objects whose significance emerges when presented side by side.
Most of the games introduced in the following sections have not been analyzed extensively in Kretzschmar, Raffel, and Ensslin's contributions. Each game was studied thoroughly thanks to multiple playthroughs or vicarious engagement with alternative paths in these branching narratives thanks to Let's Play videos on YouTube. 2 These sources were also useful to evaluate the reception of our corpus. Additional reception traces, such as journalistic and fan reviews, were consulted with the same purpose.
Much like the introduction of this article, the structure of the argument will move back and forth between early games and contemporary games, to highlight generic continuity and counter the idea that these unreal games emerged only recently. It will also oscillate between Japanese and American-European releases to nuance the perception that these designs were popular mostly in Japan in the 1980s. This structuration will highlight long-lasting design threads whose significance might not be so apparent otherwise. Some well-known games such as Loom (Lucasfilm, 1990) and Tokimeki Memorial (Konami, 1994) will be featured as anchoring points to help readers situate lesser-known titles. This not so distant, not so close form or reading has been carefully crafted so that each of the case studies shed light on one another.
Unreal Coexistence
In 1995, one of the most advanced and sought-after shoot 'em ups was released on the PC Engine Arcade CD-ROM: Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire (Hudson Soft, 1995). This late flagship title is related to the two Yuna digital comics, in spirit at least: Akitaka Mika, the creator of these digital comics, provided character designs for Sapphire. Akitaka is also famous for his work on the Gundam franchise. The three titles were re-released as a package on the PlayStation Portable console in 2008, highlighting how “core” challenges and their digital comic unreal origins can sit side by side on gamers’ shelves. In this section, we propose a brief overview of videogames that include both challenge-intensive mechanics along unreal features.
We noted earlier, following Ensslin, how mini-games have been integrated into art games and interactive literature. In Niesz and Holland's seminal overview of interactive fiction published in 1984, the authors imagined this potential cohabitation with games in a hypothetical future: “the author of an interactive novel can reach back to these earlier genres and include a game, even a game with the complex graphics of a video arcade” (1984, p. 114). Inspecting the VNDB reveals that many branching narratives in the bishōjo genre, featuring seduction scenarios with a selection of beautiful girls, integrated simple traditional games (such as rock–paper–scissors or card games) in their gameplay loop, quite early in the lineage. 3 The cohabitation between games and branching narratives appears to stretch from the second decade of the video game industry, all the way to recent offerings on all popular consoles. In the life simulator I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (Northway Games, 2022, discussed further in the conclusion), anything from social to physical challenges presented through the branching narrative is handled via a simple yet engaging math card game.
A year after creating the original chapter in the Metal Gear franchise for Konami, Kojima Hideo directed Snatcher (Konami & Team Metalslave, 1988). This “cyberpunk adventure” (Japanese box cover) builds a vast storyworld by integrating references from manga and cinema (Figure 3). The generic markers can be somewhat misleading for American and European players however: compared to typical outings from Sierra On-Line, Lucasfilm, Revolution Software, or Coktel Vision from the era, it is much easier to walk through this storyworld. While some segments integrate puzzle elements, for instance reconstructing the identikit of a suspect following the interrogation of Isabella, in effect this plays out like a sort of quiz game and does not require the same kind of effort as the lateral thinking necessary to solve complicated puzzles (see Montfort, 2005, p. 40). While players can walk through most of the adventure by carefully reading the textual elements and triggering all the options—observational or conversational—in every scene, the game also features shooting galleries, calling for rapid hand-eye coordination. As we will see below, this alternation between a branching narrative and arcade sections can also be found in the American game The King of Chicago (Master Designer Software, 1987).
Snatcher (Konami & Team Metalslave, 1988). Emulated PC-88 version. Image source: MobyGames.
Popular releases in recent history highlight the possibility of cohabitation between VNs and other forms of strenuous challenges. 999: Nine Hours · Nine Persons · Nine Doors (Chunsoft, 2009, henceforth 999) opens with our protagonist, Junpei, awakening in a boat cabin with no recollection of previous events. Exploring his surrounding, he notices a peculiar watch on his wrist bearing the number 5 with no possible means to remove. The door is firmly locked by a device that resembles a card reader. As he tries to look out through the porthole, the window suddenly cracks, water gushing in. The player must then find a way out, prompting the puzzle segment of the game that takes the form of “escape-the-room” scenarios. While the narrative sets up a race against time, there is actually no real time limit to complete the various puzzles. By using the Nintendo DS's touch screen, players can interact with their inventory—for instance to combine objects or gain insight on their next clue—all in effort to unlock the exit. Each escape section is self-contained: all items have their purpose and none can be carried over. While this design is not as open-ended as those found in classic American adventure games, the puzzles can be quite challenging. After successfully leaving the cabin, the game returns to a branching novel format (Figure 4). 4
999 (Chunsoft, 2009) Nintendo DS version. Image source: MobyGames.
While Veli-Matti Karhulahti has questioned the nature of puzzles in relationship to real games (2014), experts of the text and graphical adventure genres such as Nick Montfort and Clara Fernández-Vara have not refrained from associating this ludic design with the concepts of game, or even simulation, despite its largely “static” inner workings and predetermined solutions. 5 In the field of interactive literature, the integration of puzzles has been judged harshly; Niesz and Holland associate the rigidity of interaction and puzzle design in contemporary text adventure games with “pop fiction, read once and no more” (1984, p. 122), and then proceed to imagine the possibilities to expand the form beyond this rigidity.
As we have seen in this section, ludic branching narratives sometimes co-exist with other forms of challenges, sometimes presented as mini-games or as distinct puzzle segments. While the challenge during the branching narrative segments in such games may appear comparatively minimal, we will see in the next section that it has the potential to become a sort of giant puzzle in itself.
Unreal Endings
In the VN segment following 999's first escape room, players are introduced to the rest of the cast, each fitted with a numbered bracelet. Junpei does not recognize any of them except Akane, a childhood friend who sports the number 6. Here we learn that they all have been kidnapped for the purpose of playing the Nonary Game, a life-or-death game in which they have nine hours to find their way to a specific door (with the number 9 painted on it). The number on their bracelet must add up to the digital root of the numbered door they wish to open, but that is not their only function. Should they disobey the rules, their bracelet will trigger bombs inside their bodies. Selecting doors serves as the branching mechanism of the game toward one of six possible endings. In the context where many endings involve death or other dire consequences, it is easy to infer that some end states are more desirable, and indeed this knowledge is widely shared in fan communities even if the games themselves do not always make it clear. Interestingly, 999's “True Ending” is unobtainable on its first run, making the first endgame experience unreal by design. Players need to reach a specific endpoint (the Safe Ending) to open this real ending, highlighting the necessity to explore multiple narrative paths until the end, and rewind/restart segments. Failing to make the right choices will result in the Coffin Ending, as Junpei and his group do not have the combination to open said coffin.
Complex ludic branching narratives featuring multiple endings have emerged quite early in the Western video game industry. The King of Chicago is an ambitious narrative simulation game released in 1986 and 1987 on multiple platforms. The game featured lush audiovisual output, remixing silent gangster movies and comic book conventions. While scenes are not depicted from the eyes of the protagonist systematically, the graphical aspect is not far removed from what we can find up to this day in some visual novels (Figure 5). After they select to begin the “movie” from the title screen, players embark on a quest to become the windy city's new Al Capone. Save for the Holodeck-grade illusion-making, one could argue that Doug Sharp's system constitutes an early incarnation of Janet Murray's cyberbard, co-constructing endless clever narratives with its users (1997). The marketing of the game evokes millions of plot variations, and we can attest to the great flexibility of this narrative simulation after dozens of playthroughs over the last 30 years.
The King of Chicago (Master Designer Software, 1987). Emulated Amiga version (1987).
The Computer and Video Games review lauds the game's ability to be completely different from one playthrough to the next. The author concludes: “King of Chicago is the first so-called computer movie to live up to the name. It is as huge as it is flexible” (Bishop, 1988, p. 43; our emphasis). Such a huge game with multiple endings is difficult to “finish” in the sense of reaching a clear winning state. Still, the fun of exploring possibilities warrants genuine appreciation for its “playability,” and multiple reviewers highlight the need to play strategically. Nick Kelly goes even further: “most of all, it's King of Chicago's sheer playability that makes it exceptional. I defy anyone, even the most diehard shoot ‘em up fiend, not to enjoy KOC's DIY stories” (Kelly, 1987, p. 103). The game promises almost infinite playthroughs, making it difficult to situate the ideal performance and real ending. For instance, it is possible to take over arch-rival Santucci without taking the time to expand your gang's influence all over the city. In the context of complicated puzzle narratives, or expansive story simulators, there is a very real possibility that many users will settle on ending points that are more or less removed from the “real” one, self-proclaiming it as satisfactory.
Unreal Challenge
As we saw in the previous section, some titles in the unreal lineage complicate player progression and success, remixing games and narratives in a way that evokes a giant puzzle. Completion of these narrative puzzles is not always mandatory to reach a gratifying ludic experience. In this section, we study how some designs have subverted the core notions of success and failure.
As Jonathan Lessard demonstrated in “The casual revolution of… 1987,” adventure game designers sought to reach out to the growing personal computer user base in the mid-1980s, most notably by introducing graphical user interfaces to replace complicated text parsers (2014). Beyond the newfound accessibility of Déjà Vu (ICOM Simulations, 1985) and Maniac Mansion (Lucasfilm, 1987), Loom has been elevated for its “finishability” in an era where frustrating puzzle-solving was still the norm in the genre. According to Trenton Webb it proposes “great gameplay,” “ideal for beginners because of its friendliness: Bobbin [the playable character] cannot die for example” (1990, p. 53). While Brian Moriarty's original tale might appear childlike on the surface, the tone is actually much darker; the game features adult themes and depictions, for instance a very graphic beheading scene near the end. Many reviewers note the relative simplicity of the game, with a focused story limiting interactions and the complexity of puzzles (Figure 6). None of this appears to be strongly opposed at the time, or even dissociated from genuine gameplay—quite the opposite, in fact. A retro review published on The Good Old Days in 2012 hints at a potential shift in definitions occurring in the meantime: “It works very well as an ‘interactive story’ – it's not much of a game. This is a direction which is only explored in amateur/indie games these days. Kind of a pity, because Loom is truly groundbreaking in this respect.” (Mr Creosote in conversation with Wandrell, 2012; our emphasis).
Loom (Lucasfilm, 1990). Emulated FM Towns version (1991). Image source: MobyGames.
We noted in the previous section the relative lack of difficulty associated with puzzle design in Snatcher. Kojima's ambitions as a movie director and idiosyncratic author would become more obvious outside of Japan with the release of Metal Gear Solid (Konami, 1998), a flagship title for Sony's first PlayStation console. This “tactical espionage action” game features lengthy conversations over a codec device between protagonist Snake and the military team guiding him through his infiltration of a nuclear facility on Shadow Moses Island. These conversations interrupt the flow of stealth gameplay and disrupt the tone of this doomsday mission with flirting and self-referential humor, traits that would become hallmarks of Kojima's signature. Kojima and his team went so far as to subvert the “die and retry” gameplay convention for the infamous bomb-defusing sequence in Policenauts (Konami, 1994), which leads both the player character Jonathan, and subsequently his teammate Ed, to rapid death, while the system adjusts the dialogue and difficulty in light of these failed attempts. As Bryan Hikari Hartzheim notes: “The event's brilliance is in its subversion of ‘failure,’ taking gaming's most stressful aspect and building a puzzle where the player wants to fail to see what the responses from the characters might be” (2023, p. 80–81).
To develop his “progressive game design” (Hartzheim), Kojima has not refrained from integrating lengthy cinematics throughout his games, inviting us to put down our controllers and regress to a mere spectator. Much like his other ludic subversions, this regression has not been perceived as a diminished form of gameplay by fans. Kojima's games feature multiple reflexive elements leading some players to adopt a hermeneutic posture, debating potential meanings outside of the games with fellow members of the community. Such progressive design thus acknowledges the importance of cognitive forms of engagement that can still play a role without being channeled through game mechanics. These observations echo the integration of ludic concepts (such as cooperation, strategy, and the idea of winning) in literary and film studies, particularly under the influence of cognitivism (from the late 1970s in the work of Umberto Eco and up to this day: see Ensslin, 2014 and Higgins, 2023).
Hardcore Reading
So far, our inspection of the lineage has allowed us to highlight important qualities that make games unreal. While they might appear less challenging than already elevated forms of gameplay, it would be more accurate to point out that they integrate minimal challenges that invite us to channel our ludic impulses into the discovery of a rich storyworld, while some of them also integrate incentives to read more deeply and perform in a hardcore manner. Unreal games can be very flexible by design, and thus they can accommodate multiple player attitudes. In this section, we explore how some of these games go beyond the actualization of complex storyworlds and welcome hardcore levels of performance.
In Tokimeki Memorial, the first title in Konami's famous dating simulator franchise, players can reach multiple endings by exploring an expansive branching narrative. As in The King of Chicago, in effect this means that players have agency in determining the end of the game, effectively conflating the notion of “winning” with “satisfying narrative closure.” While some of these endings are obviously bad, and one of the love interest (Fujisaki Shiori) is singled out (as the player character's special childhood friend), many other pairings in the end can be perceived as a winning state (Figure 7). In a surprise twist, it is even possible to fall in love with Ijuin Rei, a secret female admirer posing as a mean guy until the very end. 6 As players navigate the branching narrative by selecting activities or date options, character statistics displayed on the main screen move along with them. These indicators have a real impact, opening or closing down some narrative options later in the system. In this context, players can engage with this system in a strategic manner, inferring which activities will allow them to improve character traits that might be more seductive to a specific love interest. Other players might try to bypass this strategic involvement and simply allow themselves to walk through the branching paths, exploring options with great curiosity until a satisfactory playthrough has been achieved. 7
Tokimeki Momerial (Konami, 1994) Emulated Super Famicom version with English translation patch (2022). Image source: VNDB.
Users on the VNDB have indicated that this cult classic proposes a “medium” playing time, compared to the genre's norms, at 27 h 36 min. These playing times are likely provided by users who enjoy exploring multiple narrative paths, either by starting a new game or loading a previously saved state to engage in a different path.
Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2019), a sci-fi VN about a crew of colorful (and gender diverse) characters stuck on a spaceship was first released on the PlayStation Vita in 2019. At first glance, Gnosia is essentially the werewolf game: through dialogue sequences followed by a collective vote, the player character must determine who among the crew is Gnosia, malevolent entities of ambiguous nature, while also making sure that they themself are not suspected by the many nonplayer characters. Infected crewmates, meanwhile, murder one person aboard the ship every night, and the game ends when every Gnosia is put in cryogenic sleep, or when there are more Gnosia than remaining crewmates aboard the ship (which may represent a win or a loss, depending on whether the player is Gnosia or not). Yet, players soon learn that these winning or losing states are unreal. Who lives and who dies is of little importance: the player character is stuck in a time loop, bringing them back to the moment where Gnosia presence is detected aboard the ship (Figure 8). The key to breaking out of this time jail is quickly identified: the player must use loops to trigger special events with the nonplayer characters, gathering information about each of them in a list-to-fill fashion, until every blank space is filled, and every possible truth, accounted for.
Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2019). Nintendo Switch version (2021). Image source: VNDB.
After many hours of navigating time loops and character events, persevering players are rewarded with the endgame sequence. One loop actually mattered: to cheer up nonplayer character Setsu, they can either go fishing or watch a movie with them. When a player begins the last loop of the game and reminds Setsu of that specific choice, they break the cycle together and abolish the time loop once and for all. Reaching this desirable ending, following 195 loops, took us over 21 h.
Going Back to Move Forward
As the time loop design in Gnosia reveals, the quest for real endings has led to some of the most hardcore “die and retry” forms of engagement with games among VN fan communities. Other genre conventions have also evolved to encourage a more thorough inspection of textual possibilities. Many unreal games include mechanics to interact with the world outside of the playable character's agency, for instant “save and retry,” “rewind,” or “loop” mechanics, allowing players to come back to a branching point to explore other possibilities, along with an “auto” or “fast forward” button to facilitate multiple readings (see for instance Her Tears Were My Light, NomnomNami, 2016, Figure 9). Many games also offer a gallery overview of all the enticing pictures one has unlocked through a seduction route, indicating all the spectacle rewards one could still unlock through further exploration.
Her Tears Were My Light (NomnomNami, 2016) Windows version. Image source: VNDB.
Going back, again, to Gnosia: while players initially experience the gameworld through their player character and viewing their choices and actions as having a real impact on said gameworld, they are also strongly encouraged to adopt a more exploratory mindset. The description above is guided by Marie-Laure Ryan's compass of interactivity (2006, p. 107–125, Figure 10). This model is built around two conceptual dyads and their combinations, laid over a compass metaphor.
Types of interactivity (Ryan, 2006, p. 121).
Interactivity can be internal to the gameworld (as a playable character) or external to it (as a database navigator). In ontological interactivity, “the decisions of the user send the history of the virtual world on different forking paths,” and “determine which possible world, and consequently which story, will develop from the situation where the choice presents itself” (2006, p. 108); in exploratory mode, one explores the virtual world for its own sake, for instance to contemplate locations, objects or characters (p. 112).
While complex branching narratives such as The King of Chicago or Tokimeki Memorial fit with Ryan's definition of ontological interactivity, the predetermined, textual nature of these possible worlds makes it obvious to users that their paths are already established. This can make it difficult to imagine having a clear ontological impact for our character and shift our focus to the pleasure of exploring and actualizing these narrative possibilities, channeling this desire through the “save and retry” or “rewind” mechanics until self-determined narrative satisfaction occurs. While these navigation mechanics can be related to the external mode, unreal VN games propose to explore the narrative database while maintaining strong ties to an internal perspective.
Looping Back
1996 saw the release of the infamous Shizuku (Leaf, 1996), the first in a trilogy presented with the expression “visual novel.” We mentioned already that this first alleged use of the expression should not be seen as the actual starting point of this complicated lineage; the VNDB includes titles from the early 1980s onward, many of which are still poorly documented. The association of VNs/dating sims with lewd themes and sometimes explicit sexual depictions might explain the relative invisibility of these games in video game historiography. Leaf's title is indeed an eroge game, but so much more at the same time: it is inspired by denpa fiction, a horror subgenre exploring the theme of insanity. This VN appears to be a striking example of predetermined, linear design, with extra care given to the visual design of the text and images combining on screen (see Kretzschmar and Raffel, 2023, p. 10; Figure 11) as the player progresses through the main character's investigation into madness. Interestingly, fans of the genre do not perceive this design to be at odds with the notion of “game.” On the YouTube channel VN Paradise, (2022) user Miguel praises the game on many levels, insisting on its unreal features: One of the key aspect […] is its approachability. Gone was the need to search for a guide to clear a game's obtuse systems or to save scum your way into success. The visual novel format instead welcomed any sort of player into comfortably finding the truth behind its story. And as simplistic and non-interactive as it may have been, it was exactly the sort of game plenty were craving for (0:11:00 to 0:11:45; our emphasis)
Shizuku (Leaf, 1996). PC-98 version. Image source: VNDB.
In 1995 also, Hudson Soft released Hyaku Monogatari (Hudson Soft & Sofix, 1995), one of the last great titles produced for their PC Engine platform. For this ultimate demonstration of the multimedia affordances of the CD-ROM, the studio collaborated with famous horror fiction actor and author Inagawa Junji, whose voice narrates some of the troubling events in this “gathering of one hundred supernatural tales” (Wikipedia translation of the title). Players can navigate between the hundred tales by selecting a candle on the screen, and then proceed to click through the text and images until the end of the story. Some of these tales appear to integrate a navigation menu between locations, mimicking similar menus from graphical adventure games in an unreal fashion (Figure 12). Is this just for the show? Perhaps a proper selection could lead to a hidden branching path or ending, illuminating our investigations into these dark tales. Players have the agency to decide if they want to engage the title as a puzzle, or simply actualize the tales by clicking through. This is one of the rare CD-ROMs that do not have any clear genre association on the PC Engine Bible database. It is actually an adaptation of a parlor game emerging during the Edo period in Japan (1603–1867).
Hyaku Monogatari (Hudson Soft & Sofix, 1995).
Hyaku Monogatari, the parlor game, might have been a test of courage in the samurai class, but was also enjoyed by commoners and was played collectively. Members of a village gathered and lit up a hundred lights (andons), corresponding to a hundred ghastly tales. Participants took turns in telling stories and proceeded to extinguish one andon after each tale. Rumor has it that this oral storytelling game was so frightening that it was impossible to win (Sunteam, 2024).
A Real Conversation
In The Formation of Gaming Culture (2015), Graeme Kirkpatrick highlights how debates about the nature of engaging gameplay took place in the specialized video game press around the mid-1980s. This is a pivotal moment according to the author: the community came together to define criteria to evaluate and elevate good gameplay. As we saw through the examples of The King of Chicago and Snatcher, well-known video game designers experimented with hybridity between game genres and even media forms. While the “real games” debate was raging at the same time in some corners of the gaming community, it is important to note the open-minded attitude of multiple reviewers from the English-speaking journalistic community toward the unreal game elements we studied, namely the lack of challenge and the ambiguity around winning conditions. What happened between the open-mindedness toward video game experimentations of the 1980s–1990s and the rigidity of the “real games” mindset becoming more visible since the rise of the WS genre? Answering this question in any definitive manner would require a vast research program that would take us away from the main goals of this article (i.e., reveal the engaging nature of unreal games emerging since the 1980s and in multiple cultural contexts).
Ironically, the idea that these unreal games are the exception seems to have been internalized even by scholars who work on ludic literary hybrids. Ensslin notes that “games as literary or verbal art, or hybrid forms of games and literature, used to be few and far between” (2014, p. 7). According to Ryan, games including both internal perspectives and exploratory interactivity, which can be related to VNs and other similar designs, are the least common combination (2006, p. 112). The numbers mentioned at the beginning of the articles, with more than 50,000 objects listed on the VNDB, speak volumes when compared to the list of over 280,000 titles currently listed on MobyGames. Interestingly, the two major databases overlap in part already. These documentation efforts indicate that unreal games have been a central genre in the development of video game culture. The growing numbers of objects relegated to borderline cases until recently highlight the necessity to conduct more research to properly account for the phenomenon.
In Twisty Little Passages, Montfort offers a fascinating inspection of interactive fiction as a major video game and literary genre and provides an overview that moves far beyond the initial waves of blockbuster titles from Scott Adams and Infocom. As the IF movement evolved into the 21st century, its community did not refrain from exploring unreal features (2005, p. 218–221). Another potential extension of our lineage, difficult to situate precisely in history, is highlighted in Montfort's contribution: “the entire body of Old English poetry is packed out with mini-riddles; they are known as ‘kennings’” (Montfort quoting Crossley-Holland, 2005, p. 56). As the author notes, “The riddle is not only the most important early ancestor of interactive fiction but also an extremely valuable figure for understanding it” (2005, p. 37).
In our presentation of the “real games” debates, we noted how specific communities were targeted and sometimes brushed aside. Many video game ethnographers and historians have documented overtly sexist or exclusionary attitudes surfacing throughout the history of the medium (see Harper, 2013; Kirkpatrick, 2015; McDivitt, 2020). Ten years following the wake-up call known as Gamergate (see Bezio, 2018; Jong, 2020), we have to acknowledge the very real tensions that keep growing about what kind of games and gamers are welcomed in our spaces and historical imagination. In a recent special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication codirected by Shira Chess and Mia Consalvo, Kelly Bergstrom points out how the ongoing context of online harassment, workplace discrimination, and dismissive attitudes toward feminist and queer approaches end up actively pushing some individuals out of game studies and gaming culture. She notes: “conversations with fellow feminist scholars reveal a shared frustration in how mainstream game studies tends to treat each event as an isolated incident—if they are even acknowledged at all” (2022).
In the context of this discussion, we would like to suggest that some ontological debates playing out in game studies over the last 25 years connect easily and inadvertently with real game toxicity. We do not seek to establish a causal link between the search for core definitional elements and the rigid mindsets and toxic attitudes that became very loud in the meantime. As we have shown, these debates existed before the expansion of game studies at the turn of the 21st century. Many scholars—us included—are tempted to integrating value judgments in their arguments about essential game elements and engaging game designs. Similar dynamics were certainly prevalent in other fields such as literary studies. To give but one example, previous mentions of Niesz and Holland's appreciation of interactive fiction point out their bias about specific types of experiences, and they go so far as to suggest the form will reach maturity when auteurs of the same ilk as their postmodern contemporaries embrace the form (1984, p. 126). However, we think it is necessary to underscore the connection in light of recent and growing cultural wars: in some instances, our privileged gaming definitions run the risk of legitimizing the use of exclusionary discourse and attitudes in player or designer communities.
Players who shamelessly explore and stretch our understanding of games become visible in light of the growing popularity of walking simulators, visual novels, cozy or wholesome games, and even vicarious forms of play through spectatorship. Throughout this article, we effortlessly found echoes of this open-minded attitude in the reception of unreal games in traces left by journalistic or fan communities over the years. This curiosity and openness about what can constitute a valid and engaging game experience should be elevated as essential qualities to truly embrace the mess that is video game history at this point. Besides, as the VNDB and other resources reveal, our conversations about these lineages could open up to tens of thousands of games. Real gamers have enjoyed it all, and have been doing so for a long time. Bergstrom ends up dreaming that we collectively re-imagine how we introduce newcomers to the field in a way that lives up to these exclusionary cultural tensions. We would like to argue that shedding more light on the history of unreal games contributes to such a legitimate fantasy. In the context of rising tensions and recurring cultural wars, video game history can act as a rampart against territorial claims and other forms of symbolic domination.
Of course, the expansive lineage we have inspected in this article should not be singled out for its important cultural contribution solely on the basis of its unreal features. We have selected titles with great thematic and ludic ambitions to emphasize the need for game studies to dedicate more attention to this sprawling corpus. As with any significant production, it is now attracting critical perspectives, from Azuma's theory of database animality as a major shift in contemporary narrative consumption (2009) to Ganzon's analysis of how postfeminist and postracist elements are disseminated through the localization of a popular otome game (2024).
Conclusion: The Rise of Talking Simulators
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (henceforth IWATE) was released on multiple platforms in 2022 to critical acclaim. This ambitious life simulator allows us to synthesize many of the traits we have explored in our lineage so far. The premise is inspired by the climate emergency: after fleeing the earth and going through a perilous journey in space, a group of colonists settles on Vertumna IV. Your playable character—which can be customized with many different aspects, including gender expression—is born on the intergalactic spaceship which will serve as a base on the new homeworld for the colony. In this settlement, players can undertake several activities to improve their stats in 12 skills (such as engineering, combat, reasoning, creativity, and empathy; Figure 13). Throughout the branching narrative, physical, mental, or social challenges are performed via a card game: one must add cards in a five-slot sequence to reach a preset goal. As players gain more experience, they can discard and add new cards to their deck, each card being thematically linked (as personal memories) with challenges and skills. Failure in some of these card challenges is very likely to occur, yet the system allows you to “push through” and still receive valuable experience. The game ends when you reach 20 years old, after 10 annual loops. Much like Tokimeki Memorial, attempting to reach all the different outcomes (including 21 professions in the colony) would require dozens of hours of intense exploration through reading. Players can also settle back to an ontological engagement in this complex simulation, click through in a free-flowing actualization of the branching narrative until a self-determined satisfactory ending has been reached. They could also replay for countless hours to reach a more exploratory perspective, or visit fan-made wikis to get an overview of all possibilities, before deciding which of the multiple branches they wish to explore further from an internal perspective. The system encourages great flexibility in challenge and completion.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (Northway Games, 2022). Nintendo Switch version. Image source: VNDB.
Writing about IWATE in Digital trends, Giovanni Colantonio notes that “[t]his excellent sci-fi RPG shows how kids absorb the politics around them” (2022). Despite its child-friendly appearances, this game provides many opportunities to experience troubling events, on a personal and political level; the main menu features one of the longest content warnings ever produced, including subsections such as “Major character death,” “Traumatic global events,” “Mental health and trauma,” and “Implied sexual content.” This thematic audacity echoes a tendency observed in many other games explored in preparation for this article. This aspect of our lineage definitely contradicts any claim that these “easy” and flexible games are made for kids or casual gamers only.
Thanks to a heavy focus on conversation, the genre seems to invite us to discover both playable characters and nonplayable characters with an open mind and thus could be defined as a sort of talking, listening, or caring simulator. These other generic expressions draw a direct connection with the walking simulator genre, but we have to insist that this article does not seek to conflate all these genres: while they share unreal features that have attracted pushback from members of the community, their forms remain quite distinct in many ways, most strikingly when it comes to the navigation of virtual space.
Throughout this article, we have presented games in the VN lineage that go beyond sexual seduction scenarios to circumvent the negative perception of these titles, but we do not seek to reinforce this exclusionary attitude by doing so. As a final opening, it should be pointed out that exploring the VNDB further would likely allow us to reinforce Ruberg's study of how Video Games Have Always Been Queer (2019). Of course, the database appears to be dominated by a great number of bishōjo titles, but one can also find games such as Sotsugyou Ryokou (JANIS, 1996) and the second installment in the IF series (Active, 1993, Figure 14), both featuring a male love interest on top of many girls to pursue.
VNDB page for IF 2 (Active, 1993). The description is taken from MobyGames.
In-between karaoke, swimsuit competitions, and educating the evil fräuleins of darkness, Yuna gets acquainted with Elner, a sort of biomechanical ally that doubles as a power suit, fusing with our idol heroine during combat. This powerful character, which is centered on the game's front cover, is revealed to be an extension of Yuna. At some point Yuna asks: “Come to think of it, Elner, what gender are you – male or female?” (Figure 2). The flying fairy robot replies: “neither one.” Our dynamic duo simply moves forward in their quest to spread love, some raunchy spectacle rewards, and amazing gameplay through the power of conversation (Figure 15).
Galaxy Fräulein Yuna cover art. Image source: PC Engine Software Bible website.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 435-2020-1263).
