HOBBY CHAOS - Bruneian Otaku | Geek | Entertainment Blog: New Addiction: Visual Novel! (A Dream of Summer)*Updated*

Intro:


A Dream of Summer is the first Visual Novel I`ve ever played. Well, I have always wanted to try Visual Novel but didn`t get the chance to download it.



Azmee, one of my blogging comrade created a blog where he share the download link for all Visual Novels he recommended. After watching Kamen Rider Decade episode 11 last night I decided to download one of the Visual Novel, it is called A Dream of Summer.

Synopsis:

Toshiki, the realist.
Mizuna, the girl he met on the roof.
And BROY, the school band whose members surround them.

It's the summer of their third year, and Toshiki must face not only the school festival, but also a promise that he may never be able to fulfil.

Download link here.

Characters:

Mizuna- She`s probably the ghost everyone talked about in this game.



Reiji- The delinquent but a great cook!^^ and Toshiki`s best pal.


Will do the full review after I finished playing this Visual Novel!^^

Visit Azmee`s blog if you wanna try some of the Visual Novels but I really recommend you A Dream of Summer to start with and you might end up addicted to Visual Novel just like me! xD

WHAT IS VISUAL NOVEL?

Let me introduce you with Visual Novel (Skip this if you already familiar with Visual Novel!)^^

A visual novel is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual novels are commonly called dating sims in English, a misnomer as visual novels are classified as a sub-genre of adventure games and not simulation games.

Visual novels are prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released. They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported to systems such as the Sega Dreamcast or the Playstation 2. The market for visual novels outside of Japan, however, is small.

Gameplay

Visual novels are distinguished from other game types by their extremely minimal gameplay. Typically the majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving.

Most visual novels have multiple storylines and many endings; the gameplay mechanic in these cases typically consists of intermittent multiple-choice decision points, where the player selects a direction in which to take the game. This style of gameplay has been compared to the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Most, however, strive for a higher level of plot and character depth than the aforementioned series of interactive children's books. These can be more closely compared to story-driven interactive fiction. While the plots and storytelling of mainstream video games is often criticized, many fans of visual novels hold them up as exceptions and identify this as a strong point of the genre.

Many visual novels use voice actors to provide voices for the characters in the game. Often, the protagonist is left unvoiced, even when the rest of the characters are fully voiced. This is because, the player is usually the protagonist in the first place.

Content and genre

Many visual novels are centered around romantic themes, but games centered around science fiction, fantasy fiction, and horror fiction are not uncommon.

Traditionally, PC-based visual novels have contained ecchi scenes even if the overall focus is not erotic (similar to the "obligatory sex scene" in Hollywood action films). However, the vast majority of console ports do not contain adult material, and a number of recent PC games have also been targeted at the all-age market; for example, all of Key's titles come in family-friendly versions, and two have never contained adult content at all. Also, all of KID's titles are family-friendly.

However, most still are then followed with hentai scenes-added versions later.

[Original article from Wikipedia, edited by me.^^]