I was messing with Spaceplan, a popular clicker game, and it was pretty fun. Then I watched Saekano Flat episode 4.
Wait, doesn’t this mean clickers are the ultimate form of this game format? And more pertinently, visual novels are just clickers with stuff you read while clicking?
It’s kind of a revelation that makes too much sense, as demonstrated that there is already a popular clicker that’s totally on top of the concept. I think it’s high time when we get deeper into this crossover.
The joke-y revelation aside, I totally get what this is really about in a personal sense, as many a demo I have abandoned because I can’t be arsed to click a few dozen times just to waltz past the Tolkien-esqe trope-descriptors without either the imagination or eloquence of the old masters. Well, that’s probably asking for too much. I personally am partial towards the kinetic novel format a little more for this reason. Let’s not beat around the bush; visual novels are more about novels than visual anything, at least when the tire hits the rubber. At least my western-trained eyes can’t handle the low, low data density in your average EN-translated dialog box without my mind wandering stray after a couple hours. It’s compounded by my compulsiveness to want to enjoy that voice acting, so often I’m stuck between wanting to enjoy a VN as a book, as an audiobook (which doesn’t work because only character lines are voiced most of the time), or as a slideshow-anime hack or kinetic manga kind of thing.
May 9th, 2017 at 10:31 am
In some parts of the Internet, these things are known as Idle Games. Really confuses me when they come up in podcasts and I can’t check the spelling!
May 9th, 2017 at 10:58 am
I can imagine the confusion that might cause.