Katawa Shoujo Forums

Enceladeans wrote:

Ruined wrote:How is KS a puzzle/adventure game anyway? I know it's a game and it's a visual novel, but it definitely isn't puzzles or adventures .

It's closer to an adventure game than any other conventional game genre, since there's a lot of focus on story and dialogue.

Sounds like a book. A novel, if you will.

The Walking Dead produced a child character I did not immediately attempt to murder. Whatever KS accomplished, that cannot be topped.

Xanatos wrote:

Enceladeans wrote:

Ruined wrote:How is KS a puzzle/adventure game anyway? I know it's a game and it's a visual novel, but it definitely isn't puzzles or adventures .

It's closer to an adventure game than any other conventional game genre, since there's a lot of focus on story and dialogue.

Sounds like a book. A novel, if you will.

The Walking Dead produced a child character I did not immediately attempt to murder. Whatever KS accomplished, that cannot be topped.

You do realise you're the sort of reason that games depicting children in a violent environment cannot be sold in Europe, right?

Xybaro wrote:Misplaced among novels? KS has nearly 500,000 words.Sounds like a novel to me.

I know you're just taking the piss, but have you ever played an RPG? I'd wager their scripts are pretty damn hefty. Especially before voice acting.

Also the Metal Gear Solid games, in particular number 4. Sweet Jesus there's more cutscenes than gameplay, and yet I still love 'em.

FoxtrotZero wrote:You do realise you're the sort of reason that games depicting children in a violent environment cannot be sold in Europe, right?

Who told you that? Because it's... not true.
I think Germany has some of the strictest rules regarding violence in games in Europe, and even here the violence content is evaluated for each game individually, and simply the presence of children in games is not a reason to ban it.
The Walking Dead has received the category 18+ meaning it must not be sold to minors, but otherwise it can be sold freely.
There is another, more restrictive category where games must not be advertised and may not be sold in places where minors have access.
The only games (and other media) that are actually forbidden are those that
"- depict cruel and inhuman violence against humans or humanlike creatures or
- glorify or trivialize such violence or
- depict the violent or inhuman act in a way that violates human dignity."
Distribution of such media is a criminal offense (criminal code §131), but at the moment there are a whole of 16 computer games on that list, and most of them can be sold in a toned down localized version.
I think that law is mostly used to curb Nazi propaganda, which is not a huge issue within computer games.

Katawa Shoujo is great and all but I would hardly call it an adventure game
No point in splitting hairs about it though

BlackWaltzTheThird wrote:

Xybaro wrote:Misplaced among novels? KS has nearly 500,000 words.Sounds like a novel to me.

I know you're just taking the piss, but have you ever played an RPG? I'd wager their scripts are pretty damn hefty. Especially before voice acting.

Also the Metal Gear Solid games, in particular number 4. Sweet Jesus there's more cutscenes than gameplay, and yet I still love 'em.

Ah, but those are actual games.

They don't count when comparing wordcount with KS, which is an interactive book, like it or not.

If you *do* have the wordcounts for MGS4 or well known RPGs, that would be interesting.

FoxtrotZero wrote:You do realise you're the sort of reason that games depicting children in a violent environment cannot be sold in Europe, right?

Really?

Please do enlighten me on how some random gamer guy in America somehow magically caused all of Europe to ban the sale of violent games depicting children.

Xybaro wrote:

BlackWaltzTheThird wrote:

Xybaro wrote:Misplaced among novels? KS has nearly 500,000 words.Sounds like a novel to me.

I know you're just taking the piss, but have you ever played an RPG? I'd wager their scripts are pretty damn hefty. Especially before voice acting.

Also the Metal Gear Solid games, in particular number 4. Sweet Jesus there's more cutscenes than gameplay, and yet I still love 'em.

Ah, but those are actual games.

They don't count when comparing wordcount with KS, which is an interactive book, like it or not.

If you *do* have the wordcounts for MGS4 or well known RPGs, that would be interesting.

You'd be surprised. Pulling a game script for Final Fantasy 6, the word count falls at a little over 20k words. Yes, that means Katawa Shoujo has roughly the same number of words as 25 Final Fantasy VIs. In fact, the character count clocks somewhere in the neighborhood of 140k characters. That means that KS has more than three words per character as compared to FF6.

Oh, interesting thought on the "Are VNs games"-subject:

I am currently reading "Reality is broken" by Jane McGonigal (just started), and she defines four aspects to a game, apparently takes from how Bernard Suits defined them:

• A goal.
• Rules.
• A feedback system.
• Voluntary participation.

Goal? Check. Gimme the narrative, ending X.
Rules? Check. I can't just read the script for Shizune's bad ending, I have to make the correct choices to be able to read it in full.
Voluntary participation? Did anyone force friends into playing the game?

The problem I have is with feedback system. Not eeeentirely sure. There's ofc feedback in some sense in that the narrative branches out after your choice. But, sometimes it doesn't. Or something there's no reasonable frame to the feedback, e.g. Lilly's route.
OTOH, it is a way of feedback, for sure. Pick wrong choice, you don't get the narrative you wanted. Comparable to QTEs, press the wrong button, you die.

You'd be surprised. Pulling a game script for Final Fantasy 6, the word count falls at a little over 20k words. Yes, that means Katawa Shoujo has roughly the same number of words as 25 Final Fantasy VIs. In fact, the character count clocks somewhere in the neighborhood of 140k characters. That means that KS has more than three words per character as compared to FF6.

While I agree with you in general, FF VI is probably a bad example. Back then gaming systems were severely restricted by stuff like small textboxes, so they had to cut text length wherever possible.

@Carighan:
A book also has a goal (find out what happens at the end), rules (read each page from top left to bottom right, then turn page) and voluntary participation.
Not sure what she means by "feedback system" but this is the age of the internet, so it should be no problem to tell the author how you liked the book. Whether or not he reads your feedback is on another page.

Mirage_GSM wrote:

You'd be surprised. Pulling a game script for Final Fantasy 6, the word count falls at a little over 20k words. Yes, that means Katawa Shoujo has roughly the same number of words as 25 Final Fantasy VIs. In fact, the character count clocks somewhere in the neighborhood of 140k characters. That means that KS has more than three words per character as compared to FF6.

While I agree with you in general, FF VI is probably a bad example. Back then gaming systems were severely restricted by stuff like small textboxes, so they had to cut text length wherever possible.

Point taken. Perhaps taken too much. You got me to look up the scripts for the other SNES and beyond Final Fantasy games, just for comparison. The results are somewhat fascinating.

As a word of warning, these word counts are for the entire script file, which includes intro notes, closing notes, and direction notes, so much more than just the text. And these are different transcribers, so some were more verbose in describing actions and cutscenes. FFIV and FFV are pulled from the Game Boy Advance Translations, because there wasn't an official FFV translation for SNES and the FFIV official translation for the SNES was atrocious:

Final Fantasy IV - 24k words
Final Fantasy V - 32k words
Final Fantasy VII - 125k words
Final Fantasy VIII - 27k words
Final Fantasy IX - 156k words
Final Fantasy X - 111k words
Final Fantasy XII - 43k words
(There was no convenient transcript for FF13)

Interestingly enough, the first fully-voiced game (FFX) was also one of the most verbose. Still, nothing anywhere near the length of the KS Script.

As for my opinion toward game vs visual novel, my opinion is a solid "Who cares?" From a practical standpoint, they're both electronic entertainment and draw from the same pool of your time.

From a pure categorization standpoint, I'd say the pure game lies on one end of the spectrum, and the pure visual novel lies on the other end. The pure game is probably most clearly illustrated in the form of a puzzle game, where there's no actual story, just gameplay. The pure visual novel would be like a regular novel - no decision points or mini-games, just a linear a-to-b story. The visual comes in the multimedia presentation (even though the auditory element isn't part of the name). Games like Double Dragon and Contra are heavily on the game end of the spectrum, but have trace elements of visual novel in that they actually convey a narrative. Similarly, KS is largely in the visual novel end of the spectrum, but the presence of choices provides a level of interactivity, and thus game. And if you were to categorize the game elements of KS, they would fall into Adventure/Puzzle (choices direct the flow of the narrative, with clear right/wrong results).

Ergo, if you REALLY had to categorize KS as a computer game, it would fall into the adventure/puzzle genre.

Here, this might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction

Quote
"Sub-genres

Presentation

Graphic adventure game
Interactive fiction
Interactive movie
Visual novel <--
"

Don't logic us!

"A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device."

They're all like "Walking Dead gave me the feels" and I'm like "you don't even know what feels are."