This week I decided to mostly focus on researching other visual novels by playing through them and observing how dialog is structured and what kinds of choices they give you. This week I played through Rewrite by Key. It takes place in Kazamatsuri, a city with lots of plants and greenery. The protagonist is Koutarou Tennouji who decides to join his High School’s Occult Club. As the story progresses, Koutarou and his friends learn more about what is going on in the background of the city and find themselves getting involved in a hidden war between two secret organizations.

                The types of choices and the impact towards the story that they would make were fairly obvious. However, the narrative and dialog were still very engaging. In terms of gameplay, one thing that made Rewrite different from other visual novels were the use of minigames and a dial. Throughout the story there are times where you must use the in-game GPS named Mappie. The player can click various points on a map where you meet various people and do other quests. The dial in the corner represents how much you have used Koutarou’s ability. There are times in the story where you are given the choice to use Koutarou’s ability to “rewrite” a part of his body to make himself stronger, but you are generally advised against using it as the change is permanent. The dial keeps track of how many times you have used this ability, and the result of certain choices and scenes is related to this dial.

                I really like the idea of a “resource” that you must keep track of in a visual novel.  I think it adds a layer of gameplay to something that is more traditionally just reading and occasionally making choices that impact the story. This week I’ve thought about how I could implement something similar into my own project and looked for ways to do it through Ren’py and Python.