The Ultimate Guide to Mystery Visual Novels
How you can go from Clueless to Creator
Happy Mystery Monday!
Today’s article will teach you all about mystery visual novels.
You can watch this video (please like and subscribe!) or keep reading. Enjoy!
Why Do Mystery Visual Novels Matter?
Mysteries are more popular than ever!
True crime videos are getting millions of views on YouTube
Mystery shows are getting hundreds of millions of views on Netflix
High-profile courtroom trials are livestreamed and talked about everywhere
Real-life escape rooms are literally booming in popularity
But mystery games and visual novels are in incredibly short supply.
Only 7% of all visual novels on itch.io are tagged Mystery.
Only 3% of all visual novels are tagged Detective, Crime, or Escape Game.
And those numbers are including works in progress or games that have been completely abandoned. Of the finished games, only a small fraction of those will be any good, so you’re going to have an extremely hard time finding something that is even worth playing.
The truth is, we can do so much better! And there’s no reason any mystery visual novel developer should be struggling when mysteries are so popular everywhere else.
What is a Mystery Visual Novel?
A mystery is a story whose plot involves a crime or other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end.
So, a mystery visual novel is just a cross between a story game and a puzzle game.
In 1983, The Portopia Serial Murder Case was released, and it widely defined the visual novel genre. Not JUST for mystery visual novels, but for visual novels, period. It had the text on the bottom, the images at the top, dialogue choices and point and click elements. The story also featured a locked room murder mystery with a shocking twist solution, a callback to western Golden Age mystery novels.
The story design from those Golden Age mysteries and gameplay design from Portopia were highly influential in the creation of what I call the “Big Four” mystery visual novels. From 2001 to 2010, Ace Attorney, When They Cry, Zero Escape, and Danganronpa all became massively successful franchises, creating their own niches and inspiring countless indie developers.
3 Differences Between Visual Novel Genres
There are three key differences between mystery visual novels and other genres.
They are not just a story – puzzle design makes or breaks the game. A satisfying mystery is the difference between a positive or negative review.
They include gameplay systems to facilitate solving the puzzles. Not JUST choices, but ACTUAL gameplay.
They prioritize the pursuit of truth over the pursuit of love. Most people probably associate visual novels with dating sims where you pursue different love interests, but the unique aspect of a mystery visual novel is that any amount of romance will take a backseat to the solving of the puzzle.
If you enjoyed playing one of the Big Four, it’s very common that you will also enjoy the other three. Here you can see a map of the most popular visual novels on VNDB, courtesy of BunnyAdvocate. Each node on the map is a visual novel, and the proximity of each node indicates the ratio of people who play the one game that go on to play the one next to it.
I overlaid the logos of each mystery visual novel so you can see more easily where they cluster. You’ll notice that the romance games are on the bottom, the porn games on the top, and the mystery games right in the middle.
Completely different audiences — they don’t overlap.
This is why I believe, in my experience, that advertising to visual novel circles in general just doesn’t work, because they are either looking for romance or porn. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but those just aren’t the kind of games I’m making.
4 Examples of the Best Mystery Visual Novels
My original talk on this subject included spoilers, but I’ve removed them from this article. These included the explanations of a few puzzles, and the revealing of a few victims and culprits. If you want the more detailed, spoiler-y version, watch the original video here.
Now let’s take a look at how the Big Four do things right.
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
The Detective subgenre is one where a detective, either professional or amateur, investigates and solves a crime.
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, or in English "When the Seagulls Cry" is an excellent example. The game is formatted exactly like a Golden Age detective story, constantly referencing Golden Age mystery authors like Agatha Christie, Ronald Knox, and S.S. Van Dine. Umineko is set up like a game between author and reader. The gameplay is simply reading the story from start to finish — not even any choices — but with the task of using your own brain to make sense of what's happening in the story.
Umineko includes a convenient “TIPS” screen to keep track of relevant information. Character profiles will update when you meet someone new, they go missing, or they get killed off. There are also notes on certain things, like the riddle of Beatrice's epitaph which is the central puzzle of the entire story.
It's good to have these TIPS as reference points, because especially for a long game like Umineko, the player may take a break from reading and will need to quickly refresh their memory without spending too much time catching up.
The only way the TIPS screen could've been improved was if it included the Red Text.
Umineko uses red text to highlight the absolute truth. Players can analyze these red statements in conjunction with everything else to make theories about what really happened. Red text is mostly useful for situations that cannot be proven or disproven except through "word of God", and actually this was used a lot in detective fiction from the Golden Age. They would just write in the footer of the page, "Yes, you CAN trust everything this person is saying about the situation" to give the player a fair chance at solving it.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Next is the Courtroom subgenre, where the story involves conflicts in court between characters in the legal profession.
In Phoenix Wright, you play the role of a defense attorney, so your goal is to prove your client innocent. The interesting catch is that in most cases, you prove your client innocent by proving someone else guilty. So it's incredibly satisfying to be backed into a corner, then completely turn the tables and end up getting the prosecution's witness cornered instead.
Gameplay is split into two sections: an investigation part where you gather evidence, followed by a courtroom part, where you use that evidence to point out contradictions.
During your investigation, you have the options to examine, move, talk, and present evidence — all options that were also in The Portopia Serial Murder Case.
During court, you must listen to witness testimony and raise an OBJECTION! if something seems wrong.
These game mechanics lend themselves really well to a repeatable game loop that can be used in an endless number of cases.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Next is the Death Game subgenre, where characters are forced to participate in a survival game where elimination means death.
In Danganronpa, the gameplay is similar to Ace Attorney, with an investigation followed by a "battle royale" debate between every survivor. They must cast votes to determine who committed the crime, and if they get it right, the culprit gets executed and they live to the next round. If they fail, then the culprit escapes while the rest of them get killed instead.
All characters are arranged in a circle in the courtroom. The camera pans around as each character speaks. When you spot a contradiction, you must aim your cursor and fire the corresponding Truth Bullet (the piece of evidence that proves the contradiction) at the statement before it disappears.
Other minigames involving timing and reflexes also come up during the debate, but most of these have nothing to do with the logical deduction necessary to solve the crime.
Danganronpa effectively uses the chaos of many people arguing over each other at once to create a confusing narrative that ultimately has many shocking twists and turns that fill you with despair.
Zero Escape: 999
Finally, we have the Escape Game subgenre, where characters are trapped in a confined space and must solve puzzles to get out.
In Zero Escape, the tutorial does an excellent job of using a variety of game mechanics.
You wake up in a room that is constantly being filled with water, and you need to get out of there to survive.
You must search the room for items, combine items together, rotate them to see hidden clues, and analyze patterns to decode the password to the exit.
Good puzzle design is also good mystery design. All clues needed to solve all the puzzles were placed inside the game area, and there were no excess clues.
This was also true for the puzzle design of the other games we talked about.
All clues matter. They all have a purpose in the story and a use for the player.
The Rules of Fair Play Mysteries
It was not always the case that mysteries were “solvable”. They were more about watching the genius detective figure it out while you enjoyed the show. But some people wanted to play along and solve it before the detective did. Like playing a game.
During the 1910s and 1920s there were a lot of mystery authors trying to figure out a set of “fair play” rules. By 1930, these rules were well established, and an official Detection Club was formed, made up of the best authors of the time. They held regular meetings, helped each other with their individual projects, and even collaborated together on group projects.
Here are some paraphrased and simplified examples of these rules:
Any mystery less than a murder is not worth the trouble.
The detective or servant being the killer is too cheap.
Hidden passages and unknown science is not playing fair.
…You get the point. There are way too many rules to discuss or even list out here, so I hope these paint a general picture.
That said, I did want to go a bit deeper into just 4 rules I think are important.
Kinjo’s Top 4 Rules For Writing Mysteries
Rule 1: Make the mystery worth solving. Mysteries are not about keeping the player in the dark. It’s not about coming up with the most difficult or most unsolvable puzzle. That’s where a lot of people go wrong. It’s about coming up with a puzzle that is satisfying to solve. In other words, if the solution is too confusing, or doesn't make sense, or feels unfair, then the whole thing was a waste of time. Don’t waste the player’s time.
Umineko is exceptionally good at hiding secrets and completely subverting your expectations about what’s true and not true, and when you really get to the heart of the story, it has a really deep philosophical message that resonates with nearly everyone who plays it.
Rule 2: Make the answer obvious in hindsight. Again, rather than trying to make the most unsolvable mystery, you actually WANT to rub all the clues in the player’s face. Dangle it right in front of them and watch as they struggle to figure it out. Those are always the best mysteries.
Some would argue that the dying message in Danganronpa gave away the killer’s identity too easily (just as they might argue the dying message in my game Detective Butler did the same). But there are going to be people who don’t figure it out so quickly, and even if they do, there are still other aspects of the story to solve. Better that a mystery is too obvious that some people figure it out early than so impossible nobody thinks they had a fair chance at solving it.
Rule 3: Make the player feel smart. Give them chances to show they solved at least part of it, even the most simple thing. Like a text prompt asking them the most basic questions to gauge their understanding. That’s a strong benefit of video games over books, you can actually interact with the player to see how they’re doing, and your game can dynamically respond to them. If they’re doing well, reward them. If they’re starting to show signs of failure, nudge them in the right direction with a subtle hint. And always include at least one character who is so stupid that the player will walk away feeling like a genius.
There may be a lot of prompts in Ace Attorney and Danganronpa that are too easy, and a lot of the characters might act like complete idiots, but that’s by design. It made everyone who played those games feel smart, even if they were new to the mystery genre. And they had such a fun time, they’ll want to come back and play more.
Rule number 4, my favorite and probably the most important: there are no rules!
Umineko proves this point very easily by intentionally breaking many of the Van Dine rules. Love is a strong theme of the story, and there are many long and descriptive passages unrelated to the mystery. Danganronpa obviously breaks the “there must be only one detective” rule. Ace Attorney breaks the “don’t use supernatural means to uncover the truth” rule quite a lot, and the guilty party will often show up well after the early part of the story.
But generally, when you are just starting out, following the rules is a good thing — it teaches you how to write a mystery.
When you want to do something more creative and innovate in the genre, you can bend the rules as much as you want.
Remember, there’s a reason why these guys wrote the rules. They saw lots of bad mysteries being made and it took years of experience to write a list of things you should do — and not do — in order to make a mystery that people will actually enjoy.
Don’t take it for granted, but don’t let it stop you, either.
(You can view the full list of more than 30 fair-play rules here.)
How To Make A Mystery Visual Novel
My advice for beginners is to do exactly what I did starting out.
I kept everything simple and small for my first Detective Butler game. I knew that writing a mystery story was hard enough on its own, so instead of adding anything like branching choices or complex gameplay, I just wanted to start out by making a small but good mystery story. And many people would say I succeeded.
The sequel was where I messed up. I got excited and tried to add 3D scenes, full of movement where you go around collecting evidence, and then you use that evidence in a Danganronpa-style debate. The problem was that the sequel was more ambitious than I could realistically handle, and the project collapsed under its own weight. I had to take a break from it for several years, but now I’ve scoped it down to something more manageable.
And making your game episodic is practically a death sentence. It’s very tempting to do since all of the Big Four are episodic games and we are all inspired by those. But I cannot tell you how many mystery games, including my own, set out to do an episodic series and have been stuck in development hell ever since, even just for Episode 2. Do not send yourself down this path. It is not worth it.
Remember: a small but good mystery is always better than a long but bad one.
This is exactly how we finished Reaplaced in just 30 days. I recalled what worked for Detective Butler and applied it to that project, and even though the majority of people on that team never worked with each other before, we ended up making a winning mystery game.
Then I highly suggest you use an outline. For Detective Butler, I rewrote my story so many times I lost track of what the answer actually was. For Reaplaced, we only rewrote parts of the outline, not the actual story, and that saved us a tremendous amount of time.
A logic error is what happens when your own solution to the mystery doesn’t actually work because you’ve contradicted yourself. It’s even worse than a plot hole and it can become a living nightmare. It is ALWAYS better to catch these in the outline stage, looking at the big picture, instead of being knee-deep in the story and realizing that your mystery is literally impossible to solve.
That’s why getting feedback from someone else is so important. You NEED a fresh set of eyes (or a fresh brain) thinking about your mystery and trying to solve it. You’d be surprised, just like with other kinds of game testing, what the player will end up trying to do in order to break your game.
And try to resist the urge to modify the outline – it’s not even about scope creep, that’s just how these logic errors tend to happen. You make one small change, not thinking about how it affects the rest of the story, but then it all comes crumbling down. Make a plan, stick to the plan, and make it happen!
Here is a really basic outline to get you started. Most mysteries use this format to some degree, and I used it for Detective Butler and Reaplaced:
The first part introduces all the necessary information to the reader, setting things up for later parts, and ending with the discovery of the crime.
The second part goes deep into the mystery, through a cycle of investigation and deduction, until eventually the detective explicitly tells the reader that the mystery is now possible to solve.
The final part is where the detective explains who committed the crime, how, and why. And the story comes to a conclusion.
At this point, the best thing you can do is just gain experience by writing some mysteries and seeing how they go! There are many more elements you need to know like foreshadowing, red herrings, and the intricate details of police procedures, the legal system, criminal psychology, forensic science, and so much more…
Yes, that’s a lot to learn.
And I know what you’re gonna say next:
“Okay, but it sounds like mystery games are really hard to make!”
Yes, they are.
You might be thinking:
It’s too confusing and too much work
You’re not smart or logical enough
You don’t know any clever tricks
You don’t have the money or the time
You don’t have anyone to help you
That’s okay – because we are here to help!
Mystery Gamedev is a community for anyone interested in mystery games, whether they are fans or developers. There are many “general purpose” visual novel communities, but none are specifically dedicated to mysteries. So I created this one, to help bring together these two groups of people who seem to have trouble finding each other. Mystery fans always want to find more mystery games, and developers are struggling to connect with their audience.
Mystery Gamedev solves both problems!
If you’re brand new to mystery game development, that’s totally fine! We have a place for beginner questions, and then as you create a project and “level yourself up” you gain access to more channels that go into deeper topics.
Just like the Golden Age Detection Club, we hold monthly voice calls and build community projects together. We have experts who are more than happy to answer questions and provide you with the tools and resources you need to go all the way from clueless to creator. And then YOU will be the mystery expert!
Thanks for reading!
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