discussion Do You Like Sandbox Elements in Visual Novels?

[bobsyouruncle1234]

Sandbox has potential, but is rarely ever well realised in practice. The issue is most developers do not have the time or resources to make it good and satisfying. That's why mods for games that are already sandboxes is the better option for the time being. Even if they also have their own issues.

 

[Gasaraki]

Grinding is not fun... doing the same stuff over and over gets boring really fast.

 

[BeowulfKnight]

Fuck sandbox games....99% of them have needless grind that ruins the experience. Not to mention most of them also use that grind to cover up the fact that there isn't shit for content.

 

[Eric Graham]

Sometime the grinding is fun when you feel the progression and you on the right track.
but most of the time i just use cheat to skip all of them

 

[AlBetGam]

Same here. The classic VNs where you just read'n'click to advance with the occasional illusion of choice gets boring after a while unless the story is really good.
With sandbox you get actually some gameplay and the feeling of having earned it when you finally get to the next base with the girl, while with VNs you're just along for the ride.
So yes, a well made sandbox is something I love, but there are oh-so-many ways for devs to shoot themselves into the knee and make the whole thing unplayable,

• Horrendous navigation. When a simple house turns into a confusing labyrinth of arrows scattered around.
• No indication of where what who or when something is. Often paired with slow and horrendous navigation and moving between zones costs time, so everything becomes a tedious exercise in clicking and reloading.
• Non-obvious progression through repeat-events. Why would I waste time to repeat that event if I think it does nothing?
• Money/Stat grind that isn't also some kind of story progress. I get that money and stats are an important tool to pace progress and forcing players to prioritize... but if all that means that the player spends a few ingame-weeks with a work-gym-study-sleep cycle and then get everything right away anyways? That's just a dumb timesink without story purpose.
• A VN that's simply masked as "sandbox". You have a map. You have locations you can visit. But you still need to follow a set path of steps. In that case the sandbox just wastes time and adds clicks, but the story is indistinguishable from a VN. Just make it a VN!
• ...and probably many more potential traps that I forgot.

That hits most of the ones that grate my nerves. The big one I'd add is when progress is structured so it's impossible to complete a very simple task without taking up multiple in-game days. For example, in one game I played the MC was told after the prologue to deliver some mail to the neighbor and check out his family's VCR to see what was wrong with it (or something along those lines, it's been a while). Okay, simple enough.

Start in Day 1 Afternoon. I deliver the message. There's a short conversation scene meeting the neighbor and her daughter. That advances time from afternoon to evening (add that as an annoyance- strict time system where everything, no matter how trivial, takes up several hours of the MC's day). Go back to the living room where the VCR is- Mom's watching TV now, can't do anything while she's watching it. Nothing to do but watch with Mom. Now it's night, click the VCR- it's too late to do anything. Go to sleep. Wake up, leave room, kicked into scene with sister that jumps time forward to evening again. Repeat process. Wake up Day 3, finally have a chance to do this blasted VCR quest, and it's been like two days completely wasted in 5 minute conversations.

That's really not the worst example I've seen; some games do the same thing but on a huge empty map with multiple steps to the quest that are all spaced so you have to click through a week of time between each pair of steps. Just leaves you feeling like the dev stretched out 5 minutes of content to waste an hour of your time.

 

[Aloprt]

They're fun as long as the mechanics are smoothe

 

[Yeetbruh]

as i said in another thread 99.9% of sandbox games are 'what do i have to do to get to the vn part of the game'

Games that have grinding aren't necessarily bad (most normal games are some form of grinding) but its hard to make it compelling when the dev is usually using renpy or god forbid rpgm, its always gonna be 'click box to click next box'.

 

[milfycity]

I actually enjoy sandbox games. Grinding games are another matter altogether. If I play a sandbox game and there's not a good walkthrough mod or hint system then most of the time I turn on developer support and mod the variables as I go through to make life easier. I'd rather not have to do that though.

 

[GhostyOps]

It depends on the game itself

 

[Zauldjamin]

I think sandbox is a plus to a game, if it's done properly and with thought behind it.

 

[asdasc]

most of the time I don't like sandbox games, I'm more of a visual novel gamer so yeah, sandbox feels really boring if the mechanic sucks

 

[pearl]

A sandbox needs a good quest journal. Nothing I hate more than booting up a save after a long workweek and having to rollback because I forgot what/who I was supposed to be doing

 

[Knz]

I like it, but sometimes it gets tiring

 

[User_100467]

I like the grindy once that comes with cheats so that i dont have to do the grinding bit.
Those are good

 

[akka2020]

If done right a sandbox game can be good.
Finding a good balance between the grind and the reward is hard tho.

 

[Skarin070]

I like it as long as its not to grindy

 

[Ioas78]

If it's only to talk with some other character and not too often I don't mind but I don't like if it's the main mechanic of the VN or mandatory to unlock scenes.

 

[help]

If the reward is there, if there's payoff - then sure, I'll grind away.

 

[ArtoriasABW]

As long as the grind is reasonable and the game give you hints they're fine.

 

[thepmcc2]

As long as the grind is complemented with adequate reward. If you're grinding a bunch of nonsense stuff, just to get some dialogue progression, and it's overly tedious that's not as fun. A little puzzling for progress can be fun though.