discussion Thoughts on VN vs. Sandbox

[Wulf]

I prefer sandbox type games, BUT only if done right.
Endless repeated grinding of the same scenes to arbitrarily raise a stat by 1 point each time until the scenes changes slightly and allows you to progress is horrible.. like, absolutely horrible.
But a bit of freedom in when you pursue what storyline and which characters you progress with first - etc etc has a preference over a full linear story.

So I guess...
Good Sandbox > VN > Bad Sandbox

(And in any of the cases; being locked out of certain content based on choices is lame -> it means you'll have to replay the game to unlock certain scenes; and it means that for the people that dont replay, the devs 'wasted' time on making scenes that never get viewed etc)

That's so true. Finishing a game is already hard, when a dev makes lots of paths, it just slows down development, and makes the updates slow and slim. I think the only justifiable splits in paths are love/dominance etc, that still make the story go "straight forward" but change the way the characters interact. I think that once a dev does lots of paths trying to get more people to play the game, it usually has the opposite effect. You're still gonna attract the same people, but they're gonna have slower progress and a worst experience.

That said, i think good examples of sandbox (that also have the choices done right) are The Tyrant, Desert Stalker, Horton Bay Stories and Rogue Like

 

[Rukvia]

It doesn't matter for me if it's a sandbox or if it's a VN as long as it's done right. By right I mean that the Sandbox grind is low towards medium but rewarding, similar with for example Straitened Times (could be of lower grind imo), Superpowered 1 (FAR LESS grind would be welcomed), World after War (gimme a break already!), Bang City (this one is actually decent). VN style works if you have multiple choices, paths and is actually engaging in some ways. While I don't like the theme and absolutely hate NTR, the graphics are ok and the VN style is done well in Indecent Wife Hana.
Now, if you can mix the two into one and get something like Summertime Saga, that's great. Although Summertime Saga has VN elements, it's focused more on Sandbox.
What I do know is that Big Brother game/s/remakes/dev nightmare/milking machine/those things were among the best in terms of game design construction. I'm not going to talk about the good and bads of those games cause that's a rabbit hole nobody wants to go down on.

In essence comparing VN with Sandbox is akin to comparing RTS with FPS, while there's the crazy one that mixes the two, they are their own separate and well-defined genres with both goods and bads, they both have their own market and own niches. In the end, is all up to the player's personal preferred choice.

 

[bnART684]

It mainly comes down to options: You can easily skip through the boring sections of VNs. As well as easily save scum your way through different paths. RPGMs tend to have long battles, take longer to navigate and have less renders over all.
Good RPGM are hard to find. Like Magical Girl Camp, my beloved. RIP.

 

[MattShizzle]

Sandbox usually sucks, because it's almost never open world and instead (guess the ONE place to go to advance the story - a waste of time) and often a grindfest (grind sucks the festering cum out of a dead skunk's rotting dick.)

 

[vandura]

If I feel like reading, I'll do a VN. It can charge me up for a good porn wank. If I feel like gaming, I'll choose sandbox. I guess I can only say that I get more excited when I see an interesting-looking sandbox game get released than I do when an interesting-looking VN comes out.

 

[A.K.A78]

You guys are saying a good avn sandbox..................... There are 0 of them.
Sandbox Visual Novels do not exist.
They are all a collection of individual scenes piled into a shit heap of pointless time wasting clicking/moving around and getting stuck because you have no idea what to do next to trigger the next scene.
No coherent story is apparent in any of them so the Novel part goes right out the window + you have no actual free will or free roam. Sizes of the game to give that feeling would be 100's of GB . If i want to play a sandbox i'll open Steam and play a ACTUAL sandbox.
Hell for that matter: Good VN's are not even that abundant,,, I can come up with about 10 well written vn's and 3 of those have real shitty graphics when i comes to the sex scenes.

The rest,, well people can code,, unfortunately that doesn't make them into a writer.

 

[entry1]

I like exploration so I don't mind sandbox

 

[Delpp]

I prefer sandbox too ... except there tends to be a bit to much grind with the same scene which happens on repeat. When it's done right though sandbox are more engaging (to me)

 

[Soulrave]

sandbox but only with out the damn grind.

 

[rocketsheep]

You guys are saying a good avn sandbox..................... There are 0 of them.
Sandbox Visual Novels do not exist.
They are all a collection of individual scenes piled into a shit heap of pointless time wasting clicking/moving around and getting stuck because you have no idea what to do next to trigger the next scene.
No coherent story is apparent in any of them so the Novel part goes right out the window + you have no actual free will or free roam. Sizes of the game to give that feeling would be 100's of GB . If i want to play a sandbox i'll open Steam and play a ACTUAL sandbox.
Hell for that matter: Good VN's are not even that abundant,,, I can come up with about 10 well written vn's and 3 of those have real shitty graphics when i comes to the sex scenes.

The rest,, well people can code,, unfortunately that doesn't make them into a writer.

I definitely sympathize with this attitude, but while I would prefer it if The Headmaster were a proper VN, it's really not bad as it is. (I did run into a problem there, where I didn't trigger something in time that could only be triggered in a few time slots every week, and then for many boring weeks the game insisted on doing various other new shit instead in these timeslots, ensuring that the rest of the week nothing new happened. But apart from that I think it's an unusually good sandbox. If you don't run into such a bug there is very little repetition or grinding.)

 

[MattShizzle]

I definitely sympathize with this attitude, but while I would prefer it if The Headmaster were a proper VN, it's really not bad as it is. (I did run into a problem there, where I didn't trigger something in time that could only be triggered in a few time slots every week, and then for many boring weeks the game insisted on doing various other new shit instead in these timeslots, ensuring that the rest of the week nothing new happened. But apart from that I think it's an unusually good sandbox. If you don't run into such a bug there is very little repetition or grinding.)

I played that one a bit. I thought it had too much grinding and was a bit dragged out overall. Quit when it required a restart.

 

[rocketsheep]

I played that one a bit. I thought it had too much grinding and was a bit dragged out overall. Quit when it required a restart.

OK. I just learned that I am not as anti-sandbox as I thought, but more of a moderate in this respect.

 

[MattShizzle]

Any grinding whatsoever is too much.

 

[paparas123]

I like sandbox when it's within the scope of the game. ex, Lesson's in Love or 4 Elements trainer.

I absolutely hate it when I have to click through 25 rooms just so your 10m game lasts 3h.

 

[orphan]

some point and click are good (like treasure of nadia and alikes), they feel like proper games. While VN is like watching an anime or smth

 

[MattShizzle]

Point and click is extremely outdated and too much is about trying to find some extremely hard to see thing.

 

[lapras99]

I like Sandbox, as others have mentioned as long as you don't have to do much grind. I like the feeling of freedom, for example the possibility to choose the order in which events unfold, however, it must be well implemented, so that the story is coherent and enjoyable.

 

[MattShizzle]

Most of the time sandbox is just a pain in the ass to make it take longer where you have to guess where to go next rather than just advancing like in a normal game. Worst of all are some that are kinetic novel in a sandbox form - where you have to keep going to the same places repeatedly but it's still a retarded kinetic novel where you have no actual choice in what to do. A kinetic novel is basically porn but without the real images/video and with reading. Kinetic novels suck moose balls.

 

[Sunsett]

It's kind of cool, the problem is the looping tasks are often boring to do. I believe that the good old VN with a cool story, very constructive choices is always better.

 

[b0bb09189]

Late-in-development sandboxes can be pretty good. They just always need to have at least some way of letting you know if you've tapped out all the content (preferably in the form of a hint sheet). Unfortunately, so many don't. The development is often slow, and they tend to stray into being grindy without sufficient content to sustain interest. For these reasons, I prefer VN's.