Recommended reading
For those of us who love gamingandreading, visual novels represent the best of both worlds, which is why we’ve put together this list of the 10 best visual novels you can play on PC right now. The term “visual novel” is a broad church. You can tell almost any story in this medium, which means most visual novels are a lot like regular novels in that sense. Romance and mystery are among the more popular genres, but search for “visual novel” on your favourite PC gaming storefront and you’ll find a bit of everything, really (especially once you’ve filtered out all the adult games). So sit back and relax with one of our best visual novel recommendations. The only critical damage you’re likely to take from these games are to your emotions — but that can be painful too, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!
The best visual novels on PC
In such a wide-reaching genre, no list is ever going to please everybody. So what I’ve put together below is a list combining personal favourites with undeniable classics (and, admittedly, many are both, since in my experience classics tend to be regarded that way for a reason). But if I’ve missed your favourite, be sure to chime in with your recommendation in the comments! Who knows, your case may be so compellingly well-put that I regretfully boot one of the games below to make room for your pick next time.
What else should I be playing if I like this?Check out Aviary Attorney and Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle for a pair of fresh takes on the courtroom setting that, somehow, both manage to be even more surreal than the series that inspired them. Or if you don’t mind being edutained, Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher takes liberal cues from Ace Attorney for its philosophical debate showdowns.
Newbie defence lawyer Phoenix Wright has a lot to contend with in his eponymous trilogy: the judge doesn’t respect him, his assistant is a spirit medium rather than a qualified paralegal, and it seems like everyone he’s ever met keeps getting accused of murder. Not to mention that a new law demands all trials must be completed within three days of the crime, and the defence team needs to investigate on behalf of their client if there’s to be any hope of a “not guilty” verdict. Oh, and the childhood best friend he’s desperate to reconnect with is now his nemesis as the district’s hot-shot prosecutor.
Rewinding 120 years into the past, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles sees Phoenix’s ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo facing a similar set of hardships. Ryunosuke arrives in Victorian London as an exchange student from his native Japan, but with the added wrinkle that a barmy Sherlock Holmes expy won’t stop “helping” him in his investigations. In both timelines, the result is hijinks aplenty with non-stop puns, lightly point-and-click inspired logic puzzles, a maze of pop culture references, yet more puns, and one of the hands-down campest settings ever committed to fiction.
What else should I be playing if I like this?Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is a worthy direct sequel, while Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is a contentious series reboot. Zero Escape: The Nonary Games and Umineko When They Cry are similar closed-circle thrillers but without the teen drama, while Paradise Killer delivers another neon-drenched murder mystery in a third of the run time.
A scholarship student at an elite high school is about to have a very bad first day.Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havocfollows Makoto Naegi as he embarks on his educational journey at Hope’s Peak Academy, a school which only admits students who are already at the very top of their chosen field. Makoto, however, is a painfully average guy who just won a luck-based lottery for admission.
But no sooner does Makoto step through the front door than he passes out, and wakes up in a garish nightmare version of the academy with no hope of escape. At which point the “new headmaster” — a two-faced Care Bear named Monokuma — informs Makoto and his classmates that they can either accept their fate to live out their lives right there in the school, or begin a brutal yet stealthy killing game to earn the right to “graduate” and re-enter the world.
If you can forgive Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc for having one of the most bland anime boy protagonists of all time, you’ll find yourself completely drawn in by the supporting cast. These socially inept but eventually lovable oddballs specialise in such areas as being “the Ultimate Moral Compass” and “the Ultimate Clairvoyant”, so you know there’s never going to be a dull moment as 15 different extreme teen archetypes spark off each other. The murder mysteries are solid too, if a touch inconsistent: don’t expect Agatha Christie every time, as key clues are signposted with insulting obviousness in one case only to be withheld for the sake of a shock reveal in the next. Getting to know the characters and uncover the overarching mystery is well worth a few vexatious moments along the way, though.
What else should I be playing if I like this?Hatoful Boyfriend (a.k.a. “the pigeon game”) is another affectionate spoof of dōjin-soft dating sims, and can even pull its own shift into horror if you play your cards wrong in one of its many routes. You And Me And Her, meanwhile, is a classic meta horror visual novel disguised as a throwaway teen romance often spoken of in the same breath as DDLC.
I’ll attempt a light touch when describing the original DDLC on the off-chance that you haven’t yet been spoiled for every minute of its four-hour story. Doki Doki Literature Club! is a pastel-saccharine bishoujo dating sim. You play as an unremarkable teenager who finds himself the only boy in an after-school club attended by four cute female classmates. Multiple-choice romance ensues. Except it doesn’t really, because this is actually ahorrorgame.
It’s good, but what makes DDLC+ even better is that it builds on the original’s twists, while also managing to deliver a surprising amount of fanservice-y character development for the iconic quartet. It’s quite the crowd-pleaser, further setting up the wider weird world hinted at by the freeware base game, but also giving you a glimpse into an alternate timeline where the girls got to just enjoy their books and bildungsromans in relative peace. That can’t have been an easy line to walk, but Team Salvato have pulled it off with style. If you’ve never played DDLC you should probably try the free version first to see if you like it; but if you find yourself suitably charmed, this expanded version is well worth your time (and money).
What else should I be playing if I like this?If you can’t get enough of genuinely scary visual novels, The House In Fata Morgana and The Letter make perfect follow-ups to Paranormasight, as well as being an oft-recommended pair. Both hefty sagas tackle the gothic horror trope of the haunted mansion, complete with all the torrid love affairs, creepy visuals, and darkly tense atmosphere you’d expect from the genre.
I’m usually reluctant to include brand-new games on a bestest-best list, recency bias being what it is. But so help me, Paranormasight has won over so many hearts and minds in the RPS Treehouse that to leave it out feels criminal! Many of the best horror visual novels have a tendency to run long, so if you’re new to the genre, Paranormasight is a perfect starting point. Clocking in at what I promise is a comparatively svelte 12 hours, nothing is wasted in this eerie tale of the obsessive lengths people will go to in the name of love, or else in search of power.
In a tale as old as time, an ordinary young man in 1980s Tokyo who’s been thinking about settling down meets a nice girl-next-door type while taking a break at the local park. Yoko seems steady as a rock in every aspect of her character but one: she has an intense interest in the paranormal. By the third or fourth date, our hero Shogo is waking up in the park at 1am with a slight case of amnesia and the distinct feeling that they’ve been ghost hunting together.
Yoko is particularly eager to investigate rumours doing the rounds of a so-called Rite of Resurrection. But there are more ghost stories connected to the case: those of the Seven Mysteries of Honjo, which may be some kind of prerequisite to perform the rite. Naturally, there are those who desperately want to unravel the mysteries, and others who are just as eager to control access to the rite — and aren’t afraid to sling a few curses around to keep their secrets safe. Soon our naïve spooky sweethearts are in over their heads, and asking themselves the question: “How far would you go to bring someone back from the dead?”
What else should I be playing if I like this?If you want the intersection of “sci-fi dystopian future” and “queer resistance”, you’re in the right medium! Heaven Will Be Mine is about space colonialism and flirting during mech battles, 2064: Read Only Memories is about sapient AI going all noir detective, and VA11 HALL-A is about bartending away the blues of waifus after the breakdown of society.
Indie dev Heather Flowers describesExtreme Meatpunks Foreveras being about “four gay disasters beating up neo-nazis in giant robots made of meat”. Like many modern visual novels, Extreme Meatpunks Forever resists being pigeon-holed by its primary genre, and features top-down mech brawler sections amid the more traditional scenes where you advance through illustrated dialogue at your own pace. Don’t let the prospect of a difficulty spike put you off, though: there’s really not that much to get to grips with mechanically, and your main activity will still be spending time getting to know your quartet of playable characters as they snark a lot, maybe flirt a little, and plan the next steps in the downfall of fascism.
What else should I be playing if I like this?For more uplifting trans coming-of-age stories, this time with a hefty added helping of ’90s nostalgia, check out both If Found… and Secret Little Haven. Further relaxed musings on friendship, romance, and LGBTQ+ identities - but with a greater emphasis on player choice - can be found in Our Life: Beginnings & Always.
Despite its emotive subject matter, One Night, Hot Springs is also noteworthy for its adorable art style, relaxing atmosphere, and the uplifting relationship between Haru, her old friend Manami, and new acquaintance Erika. The two follow-up stories in the trilogy — Last Day Of Spring and Spring Leaves No Flowers — switch perspectives to each of the other women in turn as they learn more about themselves and each other. All three protagonists are queer women, although their individual identities and perspectives are very different, and the trilogy as a whole focuses on the challenges that LGBTQ+ people face living in modern day Japan.
It bears repeating that A Year Of Springs is anything but a downer. Haru, Erika, and Manami all find affirmation as they come to better understand their individual identities, as well as in the strength of their friendship. You can play the first game for free or nab the whole trilogy for a fiver, and each chapter can be completed in well under an hour. It really is one of those “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn” situations, and one nobody should miss.
What else should I be playing if I like this?Butterfly Soup 2 picks up right where the original left off for a satisfying continuation of the story. Dungeons & Lesbians is another title where a group of sapphic teen pals catch feelings while bonding over a shared hobby — in this case, tabletop role-playing games.
Butterfly Soupfollows the lives of four Asian-American teenage girls — Diya, Noelle, Akarsha, and Min-Seo — living in the California Bay Area in 2008, during the vote on Proposition 8 which sought to ban same-sex marriage in the state. While not strictly autobiographical, developer Brianna Lei drew on many of her own experiences in writing the story, and it shows in the undeniable authenticity of the girls' voices, and of the community that surrounds them.
Despite the direct impact the surrounding events could have on their futures — as Lei puts it “Harold, they’re lesbians” (except for Akarsha, who’s bisexual) — our protagonists remain resolutely concerned with being teenagers first and foremost. All four end up joining their high school baseball team, and that’s what occupies most of their energy. Well, that and the blossoming romance between Diya and Min which provides the central plot, even as each of the girls stars in her own chapter.
It’s hard to find a game that has as much personality as Butterfly Soup. The characters are completely gawky teen girls who get into absurd shenanigans, with layered story arcs that intertwine with one another. They’re finding themselves, and figuring out ways to express themselves as they awkwardly grow into adults. Everyone should play Butterfly Soup. Its pay-what-you-want on Itch.io, so there’s no excuse not to.
What else should I be playing if I like this?For more dating sims that make you go “I thought this game was just going to be sexy but it’s actually very heartwarming too”, be sure to give Dream Daddy a try next. If your takeaway was more “I wanna fuck monsters now and I don’t care how scary that gets”, then I direct you to the in-progress Sucker For Love trilogy (and don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Some visual novels go in for obliqueness in their titles, others go for a pun.Monster Prom, on the other hand, does exactly what it says on the tin. Transporting you to Spooky High School three weeks before the end-of-year dance, your cool-loser protagonist has set their heart on asking out one of the popular kids at the last minute. The twist (and you might have seen this coming) is that everyone is both a high school archetypeanda monster. It’s like the Breakfast Club got run through a golden age horror filter at Universal Studios.
What elevates Monster Prom from a fun diversion to one of the best visual novels out there is the quality of the writing. Across multiple free base game updates, a chunky story DLC, and now several sequels, it’s become apparent that the creative team love their characters, and take utter delight in expanding their lore. It might have begun life as a story about horny young adults trying to get their chosen love interest’s best ending in order to unlock a tastefully nude CG, but Monster Prom very quickly became a character-driven coming-of-age urban fantasy comedy telling a much broader range of stories. Furthermore, Monster Prom is the only game on this list to officially support multiplayer, which is quite the rarity in visual novels, allowing up to four players to wingman or sabotage each other.
What else should I be playing if I like this?For more 00s VNs that helped bring the medium to a wider audience, readour Jai’s good words about Muv-Luv, or start with the Fate and Science Adventure series (good entry points on PC are, respectively, Fate/Extella and Steins;Gate). If you want to stick with acclaimed romantic dramas, you’ll find the right mix of sweetness and sentiment in If My Heart Had Wings or Highway Blossoms.
The core story of Clannad follows Tomoya Okazaki, a troubled high school student with a difficult home life, who finds renewed enthusiasm and purpose in helping a chronically ill classmate revive their school’s drama club. What seems at first like a fairly straightforward harem game (Tomoya solves a girl’s problem, they grow closer, the girl joins the ranks of the drama club) takes an unexpected turn when the action jumps forward several years. The story now centres on Tomoya’s struggles as a bereaved single parent to a young child, as he desperately tries to avoid repeating his own father’s mistakes. It’s quite the tonal shift, and there’s more to come if you want to unlock the game’s true ending.
This is a hard game to recommend, but an even harder one to leave off the list. In an ideal world, Ukraine War Stories wouldn’t have to exist, but we do not live in an ideal world. Starni Games built their reputation on theirStrategic Mindseries of hardcore TBT games inspired by real-world military history, but this Kyiv-based studio have understandably broadened their output of late.
Given its short turnaround time and the circumstances under which it was produced, Ukraine War Stories is bare-bones as a piece of interactive fiction. But with a beautiful art style and vital message to convey, it’s a timely and important story; given that it’s free to play on Steam, it’s well worth investing three hours of your time, especially if you feel that you could stand to learn more about the war in Ukraine.
Here’s every game that has featured on past iterations of this list, with links to all our coverage of them elsewhere on the site:
This doesn’t mean that we don’t still love these games, mind you, or that they won’t be featured here again in the future! But there are loads of great visual novels out there, and it’s more fun to change things up, as well as to highlight the ones we’re really into right now.
