Interactive fiction is a genre of games where players move through the story of a game told primarily through text, either by typing in text commands or clicking a line of text written as a series of choices. Interactive fiction games generally fall into two categories, named after how they function: “parser-based” games (for text commands) and “choice-based” games (for text-based choices). (Paraphrased from Interactive fiction - IFWiki.) These games are also casually known as “choose your own adventure” games, from the novel series of the same name. Twine games and visual novels are popular examples of the “choice-based” form of interactive fiction games.
Visual novels are a type of interactive fiction game “with a large text based storyline and only little interaction of the player.” (From the Visual Novel Database FAQ.) They are usually designed with animated characters in the foreground and a stylized environmental background, with dialogue written below the characters in a text box. Players of visual novels progress through the story by reading dialogue and narration, and then sometimes making choices between lines of dialogue, places, or characters. Occasionally, visual novels are created as kinetic novels, named after a Japanese company that published games where players made no choices, and instead simply progressed through the story by reading dialogue and narration with limited controls.
Writing for Games: Theory and Practice
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Introduction to Game Analysis 3rd edition
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