Chellay's Introduction to Furry Visual Novels
For those new to the scene and want to learn more.
Hey Habibis! Today I wanted to do things a little differently. I want to create a small guide for people just starting out furry visual novels. If you are well into Furry Visual Novels, then this blog might be a little redundant. However, this should be helpful for anyone who doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of the community and wants to learn more about it. Furry Visual Novels are somewhat hard to get into since you'd have to be on itch.io, a fairly small site compared to juggernauts like Steam, to get to know most of them and there really is no one place to look up reviews and discussions of these FVNs. But some of the best and most compassionate stories I've read come from FVNs, and I want more people to get into them. Because of this, I thought it was a good idea to make this little guide.
What are Furry Visual Novels?
Furry Visual Novels, or FVNs for short, are interactive furry stories with a heavy focus on art and narrative while foregoing more traditional gameplay mechanics. They tend to have nonlinear branching paths, erotic content, and a focus on gay men, although this doesn't apply to every FVN. They can be any genre of story but the more popular genres include romance, slice of life, fantasy, adventure, and horror. Due to the relative newness of this genre, most projects are unfinished however there are several finished projects, some of which I will be naming later on in this blog. Most FVNs can be found on itch.io as it's the easiest site to release games on. Generally, most creators update their game builds before it's finished development. They can be monthly or more sporadic. They usually have a Patreon where you can become a patron to gain access to builds earlier than non-paying readers. Development teams tend to be extremely small, rarely exceeding 5 people.
It's hard to determine what these games have in common and how they differ compared to regular visual novels aside from the aspects I've already mentioned. I will admit, I am not a visual novel expert, but I have noticed some considerable differences. The main difference is that most non-furry visual novels often have strong influences from manga and anime when it comes to visuals and plotlines. There are anime-inspired FVNs (Tennis Ace and Repeat come to mind) but they usually have more varied influences such as from comics and Western literature. They’re also more likely to deal with darker subject matter regardless of genre. Even a lighthearted slice of life may include mention of depression, drug addiction, and sexual abuse. I'm not sure why this is, my guess is that heavy personal subjects are getting more popular recently and that furries tend to be discriminated against more than non-furries. High-concept stories are also less common. They exist but even some of the fantasy/sci-fi FVNs are more grounded in reality. This is because slice-of-life stories don’t have a lot of appeal because it's so similar to real life, but having the characters be furry makes them stand out and gives them a niche.
The last thing I'll mention is that certain kinks like musk and age gap tend to be more normalized in FVNs. Different body types, including chubby ones, are more common and considered attractive, which is nice. From what I've seen, furries are generally more accepting of different body types and kinks, which is why they're more prevalent in FVNs. Expect to see more detailed descriptions of scents in FVNs than in other VNs. Now one concern people might have when getting into FVNs is the abundance of erotic content. This is understandable; however, several FVNs have SFW modes that take away all the erotic content. Just be warned that a lot of FVNs can be really horny but know that they are more than just horny (most of the time anyway). Also, I don’t know where to put this, but if you have issues reading long walls of text, there’s an option in most Ren’py (a Visual Novel engine that a lot of FVNs use) based VNs where you can press the V key to enable self-voicing within the VN. Just thought you guys should know.
In any sort of niche/genre/subculture inspection article, there's usually a section where the writer spends a paragraph or more talking about its greatness of it and how it will feed the hungry and bring world peace. More specifically, they talk about what the point of the niche is. I'm not going to pretend that I'm some professional wordsmith who knows how to convert you into an FVN entrepreneur. I'm just a guy on the internet. Every niche is a place where people who share certain interests come together and create things they'll know they like instead of having to accept mainstream media that caters to the lowest common denominator. FVNs are no different. It's where furries can just be themselves without compromise. It's a place where they can explore stories about themselves without being judged by the mainstream for how "weird" and "freaky" it is. If you are someone that doesn't have anything catered to you, then there's a desire to create it yourself. It can be something as moving as the traumas of being with an abusive boyfriend to something as silly as having funny Anime moments with a cute lion man. Yeah some people in the community can be judgemental to certain FVNs but there's bound to be an audience for any given game out there. I think that's the main appeal of FVNs, furries being indulgent with what they want.
Still, these VNs can be enjoyed by non-furries all the same (well some of them at least), as their stories can resonate with many different kinds of people. At the same time, it's a niche that's more than happy to stay a niche. They don't want to worry about how people outside of the niche will react to it, they only care about sustaining it from the inside. While not everyone would want that, it can be comforting knowing that "normal people" don't care about the weird things you enjoy. This lack of shame of creating what you want to make and letting your creativity run free leads to some unique and engaging stories that you can't get elsewhere. A FVN might not be to your taste, but that they exist for the world to see is a blessing even so.
With so many FVNs out there, it can be hard to know where to start. Here's a good tip, if an FVN looks interesting, go read it. It's really that simple. Go on itch.io, look under the furry+visual novel tags (make sure you're logged in so you can see all the NSFW games), and see which one piques your interest. Alternatively, you can look at this collection here and check out the games there. If you don't like the first hour or two, then move on to another FVN. I'm sure you'll find something you'll like. Unless you don't like reading books in which case, why are you reading this?
But if you want a place to start, then I have a few suggestions. If you want to familiarize yourself with the scene and see what people usually talk about in the community, I'd suggest taking a look at Echo, Adastra, and Morenatsu. They're usually considered the big "staples" of the FVN community. Adastra and Morenatsu have some issues that prevent me from recommending them purely for entertainment, but Echo is a decent read if you enjoy psychological horror. Burrows is also a good FVN to read if you're looking for something else in the genre. If you want something more light-hearted and slice-of-life but still takes its story and characters seriously, try Dawn Chorus or Tennis Ace. If you want something that has a lot of focus on literary story telling and is more developed in its writing, I highly recommend Minotaur Hotel. If you want a fun fantasy adventure story, try out Killigan's Treasure or Shelter. If you want something horny, try Extracurricular Activities. And if you want the greatest VN of all time, read By Your Hands. Just kidding. I have a bit of an ego but I'm not that narcissistic.
There are many more great FVNs out there, but those are what I'd suggest you start with. If you want to keep updated with FVNs, follow Cardigan, Purkka, and Kopten on itch.io. Those three write reviews for FVNs and while Kopten is a little biased against slice-of-life, I'm sure you'll find the points he makes to be decent. Kopten also has a bunch of collections that organize games based on different categories such as completion status and what he finds to be above all the rest in quality. There are also several FVN discord servers that you can join that have discussions about these games. Hopefully, these resources will help you guys out.
And that's it from me. I hope this helps people get into FVNs as I really enjoy them and I want more people to experience them. Have a good day and see you later!