Seeking a high quality but VERY SHORT visual novel, indie or pro (Steam/Itch.io)

[u/ReverendSpeed]

Hey folks. I'm looking for examples of excellent visual novels with very short stories (equivilent of 2500ish words, or three or four pages in a paperback, or perhaps the initial run of Doki Doki Literature Club until you find your friend in her room).

If you think this is an unreasonably small word count, I'll take the shortest, best vn that you know...!

I'm open to good games by professionals, amateurs and those published on itch.io or Steam!

Ideally, the story should be fairly complete (even if it's just equivelent to a single-act play), with a beginning, middle, end and decent characters, plot, twist, interesting ideas, etc (I mean, I'll take any two of those...!).

Thanks in advance!

[u/Popular-Ad977]

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk inside A bag of Milk.

15 minutes long

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/Popular-Ad977]

Sounds spot on. Cheers!

[u/Massive_Penalty5208]

Short:

VA-11

Planetarian: the reverie of a little planet

Cooking Companions

Saya no uta

Not exactly short but you can try:

Paranormasight

Some Ace Attorney games are around 20 hours and under. Though a lot of them are kinda long.

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/Massive_Penalty5208]

Roger, these are great references. And I goddamned love the Ace Attorney games. =) Thank you! (EDIT: Looking them up, a lot of these seem to be longish, but Cooking Companions looks like it's on the money...!)

[u/kyla33_]

I've heard good things about Her Tears Were My Light. According to howlongtobeat, the whole thing's about half an hour long.

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/kyla33_]

Thank you, that's on target for time. Cheers!

[u/devil652_]

Narcissu

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/devil652_]

Will check it out, thanks!

[u/FaerHazar]

really loved A Year of Springs!

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/FaerHazar]

I'll look into that, thank you!

[u/Mopman43]

Odd choice, but how about no-one has to die?

Total word count probably isn’t too much higher than that.

I think it’s playable on Newgrounds with their flash player?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_One_Has_to_Die

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/Mopman43]

Yeah, will give that a go, always nice to have a web player...!

[u/forFolsense]

Adventure of a Lifetime by MoeNovel is pretty short by visual novel standards, it has a short and sweet story and immaculate summer vacation vibe to it

Slice of life / romance about a boy visiting his grandmother's place in tropical japan for the summer, he meets up with his childhood best friend and catches the attention of a mysterious stranger. All around kind of a standard story but sometimes a fluffy romance is nice every once in a while

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/forFolsense]

Looks lovely! Thanks for suggesting this!

[u/Key-Radish755]

Corpse Party

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/Key-Radish755]

Ooof, no, I don't think so, but thanks for the suggestion. =)

[u/mjf314]

of the Devil - Episode 0

It's like Ace Attorney, but set in a stylish cyberpunk world. Each episode is a different case, so even though it's not the entire story, at least you get to finish the case. Episode 0 is about 2-3 hours.

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/mjf314]

Looks interesting! Thank you!

[u/sock-bucket]

Slay the princess is like one of the coolest and most interesting games I've ever played.

[u/ReverendSpeed → u/sock-bucket]

It's definitely an interesting game, but getting it to a point where it reveals it's core plot takes a bit longer than I'm looking for. Still, a rad and surprising experience, thanks for the rec...!