Narrative features

Narrative features within visual novels function as a way to help the player enjoy the game as they want or need. Most of these should be easily accessible to the player by being in a quick menu.

History

Main article: History

The history page will keep a log of all the dialogue text that the player has already encountered. Opening the history log allows people to read through events to remind themselves what had happened previously. In games with voice acting, a feature to relisten to the voice lines is usually included as well.

Rollback

Main article: Rollback

Rollback is a feature like history, but instead of having a separate log, you can roll the story back within the game itself. This allows rereading, but also can allow players to remake choices if the game is not linear. Rollback can be done differently depending on the engine, but a button or using the mouse scroll wheel are common options.

Rollback can be locked, disallowing players to play back, but this is contentious.

Autoplay

Main article: Autoplay

Autoplay is a feature that allows the visual novel to go to the next dialogue section without the player having to interact with the game at all. The speed of autoplay can be adjusted within the settings to be accessible to each player's reading speeds.

Skipping

Main article: Skipping

Skip can be used to quickly replay the visual novel. This can allow players to get to their favorite parts once more, or in terms of branching games, allow them to return to choice menus to explore more options.

There are two forms of skip: Skip Read and Skip All. Skip Read will only go on until the player arrives at a section they have not read yet, while Skip All does not take into account if the player has experience the sections before.