Ending

An ending is an event in a visual novel where a story, branch, or route is concluded. This is often accompanied by credits for the game's creation, or a 'Game Over' message. Generally there is no more gameplay for the main story after its ending, but extra content can be unlocked by the ending. Multiple endings are a key part of the visual novel medium; visual novels with a single ending and no choices are often called kinetic novels.

Visual novel endings often have three main types: Good, Bad, and True. As the names suggest, good endings are endings where things turn out well for the player character, bad endings are where they don't, and true endings are considered the canonical ending, whether good or bad. Many true endings are good, or 'best' endings, though they are not required to be.

Few Good and Many Bad Endings

Some visual novels employ a significantly higher volume of bad ends than good endings. Many of these visual novels run a gauntlet of choices or mini-games to determine where the players end up. Bad endings are numerous and the result of making the wrong choices in a given situation. This convention is common in visual novels where the player character's death is likely, like horror, action or thriller visual novels, but may appear in visual novels where there are lower stakes, like failing to impress a particularly picky love interest in a romance visual novel, or failing to solve a puzzle at various stages of completion in puzzle-visual novel hybrids.

Oftentimes bad endings end the game earlier than good endings, which make them less satisfying as an conclusion to the story than the good endings, encouraging the player to try again until they reach a better ending.

Equal Endings

Some visual novels may not have endings that can be ranked on a scale of how good or bad the outcome is. The endings are different but equally "good" in their outcomes. While the differences themselves can still be considered good or bad, they are not major enough to consider any one ending as better than the others.

Visual novels in a lighthearted genre such as slice of life, or casual visual novels can have equal endings to convey the low stakes of the story. Alternatively, visual novels can have equal endings that are equally bad in terms in outcomes for the characters to convey the bleakness of the story and the futility of the player's choices.

Combination Endings

Some visual novels with many characters and choices will have combination endings composed of individual outcomes to different events instead of separately, all-encompassing endings for the overall story. As such, endings cannot simply be categorized as "good" and "bad" since each segment of the ending can have a good or bad outcome. Due to the nature of combinations, the number of possible endings will increase very rapidly with the number of ending segments.

For example, one character could die as a result of player choice, and another character could die as a result of an player choice unrelated to the first one. In a combination ending, there will be an ending where both characters are dead, two endings where one character is dead, and one endings where both characters live, for a total of four endings.

Visual novels with combination endings can also have true endings as well. To distinguish the true ending from a combination ending with all the best outcomes, additional scenes can be added to the ending, or a completely separate ending with different content can used. Additionally, the combination ending with all the worst outcomes can also be the true ending or treated like it with additional content.

Character Endings

In character-driven visual novels, individual characters will have both good and bad endings associated with them. In romantic visual novels, it's often love interests that have both good and bad endings each. In horror visual novels, individual survivors may have their own good and bad endings. These visual novels also sometimes have pure failure state endings, e.g, you court no one in a romance visual novel, or no one survives in a horror visual novel.

In some games, only one character ending out of all the characters is achievable each playthrough, since going down a specific character's route locks the player out of all the other character endings. In other games, such as ones where you can romance multiple characters at once, multiple character endings from different characters can be achieved.

Character endings can be independent of the overall ending of the main story, or the main story can be affected by the endings the player gets for each character. Alternately, the character ending can be the same as the overall ending in games that are character-focused.

Canon Endings

For games that have sequels, it can be difficult to fit all the different endings of the previous installment into the sequel. One way to avoid this is to only have one ending from the previous game as canon, meaning that the story will continue based off that ending. This can be the true ending of the game if it has one, or it could be an ending that makes it easier to continue the story from. Another way is to never mention which ending of the previous game was canon, referring to any player-made choices in vague terms. This does prevent use of characters who were affected in a major way by choices in the previous game, but that may not matter if the sequel is not directly connected to the previous game.

A third way is to have a combination of endings as canon, so that no one ending from the previous game is canon. For example, a game may have no endings where all characters survive, but the sequel could use the premise that all characters survived regardless.

Black Screen Bad Endings

Some visual novels are not written to have bad ends, but still have failure states. When a player selects choices that do not lead to a good ending, but also do not lead to scenes where a bad end scenario is played out, it is a black screen bad ending. These endings often cut to either a 'Game Over' message, return the player to the title screen, or outright close the visual novel as a more meta example. These endings may not even be considered "proper" endings since there is no content to convey what happens in the ending, and is simply a way to tell the player to try again.

Meta Endings

Meta endings are a type of ending where the events are connected back to the real world, narratively acknowledging that a character, or sometimes the story itself, is aware that they are part of a visual novel. This is not to be confused with visual novels set in real world settings. These types of endings are most often seen in horror or comedy visual novels where they are added as dramatic twists or genre-aware self-referential humor.

Some visual novels use this type of ending to cue the player into mechanics that exist outside of the story and in the nature of the game, its interfaces, and even its technical end, encouraging them to experiment outside of how the game is ordinarily interacted with. For example, a game may hint towards the player editing files associated with the game to achieve an ending, or reloading an earlier save to choose a different option when presented with a choice.

Meta endings can also be used a fake-outs. The player will believe that they are getting a bad ending as a result of failure, but the gameplay will resume after the ending. This can be used to scare the player or as humor when the player discovers the ending was not real. The ending can go so far as to having the player sit through the entire credits before resuming the game.

Loop Endings

Loop endings are false endings where the player is led to believe they are restarting or resuming play from a previous point, but are continuing play as part of a contiguous story. Some or all characters need not be aware of the existence of the loop for this to be a looping ending, but the information that is carried between instances of the game needs to be accessible to at least one character, most often the player character, supporting character, or even antagonist.

This does not include games where information is retained only by the player themselves. If no characters acknowledge that the events have happened before, then it's not a loop ending.

Some visual novels employ mechanics where previous playthroughs are factored into the state of the current playthrough. For example, additional choices can be made available to the player, or events will play out different as a result of looping.

Loop endings can be combined with multiple endings, where the true ending can only be achieved after multiple loops, using information from previous loops to change the outcome of events. Sometimes it is possible to reach the true ending without looping, if the player already knows the correct choices to make without having played the game before, possibly by looking up a guide online. Other times, the game prevents the player from making choices that the characters in the game would not be aware of.

Hidden / Secret Endings

Visual novels sometimes have hidden endings. Hidden endings are often endings achieved by completing a series of choices or other obscure combination of events. True endings are the most common type of hidden ending, but joke endings in more dramatic works, harem endings in romance visual novels, and meta endings find themselves in hidden endings.

In order to be a hidden ending, the way to get the ending must not be obvious. In some cases, it is nigh-impossible to get the hidden ending without looking up the endings or looking through the code of the visual novel. For example, typing in a certain combination of numbers on a keypad that is not given in the game itself can unlock a hidden ending. The combination is not obvious because there are many combinations on a ten-number keypad, and players would not want to try them all. Other hidden endings may be achieved by purposely making choices that are considered "bad", such as putting the characters into dangerous situations deliberately or insulting love interests in dating sims.