Skipping

Skipping is a feature that allows players to speed up parts of a VN, especially parts that they've already read in previous playthroughs.

Skipping can typically be toggled on and off using a quick menu button. It may also be toggled with a keypress or button press, or it may get enabled when a key or button is held down and automatically get disabled when the key or button is released again.

Options

Games with skipping typically include configuration options for players to change:

• How long to display each piece of text before switching to the next one.
• Whether they can skip all text, or only text that the player has seen before (including in previous playthroughs).
• Whether to skip interactive sections (usually choices) by redoing whatever the player did last time they went through that section. This usually only redoes actions from the same playthrough.

Variants

Different games might handle skipping in slightly different ways. Some examples are:

• Whether text is animated when appearing during skipping, or it appears instantly. A compromise might be to have it appear instantly semi-transparent and have the animation turn it opaque.
• Whether it's only text that's sped up or animations also play faster.
• Whether different types of audio are muted while skipping.
• Whether sound effects on "skipped" lines get played.
• Whether audio that does get played is sped up in any way, and if so, how.
• Some games or engines might provide a "jump to next scene" or "jump to next chapter" button which might function as an alternative to skipping.

Use by developers

Sometimes VN developers might use skipping when testing their own VNs, either to quickly get to particular points in the script in order to test if those work, or as a way to test how the game behaves when advanced through quickly, to check that animations still flow correctly into each other.