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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43271
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43271
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've seen a few visual novels on Steam and Kickstarter that mentioned how many words they already contain and what they are planning for the final amount. The problem is: I have no idea how those numbers compare to other games. As I am currently doing some research about the creation process of visual novels as a sort of "hobby indie developer" I'd like to know more about the rough statistics of visual novels and how to compare them to each other.

Therefore I would like to know how many words a visual novel contains on average. As there are really, really long professionally done visual novels and really, really short indie games I'd like the answer to try to estimate the amount of words in relation to the length of gameplay, as that is a statistic that is often used in all kinds of games to express how much a reader / player can expect from the final product and thereby influences the price they are willing to pay.

Obviously there are many differences between individual games and there are many things you can use to change the play time, like longer cutscenes, longer puzzles, different routes that only diverge after a certain amount of time and therefore force the player to replay some of what he's already played through. That means answers to this question should only try to provide some context to the amount of words and play time as best as they can with the available data.

Original score: 5