This paper can be seen as a first step towards developing genre tailored heuristics for visual novels. The focus being visual novels come from the fact that it is a genre of games that is growing in popularity globally. Besides players and developers, it is also popular among researchers because the genre is very accessible (Camingue, Carstensdottir & Melcer 2021). But let’s say the developers and researchers want to evaluate a visual novel they are creating, what methods would be fitting. There isn’t a lot of research on this, so the method suggested in this paper is heuristic evaluation, due to it being a very accessible method (Nielsen 1994). To tailor heuristics for this genre, a compiled list of heuristics was used to evaluate a number of visual novels and the data from the evaluation was analyzed and used to identify problems that weren’t addressed by the heuristics.

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Au moment de déposer ce mémoire, la base de données créée par les fans, pour les fans nommée The Visual Novel Database (https://vndb.org/) liste plus de 37 000 visual novels. Ce corpus non- négligeable demeure peu abordé dans la recherche vidéoludique, particulièrement dans une perspective englobant les différents sous-genres qui lui sont associé, telles que « simulateur de drague » (dating simulator), jeu bishoujo ou jeu otome. Ce mémoire se penche sur des éléments culturels et de jouabilité récurrents dans ces sous-catégories à l’aide des études des genres (gender studies), des études queer, des études otaku et des études narratologiques. Il propose un cadre conceptuel afin d’articuler l’expérience particulière qu’offrent les visual novels, l’employant ensuite pour les analyses des jeux Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (STING & Otomate, 2015), Hustle Cat (Date Nighto, 2016) et Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2021). / At the time of handing in this thesis, the database created by fans, for fans called The Visual Novel Database (https://vndb.org/) lists over 37,000 visual novels. This significant corpus remains barely addressed in videogame research, particularly from the perspective of the various sub-genres associated with it, such as dating simulator, bishoujo game and otome game. This dissertation examines recurring cultural and gameplay elements in these subcategories using gender studies, queer studies, otaku studies and narratological studies. It proposes a conceptual framework to articulate the distinct experience that visual novels offer, before employing it to analyze the games Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (STING & Otomate, 2015), Hustle Cat (Date Nighto, 2016) and Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2021).