Narrative Possibilities in Mystery BL Games

This article seeks to analyze the narrative possibilities offered by Visual Novels in relation to horror-mystery narratives by analyzing PigeonBlood (PIL/SLASHXXX, 2014), a Boys' Love game with horror-mystery elements. The first part presents the connection between game systems and interactive narratives, focusing mainly on the inner system of the choice-based gameplay that rule most Visual Novels, trying to further understand what makes it engaging. The second part analyzes the use of these systems to structure horror-mystery narratives by analyzing the game PigeonBlood and its approach to the horror-mystery genre elements, such as scattering valuable hints and information thorough the different routes, using the branching narratives to offer crude and oftentimes gruesome endings as a way of increasing fear and suspense, and utilizing a main character that actively refuses to resolve the mysteries, leaving plenty of unanswered questions for the player to ponder upon. From their early beginnings, visual novels have been strongly connected to mystery and horror themes. Sound Novels, widely understood as integral precursors of the genre, find their origins in mystery/horror narratives such as Chunsoft's Otogiriso (1992) and Kamaitachi no Yoru (1994) (Morooka 2018, 112-113), not to mention the active effort to translate mystery works, such as Jiro Akagawa's novels, to the medium across the 90's (Yahiro 2005, 215). Even now, the wider genre of text-based Adventure Games popularized by mainstream franchises like Ace Attorney (Capcom, 2001) and Danganronpa (Spike, 2010) keep the aesthetics and narrative elements of murder-mysteries while expanding on gamified and anime-like elements. As such, it is no surprise that many works in the specific sub-genre of Visual Novels revolve around mystery and horror elements, such as Kara no Shoujo (Innocent Grey, 2008) and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (07 expansion, 2002). In fact, the smaller sub-market of female-oriented BL games includes a wide variety of both mystery and horror themed works, with some of the most highly-regarded and popular stories falling in these genres. In this article I would like to explore the narrative possibilities offered by the medium of visual novels to create engaging, suspenseful narratives in BL works by analyzing the 2014 game PigeonBlood by BL game brand PIL/SLASHXXX.