We will make video games literature.

These are the criteria for a piece of interactive fiction to be considered a “modern visual novel”.

#1: Reading of text is the primary user action.

#2: Obstacles may branch branch but never halt or reverse the user’s progress.

#3: Rules 1 and 2 may, in exceptional cases, be broken if doing so provides clear narrative intent.

“For every pixel displayed on screen, one is taken from the user’s mind.”

Limiting oneself to 230400 pixels on screen — usually divided into 640x360 for a 16:9 ratio — allows the developer enough room to visually provoke an emotional response in the user, while still preventing over-emphasis on visuals themselves rather than their implications.