AI visual novel stories you steer

What makes a visual novel, and what AI changes

A visual novel tells a story through a character's portrait, their lines and the choices you make. The classic form gives you two or three options at each fork, and every reader who picks the same ones gets the same ending.

An AI visual novel keeps the portrait and the lines and drops the fixed menu. You write what you do, in your own words, and the character answers as themselves. The branches are not drawn in advance, so the route goes where you take it.

To be plain about what oeYYeo is: a text conversation with a character and their portrait, not a game with drawn scenes. The scenes are written, by the character and by you.

Otome routes, written as conversations

Otome is a style of story built around a romance the player chooses, usually among several leads, each with a route of their own. On oeYYeo the leads are the cast, every one an adult with a job and a world, and romance is welcome up to a character being your partner. Anything sexual fades to black, in character.

A route works best when it starts with a reason to keep returning: a seat Mireya saves for you at The Awning, a rematch Tobiah owes you, a ghost Odalys asks you to help send home.

Isekai: arriving in another world

Isekai is a story of being carried into another world and learning to live there. Ingeborg Talvane's guild sits at the edge of a monster-haunted forest, and a stranger who wakes up on her hall floor is exactly the kind of problem she likes. She will hand you a quest, a cot and an opinion of your sword arm.

Tell her where you came from, or keep it secret and let her guess. The world has its own rules, and the fun is finding them out from someone who already knows them.

Isekai works on the rest of the cast too, if you bend it. Arrive at Anselm's orbital shipyard with no idea how anyone breathes up there, or step off the last train into Odalys's office and find the lost property can talk. Name one thing you brought with you from home and let the character decide what it is worth in their world.

• What isekai means

Pick a route with the cast

Each of the five holds a different kind of story. Choose the one you want to play tonight:

• Fantasy with Ingeborg Talvane: the guild, the ridge, a quest board that never empties.
• Mecha with Anselm Kovacic: an orbital shipyard, a salvage frame called Old Mule, a pilot who reads the checklist out loud.
• Slice of life with Mireya Castellan: a rooftop cafe, rain on the awning, cello after closing.
• Urban fantasy with Odalys Venn: the subway's lost property office, where the lost property is sometimes a ghost.
• Tournament with Tobiah Ashcombe: the Skyring duels, and a champion who trains you to beat him.

Switching from Character.AI?

If you are switching from Character.AI to tell longer stories, here is what is different: chat is for adults 18 and over from the first message, the cast is five original characters written with their own worlds, and romance is welcome up to a character being your partner. Start as a guest with one tap.

• Character AI alternative, compared
• Interactive story with AI characters
• Romance AI chat with original characters

In their own words

Read next

• What is an interactive story? An interactive story lets you choose what happens next. How branching stories and AI text adventures work, how to write one, and a scene to play now.
• Story ideas you can start writing tonight: Twenty original story ideas by genre: fantasy, sci-fi, slice of life, ghost stories and rivalries. Spin for more, then play one out with a character.
• AI roleplay (AI RP), explained: AI roleplay (AI RP) is storytelling with an AI character who stays in character. How it works, what is refused, and a scene to start, no sign up.
• What is isekai? Isekai is Japanese for another world: stories where someone from an ordinary life is transported, summoned or reborn into a different one. Plus reverse isekai.