[i] Full review is available [url=https://nszark.substack.com/p/the-house-in-fata-morgana]here.[/url] [/i]
Visual novels stand in a very peculiar place among video games. They frequently face criticism for being unappealing due to their quite limited interactivity and modest graphical presentation. Can you even call something you don’t actively play a game? The fans, however, highlight the stories of these games as some of the deepest and most meaningful ones. Reflecting on this, I always found it logical to expect that when a product - whether artistic or commercial - is limited in certain ways, it often compensates with strengths in other areas. This observation brings me to my central inquiry in this critique: visual novels invite debate not only about their status as games but also about whether they should be considered interactive literature that challenges the boundaries traditionally separating video games from books.
The House in Fata Morgana is one of the most cherished and well-known visual novels. In the context of both critical recognition and public popularity, it emerges just beneath mainstream titles like Doki Doki Literature Club and Danganronpa (side note: do not check top-selling VNs on Steam, I warned you). As an example, I would provide something like an equivalent to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster/movies-as-art combination. The House in Fata Morgana garners commercial success, but is a work of considerable artistic ambition, as well. It is quite peculiar how, even now, almost 14 years since Windows' release and 5 years since it arrived on Nintendo Switch (specifically in the Dreams of the Revenants compilation), the game still stands alongside the mastodons of the latter on Metacritic. I am genuinely fascinated by how a game from such a niche can remain competitive with much more accessible and mainstream games like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. Of course, this only further reinforces the game’s right place in the discourse about the boundaries of gaming.
The House in Fata Morgana became the first visual novel I have truly finished. My feelings and attitude often switched throughout the runtime, but overall, to say plainly - it is amazing. It is tiresome, sure, and even boring at first, but this experience simultaneously feels like reading an incredible classic book, but also something different entirely that questions its own existence.
For my walkthrough, I have chosen the Nintendo Switch version of my compulsively bought new console, as it felt like a more enjoyable portable experience than on a PC. After all, you can read your books anywhere; that is part of the appeal. The Dreams of the Revenants edition comes loaded with an incredible amount of content, including the main game, the prequel, the sequel, and some additional scenes I am yet to go through. Apart from the collection differences, compared to the PC version I skimmed through, some graphical assets on Switch seemed to be updated, but nothing truly game-changing; the general feeling is almost one-to-one.
What fascinated me most is how The House in Fata Morgana differs from its peers in terms of art and overall design direction. If other big VNs perfectly embody the role of an extension or a product of the anime industry, this one feels like it came straight out of Shakespeare and classical literature. My first thought was that maybe it is just not Japanese, but alas, no, Novectacle (called NOVECT now) also has its headquarters in the land of the rising sun.
The story takes place mostly in the same place, the eponymous House, throughout different time periods and outside of time as well. Four main periods, 1603, 1707, 1869, and 1099, all feel distinct, either through subtle changes like UI and English translation gimmicks (saying "abigail" instead of “maid” makes you sound older, you know), or the difference in the general tone of the story as well. The soundtrack further reinforces this feeling of immersion in these eras.
The art in The House in Fata Morgana contrasts heavily with everything I have seen before. The heavy coloring and shading of everything on-screen provides a stark “oh, this is something serious” feeling from the get-go. It gives the VN a much more intense feeling, and as a result, the game seems much harder to headstart than the more cutesy art of other VNs. To be frank, not every piece of art struck me as good. Some pieces made me genuinely fall out of the immersion a bit, because of how weird the anatomy of these supposedly classically painted characters was.
The music is expressive. It is very sauce-heavy, with many very vivid vocal tracks. On the bright side, it adds a lot to that classical immersion, moving the Shakespeare play from the script onto the stage. Unfortunately, it can also be quite distracting at times. The perk of more ambient tracks in many long-haul novels and JRPGs is that they are light on the ear and meant to be listened to for hours on end. On the contrary, the OST of The House in Fata Morgana at times suffers from oversaturation.
To summarize the narrative, the best thing a story can do is leave you questioning - not the details or the characters themselves, but the ideas they represent. The House in Fata Morgana’s extremely hyperbolic treatment of violence and cruelty appears deliberate, compelling players to reflect on their own distance from suffering and the ways such narratives can evoke both immersion and detachment. By the game's words, the story was not ours. Maybe anything bad can only seem distant because it is not happening to you. The game is simultaneously immersive and very detached, and I think this is the main idea behind what's happening. I do not think it would work as well as a book anywhere; the shifts between narrators and the stylizations between the doors would be lost. This immersion, made possible only by a myriad of things I have mentioned before, is a privilege of being this “uninteractive video game”, a game that is not a game, a story that is not a story.
Overall, I have spent roughly 20 hours (I think I am a fast reader after all) on this story, only going through the eponymous main game on my Switch compilation edition. Of course, I have several major gripes with The House in Fata Morgana, both in and out of narrative elements, yet I am excited that it has left me with so much space and ideas to ponder. It is presented coherently as an incredible, overarching dissection of stories, violence, love, and morality. The House in Fata Morgana is compelling not because it tells a better story than a novel could, but because it tells it using tools only a visual novel possesses. Its interface, music, typography, and player-directed pacing transform reading into participation. While it is not one of the most breathtaking stories and certainly not one of the best games I have played, its significance extends beyond enjoyment. The House in Fata Morgana challenges the conventional boundaries by showing how visual novels can achieve a unique form of narrative immersion. Its paradoxical nature, both ludically (a reading game?) and narratively (about how narratives are perceived), highlights possibilities for how interactive experiences can be conceived. As such, The House in Fata Morgana is one of the experiences that shows that any amount of interactivity can redefine expression and further legitimize video games as art.
