By these premises then you would separate pure Visual Novels from VNs like Higurashi, Umineko where you will just read what is essentially a book from the ones with answer choices and route selections, like Fate, Tsukihime, Dramatical Murder, Science Adventures etc. and, finally, from games where they spice out it with minigames and way more interactivity, like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney.
I don't know, from my experience I classify all like this.
The first are NVLs, the second and third are ADVs or AVGs.
That's 'novel' and 'adventure' respectively, similar to RPG for 'roleplaying' game, SLG for 'simulation' game, STG for 'shooting' game, and so on...
To illustrate, here's
the Higurashi website's explanation of what 'Higurashi no Naku Koro ni' is:
They classify it as a PCノベルゲーム - A PC Novel game.
I can't get access to the Umineko site, but it's listed as a 連続殺人幻想ノベル on
the PS3 site - a 'Serial Murder Fantasy Novel' game. There's a reason for that ridiculously long genre name, but ignore it for now.
The genre has other names. 'Digital Novel' gets use, as did 'Sound Novel' in historical cases, though that's a trademarked term nowadays. 'Novel Game' is definitely what I see most often.
ADV, AVG, and Adventure are all largely used for games where there's a meaningful degree of interaction. Titles that have only meaningless choices are sometimes called Adventure Novel games, which can be deceptive.
The term 'Visual Novel' is also used in marketing nowadays, partly because of its prevalent use as a catch-all term in English fanbases, but even the originator of the term (Leaf's Visual Novel Series) was
marketed as AVG back in the day.
This is why, when the NVL title 'Chaos;Head' was co-opted into the Sci;Adv franchise, they created a new version of the game with proper routes and choices. They had to convert it into an ADV for it to be included in Science;Adventure.
Games like Danganronpa and Ace Attorney are informally known as Mystery Adventure games (
推理ADV), though Danganronpa specifically has Action game elements, so that's a hybrid of genres.
It's informal because of a silly tradition created when the author of 'Cosmos no Sora ni' allegedly (in his own words) miscommunicated something with a magazine editor at TECH GIAN, leading to his game being marketed as a 'Healing Adventure' game.
Ever since then, marketers have used silly themed genre labels, such as the 'Delusion Science Novel' of Chaos;Head, or the 'Serial Murder Fantasy Novel' of Higurashi.
, all the colours, the fonts and HUD are all redesigned.
