A Titlecard for a Game-Clearing project, the Detective VN and Life Sim, 'On Your Tail'~ I'll make any old excuse to seek out and play a game with a healthy furry cast, at times, but the one thing that turns me away instantly is the 'Visual Novel' genre. It's ironic, given that I love a good story, but I also have a need to work for that story, too. I mention it On-Stream a few times, but I don't consider Visual Novels as Games at times. Let me explain....

To me, a Game requires not Interaction, which is easy to define, but Depth In Interaction. Say I open up the average Phoenix Wright game: here, Interaction is 'Hey, I pick dilogue options that move the plot', but the Depth is to 'Solve a Mystery'. It requires a lot of thinking and several interactions over the course of a case to properly crack it. There are Failure States, there are means to mess up putting together Logic. Because of this Depth and Density, I often use Phoenix Wright as my meterstick to measure 'How Much Interaction in a Game.'

To look at another sample, suppose I pull up Mice Tea (yes yes, very sus of me to name drop 'Mostly Sesbian Lex TF's the VN', move along). Here, your dialogue options are to advance plot, still, but they comparatively hold much less Depth. Yes, there's the whole narrative there on why the characters are turning Furry, but there's no Logic or Puzzle-Solving, no Minigames or Interviewing. You exist in the story... just to watch it (and the 0w0, let's not brush that aside) branch out and that's it.

I can give more examples, too:
-The 'Zero Escape' series features Escape Rooms and Puzzles to solve; it's a Game.
-Fate//Stay Night is a Visual Novel, but not a Game due to only picking dialogue options.
-Another Code/Trace Memory and its sister titles in Hotel Dusk feature Puzzles too.
-Danganronpa is a Murder Mystery Game. Enough said.
-Nekopara is not a Game because 'Oh look, cute catgirls and hey, these 0w0 scenes are why they and this game smell fishy, huh?'.

Not to say that Visual Novels are bad, quite the opposite. They're a wonderful way of telling a concise and compelling story; I just struggle, at best, to call them Games. Picking/Advancing Dialogue and Narrative isn't what I call Gameplay, so much as Reading. The almighty CYOA(Choose Your Own Adventure) may help illucidate on this. The CYOA that lets you hold Inventory, track Stats, simulate Fights... that's a Game. But, it needs to do more than just one or two of these.

But we've sidetracked... 'On Your Tail' is a pretty good game~ Buy it!