The most important part of playing your new visual novel is getting started. For now, let's just click on the button that says "New Story." Doing this will get your right into the game. More advanced users can try clicking the other buttons, if you feel confident. The only other button that may be of use to new players is the "Quit" button, which is to be used only when you want to stop playing the game.

If you see this screen, that means that you have successfully navigated past the main menu screen, and are now in the game. To play, simply look at the words in the order you would look at them as if you were reading a book. However, simply doing that won't make you any progress in the game. As you can see, it's only a very small amount of text, and clearly not all that the game has to offer. To display the next set of words on the screen, simply click the left mouse button anywhere on the screen that there isn't a button. In Dysfunctional Systems, the buttons can be found near the bottom of the screen.

So you think you've mastered the art of playing visual novels, eh? I know clicking the left mouse button over and over again throughout the game while also reading words sounds difficult, but there's still much more to learn. Many visual novels include sections where simply clicking anywhere on the screen won't do anything, and you are given a choice, to decide what your character should say or do. To get through these confusing parts of the game, you will have to think about what might happen if your character does each of the options. Sometimes it's easy to know what might be the best choice, but other times may be more difficult, and the best-looking option just might be the one that will get you pushed off the roof during the school festival, and die before you even get to the second act. Once you know what you want to choose, simply move the mouse over the choice you want, and click the left mouse button. This will cause your character to do what the text in the box you clicked on said to do, and then you can go back to reading small bits of text and clicking the mouse just as you have been.

So now you can read text AND click boxes! Good for you. Now you are ready for the advanced moves. Instead of using the left mouse button to show the next line of text, you can instead press the space bar. That's the really wide button that's found on the bottom of the keyboard, usually between two buttons that say "alt." Depending on your skill level, this may be preferable, because with the mouse it's easy to accidentally click too many times when reading the words on the screen, and end up clicking on a choice that you may not have wanted, before you even got to read them.
Making a choice in one of these sections of the game is quite easy with the keyboard. Simply use the arrow keys to select the choice you want, then press the enter key to confirm.
Although the keyboard allows you to not accidentally make choices you don't want, it doesn't automatically protect you against mashing the space bar faster than you can read. If you end up doing this, most visual novels will allow you to go back to text that you have already seen simply by moving the scroll wheel up on the mouse.