10 hours ago

Question: Why do I only ever show the art and screenshots of my VN games? Why not the code?

TLDR: There's not really anything to show beyond that, as Ren'Py is a very "default" engine that I rarely ever stray from.

Long answer in article below.


I may classify as a VN dev in the world of gaming creation, but I am really just a storyteller who draws anatomically weird on purpose and has had to use Python in both school and work for years.

As such, Ren'Py is the perfect fit when it comes to giving my stories an interactive element. Since that is all I use it for, I honestly have no need to develop the more complex gameplay systems seen in mainstream games. The bulk of the work is just drawing the art, writing and separating the story into the choice menus, checking the flow so that any possible route makes as much sense as all the others, and customizing the UI to differentiate it from other Ren'Py games. In terms of extra features, the most you would probably ever get in one of my games is either a gallery and/or a second gameplay mode (maybe a minigame) made entirely within Python's "pygame" module.

When developing and promoting a game, I have to make sure to walk the fine line between sharing too little to make the game interesting to the average person, and showing too much (thereby erasing the point of playing once it finally releases). To tackle this, I usually stick to only sharing promotional/main menu artwork and screenshots of the early half of the story (if not a demo) before the game's release. After the initial release, I strategically pick screenshots towards the middle, and maybe some images that may or may not be spoilers as more people come forward with having finished at least one playthrough of the main story.

Luckily for the EF project, the game is large enough to have had loads of material to share, but for future projects that may not be as big (save Project Equals, which rivals the EF project in size and depth) you may not see much at all. I will still make sure to put effort into any visual work I do share here!

#renpy #visualnovel #gamedev #solodev #art #writing #gameplay #python #pygame #storygame #kineticnovel #advice #community #support #renpyvn #renpygame #casual #minigame #marketing #promote



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