"I want to make a visual novel but don't know how"
visual novels are one of the most diverse and varied mediums out there and can be so much fun to make. if you've ever wanted to make one, it's pretty easy to get started!!
Overall Guide
this is a lengthy guide I made going over different parts of visual novels and how people make them! now let's go over some parts~
A quick overview on how to make visual novels including terms, engines, communities and more. You can get started making your own visual nov
What Are Visual Novels?
Visual novels are a medium of video games focused on storytelling through the use of static or low-gameplay mechanics. Most can be considered a subsection of interactive fiction. A lot of visual novels have no gameplay or minigames, but some do feature light gameplay. The important aspect is that the gameplay in visual novels is never the focus, and instead the game focuses on a story delivered through dialogue & narration in textboxes on the screen.
Some visual novels are romance, some are fantasy, some are mystery, some are NSFW, some are cutesy, some are kiddie. Visual novels come in all shapes and sizes.
Visual Novel Misconceptions
Visual novels have been around for several decades now, but parts of them are still misunderstood by wider audiences. Here’s some frequent misconceptions about visual novels.
"Every visual novel has sexual content."
Visual novels come in all shapes and sizes, which includes content. Not every visual novel has sexual content, nor is it required to sell well. Visual novels are a medium for storytelling rather than a genre, so they can be anything you want them to be.
"Every visual novel is a dating sim."
Similar to the last one, some people think every visual novel is a romance game or a dating sim. Not every visual novel has romance in it, nor is it required to sell well.
"Every visual novel has choices and multiple endings."
Some of the most popular visual novels out there like Umineko When they Cry don’t have choices. Choices and multiple endings aren’t required to make a visual novel—completely linear experiences are fine.
"Visual novels need to be long."
Some of the top visual novels on itch.io right now are under 25k words, which puts them under 2 hours of playtime. Visual novels don’t have to be a certain length—they can be as long or as short as the story needs them to be. There’s even an annual visual novel jam, O2A2, that focuses on making a visual novel under 1k words with limited assets.
"Visual novels don’t sell well."
This is very much your mileage may vary. Some visual novels sell very, very well, such as how the recent Our Life: Now and Forever Kickstarter gained almost $300k. Marketing is an entire field just like art and writing and isn’t something you can skimp on or push to the end.
"Visual novel players hate reading."
A vast, vast majority of visual novel readers want a visual novel—they want a game that is light on gameplay and heavy on reading. You don’t have to add gameplay to a visual novel to keep people interested. Rather, minigames added at random can deter players. Visual novel players want an engaging story—if you’re worried of losing their attention, then focus on a tighter script or cinematography.
"Visual novels need to be anime style."
Visual novels originated in Japan and most do have an anime style, but visual novels do not need an anime style to sell well. The art style for a game will change the audience for the game—players who want something anime style probably won’t be interested in a semi-realistic style, but other people will be. It’s all about finding the right style for your story and finding the audience who responds well to it.
Visual Novel Terms
Here’s a list of terms you might encounter in visual novel and game dev communities.
EVN / OELVN – stands for English Visual Novel and Original English Language Visual Novel. Two terms used for describing Western VNs that are made in English, although EVN is used more frequently nowadays. An EVN/OELVN is specifically a visual novel made in English first, not a visual novel that has an English translation (and was made in a different language first). There are several variations of this, such as JVN meaning Japanese Visual Novel and RVN meaning Russian Visual Novel.
Kinetic novel – a visual novel that’s linear with few or no choices. Has only one ending. Also called a linear visual novel, linear game, etc.
Game jams – an event where developers have a set amount of time to make a game, ranging from a weekend to several months. Some jams have themes that the games must follow as well as other restrictions while others are more freeform. Nowadays, most jams are hosted on itchio. You can find a list of visual novel game jams here.
Game engine – a piece of software used for developing video games. The most popular ones for making indie VNs in English-speaking areas are Ren’Py and Unity, though Tyranobuilder is very popular in Japan for indies.
Text/code editor – when programming, you’ll need another piece of software to edit and write code that works with the game engine. Some popular text editors are Visual Studio Code, Sublime, Atom, Notepad, and more.
Character sprite – the individual character art that changes expressions and can move around the screen. Can include multiple outfits, pose changes, and more.
CGs – although it typically stands for Computer Generated, CGs in visual novels typically means the cut scene art where no sprites are shown (unless there's a side sprite on the textbox). CGs are usually reserved for special scenes and are the type of artwork you’d see in a CG Gallery or as promotional artwork.
UI / GUI – the User Interface / Graphical User Interface. This is what the player interacts with such as the textbox, main menu, save / load screen, settings, and more.
ADV mode – the standard reading mode for visual novels, short for Adventure mode. The textbox is located at the bottom of the screen. Popular examples of this are Steins;Gate, AI: The Somnium Files, and Amnesia.
NVL mode – a different reading mode for visual novels, short for Novel mode. The textbox covers most of the screen. Popular examples of this are Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and Umineko When they Cry.
Dating simulator – dating sims are some of the oldest forms of visual novels and are essentially stat raisers where you spend time with various characters with the goal being to romance them by getting your stats high enough. In Western spheres dating sim has become synonymous with a romance game, where stat raising is not involved, but it’s important to note that dating sims refer to stat raisers a lot of the time. Unlike otome, a dating sim doesn’t refer to a specific sexual orientation.
Otome / Otoge – roughly translates to “maiden’s love” and is used to describe games with a female demographic, usually dating sims & romance games which feature male love interests and a female protagonist. Some otome games feature female and other gendered LIs, but male LIs are still the primary focus.
Eroge – an erotic game. If a game has sexual content in it, it’s an eroge. The original Fate/stay night (not the remastered version on Steam) is a popular example of an eroge.
Resources
And now, let's look at some tools and links for actually making visual novels.
Engines & Programming
Ren’Py – free visual novel engine
Twine – free text-based game engine (usually used for interactive fiction)
Feniks Ren’Py resources – various add-ons and tutorials by Feniks
Game Jam & Short Dev Advice
Game Jam Survival Guide - Essential Tips and Tricks
Releasing 8+ games (ft. game jams) and when to take a break
making game development backup plans
Advice for Leading VN Game Jam Teams
How to Make a Visual Novel Solo
How to Finish Your Visual Novel
Design
How to Make Visual Novels
Visual Novel Conference Talks
Visual Novel Cinematography & Design
Art Direction & Execution in Visual Novels
Making Impactful, Impressive Character Sprites
Post-production Techniques for VNs
Vimi’s Visual Novel Design
Writing
Writing Interactive – guides for narrative games writers
Visual Novel Conference Talks
Writing Mystery Visual Novels
How to Design Interesting Choices in VNs
The Intrigue of Ambiguity
Artwork
Clip Studio Paint
Krita
FireAlpaca
Medibang
GIMP
FastStone Photo Resizer – batch photo resizer and editor
FotoSketcher – various settings to apply artistic filters to photos
Marketing
How to Market Visual Novels
Marketing Visual Novels FAQ
Marketing Fundamentals for Indie Game Developers
Marketing your first indie game – What we learned from releasing the same game twice
The stairstep approach to indie game marketing
Marketing your Visual Novel for Kickstarter
Visual Novel Press-Kits
Audio
Eric Matyas music & SFX
Vita-chi SFX & graphics
Free Music Archive
Free Sound
dova-syndrome
Misc.
Lemmasoft Creative Commons Forum
itch.io visual novel resources
Google Fonts – free fonts
Uncle Mugen backgrounds
Canva – browser & desktop graphic design tool
Unsplash – free photos
Wrapping Up
all in all, visual novels are a fun medium to explore and play around with. if you want to make something short as a test run, try joining a game jam! if you want to see how varied visual novels can be, try playing some indies from itchio! at the end of the day there's no bad way to start making your own visual novel. hit the ground running and go for it!!
I've been developing visual novels for over 10 years now, blogging about them on my own blog and releasing visual novels through my studio Crystal Game Works. I hope this guide helped shed light on how to get into the medium!
Im looking for a resource that Im pretty sure I came across either from this post or maybe a response to it or something, but I cant find it.
Its either a website or a program thats designed for eg writing visual novels or any kind of story where you have branching narrative paths that can come back to a meetup point, like you can put in a square and thats like, a question, and then you split from that multiple possible answers, and then you can write a conversation for each part of the tree and bring it back to however the conversation continues. Like index cards, kind of?
Please let me know if you know what im talking about, or if you know something that does the same thing. Ideally free.
I did find this link, which I suspect might be a step to what im looking for, but my browser was refusing to show me the webpage due to some kind of security concern and then it straight up went to 404 not found, so idk whats going on there. follow link at your own risk i guess https://arimiadev.com/how-to-make-visual-novels/
Wait, you are actually forgetting that in Homestuck it is possible for a person to be shipped with themselves (Karkat for example is in a kismesis relationship with his past/future selves). This brings the real total of number of ships closer to (840^2 * 3) + (840^3) =
594,820,800
This is of course assuming that each character is only capable of having 4 types of ships. If we factor in charms (which is the Leprechaun romance system) there are 9 types of relationships. However, it is clearly stated that Leprechauns can be in more than 1 charm with another Leprechaun. That means that the total number of combinations of relationships that a Leprechaun can have is :
=
511
There are 14 known Leprechauns in Homestuck meaning that the total number of possible “Leprechaun Only” relationships in Homestuck is (14*14*511) =
100,156
So we add that number to the previous total for 594,820,800 + 100,156 =
594,920,956
However, this is assuming that only Leprechauns can be in these types of relationships. If we assume that all characters can additionally be in these types of relationships (which I understand is a big assumption, but the fandom will probably ship everything possible anyway) then we need to add a few more numbers.
(840 * 840 * 511) =
360,561,600
I am going to add this to the first total I came up with so as not to include the Leprechauns twice. So the grand total number of ships possible in Homestuck assuming that every character can be in both Troll and Leprechaun relationships (but not both at the same time) is:
I believe I’ve addressed this before, however, I’ve decided to revisit my old calculations for funsies.
So remember how way back when I said G1 has 538 Autobots and 452 Decepticons? Remember that? And how I got that nifty calculation that said, hey the Transformers Fandom has nearly 3 billion ships in the G1 Continuity on its own?
Well, I went back onto the TF Wiki and decided to calculate the total number of characters from every continuity that could be considered Cybertonian in origin.
TOTAL NUMBER OF AUTOBOTS = 3071
TOTAL NUMBER OF DECEPTICONS = 2469
TOTAL NUMBER OF MAXIMALS = 264
TOTAL NUMBER OF PREDACONS = 310
TOTAL NUMBER OF NEUTRALS = 40
TOTAL NUMBER OF MINICONS = 610
That is a grand spanking total of 6764 Cybertronian characters. If we were simply to address one specific method of pairing characters, say Full Spark Bonding between two individuals, this would lead to exactly 91,503,392 possible ships.
However, there are five widely observed types of relationships between Cybertronians. These are Full Spark Bond (2 Individuals), Partial Spark Bond (2 Individuals), Trine Bond (3 Individuals), Full Multiple Spark Bond (3 to 5 Individuals), Partial Multiple Spark Bond (3 to 5 Individuals).
Ahem.
Following my revised calculations, the total number of possible ships with JUST Cybertronian Characters is anywhere between 2,785,363,252,480 and 929,033,938,976.
Let’s, for the sake of fairness, keep the calculation of Homestuck’s total ships at 594,820,800 (disregarding leprechauns, including selfcest.)
And instead add this:
No, it’s not canon. No, this probably wouldn’t apply to any form of Alternia that “exists” or ever will “exist”. But for now, forget that.
We’ve already calculated data for the main four ships, so for now those are going to be skipped. Going down this list in order disregarding the main ships, we have (840^3) + (840^2) + (840^4) + (840^3) + (840^2) + (840^2) + (840^2) + (840^2).
Simplified? 499,060,296,000 ships. Adding the original ship count gives us 499,655,116,800 - which, for those of you whom don’t want to look at such a big number, is a burning half trillion potential ships.
Not enough to scratch your total. Let’s just try not to succumb to futility, here: predictably, I’m going to go deeper.
Flagism (i.e. inside-your-caste only) required me getting a list of every canon troll. Yes, Meirfa and Nektan as well as their potential ancestors/decendants (one or the other) are counted. In cases in which it asks for a “group”, or uses “many”, I used 4 and 8 respectively, in reference to the kids. This is because things like Laytherithm, which could repeat infinitely, would probably essentially be cheating this list.
My final result is 2.484660738974071e+23, which I had to manually calculate to be a whopping total of (supposedly) 248,466,073,897,407,100,000,000. 248 sextillion possible ships. We don’t even need the leprechaun ships, because we’ve already won. *mic drop*
There are now at least 6766 documented individual named Cybertronian Characters (I’m way too lazy to go back to the TF Wiki a third time to verify it, but there’s probably more. They pop up like daisies). As of my writings at this time we have Full Spark Bonds (2 Individuals), Partial Spark Bonds (2 Individuals), Trine Bonds (3 Individuals), Full Multiple Spark Bonds (3 to 5 Individuals), Partial Multiple Spark Bonds (3 to 5 Individuals, and the Official Conjunx Endura (which appears to be your basic marriage synonym, assumed 2 individuals).
So Full and Partial Spark Bonds plus Conjunx Endura = 3(6766^2)
Add In Trine Bonds = (6766^3)
And all variations of the the Multiples. I only did one variation of each before because honestly, five seemed a bit unfair. = 2(6766^3) + 2(6766^4) + 2(6766^5)
Over 28 Quintillion in Cybertronian Only Relationships. If I really wanted to be unfair, then I would throw in Gestalt Bonds, which can range from 2 to 6 individuals. Occasionally there are more than six, but that’s such a statistical rarity that I’m excluding.
But hey, since I’m here = (6766^2)+(6766^3)+(6766^4)+(6766^5)+(6766^6)
This brings the total to 9,636,373,416,060,850,260,016 and does not include Symbionts (who can have symbiotic bonds with eighteen or possibly more cassettes), Splitsparks (one spark split into two individuals), Triple Changers (one spark, multiple forms and multiple personalities, or Multi-Changers (one spark, more than 3 forms and possibly more than 3 personalities).
This is one Universal Stream.
There are 54 Quadrillion Universal Streams.
I had to use google’s calculator because mine wouldn’t cooperate but that gives us this number here = 520,364,160,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Wikipedia tells me that this number is approximately 520 Tredecillion. Not as nice sounding as Quintillion or Sextillion, I’ll admit. But it’s further down the list and therefore larger, so I will put up with how dumb it sounds.
Considering that we have yet another movie this year, three on-going comic series, and a new tv show due out next summer, we may just reach a googol within the next half decade.
Now, I have expended all of my possible resources for possible ships, but you must remember a novemdecillion is eighteen zeroes past a tredecillion. And even if that math did have a chance of being totally incorrect, just remember that we have seven sets of infinity sitting on top of the half-a-quadrillion ship pile.
Apologies, I counted wrong. It’s actually 520 Undecellion, not Tredecillion.
We only reach 1.03 Tredecillion if we add in Triple Changers. It’d be more if we applied every single bonding type to each personality, but I’m pretty sure that may cause some spark strain in the long run and be somewhat physically unhealthy.
I’m also not going to even attempt to calculate the possibilities of Triple Changers in conjunction with Gestalt Bonds because let’s face it, that would be a very ridiculous number, accompanied with the even more ridiculous imagery of Astrotrain and Blitzwing in an orgy with the Stunticons.
If there isn’t a fic of that already, there will be within the next five days.
As for Symbionts and Multi-Changers, there is not enough caffeine in the universe to challenge the headache that will bring me. I also forgot about Binary Bonding and again, that’d probably bring me more headache than can actually be cured. Still left out Humans and Non-Cybertronian Aliens.
But still, whatever number we manage to get for one Universal Stream, we can multiply it by 54 Quadrillion.
Cleaning out my filing cabinet, I found this handout that I made for my mini-comics class. Hope it’s helpful! Remember, it ain’t only for comics. Self-publish short stories, collections of drawings or sketches, or blank for journals/sketchbooks, etc.
(Reblogging because I’m doing a talk for teen writers tomorrow and sending them to tumblr is a lot more cost efficient than printing up a ton of handouts)
YOUR new years resolution is to read critically acclaimed internationally bestselling visual novel WITCH ON THE HOLY NIGHT available on ps4 and switch and currently 30% off on steam
theartofmadeline
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