Asset first development: the most realistic way to build a visual novel in 2026
Broke as Hell but still wanna make a crisp looking visual novel without any AI generated crap? Then keep reading!
Sadly, I don’t have any good news about the situation with Steam. And so, because the life of Second Wind on Steam is so unclear, I’ve decided to look to the future in general while I wait for Gaben’s final verdict. The worst thing you can do as an indie game developer, after all, is stop after your first couple of games are done (unless you sincerely cannot afford to/have the drive to keep making games). Besides, JAST has been great to us anyway. It would be a shame to give up now. But I will certainly be approaching things differently going forward. Spending 10,000+ dollars on art for my visual novels that might not even be allowed to reach their target audience just isn’t something I’m too keen on doing again. It’s too risky. So today, I want to share with you all that very approach I will be taking until the gaming ecosystem becomes a little bit friendlier for indie visual novel developers. Countless mistakes were made during my seven year career making VNs, but throughout that time, I have learned various techniques to cut spending without cutting quality. All of these techniques depend on one thing: asset first development. Not asset flipping, because that means you don't give a damn about what you're making. I'm talking about making a REALLY good story based on assets you find online. Think of it like a big creative writing prompt, but with the prompt being based on visuals and audio rather than words. We’re talking about building your story AROUND the game assets you already own, rather than the other way around. I somewhat took this approach with Second Wind—building off of the character sprites and music from the first game, but not everybody has an entire first game’s worth of assets laying around. This post will go into detail about how you start from absolutely nothing; it is the rocket fuel needed to launch your first, small visual novel. Every visual novel is composed of several types of assets: pieces of media that work together to make your game a wonderful audio/visual experience. These assets, naturally, need to work together to create a specific vibe/tone for you game (they need to be cohesive; you’ll know what works together when you see it), but before we get into that, let’s start small. For the sake simplicity, the basic visual novel can be broken down into the following assets:
* Character Sprites [the characters talking on screen] * Backgrounds * Cgs [these require the most personality and are typically the most expensive asset] * Background Music * Sound Effects * UI/UX Assets [buttons, text box, etc] * Your Game Engine * Fonts * Your Game’s Narrative Script [both the code and the story inside of it] The cool thing is that some of these are completely free to acquire from the start. For instance, there are several free visual novel engines you can make your game with (Renpy being the most popular one). If you’re interested in making indie visual novels, the existence of these engines is likely something you’re already aware of. Then there is the script itself. If this is your story we’re talking about, then I strongly advise developing the skills to write your game’s script yourself. I always say this, but if you’re directing a visual novel’s development, but don’t want to have anything to do with writing the game’s script, then consider making your game a different genre altogether. You’re basically directing an elaborate stage play when you’re programming a visual novel, so if the narrative vision of the story isn’t 100% clear in your head while you’re putting everything together, then things are going to come across as muddy. To keep things as simple as possible, your game’s director and writer should really be the same person (you). So yes, it takes work, but your script should be free to write as well. And your word processor that you use to write everything? Also free. LibreOffice is a great choice if you don’t want to spend tons of money on Microsoft’s options. Fonts are also a gimme. In my opinion, Font Squirrel is the best place to get commercial use fonts for free. So those bottom three on the list should not be super complicated. Now is where things get tricky, but very VERY cool. Let’s continue with the simpler ones and then work our way up to the most difficult assets to acquire for commercial use. For sound effects, my go to has always been and always will be Freesound.org. Some of these sound effects can be a little rough in terms of quality, but with a bit of polishing in Dark Audacity (more on that later), you can make almost anything work. Just, as with all of these, make sure the sound effect you’re interested in can be used in a commercial work. In the case of Freesound, that means filtering your search results to only include sounds under Creative Commons 0. And if you want to make sure your sound effects aren’t AI generated slop, only go for sounds that have been on the website since 2020. That is, in my opinion, the most risk free approach (and generally works for most asset hunting in general). Now, if you’re a seasoned VN developer, you might be thinking “okay, cool, so it’s easy to find assets for all the stuff that isn’t music or art, but art and music are two of the most important parts, so…”
You’d be right to think that. It is certainly much harder to find assets that many would consider to be the “life blood” of your game. But it’s not impossible. In fact, there is one website in particular that I go to all the time whenever I need anything royalty-free. And that includes not just backgrounds, music, and UI assets, but even CHARACTER SPRITES. DLsite. This place has legitimately everything you could need for indie visual novel development. You, naturally, have to check the store descriptions to make sure what you’re looking at is both royalty-free for commercial games and AI free (anything before 2020 is normally a safe bet), but that makes up the vast majority of their storefront. I’ve used Minikle’s backgrounds for many different games of mine, but there are plenty of circles on this website that cover everything from music, to UI-UX images, to character sprites. A note about the character sprites is that it can be difficult to find ones that have more than one pose AND more than one outfit. If DLsite doesn’t have anything that fits your needs/the vibe you’re going for, then BOOTH is another solid alternative. My recommendation is that you start with the character sprites first and then work backwards to get other assets that fit that design. Again, cohesion (making sure everything works together artistically) is paramount when picking assets. Without cohesion, it is basically an asset flip, which is cringe. Show people you care and pick pieces of art that work well together.
So that only leaves Cgs. This is the biggest money sink and, unfortunately, there is no real way to have these in your game without either making them yourself or commissioning them (no, I am not counting AI; we want our game to have actual soul). Typically, I like to have my CGs made after I know what the key moments that need them in my story are going to be. I’ve tried many different storefronts for commissioning Cgs, and Art Mug has been, by far, the highest quality art per dollar spent and most painless experience I’ve had as a developer. It is also possible that, if your game is short enough, you might not even need any Cgs. If you’re just dipping your toes into the visual novel development world, there is no shame in not spending loads of money on Cgs. If you do, however, make sure to mention that the art you are commissioning is being used for a commercial product. Be honest with the artist about what your expectations are and what their art will be appearing in.
So our revised list is now: * Character Sprites [DLsite/Booth] * Backgrounds [DLsite] * Cgs [Art Mug or an equivalent storefront] * Background Music [DLsite] * Sound Effects [Freesound] * UI/UX Assets [DLsite] * Your Game Engine [Renpy or an equivalent engine] * Fonts [Font Squirrel] * Your Game’s Narrative Script [write that shit in LibreOffice] Now we have some good sources to hunt for assets to base our game around. But what if we need to edit those assets in someway? What if we want to change a character’s hair color or polish up a sound effect? Well, there are two programs you’ve gotta learn for visual editing and audio editing respectively: GIMP (or Photoshop if you like burning money) and Audacity (I prefer Dark Audacity). GIMP is your one stop shop for editing any of the visual assets you have. Anything is fair game here. If there are certain filters you can apply that aide in the tone your game is going for, don’t be shy with using them for like...every background in your game. GIMP will be how you make things feel more cohesive, even if these visual assets were pulled from different corners of the internet. You’ll have to spend lots of time messing around with the program, youtube tutorials and everything, but that is part of the fun. Horror games are especially easy to make cohesive with all these disparate assets because there are plenty of easy ways to make an image creepy in photo editing software.
It's not too hard to do this, I promise. It just takes time to learn the software. It's certainly easier than writing the script, I'll say that much. But there is something pleasant about editing images to fit your game's vision. It's a nice pace breaker. A little extra style goes a long way. Audacity is basically GIMP, but for audio files. If you like one part of a sound effect, but not another, you can use Audacity to cut out the parts you don’t like. Editing your assets after you’ve bought them might sound like work, but it is the easiest way to give your game that personal touch that will make it feel more like yours. It also helps your game stand out more. And that covers pretty much everything! Once you find some striking character sprites that you really want to use, you’ll find it easier to start crafting stories AROUND the art instead of the other way around. This asset first approach isn't best for everybody, but given the current video game landscape, I'm down for spending a little money making your games as possible. As developers, our hand as kind of been forced, as publishing your game and expecting a return has only become more and more of a gamble. So start out making some hobby games before you spend more than you have. If you've got money to burn, do whatever you like, I guess. Or you can always use some royalty-free assets and pay for the creation of others. This is only one path you can take, but I sincerely think it is the best for beginners. It's still going to be hard work (you're learning all this editing software and writing an entire visual novel script, for starters), but it will be worth it. It's always worth it.
Let me know if you have any questions though! If there is anything I missed that you would like me to touch up on, don’t be afraid to ask. Until then, stay cool, everyone. Yours, Jacob PS: Also, if you already know how to draw digitally, then congrats, you don't need to do any of the visual asset hunting. For everybody else though, if you want to get your feet wet, this is what I would recommend.