Considering that I enjoy love and writing, I decided in the summer of 2024 to learn how to use the Renpy engine to make my own visual novel.
I'd already done some with unity, but this new engine, specially created for this genre, really interested me, so I set out to discover it and its associated Python programming language.
Visual Novel
Dating Sim
Renpy
PC / Ios / Android
Character Roads
Various playable characters and possible romances to find the person who suits you the most !
Inventory and State System
Different states and collectable objects which unlock access to certain specific dialogues, encouraging exploration and replayability to observe story variations and various possibilities.
Successes
A multiplicity of successes linked to the many endings accessible to the player to give him maximum recognition regardless of his playstyle and add replayability.
Learnings
Programming with python
Programming with Python is certainly not the least accessible, but it does require a certain amount of rigour. This project helped me to understand its basic workings and to strengthen my programming skills.
Narration and creativity
Romance scripts are in a class of their own when it comes to writing dialogue. It's easy to fall quickly into basic clichés, so to avoid this it's important to build up the characters in depth, to define their personalities clearly and to ensure that their speech flows naturally from the type of person they are supposed to represent. Writing love stories is an excellent exercise in this respect.
Building games
Having only ever made games on RPG Maker and Unity before this, I never realized how complex it was to build certain games using different engines. Wanting to try my hand at APK creation with this project, I was finally able to realize the difficulty of the task, which I didn't expected to be so arduous. A lesson I won't be forgetting in the near future.