okay. good job. its downloading now. awesome. you're already closer to making your own game than 99.99999% of the population in this world. be proud of yourself for taking the first step. i know youre super excited now but dont open it yet tho. read through the rest of this page first.
the thing with renpy is that its straightforward enough that simply downloading, installing and hitting the "create new project" and spamming through the menu and then opening script.rpy to see the code which will tell you like 70% of what you need to make your first vn.
inside the main script file, script.rpy, are commented instructions on how to name a character, place a sprite, place a background, and put in text and you can basically make a vn with these things. ive played and enjoyed many wonderful vns that just rock the default renpy gui settings and only added their own text, sprites and backgrounds and music.
there no need to be afraid just because the word 'code' was mentioned. ren'py's own language is just copy pasting stuff back and forth and inserting your own names and pictures. its nothing like C# or java or whatever languages exist cause i know jackshit about any of that and dont know how to do programming
i can not stress it enough KEEP IT SIMPLE, especially if you're starting out. making things complicated or planning massive projects is just shooting yourself in the foot. better to make a two minute game than get stuck trying to make a epic masterpiece that never completes
like just trust me, if its your first game and you find yourself scouring through gui.rpy and screens.rpy and feeling hopeless and lost, question your life choices and think about what nadia would say. she would say to get the hell outta there and go back to script.rpy thats where the magic happens!!! worry about the other stuff for your NEXT game. finishing a project is the hardest part so that should be your first goal!!
if you find it exciting and interesting to tinker with the ui or styling go ahead! but if it gets in the way of actually completing a game, ask somewhere for help! join any vn related discord, if youre doing a jam and it has one ask there! theres so much renpy resources and helpful code all over the internet to get your game to look and feel how you want. you dont need to reinvent the wheel. and remember, by default renpy games can simply be opened up and you can look at the code to see how something was made. basically every renpy vn i dl on itchio lets you simply click into the game folders and see all the code and assets directly. all that is fair game to use! steam games generally are archived in .rpa files but they can still be opened regardless
me telling you to use renpy is general advice and i dont intend to push someone away from their programming passion or interests. like sure you can use godot or unity if you already are familiar with them. theres also other cool stuff like videotome or billion other vn engines that promise you easy no/low coding experiences, but but renpy is my strong opinion for those who want to create a visual novel as its the most popular and has the most resources.
getting stuck on how to change ui in VN MAKER ULTIMATE will have far less forum posts telling you how to fix your problem. thus i believe renpy is best option for everyone who doest have previous programming experience or specifically a huge interest into getting into programming as a whole and want to do something more elaborate than a simple visual novel in terms of game design. and even those who DO have programming experience, if you want to make a visual novel, why not pick renpy since its made specifically for it!
i have hosted so many vn jams with cumulatively hundreds of entries by now and observed many vn jams with the same patterns; when people ask for renpy help in the discord theres so many eager people giving the solution. if its some other vn engine, nobody has even heard of it before. the godot/unity types are the most experienced programmers so they deal with problems on their own. i know im biased but it always feels like its always the godot/unity people who proportionally release the most demos and incomplete entries or simply tap out mid jam since they spent most of their time coding their own vn engine instead of writing the story or making assets. its just an entirely different beast
writing a story is its own thing. however anyone can write and its better to write a shit story than no story. that way you have something to build on and get more comfy with your own art process. its what me and everyone else who makes vns and any other art or skill or hobby have done too. making a bad story is better than making no story. thats how you improve. just make a story and put it out.
honestly you dont even need to put it out. if you need more confidence before sharing something, making your beginner vns even for yourself and showing it to a couple close friends is completely reasonable too. dont be afraid of making something terrible or get stuck worrying "oh no will people think this is good", simply make something that is you. you develop as a creator and an artist by following your passion and doing what you want. everyone else should be grateful if you bless them with your creation. but i do think that simply sharing what you make and being proud of it and understanding it was the product of its time is the way to go
i think a lot of people dont realise that when it comes to any form of art, but writing especially, its the heart that matters. and im not like saying that just to be cheesy, art is about communicating things to the reader and most of the time the shit thats going on in an inviduals head has something interesting going on and even an amateur first time writer can put down fun and exciting things. technical skill and experience is a cumulative thing that only makes it easier to find your own voice and figure out how to get your projects out there. so many times ive read something brilliant just to be surprised it was the first vn the author put out. that happens a lot
if you like what some other vn/manga/anime/story does copy it and smash these inspirations together to make your own thing. save pictures and lines you see that get you inspired if you need inspiration and references for your own story. everything in this world is inspired by other things someone else has made. its not stealing unless you get absurd and download someone elses game and take out half the assets and put them in your own game and pretend you didnt
so dont be afraid to follow your inspiration, if there are visual novels (or any media) that you love. emulate it. make the kinds of protagonists and characters you enjoy seeing the most. create stories that have moments similar to the ones that touched you the most. you can do anything. and following the path towards making the dream game you wish existed is in your hands.
you gotta be reasonable though, your first game wont be umineko. you wont finish that project ever if you havent first learned how to complete a project in the first place. even if you could, the time spent on something like that will be so long that you might as well do a couple smaller projects and THEN complete said massive project with all the experience youve gained in far less time and with better results than if you had jumped straight into the behemoth. you gotta learn how to complete projects first. jams are great for that. itchio has constantly cool vn jams going. but trust me, making small games while including these themes you love is the way to go as a fledgeling vn dev.
i also have a suggestion regarding writing your story. what i personally do is that i simply write the whole thing in a simple word writing software first and dont even worry about renpy syntax or code at this point at all. i just write the story first (or most of it) and only then i start converting and fidgeting it into my beloved script.rpy. as for writing software you can use whatever. be it notepad++ or google docs or obsidian. i use obsidian personally. but the point is that i think focusing on one aspect at a time is the best way to go with these. dont overcomplicate things for yourself, but also try different approaches to find out what works for you personally
so if you have the interest and motivation and love visual novels, do yourself a favour and make a vn. as far as game development goes its one of the most accessible options out there. ren'py is an amazing engine having all the vn necessities already in place since that allows you to just focus on the story and not have to worry about setting things up yourself and scrambling with advanced code unless you really want to. you can get so far just writing "how to do x in renpy" to google
its important to know that its a fake and unreasonable expectation that selfmade indie games HAVE TO look like remastered tsukihime or umineko just because they're also visual novels. like even regarding these vns, consider looking at the original versions and how far they get with less cgs and far simpler visuals and coding effects
but for even simpler solutions, for example my vn ( slime feet ) uses no art and instead free to use photos smashed together and music which i grabbed online that anyone else could have access to as well. making anything is about getting creative with what you have available and some of my favourite visual novels have heavy use of creative combinations like these. ( victim doll ) ( planetary attraction ) ( the great i am ) ( this superficial world ) ( paper girl chain ) (everyoine should play these all by the way.)
go dig through some visual novel or visual novel adjecent jam entries on itch io and build an idea of what the gays are actually making. here are the entries for two jams ive hosted. menhera vn jam and toxic yuri vn jam, but keep in mind a good portion of these entries are by developers who have already made a lot of games in the past and comparing yourself and your projects expectations directly to them would be unreasonable.
so read some polished looking ones but id say even more importantly; also read some amateur vns that have been made by first time devs. you will have a broader perspective of what renpy devs can achieve and it can help lower your expectations for your own project and reduce stress and perfectionism
what i want to say is that even if your game doesnt have perfectly rendered animated anime girls and handpainted backgrounds there is an endless way to still have visuals and put together a game. you do not even need to draw a single thing to make a vn if you dont want to or cant. but that being said, i rather see a vn with bad art than no vn at all!! the only way to improve is by Doing instead of Worrying
for images and backgrounds my advice is to either use sites like pixabay or unsplash or just google "CC0 pictures" and you can use these in your games uncredited. some sites kinda suck shit nowadays because enshittification so theres community efforts of sharing photos too.
i recommend glancing at community gathered image sets made by cool vn devs. hurtnullifiedcatgirlsforfun & this itchio collection.
when you have pictures you can throw them into krita, photopea or whatever you want and google "how do i x" questions until you know what to do what you want. personally when i do backgrounds i just like to stack some layers and try if overlay or multiply layer mode looks more fun or simply just run them through filters. this is what i always do and its a classic vn background solution for a reason, even games like tsukihime, higurashi and umineko have used this.
i made a separate post about my background creation process to give you an idea of what it could look like: click click
a more advanced background trick is that if you have blender skills you can make a scene there as well, either use the renders directly or throw some effects or paint over the renders. you can find tutorials for vn background making on youtube too. if you go the 3d route, there are unlimited sites for free to use models you should be using because i think its a waste of time to make every single lamp or door handle from scratch when someone else has already done them and is letting you import them into your blender scene for free.
there are sites like DOVA-SYNDROME for music, freesound.org and pixabay again for sound effects. these are the ones i generally use and sometimes i just throw "CC0 -thing i need-" into google and usually i have no problems finding what i need
heres a link for a directory for an overwhelming about of CC0 assets
ultimately there is an infinite amount of free to use materials out there itching to be used, and a huge amount of them have a CC0 license which means you dont even have to credit them. however theres also other licenses that you can do wahtever the fuck you want to with and the only thing is just to throw in credits somewhere in your project
anyway but for real if you really are interested make a vn heres the renpy download link again in case you didnt click it the first time. now you have to do it under the threat of violence cause im holding a whip and making thOSE SCARY CR-
i believe in you. you can do it. you can make your own visual novel just like i have. look at them. i made them. play my visual novels. thanks you very muchy
thank you for reading. godspeed.