A Clown Girl Teaches You How To Make Visual Novels
A clown girl breaks into your computer and...teaches you how to make visual novels?!
For April Fool's Day 2025, I for some reason decided to make an actual game where Rimia teaches you how to actually make visual novels. This guide is intended for beginners! Yes, this will actually teach you things!
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This was adorable! I really enjoyed her bouncing animation and the art. Also, I liked the Umineko mention.
Wow, I wish I’d read this last year. I might not have used the wrong terminology in posts this season.
I’ve been trying out different phrases when talking about games. Visual novel. Visual short. Narrative game. Interactive fiction (as if that’s an umbrella term). No one has corrected or confirmed any of the choices, which has not been entirely reassuring.
One question remaining is about minimum word count or length of play. Can a project be too short to be considered a visual novel? Sub-question: Does branching or the way illustrations are used make a difference in the count?
Broader terms like narrative games can mean lots of things, so it's harder for people to correct or confirm them. A visual novel though can be any size or length - the word count is important to denote for players to know around how long the game is, but visual novels can be 1k words or 100k words. There's even an annual game jam called O2A2 on itchio focused on making micro visual novels under 1k words with minimal assets. When counting the word count for a VN, it includes every path and choice. Engines like Ren'Py come pre-built with ways to check this such as the Lint function which will tell you the entire word count.
Amazingly helpful. Thank you so much.
lol
Thanks for your tips, everything was well detailed in your visual novel tutorial. I have played a lot of visual novels since being on the PS4, and Steam. The Clown Girl explained a lot of good points. Again, thank you!
I'm not personally a fan of visual novels, but I do use some VN-style cutscenes in other genres of games. I found this introduction to be well-thought-out, with some solid advice on many topics of interest to both VN developers and other game devs who borrow VN style conventions like me.
So, good stuff here! And good on you for making a detailed, approachable resource for people looking to get into the field. Well done.
This was really good, I just played through it! I'd only made one VN before, but I was able to pick up a couple of things and bookmark some of those resources to maybe use for my next VN!
Also the clowngirl was a cutie :D
Thank you so much! I'm actually making a visual novel right now and i didn't understand game jams at all so thank you!
Thanks for making this! Learnt a couple of things and read a couple of things I needed to read. ^^
Are you saying a clown made this visual novel?
unbelievable. 5 stars.