I know this isn't the kind of content I post much, if at all, but I've been at work on a really fun and exciting project to make a visual novel style dating sim, and I just wanted to talk about my experience! I know a lot of others are into VNs, otome games, and dating sims around here, and maybe some people have even wanted to make their own and find it too intimidating. But it really isn't!
I've always been SUPER into visual novels and otome games--Fate/Stay Night, Code: Realize, Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side...I'm pretty voracious with them, and there's a reason why my most beloved system is my Vita lol.
Something me and my friends talk about a lot is diversity in the gaming genre. It's a topic that means quite a bit to me, and it's something I've really been wishing for a lot in the dating sim genre. I don't know how common of an opinion it is among the otome community, but I feel like in a genre based around dating unique people, learning their stories, and really getting to know the characters on a personal level, diversity can keep the genre SUPER fresh.
Unfortunately, diversity in terms of racial divesity, sexuality, and gender identity is either left in obscurity, few and far between, or ham-handed. (I love MysMes, but Jaehee's route was severely lacking in explicitely romantic content considering she's the only dateable woman among a cast of men.)
When Dream Daddy came out, I was excited for it--not only was it a fresh new release, but it had a lot of diversity of all kinds, and it was a dating sim/vn unlike many that had come out before.
Unfortunately, along with being painfully short, although delightful when it did things right, interviews and comments that came out from the creators showed a lot of contempt for the genre and the people who play it. This along with the fact that the player is explicitely denied a good ending with one of the characters due to the creators' own weird moral hang ups left me wondering why they chose to make a dating sim in the first place.
(Seriously, you create a dating sim and then say that people who change their answers to get different routes are creepy and manipulative? Dude come on lol)
I've thought about that for a while, and decided something.
If I wasn't content with content in my preferred genre, I should try my hand at it.
There were a lot of reasons not to--I've never coded anything in my life, it's a lot of work and time to put into something that might only ever be seen by me and the friends I scream about to it, and....
But those were all just excuses putting off a creative project, and I threw caution to the wind and did it anyway, because why not.
I'm about a week into it, but I have to say, to anyone interested in doing a project like this:
Ren'py is a delight to use. I had all the basic codes and systems down in about an hour, it's so user friendly, and it's free for a professional and industry level program.
Of course, I have a lot of advantages here. I'm an artist and a writer as a hobby, so I can rely on only my own abilities until it comes time for things like music, but that's a problem for tomorrow's me, and I'm having fun with this.
I'd like to show you guys a bit of my progress so far. Again, I'm only about a week in and I'm in the prologue right now, hoping to have that done by the end of the month.
I've got some nice transition effects going, and it's really satisfying to figure out how to do more advanced things that you see in commercial VNs. I've got decision trees, a working affection system, hopefully an unlockable route when it comes time to test THAT code....
Moreover, besides being a lot of fun, this project has been really good for me, I feel, and that's a large chunk of why I really want to do it.
Personal info time, depression is a hard pill to swallow, and my creative drive is the hardest hit. I've had a lot of years where I draw maybe twice a year at most, and that really sucks.
Having a tangible goal that gives this level of results has been extremely helpful to bring me back to art, and I'm having a lot of fun with it, too.
I know this is extremely wordy, but I hope that everyone who has something they want to do that seems too difficult for them, whether it's a visual novel or any other kind of project will give it a try. You never know what you can actually do until you slam into it head first.
(Note: Please don't actually slam into things head first.)
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