Gibberish

This is an experiment I did for a C64 a while ago. It showcases a vn-like game format with a text window large enough to fit in a character name and two lines for characters, as well as a command prompt below, all of that along with graphics. All of this is running in 320x200 (actually 160x200, since the program runs in multicolor mode which doubles the size of each pixel horizontally in order to fit in more colours, in this case 16 displayed on-screen at once from 8). NVL is clearly possible and will fit even more text at the cost of background visibility (translucency is something which is too much for C64 to handle realistically). This runs on a hardware that has a 1mhz CPU and 64 kilobytes of shared RAM. Even certain very old feature phones are capable of more.
Fite me.

I was sure I'd done an analysis post on this, but it turns out I never posted it publicly. This graph was an early draft and the data is a bit out of date, but it's still accurate. I analysed the kind of content people were reading in the VNs they rated each month, to see how the popularity of sexual content was changing over time.

While some degree of sexual content has generally always been the norm (it still accounts for over 60% of read VNs), it's generally been dropping these past couple of years, likely due to the increasing popularity of EVNs where sexual content has historically been quite rare. There might also have been a Steam effect back then, as at the time, Steam didn't allow nudity in VNs, so all-age VNs were getting a popularity boost. That's been changing recently though, Steam allows nudity, and EVNs are beginning to embrace their more hedonistic side. I'll have to do another updated chart on this sometime.

Let me take this idea one step further: Anything besides one-sided curation by Steam itself is going to fail miserably, no matter the tools.
Why? 
Because this sexist/racist/homophobic/"hurrrr SJWs" games trend originates from within the gaming community itself.
It's ingrained into the damn culture. People who publish moral turds (again, Slave Tetris) aren't outspoken outcasts. What they do is condoned, supported and disseminated in countless gaming circles. 
The principle of free speech was established to protect people who were under threat from those in power for their opinions. Now it's being used to legitimize acts of silencing the very people free speech was intended to protect. I believe the "censorship" argument is invalid for this very reason.

However it is possible. Like with any development you work within the device's limitations. If you have a low resolution feature phone maybe you should not write a 100 hour visual novel with long-ass lines. Something like pokemon on GBA has a fine looking text box.

I think you can make a visual novel work just fine with that size of a box or maybe move to NVL format instead of ADV if not.
I also don't think that anyone would read a visual novel for many hours on a phone but it would be every now and then and the visual novel should be adapted to a format that makes it work.
Do not think how the CURRENT visual novels are but how the visual novels COULD BE DEVELOPED for a feature phone.

I guess I, quite impossibly, agree with both you and @Funyarinpa to a certain degree. From an absolutely selfish perspective, I'm very happy about this policy because I don't see any other situation in which VNs are allowed to thrive on Steam. Beyond just the fact of having porn, Japanese eroge have tons on questionable content. If Valve wanted to make some reasonable curation policy against offensive/morally dubious games, VNs would be under fire literally all of the time and many publishers would just leave the platform. For our little niche, anarchy is the most desirable state of affairs IMO.
On the other hand, I agree that giving space for racist, scummy, offensive games can backfire both against games in general and Steam in particular. Plus if Valve wants to actually give us good tools for filtering content, they will have to make major modifications to how their platform works, including forcing publishers to properly describe and categorize their own games and disclose any kind of questionable content. I would more likely expect them to do something half-assed, for example filtering based on user tags. There's a good chance that the means Valve is willing to take won't change much, while all kind or scum will be encouraged to create borderline-troll games and given a platform. Long-term consequences of this might be further normalization of all kind of fringe bigotry that would normally be contained to certain 4chan boards or other cesspools of the internet.
In the end, do I trust Valve to decide what is "right" and "wrong" without fucking over the things I personally like and perceive as completely harmless? Can an incest porn VN such as Love Ribbon thrive in a world where Steam is properly curated? Probably no. Maybe I'm just that cynical, but if I have to chose between easy access to my favorite entertainment niche and good of the society as whole, I will chose my 2D waifus. *shrug*

I feel that this stance would have more merit if we didn't already have half a decade of exactly that. And we've seen the outcome: Massive oversaturation that hurts indie games, an entire culture of asset flips, a failed attempt at implementing user curation (Greenlight) that was perhaps due to the environment fostered by Valve's hands-off approach in the first place, outright bigoted games (anyone remember Slave Tetris?).
Especially seeing as there are already huge swathes of the gaming community who are the sort of people who raise hell over a woman on a game cover or who stir shit the moment a gay character appears in a game, I'd say we've seen enough to know that neither the developers nor the consumers have the sense to fully regulate themselves in this regard (Bloodbath Kavkaz was greenlit), both in terms of the quality of the games on the store, and in terms of not promoting bigotry.
There isn't much that the free market can do to decide right now. Many people don't know GOG or itch.io even exist, and even if they did, in terms of game availability, local pricing, networking (GOG's only recently rolled out a profile system) and other factors, nothing faces up to Steam. The only way to see if the market decides one way or the other is to make Steam implement curation and see how that affects the industry. Not that I believe following the money trail is necessarily the most wise, helpful or ethical choice in this regard.

I kind of wish they hadn't done this.
"Illegal or trolling" is too low a baseline for admission onto the world's probably most influential and popular video game marketplace. 
It's this very stance that got games literally about shooting LGBT+ people and the like onto Steam. (And the fact that Valve removes (some) of such games upon public outcry doesn't redeem its appearance on the store in the first place.)
It's too easy to disseminate bigoted content this way, and all Valve needed to do was to create a policy that says "Games made for the purpose of mocking a(n oppressed) demographic, or games that endorse such content, are not allowed on Steam.". 
Steam is not the entire internet. If someone's just fucking dying to distribute racist, homophobic or sexist games, there are other avenues. Steam doesn't have to, and in my opinion, mustn't give a platform to such games. Steam isn't responsible for giving every single game a fair chance.
And, of course, any actual quality vetting policy would also catch the myriad asset flips, barebones Unity turds, shovelware and copyright-infringing works. But I'm honestly more miffed about the political angle (a game called Feminazi: The Triggering doesn't really have a right to be put on the Steam storefront).

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

Valve released a new staff blog post, basically confirming their "anything goes" stance when it goes to what's allowed on the platform.
They explicitly stated that the latest mess was not connected to any kind of outside pressure and pretty much suggested it was done by some overly-eager employee (most likely someone with a serious bias against VNs/anime stuff, considering the games targeted).
They also openly called out anime games as something many of their users hate and want filtered out of their feeds, suggesting that they're working on tools that will make that doable. Which is slightly messed up, but I guess it's still a win. At least for VNs. Because I'm not sure if Valve's "hands-off" approach will benefit them in the long run.

Before people smarter than me can elaborate, I think I can pinpoint basic elements. To make a VN you typically need:
1. A game engine (most likely Ren'Py, which is free and have a lot of guides and assets available for it)
2. A graphical user interface (GUI), through which people will interact with your game - Ren'Py provides a basic structure for your GUI, but custom visuals and ability to modify the UI according to your needs is important.
3. Background graphics - static images over which character sprites and the GUI will appear. I think it's easy to find free or cheap stock VN backgrounds.
4. Character sprites - the representations of the characters involved in your story - static 2D images, usually with a few poses and face expressions to fit different situations.
5. CGs - custom, full-screen illustrations which show situations that are hard to present through sprites and text, usually used in crucial moments of the story.
6. Background music - to give your game a proper climate and make it less monotonous, underlining the switches in mood etc.
7. A script - all the dialogues and descriptions that will show in the text box (which is a part of the GUI), along with necessary "stage directions" [especially if you'll not be the one handling the programming, the person doing it must know what background, expressions etc. go with each scene].
8. (optional) Voice Acting/Voiced Narration - expensive as f***, if you want good quality, so many developers skip on it.
9. (Optional) Other sound assets - depending on the content of your story, some additional sounds could be useful, for example if you want bring the reader's attention to something, but often such additions are quite obnoxious - music can be enough.
When you have a script and all the necessary assets, you have to put them together and synchronise them properly. This part I know pretty much nothing about, as I'm not a programmer.
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20 edits later - Did I miss anything?

I wastly prefer writing when I already have the visual part, because it gives a much better idea of how the end result feels, so I make a lot of fast sketch art before producing finished stuff.
 
One of the early sections is set in this tavern




The local count and his bodyguards, in the castle hall

(this one is a little outdated, I just noticed that I dont have the latest version on my phone)

 
M.c. sketch, with some emotions

The first thing that comes the closest in terms of setting and stylistic similarity is definitely Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. As Sanahtlig said - you should consider marketing your game as an interactive fiction. A lot of people like to use the classic term, but in my opinion visual novels at this point are mostly considered "porn" games for horny teenagers and deciding to stick to this might bring some unwanted results in case of your project. Unless your project has appropriate size and quality, calling it a vn will instantly alienate a large portion of the player base, who would be otherwise supportive of your game. It's also worth to point out, visual novels are often considered games based on distinctively japanese art stylistics your game definitely does not have, either.
If played well, your game might actually attract both fans of low fantasy, as well as fans of anthropomorphic characters (the furry fandom, in others words). I can already see potential, considering the story is very much Bethesda-esque in terms of plot devices and crude, out-of-the-box humour. Keep it up and you'll make it worthwhile.
As an interesting remark, I'd highly encourage you to play the Along the Edge and it's spiritual sequel - Seers Isle (that one actually should be closer to your heart), which should be coming out soon. I consider Along the Edge one of the best interactive fiction experiences of the past few years, that clearly shows there's potential in these kinds of storytelling devices along with a community, that follows.

We are a team of two people with virtually no budget, and one day we decided to make a videogame. Visual novels seemed like the most suitable option back then: they are not particularly hard to programm and allow a decent story.
By now we have most of our story layed out and are building scenes with sketch art. Its going to be a short, choose-your-own-adventure kind of story, somewhat ironical in tone with crude and dark humor, set in a low fantasy world full of cynical assholes. Its mosltly inspired by The Witcher and the original Thief games, with some influence from criminal thriller movies.
What I am concerned about, though, is selling the game once it is made. Sure, it has anthropomorphic characters which is probably a plus, but it's entirely un-erotic and un-romantic, characters are designed to be quirky and often outright ugly, and the art style is quite un-anime. We simply have now idea how and where we can advertise such a game once we have cool stuff to show.
As an example of my art, I'd love to show some pages from a webcomic I abandoned a while ago. It's set in the very same world our VN is gonna take place in, and is drawn in the same art style
(careful there's strong language and occasional graphic violence)
http://badamned.thecomicseries.com/comics/25/
We also made a demo/test VN with primitive sketch art and a nonsensical story:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-k56Eamc2FWHZ6WVJFZ2ZqMmM/view
 
pls help ur my only hope

I'm watching the BanG Dream anime now too, really interesting to see how the Poppin' Party girls got to meet each other. 
On Episode 4. Kasumi, Arisa and Rimi all act as expected, Saya though was unexpected with how nonchalant she is and how Kasumi is waay closer atm with Arisa and Rimi despite meeting Saya first
And Tae somehow got totally gimped for these first episodes, barely any screentime whatsoever compared to the others so im guessing the later episodes will center around her if not then the writers need to get shot because tae is bae
 
~~
I think i tried but couldnt get into it because I'm an EN scrub and too lazy to look up translated menus 
 
SO YOU'RE THAT ONE PRICK THAT, WHEN ALL FOUR OTHER PEOPLE GET THEIR CUT-IN CGs SAYING THEY ARE READY FOR THE FEVER TIMES AND WE'RE ALL PUMPED UP BUT THEN THERE'S THIS ONE NOB WE'RE WAITING FOR FINGERS CROSSED BUT THEN THAT NOB NEVER MAKES IT AND THEN WE SEE THEIR SPRITE HAS THE TWIST OF SHAME AND IT'S LIKE GODDAMIT THERE GOES THE A-RANK CLEAR
 
jOiN ussSS

https://bang-dream-gbp-en.bushiroad.com/
Ok so I kind of regret being a LoveLive! School Idol Festival loyalist and not hopping on the banDwagon for the EN version of BanG Dream! Girls Band Party (Bandori) 
But wow I finally started it this week and it's really fun. Bandori is a mobile rhythm game revolving around 5 girl bands each with 5 members. So that's 25 names to remember, 25 potential waifus, 25 idk glhf. 
Actually let me see if I can type them all out now:
Poppin' Party: Kasumi, Alisa, Rimi, Saya, Tae Afterglow: Ran, Moca, Tsumigi, Tomoe, Himari Pastel Palettes: Aya, Eve, Maya, Chisato, Hina,  Roselia: Yukina, Sayo, Rinko, Ako, Lisa Hello Happy World: Kokoro, Mitsuki, Kanon, Kaoru, Hagumi I swear i didn't look any of them up (jk maybe like two or three ._.)
The first couple of hours is a bit overwhelming since you are familiarizing yourself with the game interface, mechanics, and the characters but there's plenty of Main Story and Band Story scenes along with (hundreds?) of small talk conversations between members on the world map to flesh out these characters. There's actually so much story I ended up just skipping through them all for now just so i can get the rewards and continue playing 
Rhythm gameplay is great and very satisfying; it's easy to get into yet challenging to master. Despite being a LLSIF veteran I got smacked by even the Hard songs starting out. But now I can manage to beat songs up to 25* EX, though Full Comboing them is a different story, and unfortunately 26* is a slow suicide, and 27*+ hahahaa insta-death 
Most of the songs are catchy and they even have cover songs, I was like  when I saw they had Little Busters! 
Multi-Live is genius, you are encouraged to play with others due to the increased rewards, and whoever in general devised the ingame resources is deviously brilliant because unlike LLSIF where G does absolute shit, this game has plenty of various materials via s/m/l power/pure/cool/happy shards that you can only gain by playing Lives and are necessary to purchase boosts to your team stat and more importantly, to promote one of your girls to their idolized version. TL;DR the incentives to play in this game are nicely thought out. Want to idolize that ultra rare 4* Wonderland Kanon card? You'll have to farm up shards, and you'll want to play with others because you'll get more shards in doing so. Win-win.

 
I've played so much I'm in top 1000 for the current Runaway Rabbits event, gg

Thanks for the kind words! The demo actually does have some exclusive content (the very first scene, as well as the chibi stuff, although the first scene might be included in the full game from the extras menu or something.)
Regarding HRP, we're still working on it, but it's mostly a matter of real-life issues causing a lot of delays and stuff. When we ran the Kickstarter most of us were in college or in one case even high school, so our availability has changed a lot since then. Most of us who have been working on other projects too are ones who do VN stuff full-time as a career (for instance, my day job is working for everyone's favorite localizer, Sekai Project) while some other members are doing dumb, boring stuff like medical research to cure cancer. Also, we were bad at estimating and planning schedules back then, so we dramatically underestimated how much time it would take (for most of us, HRP was our first ever project). So basically, we're still working on it at the same time as our other games, it's just taking longer than initially expected.

I'm Josh, the founder of the Studio Élan. I'm also part of Alienworks, the group that released "Highway Blossoms" and is working on "The Human Reignition Project." With Studio Élan, we just released a demo for our first game, "Heart of the Woods." It's a yuri game through and through, although I primarily consider it to be a fantasy game with romance elements, rather than a romance game with fantasy elements. I've copy/pasted the synopsis for the game below. The demo is available on Steam for PC only, and it's on Itch.io for PC/Mac/Linux. It'll be on Denpasoft probably next week, and we'll also update the Steam version with Mac/Linux versions around then too. There's a free patch to add in the adult content - for the demo, this is just one scene. The character artist for the game is Rosuuri, whom I also worked with on HRP and HB, but who's best known for her gorgeous fanart, especially FGO. This will be her first ever time drawing adult content. Hope you like the game, please let us know any comments or feedback you have here or on the respective store pages.
And please, before anyone else asks: no, we're not concerned by the recent Steam takedowns and don't think it'll affect us (backtracking or not).
Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/844660/Heart_of_the_Woods/
Itch.io Link: https://vnstudioelan.itch.io/heart-of-the-woods-demo
Adult Patch Link: https://vnstudioelan.com/hotw-r18patch/
This demo is a sample of the full game and contains a selection of scenes from across the whole story. We've hand selected the scenes in order to give a taste of the game without spoiling too many of the major plot points (we figured it's a given that Maddie and Abby end up together). To help fill in some of the blanks though, there are demo-exclusive chibi versions of Maddie and Tara who will help fill you in on what's happening along the way.
Heart of the Woods is a fantasy yuri visual novel about paranormal investigation, ancient mysteries, and a love between two girls that transcends life and death.
Maddie Raines, manager, editor, and general business-handler for her best friend Tara’s popular paranormal vlog series, is swept up in a dangerous supernatural crisis when she’s dragged against her will to the remote European village of Eysenfeld. A strange young woman named Morgan has promised them undeniable proof of real paranormal phenomena, and what she has to offer eclipses anything they’d ever seen before.
However, out of all the strange occurrences the three of them bear witness to, one in particular captivates Maddie in a way she’s never been before: the ghost of a young woman. This woman is Abigail, the victim of a centuries-old injustice now bound eternally to the forest surrounding Eysenfeld. Drawn to Maddie in a way she can’t explain, Abigail reveals herself to another person for the first time in more than 200 years.
While Tara and Morgan investigate the mysteries surrounding the village itself, Maddie begins to form a bond with Abigail that grows to be more intense than any bond she’s felt before. As she learns the truth about Abigail’s death and imprisonment, she realizes that it falls to her and her friends to break the curse that has ruled over Eysenfeld for centuries. But more importantly than that, it falls to her to finally free the woman she loves.
Features:
-Chibi characters to fill in the gaps between scenes
-Incredible character and CG art from Rosuuri -Fully original backgrounds and soundtrack
-Multiple accessibility options
-Extra features including a music room, CG viewer, and guest art gallery
-At least one really, really gay ghost

Hello there, brave soldiers of Fuwa! 
This was a rather insane week for me personally, but not without some cool developments on the blog. When it goes to minor announcements, I've added VNDB links to all the old reviews and gave a slight editing run to some of them. I'm not sure why I didn't do it in the past, but it's fixed now and I will obviously keep adding the links to all future posts. Also, if you started following the blog later down the line, this might be a nice moment to check out the things you've missed.
This week I've tackled a game development of which we could observe on Fuwa pretty extensively - it's always really cool to see project in which you interacted with the developers, and maybe even left your small mark on, coming into fruition. It's also a game that tackles topics that I'm personally really interested about - that of more "human" aspects of war and totalitarianism. Panzer Hearts by HELYEES proved to be both a flawed game and a very interesting one and was definitely fun to review - hopefully that's also visible on the reader's side of things. I really encourage you all to read the post and if you're not sure if the game might be to your liking, there's a pretty large free demo available on Steam. 
Next week, I might tackle one more fresh release before I venture into the world of gameplay VNs - it mostly depends on the time at my disposal.
Whatever happens, I hope you'll continue to follow my blog and have a wonderful week everyone!

It also doesn't explain why Steam want the publishers to censor content, if it was about the rating they'd state to get a rating  because even if they censor the games even further they still wouldn't have one.

Oh you haven't seen anything yet, No Thank You is relatively mild bondage porn compared to some stuff in VNs like Hadaka Shitsuji.

The male version of our sexual prediction quiz is now up here. Have fun~

Thanks for all the info so far guys, I will be coding in the Ren’Py engine. I have done some encapsulation, but not enough to what most people would expect. It will be linear VN, a kinetic novel. Less than an hour readtime. Like Indie of Indie, right here. I apologize for the vagueness of the project, but when I need to know most is how to release successfully, and handling post-release.

This time I will write about my main field of expertise: programming. It's entirely different from the previous post (planning the story) and as such justifies splitting the two topics into two posts. This post assumes using Ren'Py, though it should be doable with most or all engines. I just had to make a choice if I write specific keywords.
First of all, don't be afraid of adding more files. Ideally you should use a one file, one task approach. Also name the files in a way that allows you to find them easily and use a folder layout if possible. You need to split between setup, file access, flow control, story etc.
Setup
Make a file where you list backgrounds and their filepath. Add spaces to make the paths align on top of each other. That way it will be easy to spot typos in the paths. Do the same for music, possibly in the same file.
Next up is characters. Make a list of characters (possibly in a new file) and assign names, color etc, again with spaces and an aligned layout. Add comments at the end of each line to write the color in human readable text (as in not the color value numbers). Also list the characters to set sprites for each. Possibly do it in one file for each character or in one file, but then sort them alphabetically. You should sort them in the same order as the first list, but it's a good idea to keep the names and colors as a list to get an overview.
Make a file with sound effects using the same approach.
If you do this right, you have some files, which list all the media files you use. No other text files access media files and changing the media files can be done from the setup files only. Also the setup doesn't contain much other data than shortcuts to the media files.
Story
For each scene, make one file. If done right, it's close to one file for each paper on the board, but in some cases one paper-one file is not the best option. Start with a label, name it the same as the file and name the file something fitting. End the file with a return. Write a story where it's just the story. No jumps, questions or anything like that. All the media file usage comes from the setup files and nothing is called directly.
Each file should set the scene, like setting music and background at the top and clean up as in removing all sprites at the end as well as canceling all audio and leave the screen black.
Asking questions to the player and branching accordingly contains some exceptions to those rules. More about that later.
Flow control
Make one file containing flow control logic. It exploits the difference between jump and call. Simply put, call will go to a label and when it encounters a return, it will go back to the line it called from and continue from there. Jump will not go back, meaning if you call and then jump, the return will go all the way back to the call.
Now you should add a call to each label in the order you want the labels to be called. Since each event file ends with a return, the story will return to the flow control and move on to the next line. This way the order of events is purely controlled by one file and is not mixed into the story.
Questions/branching/flags
In case a question is asked, return just before asking it. Next you ask in the flow control and branch according to the answer.
You need to make labels in flow control and when you get the answer from a question, you jump to a label in flow control and continue from there. Since you aren't going back, jump should be used and not call. Each such labels will then call an event and since the screen should not be black while the question is asked, events ending with a question and those starting with one should skip cleaning up and setting up and just continue. This is the exception to the cleanup rule.
If you want to use flags, you set the flag in flow control and you test for flag conditions when figuring out which event label to call, which is also done in flow control. This way you have all flags and actions based on flags placed in the same file.
Testing
When writing an event (story), just add call scene after start and testing it will be quick and easy. This will allow testing text, sprites etc without having to consider flow of the story. It's a huge timesaver to not have to fast forward to the scene you work on for each change you need to test. Naturally you should test the VN in the final form before publishing, but you will likely do a lot of small tests multiple times a day while working on it to catch typos and similar as early as possible.
Final words
If you follow this guide, you will end up with a layout where each file has a purpose and it's easy to tell the parts apart. It helps a lot of you want to swap the order of events as this can be done without touching the story itself. Likewise you can't break the flow control by accident by changing the events and changing which media files to use will not affect either. In other words it's a design, which heavily reduce the risk of bugs and it also reduce the need for testing after making changes.
Now put those two posts together and make sure you have at least one paper for each event file. However in some cases it might make sense to merge multiple papers into one event file. It's something to consider in each case and I can't tell you in general if it's right or wrong to do it in your specific scene. It's one of those things you have to figure out on your own.

I can just imagine a GOG curator reading DDLC with a checklist:
Good ❌
Old ❌
Game ❌