I'm always still learning and searching for writing advice myself. I usually find advice for regular novel writers and am sorry I haven't been able to talk to VN writers more.
Okay, first, I ALWAYS worry and feel insecure about everything I publish. But I still publish it.
My process for my last two VNs has been:
1. Write the first draft, which is pretty bad. Try not to edit at all, so I can get to the ending (or several endings, if that's what I planned.)
2. Read the whole thing and figure out what's wrong with it. Get some new ideas for adding characters or subplots that would make it better. Make a plan for structural changes, then add or delete scenes.
3. Repeat step 2 until I can say the story is decent. But the goal is to finish it, so do it maybe three times max. The first structural edit is the most significant. After that, the improvements aren't that impressive.
4. Edit sentences, read the text out loud, change small details.
Ideally, I would say if I am able to test the whole game and have very few edits, it's ready to be released. But in practice, I change a lot every time I test it. I release it anyway, because I have set a release date, and after playing the same 6-hours-long game for 20 days in a row, I can't do it anymore. Technically, I *could* take a month off and then come back and keep doing the same... but why? At that point, I don't want to do it anymore. Nothing is ever perfect. People have probably already decided whether they want this game or not based on what they see: how many love interests, do they have wings?
Is it the kind of game they usually enjoy? Me editing the sentences ten more times won't really change much. It won't change the meaning of the story.
They say a work of art is never finished, only abandoned. I feel that's true. You stop working on it. It could always be better, but then you'd never publish it. I want everything to be perfect and feel guilty because it's not, but I convince myself to let it go. If, as an artist, you no longer feel inspired to work on something, you should care about yourself and move on to something that inspires you now. But if you enjoy those rewrites, I guess it's perfectly fine to keep doing it.
Some anti-perfectionist tips:
- If it's not released, no one can enjoy it. It's like it doesn't exist!
- Does the value of your work come from it having no flaws, or from people being able to enjoy it?
- Games aren't books. In case you make a mistake, or you really want to edit something, you can update the game after release.