Your VN making experience

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Xerofit51
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Your VN making experience

#1 Post by Xerofit51 »

Hi, I wanted to know of the experiences of Vn makers in this group, either your successful, or just trying out I would like to know how u got into the vn bizz and if ur an indie game developer I want to know too.

Here's mine

Hi I’m Xero, also known as Dewi or waria, he, she, it, call me what u like, I don’t care
I made games for about 4 years now, which basically means I start since I started college. When I first did it, it was basically cuz I hated current VNs and wanted to make one as a joke. It was fun and gave me an escape of my depressing college life which I was forced to major a college I wasn’t too keen on (medical engineering, I wanted psychology)
My first game, Freak-Quency, got more downloads than I expected, even turned into a comic at lezhin now! I took a semester not making games to see if I focus on my school more. That semester, I got the lowest GPA of my entire life, slit my wrist and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, so yeah…. That happened, but I passed the semester somehow at least. Next semester I made Amplitude, a game currently on steam. Took me two years to make since I was also working on my final thesis/project, which almost got stolen by my final thesis partner if I had not taken extreme action (she basically almost took off with the project that I coded, I tested on to the hospitals and all that jazz). I'm graduating April 2018 by the way, already finish the thesis and everything, I'm all set.

Anyway, On September 6th, Indonesian time I released my game on steam, since my co workers were willing to work for me for free back in the developing stage I didn’t have any financial issues, but now I do have some financial sustainability worries if we want to stay as a team in this bizz.
What about you guys, what made u make Vns, are you still making em?

Thank you
Last edited by Xerofit51 on Tue Nov 14, 2017 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Imperf3kt
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Re: Your VN making experience

#2 Post by Imperf3kt »

The honest truth?

I'm over confident, arrogant and a bit of a jerk; thus I think I can make a better experience than most of the games I've played in the last 20 or so years.

Probably can't, but, I'm also stubborn and won't give up.
Warning: May contain trace amounts of gratuitous plot.
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Scribbles
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Re: Your VN making experience

#3 Post by Scribbles »

Discovered VNs, loved them, had this whole identity crisis when I turned 30 that eventually ended up with me trying to make VNs. I released Pinewood Island a few months ago, and hopefully I'll release As We Know It next year maybe? kinda early to tell. I really enjoy it and hope I can keep making them ^^

as for why VNs, I was always a writer and the idea of an interactive novel sounded more fun than a traditional one lol (for me they are - and no one will probably ever read/see my unpublished novels)

congrats on releasing your game on steam! I hope it does well and you can make more VNs too :)
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Re: Your VN making experience

#4 Post by Katy133 »

I've working on my next visual novel (I've completed five), and I can give you my thoughts on the whole experience.
  • The first visual novel you make will be the hardest. Once you complete a visual novel from beginning to end, things will feel easier afterwards. Even though your projects will get more and more ambitious.
  • Make sure you pick a story idea you want to make and work on for a long time. "What you want to work on" is different from "What you want to have made."
  • Start small, because the project will always end up being more complicated than you expected.
  • Work a little bit on it every day. Give yourself mini-goals you can complete week by week.
  • Remember to give yourself breaks after you finish a game. Celebrate it. Like a tree, we have to have our own winter to rest so that we can bloom in spring.
I make visual novels because I like telling stories and visual novels are a medium that I discovered I could use to do that.
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Ibitz
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Re: Your VN making experience

#5 Post by Ibitz »

I'm still in the process of creating my first VN. I've released 1 demo and have 2 more to go. I've gotten lots of excellent critique on my work (both bad and good) and I appreciate it all. Every bit of help from the community is even more helpful in learning how to make VNs.

I make mine for fun and for the experience. I played SweetChiel's VN "Nusanatra" and fell in love with VNs after that. I had a story I wrote a long time ago and decided to finally make it come to life. I'm a baker/chef by profession, but I had fun and taught myself coding/art in order to make a VN. I have a bunch of ideas for more games that I want to make. I just wanna give people tons of fun games to play, for free.

It's been hard work, finding all the assets I can't create and making the ones I can. The hardest part is sorting through all the code, making sure it's correctly typed out and then making sure there aren't any typos and whatnot. An even harder aspect is making what you want and not letting the world fully change your idea. You can let opinions and advice help influence good changes, but you shouldn't stop what you're doing just cause of critique. With my game, I feel pumped up and want to improve my work. Having both good and bad feedback is actually great motivation.
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Ibitz is a self-taught coder/artist who works alone on their games. All games I create are freeware. If you need any help with coding or creating your game, just let me know. I'd be more than happy to help.

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Re: Your VN making experience

#6 Post by Mammon »

I made two VNs thus far and am currently working on my third. My first one I made because I was into EVNs at the time and had way too much free time on my hands. So when I came up with a story that was chronologically complete (as opposed to just a few random scenes without knowing how everything around them would go) I really wanted to write it. And I did, for 1,5 years I worked on Pervert&Yandere (according to comments, it's better than the title and premise give it any right to be.) until I finally solo-dev'd it complete.

After that I started experimenting a bit with other forms of development, but soon concluded that solo-dev is what I prefer most. No deadlines and communication. The first time writing for someone else ended with both parties greatly annoyed and my role in that project scrapped. The group-development project I made was a mixed bag. It was fun working together with some of them, but there will always be people not getting their requirements done in a new team and I'm not good at enforcing those deadlines. Also, I never really had the freedom of time with S&Y to alpha-test it three times and make sure everything worked right, so looking back on it there are so many bugs in it.

So right now I'm working on my latest project alone again. It's going to be longer and it's going to be more, and I've got myself to blame for that. But for what it's worth that's how I prefer it.
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Re: Your VN making experience

#7 Post by sake-bento »

Been doing this for I guess, a while now? Seven years, give/take. Overall, I'd call the experience rewarding, but also kind of unhealthy. The first few years especially were plagued with overwork and crunch and I kind of wrecked my well-being trying to get stuff done. Do not recommend. I'm a lot more chill about it these days, and it's actually quite fun again. Shocker.

As for finances, I'm lucky enough that the hobby pays for itself with a little extra to make the next game even more polished. It's hardly something I could make a living off of, but that's cool with me.

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Xerofit51
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Re: Your VN making experience

#8 Post by Xerofit51 »

sake-bento wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 2:07 pm As for finances, I'm lucky enough that the hobby pays for itself with a little extra to make the next game even more polished. It's hardly something I could make a living off of, but that's cool with me.
I'm actually surprised by this because I did play a lot of your games, although RE: Alistair will be forever my fave, I thought you'd be able to make a living off it since I can do so withmy project, then again living expenses in Indonesia is cheap

Anyway thanks for making vns sakevisual

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sake-bento
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Re: Your VN making experience

#9 Post by sake-bento »

Xerofit51 wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 6:21 pm
sake-bento wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 2:07 pm As for finances, I'm lucky enough that the hobby pays for itself with a little extra to make the next game even more polished. It's hardly something I could make a living off of, but that's cool with me.
I'm actually surprised by this because I did play a lot of your games, although RE: Alistair will be forever my fave, I thought you'd be able to make a living off it since I can do so withmy project, then again living expenses in Indonesia is cheap

Anyway thanks for making vns sakevisual
And thank you for playing! I do believe I make a reasonable amount, but yeah, it's just a hobby that pays for itself. I wish I made more so I could hire even more people and make games with even more in them. ^_^;; I think as visual novels grow in popularity, that might be an option in the future. I'd have to write a lot faster, though. XD

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Re: Your VN making experience

#10 Post by Aureus »

I started as an RPG lover, but I was upset by how terrible the video game stories were. I am extremely bored by tropes and cliches and studying literature and various art branches made me oversensitive on this point.

I realized what parts of the games I had most interest in - the plots, the characters, the drama. But I don't like many things that are a very mainstreamish part of Visual Novels. I prefer to avoid kawaii moe girls with cliche personalities, sexual content, fan-service and some Japanese types of humor. I'm also not very interested in romances and love-related topics (though I am in a quite happy relationship myself), so I keep seeing that I don't fit the VN community very well.

I also noticed that many video games which are not commonly considered to be VNs have a very VN-ish feeling to them: The Beginner's Guide, Kentucky Route Zero, To The Moon... Some people claim that even VA-11 Hall-A is not a VN because of the make-a-drink minigame. Or that VNs can be only made using manga-inspired drawings. I don't like these artificial barriers. I keep feeling that VNs are getting more and more interesting with all the risks the developers take, and that you don't have to be interested in the additional ways of player's input, but there is no reason to fight the experimental ways of telling the VN stories.

So I started developing my first VN-RPG hybrid a year ago. The Tavern was released in August and even though the game has its shortcomings, I'm quite proud of some of the things I offered there. Now, with Tales From Windy Meadow, I'm making a quite classic VN, but with some personal spins and experiments as well.

I'm doing it because I can't express myself through non-interactive media. I was a poet for a long time and I tried to write novels or screenplays, but I keep proving to myself that I find the moment of choice and the synergy of various media the main "language" I want to use. The music, sound effects, text-based dialogues (I'm not a fan of voice acting), visuals, being able to read as fast as you like... What an amazing branch of culture.
Tales From Windy Meadow - slice of life, pixel art Visual Novel set in a fantasy village. now available on Steam.

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Re: Your VN making experience

#11 Post by Mikomi »

For me, I started off as a huge fan of RPG horror. It was while watching let's plays of Ib and The Crooked Man that I realized that this was what I wanted to do with my life, make story-driven games. So, I got to doing research and found Ren'Py. Now, almost 4 years later, I've released a lot of smaller VNs I've made during game jams, and about 3 finished non-game jam VNs. For 2017, however, I've started branching out and working more on projects I really care about, as I get burned out on stuff I'm not interested in. So now, I'm focusing on RPG VNs.

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