How do you advertise your VN?

[PyTom]

Step 0, I think, is to have a ensure your game is interesting and polished enough that people will promote it for you. When a game takes off, it's generally because it has an interesting story and quality art - and both are evident by the start of the game. So you want to make sure you take the time to polish both of those, do an editing pass, and so on. Similarly, you probably want to do things like customize the interface, shrink the download size to as small as possible, put together an installer - I think the more professional a game _looks_, the more likely people are to link to it.

Have a website. Having a website - especially at your own domain, gives people confidence that you are legit. People are far more likely to link to a game's web page then a forum thread about it, and having the games hosted on a website rather than megarapiddepositshareuploadfiles is going to give the more confidence in a download.

You should pick a few (4-6) representative screenshots, and ensure they're up on the website. Especially for a free game, ensure the screenshots are available under an open license (CC-BY-ND, for example.) This means that when people write reviews (etc) of your game, they can put media on those reviews. Use similar or the same screenshots when you post announcement threads - visual novels are a visual medium, so it makes more sense to illustrate games rather than having a wall of text.

Beyond that, find communities where the game will be accepted, and post. Not just a forum like this - but things like game directories and the like. At the end of the day, it's up to the members of those communities to pass judgement on your work - if they like it as much to share it with their friends, and you make such sharing easy, then your game will expand by word of mouth.

(After nearly 7 years of release, the number of downloads-per-week I get for Moonlight Walks is still slowly increasing.)

[lordcloudx]

@leon: cool, dude. You're the professional after all. I was just poking some fun at stereotypical SEO techniques.

@Voight-Kampff: Seriously, I'd avoid 4chan -- although it is kinda fun to watch out for when mugen trolls /jp. The iichan boards (you can visit it through 2ch.us) and bunbunmaru (http://bunbunmaru.com/wakaba/) among others, I've found to be generally inhabited by a lot more civil regulars who often make less scathing remarks even for OELVNs.

I generally go to this site if I want to scan the usual chan boards: http://2ch.us/ (some links NSFW)

[Voight-Kampff]

@Voight-Kampff: Seriously, I'd avoid 4chan -- although it is kinda fun to watch out for when mugen trolls /jp. The iichan boards (you can visit it through 2ch.us) and bunbunmaru (http://bunbunmaru.com/wakaba/) among others, I've found to be generally inhabited by a lot more civil regulars who often make less scathing remarks even for OELVNs.

Interesting. I assumed you were half-kidding with your suggestions. But to imagine that there's a subsection of the chans that are quasi civil? Shocking.

At any rate, I just came across this:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... mp-dev.ars

I'm not at a place where I can actually watch the video at the moment. But given the nature of this conversation, I thought it might make a timely (and helpful) addition.

[Anna]

At any rate, I just came across this:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... mp-dev.ars

I'm not at a place where I can actually watch the video at the moment. But given the nature of this conversation, I thought it might make a timely (and helpful) addition.

Oh, really nice find! Even though it's mostly about real games (I don't see VNs as games haha :'D), it's still really interesting to watch and some points can be used for visual novels too.

Be innovative, to the point and show people why they should play/read it.

[Celianna]

I rely mostly on word-of-mouth, as well as getting fans of my game (not a VN) to support me through showing a support banner in their signatures. Trust me, that really gains a lot of traffic when there's several people posting in several different forums. Eventually it just starts snowballing from there on as more people find out my game even exists, and support it as well.

Also a very good thing to remember is to make the title of your game ... well, for lack of a better term; googlable. That's not the same as memorable, mind you. It just means it should be unique enough that people can easily remember it, but also shows up in the top results when they use search engines. Naming your VN 'Forbidden Love' will seriously get you nowhere. I kept this in mind as I came up with a name for my game, and now if you google it, almost all results on the first page belong to my game - that's the way you want it to be.

[Cidz]

tumblr is a good place to make an acct and advertise your game there. ive seen many reviews and posts too from people that play OELVNs (heck its how i found out about planets >_> )

or make a really absurd and crazy game like hatoful boyfriend. that way itll pretty much advertise itself.