Word Count!

[Imperf3kt]

How do people make an entire game with so few words o.O
5000? 9000?
How do you even get half a story to fit into that small amount?

[wyverngem]

If anyone was interested...

In fiction
Classification Word count
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story under 7,500 words

[tohtamish]

About 15000. Kinetic story with some "byway" death choices and with one big serious dramatic choice. Well, it is serious literature, not school girls. Story was about far future where couple of spacemen faced their doubles made of antimatter. On contact - annihilation. They are all far away from civilisation and must solve their own personal "life questions". In fact, player cannot learn for sure who is made of antimatter, but player must make choice - and see consequences, see the truth who is real and after experiment what is the universe around, who teleported to whom. Scientific devices are broken and they cannot analyze the universe, only check it directly by contacts...

[wyverngem]

How do people make an entire game with so few words o.O 5000? 9000? How do you even get half a story to fit into that small amount?

Hrmm, it's very possible. Usually it's the focus of one event and a couple characters.

[tohtamish]

Some classics stories are written on one page.

[Imperf3kt]

Seems like you would skip a lot of character time for that. Instead of "this is Jack Schitt and he has these features, blah blah blah. Now you know Jack Schitt". Jack Schitt did this, you know how Jack Schitt would react, etc and feel like the story was somewhat personal, wouldn't it just come across as "some dude did this, the end"


And yes, there is a reference in there. I prefer the original video version though.

[Zelan]

Seems like you would skip a lot of character time for that. Instead of "this is Jack Schitt and he has these features, blah blah blah. Now you know Jack Schitt". Jack Schitt did this, you know how Jack Schitt would react, etc and feel like the story was somewhat personal, wouldn't it just come across as "some dude did this, the end"

Sometimes a story works better if it's impersonal. A lot of short stories do, in fact.

[Scribbles]

ok- I'll bite because I need a break from writing code lol

I'm currently at 52,409 in Pinewood Island- I don't think it'll go above 60K

in my traditional writings I've done as little as 500 words (flash fiction) to as much as 90k I think?

the thing that a visual novel changes with word count is you don't have to describe the visuals which cuts out A LOT of words lol. If I had to describe every character and background without visuals I'm sure Pinewood Island would be more like 100K so that might be why some of the word counts are so short. They could also just be short games with few characters?

The only flash fiction pieces I ever wrote were horror where the vagueness helped add to the creepiness - though that was in prose obviously not sure that would work in a visual novel format...

I think every 10K is roughly (very roughly) about an hour of game play... so as long as your 2000 word game doesn't take 5 hours to play.... it's probably not too much of an issue lol

[Harliqueen]

The Lady's Choice comes in at just under 117,000 words. But Scribbles is right, I think being able to cut out major scene and character descriptions helps a lot in cutting down on words, so some games may seem shorter, but it's because they don't have to have as much 'fluff' description

I think it's about quality not quantity (cliche, I know!)- some short pieces are excellent and get to the point, but on the other hand, longer pieces can draw out a scene in a way that appeals too.

It's all about judging what's best for the story and game you're making.

[Kokoro Hane]

Okay so this is for finished games, so...
4,751 words for 30 Kilowatt Hours Left.

And while it's not released yet (I wrote it in 2 days I just have to script in commands and compile);
10,635 words for False Hope.

[Taranee]

Code: Select all

The game contains 10,737 dialogue blocks, containing 193,416 words and
1,066,987 characters, for an average of 18.0 words and 99 characters per
block.

This happens all the time:
>Wordcount: 185 000
>Alright, it's time to shorten this beast.
>*Removes at least 3K of fluff words.*
>Wordcount: 190 000
>It got longer?!

[gas]

I'm reaching the wonderful goal of a complete game with...
NO DIALOGUE LINES AT ALL!

My lint say 0 lines of dialogues.

Everything managed by variables, called screens and conditionals.
A Ren'Py tour de force.