Uneven number of endings per character?

[FluffyCakeFactory]

Hello everyone,
I'm planning a character driven vn. At first I wanted to have a friendship, one-sided love and love ending for every character... However that'd be difficult since for example no matter what a male mc does, a straight man can never fall in love with him. Now I don't know what to do about the endings in that case. I feel if that character only gets a friendship & one-sided love ending, the reader might feel that character is being neglected by the author. I thought about adding a "best friends" ending instead, but then again that might seem unfair too?
What would you do as writer & how do you think about it as reader?

[mitoky]

Personally, as the reader i wouldnt mind.
While i can understand wanting and "even" or "fair " amouth of endings for each character, i also don't think there is anything wrong with it being diffrent or uneven. In fact, i think it can be quiet appealing, since its shows diffrent sides.

Maybe you could change it for the charcater alone, so intead of "friendship" with no romance it could become an ending where the player did confess, was rejected, but learned to life with it and became best friends. While with the "one sided" they too confessed, were rejected but couldnt bear the though of being still near them, hence grew apart etc.

Either way, dont feel obligated to make more endings then you see fit for the story. As long as it makes sense to the player and is well written i see no problem (:

[Zelan]

Personally, as the reader i wouldnt mind.
While i can understand wanting and "even" or "fair " amouth of endings for each character, i also don't think there is anything wrong with it being diffrent or uneven. In fact, i think it can be quiet appealing, since its shows diffrent sides.

Maybe you could change it for the charcater alone, so intead of "friendship" with no romance it could become an ending where the player did confess, was rejected, but learned to life with it and became best friends. While with the "one sided" they too confessed, were rejected but couldnt bear the though of being still near them, hence grew apart etc.

Either way, dont feel obligated to make more endings then you see fit for the story. As long as it makes sense to the player and is well written i see no problem (:

Basically seconding what mitoky said. If you have an idea for a "best friends" ending that is distinct from the "friends" ending, go for it. Otherwise, if there are acceptable reasons (which there are) to have an uneven number of endings, it should be fine as long as the quality of all of the endings is consistent.

[Katy133]

I agree with the above posts. It's better to have a few deep routes than try to shoehorn extras for the sake of evening ending numbers.

If you feel like something is missing, try to compare each character's arc/journey and how it relates to the game's main theme or main conflict/plot. Ask yourself if there's less routes for a particular character because they haven't been developed as much as the others, or if their journey is not closely linked enough with the main theme of the game.

[FluffyCakeFactory]

Thank you for the replies! It helped me a lot.
I really like @mitoky's idea! I will have another close look at the outline and then decide if another ending would make sense for that character.
And while I'm at it, I'll try to make all the character routes the same length (roughly).

[Imperf3kt]

I look at it this way; it's your game. Your story to tell. Tell it how you want.
If you start forcing routes because you think it is what your audience wants, it is no longer your game, it is your interpretation of the game your audience wants, not what you want.
This, in my opinion, is never good and only comes across as a flimsy attempt to 'satisfy everybody' and ironically, makes your game feel 'cheap'.

[sasquatchii]

If you start forcing routes because you think it is what your audience wants, it is no longer your game, it is your interpretation of the game your audience wants, not what you want. This, in my opinion, is never good and only comes across as a flimsy attempt to 'satisfy everybody' and ironically, makes your game feel 'cheap'.

Wise words! It's kind of like the saying, if you make a game for everyone, then you're making a game for no one.

I want to echo what has already been said in this thread: an uneven amount of endings is 100% OK - write what you think is best for your game. The beauty of visual novels is we are not confined to formulas or a certain number of endings for each character- the possibilities are infinite as to what we can do.

I know in a lot of romance VNs the point is to try to romance the character. But if I played a VN where I could befriend a character along the way while getting to experience a really wonderful (or heartbreaking) story, I would absolutely love that.