First short visual novel question

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asahi_tanuki
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First short visual novel question

#1 Post by asahi_tanuki »

Having been reading over the forums the past few days and not really finding what I'm looking for I figured I'd make an account and just ask.

I've been, at best, a hobbyist coder, writer, and artist since my high school days and a fan of comics / manga, anime, more recently visual novels, etc. for as long as I can remember. Having a little more time on my hands lately decided to try my hand at making a visual novel for fun and to just try it out. Post after post suggests a 'small' project, which I 100% agree is best but I'm having a little trouble with the branching part of such a short story.

I've been thinking of a short romcom / slice of life story taking place over the course of around 2 weeks with some time skipping to shorten the overall length, a very small cast of characters (5 or less total, including heroines and protagonist), and basic relationships already established made known through dialogue (friendships, acquaintances) to eliminate the need for courting or in depth character building with just some very basic character building through a short common route and 2 branch routes to maybe 4 endings (1 good, 1 bad for each route). Nothing especially difficult or involved or even original and nothing to win any awards or anything. Just something to actually start and finish and experiment with.

This is where my problem comes in. I definitely want to make a 'visual novel', complete with choices that change the course of the story rather than a kinetic novel. Having only 2 routes though seems to make choices arbitrary. Even aiming to make something extremely simple, it seems that it'll be too difficult to make it more than 'choice 1 goes to route 1, choice 2 goes to route 2, end'. Is a visual novel with only 2 routes feasible? Would throwing in a 'bad route' or a 3rd route be more viable? Or is the idea of such a short visual novel that actually has an interesting enough story to warrant a replay or 2 to see the other routes / endings just that difficult? I'd like it to have enough depth to be more than a single choice changing the entire story and would prefer at least a couple back and forth choices or something of 'hard to get scenes'. I've read through shorter visual novels (Ripples and Memo comes to mind) and just want to come up with something as short or shorter.

I'm sorry for the multiple questions and if this was covered elsewhere, searching around I didn't have any luck finding information specifically about something so short. If there is a post though, if you could kindly point me in the right direction I'd very much appreciate it.

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fleet
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Re: First short visual novel question

#2 Post by fleet »

Here are my opinions. Others will have their own opinions.
"Is a visual novel with only 2 routes feasible?"
Yes, I've written several visual novels with two routes, and never gotten any complaints about 'this would be better with more routes'.
"Would throwing in a 'bad route' or a 3rd route be more viable?"
No, unless the 3rd route makes sense. If you were writing a boy meets girl romance they get together or they don't. A 3rd route would be unnecessary.
"Or is the idea of such a short visual novel that actually has an interesting enough story to warrant a replay or 2 to see the other routes / endings just that difficult?"
No. If the characters are interesting then people will want to see the other route/endings.

Have fun making your first visual novel, and don't worry about it so much.
Some of my visual novels are at http://www.the-new-lagoon.com. They are NSFW
Poorly done hand-drawn art is still poorly done art. Be a Poser (or better yet, use DAZ Studio 3D) - dare to be different.

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Re: First short visual novel question

#3 Post by Banya »

One of my favourite visual novels of all time, Umineko no naku koro ni, has only two routes and one single choice.
If you feel like the story is complete in that way go for it :) good luck!

asahi_tanuki
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Re: First short visual novel question

#4 Post by asahi_tanuki »

Thank you for the replies. I guess I'm just overthinking it. No right or wrong way I suppose, was more thinking about in terms of length but knowing 2 routes works and can work well actually really helps.

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