I need some help for this school life settings novel pleasee

[danyasilvian]

Hi everyone! I’m really new with everything here as well as VN making in general

I’m planning to make my first VN about socializing in school life (high school - uni). I want to write about a story involving 3 students who have different personalities: 1 is a introvert, 1 other is an ambivert, and another 1 is an extrovert. Each of them have their own untold problems with socializing and connecting with others, and I want to write for players to go thru each of their povs and understand more about each traits’ struggles regarding this topic, and I hope it relates to the players somehow through the story (as i want my 3 characters to represent that 3 different types of basic traits.)

I wonder what are the factors that can attracts and pull you in playing a game as such? Like what would tempt you to try the game? And I would so very appreciate if anyone can give me some recommendations or tell me your own aspiring stories regarding my story topics!

Thank you!

[fleet]

Two things will draw me to read a VN: story outline/summary (you've written a good one in your post) and decent art.
For me a VN must have both.
Having said that, even if a VN has an interesting summary and decent art, I'd skip it if it has a lot of grammatical errors/typos/misspelled words.

I wish you success.

[Fuseblower]

To begin with : I'd like to know the genre of the VN. Is it a romantic story? Is it a mystery? A horror story? Slice of life?

A site like itch.io has thousands of visual novels. People search for games tagged with a genre. Some people check out new horror VNs, others search for detective VNs, etc. It's important to communicate the genre.

From your description of your story I have no idea what genre it is. So I can't tell whether I'm interested or not. All you have given is the setting (high school or university which is the vast majority of all VNs I guess) and the "gimmick" which is to play 3 characters with different traits and their own untold problems (whatever those problems are).

Can you come up with a short description that piques the interest of your intended audience? Something like "Kato tries to fit in on his new school but he has a dark secret" , "Mayumi is the class clown but how can she make Ryu take her serious?", "The students of Hideki Tojo Highschool are so pale. Are they coming down with the flu or something much, much worse?".

Also : this is your first visual novel. I strongly advise not to complicate things with a gimmick like working with 3 different PoVs. Keep your first one simple. You could join a jam on itch.io and make a VN in a month just to get used to finishing a project. Joining a jam also has the added advantage that people will actually play your VN (although there are also people constantly on the lookout for new VNs).

And, as Fleet wrote, art helps too. When browsing through the plethora of visual novels, people will see the thumbnail and the short description of the game. This is what either attracts their interest or make them ignore it outright.

[danyasilvian]

Two things will draw me to read a VN: story outline/summary (you've written a good one in your post) and decent art.
For me a VN must have both.
Having said that, even if a VN has an interesting summary and decent art, I'd skip it if it has a lot of grammatical errors/typos/misspelled words.

I wish you success.

Thank you so much

[danyasilvian]

To begin with : I'd like to know the genre of the VN. Is it a romantic story? Is it a mystery? A horror story? Slice of life?

A site like itch.io has thousands of visual novels. People search for games tagged with a genre. Some people check out new horror VNs, others search for detective VNs, etc. It's important to communicate the genre.

From your description of your story I have no idea what genre it is. So I can't tell whether I'm interested or not. All you have given is the setting (high school or university which is the vast majority of all VNs I guess) and the "gimmick" which is to play 3 characters with different traits and their own untold problems (whatever those problems are).

Can you come up with a short description that piques the interest of your intended audience? Something like "Kato tries to fit in on his new school but he has a dark secret" , "Mayumi is the class clown but how can she make Ryu take her serious?", "The students of Hideki Tojo Highschool are so pale. Are they coming down with the flu or something much, much worse?".

Also : this is your first visual novel. I strongly advise not to complicate things with a gimmick like working with 3 different PoVs. Keep your first one simple. You could join a jam on itch.io and make a VN in a month just to get used to finishing a project. Joining a jam also has the added advantage that people will actually play your VN (although there are also people constantly on the lookout for new VNs).

And, as Fleet wrote, art helps too. When browsing through the plethora of visual novels, people will see the thumbnail and the short description of the game. This is what either attracts their interest or make them ignore it outright.

I see! Your comment helps me a lot! I will improve on the structure and come up with some better descriptions for it 🫶 Thank youuu

[Epschy]

I usually decide to watch a show or read a book based on this characteristics (order: moster important characteristics firts):

1) Genres I feel like reading at the time - Sometimes I want to read a story-heavy novel with drama and phylosofical questions, sometimes I want to read a comedy to recover my energies from a heavy read, and sometimes I'm picking anything that has an interesting synopsis. However, if a work is from certain genres and themes, such as BL, otome, generic-looking isekai, idol and et cetera, I skip them instantly, even if the synopsis seems cool.

2) Art style - Although the quality of the art is also important in my decision to play a game or not, I get instantly turned off by a game if it has an artstyle I don't like (i.e non-anime style VNs). However, this doesn't apply to anime, manga or LNs.

3) Synopsis - If the work attends the first two critiriums, then the third thing thats going to determine if I'm playing a game is its synopsis. Synopsis shouldn't be underestimated, but carefully composed. They should highlight, in a subtle way, why is your game worth of playing and what makes it unique, as well as present its story to the reader. When I read Watashitachi no Tamura-kun's (drama, love triangle) synopsis, that was enough to make me emotinal and create a chilly sensation thorught my body and since then I'm dying to read this LN. If you want to get people to play a drama game, this is how you want your synopsis to be - if your game has a different focus, you should strive to make your synopsis appeal to that public

4) Lenght - I avoid reading and playing long works unless they are very famous or seems veeeeeery interesting because, well, my time is limited

[danyasilvian]

This is insightful! Thank you <3