Lemma Soft Forums

Hello! So I thought it'd be convenient to have a post containing a list of all the currently available VN engines. If this is not allowed, please remove this post! ^^;
I don't know of every single VN engine made, I merely looked through here and added the ones I already knew about. So if there's something missing, or you even want to add your own engine, feel free to comment!
Also, if I make a mistake, such as putting an engine in the wrong category, or linking to the wrong site - please tell me. Thank you!

These are not limited by language, so an engine may be entirely in Japanese, English, or have multiple translations available.
I also have not tested many of these. They may be great, they may be bad - what I'm focusing on is them being available to download and develop with.

With that said, here is the list;

Non-paid/Free;
Ren’Py = https://www.renpy.org/
Monogatari Engine = https://monogatari.io/
Novelty = https://www.visualnovelty.com/
N/ONScripter = http://dev.haeleth.net/onscripter.shtml
Kirikiri = http://kirikirikag.sourceforge.net/contents/index.html
Suika 2 = https://luxion.jp/s2/
Cat System 2 = http://cs2.suki.jp/top
ADV ++ = https://www.yox-project.com/jp/
Showpony = https://showpony.heybard.com/?#vn
Light.vn = http://lightvn.net/
Belle = https://fr33mind.github.io/Belle/
WebStory Engine = https://webstoryengine.org/


Paid;
TyranoBuilder = https://tyranobuilder.com/
Visual Novel Maker = http://visualnovelmaker.com/


Partly Paid;
CloudNovel = https://cloudnovel.net/

Thanks for putting this list together (: if you or someone else was able to play around with a few of these and rank them based on a few basic features, that would be super helpful to people looking for a suitable VN engine, I think! Maybe plan out a basic project and see how implementing it in each engine works out?

I would add WebStory Engine to the list. It may be officially discontinued, but it's still available and open source, very easy to set up and use. Certainly seems much nicer than Monogatari, and surprisingly powerful for how it's made to be used.

Zelan wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 10:19 pm Thanks for putting this list together (: if you or someone else was able to play around with a few of these and rank them based on a few basic features, that would be super helpful to people looking for a suitable VN engine, I think! Maybe plan out a basic project and see how implementing it in each engine works out?

That would be a good idea, yes! I would do it, but I don't think I'd be capable of doing a fair review... I do however plan on doing a small video with just a couple of of these and comparing them, just for a short fun video when I have time ^^

And no problem! I was surprised to find nobody had done this... or perhaps they had and I missed it ^^;

felix wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 12:48 am I would add WebStory Engine to the list. It may be officially discontinued, but it's still available and open source, very easy to set up and use. Certainly seems much nicer than Monogatari, and surprisingly powerful for how it's made to be used.

Added! Thank you for the link ^^

Another (apparently discontinued) free VN engine is Java-based NVList (http://nvlist.weeaboo.nl/). Version 3.3 was released in 2013.