Lemma Soft Forums

Hello, I have a question for you all: what is a good length for a VN? I have a pretty ambitious idea for a novel, but I am worried that the project might end taking players many hours to finish. It's an RPG/VN so it should take a few hours, but how much time would you guys be willing to invest in playing?

In general, provided the game stays engaging, people are willing to invest pretty much any amount of time. Think all the professional rpgs that play out at over forty hours.

That said, for you first project, you're better off starting with a shorter game and expanding it after you have a working version than writing out a ten hour game, testing it and discovering that it would have been better at half the play time. One step at a time means you'll be able to tell if you've crossed the point where people are no longer willing to invest in playing.

As long as it takes to get your idea across.

I started off this month trying to work on a "small project". The idea was to have a half hour of gameplay, but I saw that in order to truly tell the story to it's full extent, I would need to expand that length of time.

I suggest starting off with a small project first, get some reviews, and see how you did. My first project was just about 5 minutes in gameplay length yet it got it's point across just as I needed it to, and people seemd to enjoy that. If you're stuck between making it longer or shorter, the safer bet is too make it shorter. After all you don't want your players to lose interest mid-game and stop playing.