I’ve got things working on Lights.VN, although I did encounter several bugs I couldn’t reproduce. Ah, the joy of making things… I still don’t get how I managed to get the editor botched to the point that it wasn’t able to show preview at all, showing random artifacts or complete void instead (while the BGM plays! I have explicitly checked ‘mute BGM on editor’). With little time and even limited patience, I built a fresh project folder and moved the Data folder in so I could have a working editor again. I still mostly work with Sublime Text, I’m just too accustomed with working in a plain text editor. The bounding box preview is pretty nifty, though. I should be happy, but it’s Monday and it’ll be a while until I can tinker with this again. Crossing my fingers and here’s hoping three days would suffice for getting the text and the rest of the assets in… (Tuesday edit: I got the text in)

Ha, who would think making a visual novel, a kinetic one at that, would take so much time?

…a lot, actually, and that’s what I want to talk about today. This is less an essay and more meandering thoughts I haven’t gotten the time to actually flesh out, feel free to skip.

A lot of people underestimate what it takes to make a visual novel, let alone a kinetic one. Join a visual novel jam, any jam, and you’re almost guaranteed to meet someone trying to roll out their custom implementation because they are experienced coders and wouldn’t bother with an engine. The good-natured community would try to warn them, to which they were assured that this wouldn’t be their first time devving. Fast forward to the end of the jam, and you’d find them not submitting, because what a surprise, the bog-standard skip-seen-text and rollback feature are…somehow more difficult than they thought. (if you’re joining with the intention to try building an engine, more power to you)

You’re kidding me! These are, what, basically Keynote/Powerpoint slides!

Stripped of “gameplay” and away from the scrutiny of “mainstream” games (whatever that means these days), making text looks good on screen and the reading experience smooth are surprisingly challenging. Many games put their graphic assets forward and in the name of aesthetics forsake text readability. Many AAA games fail to account for text size when viewed from across the room, probably thinking full voice acting make up for that. No. Then the ever-evolving resolution creates this confusing situation where sometimes you have to sacrifice your sprites to make sure the dialogue stays crisp.

A lot of VNs find success on mobile platforms because just like ebooks, they are easy to pick up on the go. Don’t get me started on mobile development.

And if getting someone to play your game is hard enough, getting someone to finish it is even harder. You’d think Visual Novel as a medium self-selects people who are predisposed to reading, but this is not always the case. With VN being relegated to a niche within anime-aesthetics enjoyer, the visual appeal is getting more and more demanding, though you should also ask yourself if this is the audience you wish to support. Let’s not shoot the message. I’m happy to shell out money for barebones release so long as the story is engaging, this is not the case for many people. A lot of VNs are, frankly, boring, and fail to make use of the medium.

After all, you could have written a novel instead. (Don’t think too much about this if you’re a hobbyist. I do visual novel short stories simply because it lets me tinker)

Easy, you say. Just amp up the production value. More movement! More sprites! It’s important not to get over the top, because at that point, you’re probably halfway to making an anime without a production committee to back you up. Welp. There’s a reason major VN companies in Japan sustain themselves from merch and gimmicky limited editions. It’s funny, because as a genre this is the kind of game one would usually recommend a beginner dev to start with, but then the ‘acceptable’ standard for it seems invariably high. Not really. This hasn’t been always the case. We’re just more mature as a community now, with greater access to resources and lower barrier of entry. It also makes me feel bad for lack of polish, because it feels like a personal failing than anything (this is, obviously, a me problem).

Where does this put a VN at, then? Well, to start with, it’s a nebulous term and good luck getting people to agree on one defini– eh, semantics schmancy. I believe VN is an interesting medium in the potential it has in presenting text and providing texture by way we interact with the narrative. Even if the experience is purely kinetic, it’s still something you go through in your own pace, on your own terms. We’re on the cusp of an indie VN renaissance, with more and more people discovering this medium and making a lot of interesting things. We’re eating good. If no one can agree what it is, then we can all make something different for everyone.