As is tradition every Halloween, I get kidnapped and stuck in a windowless room with only a computer already loaded up with indie Halloween & horror-themed visual novels and forced to play said games before I can escape. It’s a daunting task, not because my life is on the line, but because, well, that’s a lot of visual novels! And so much time and heart went into them, but now I have to be judge, jury, and executioner??
The annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam has wrapped, along with our judging period for the entries. This year we implemented a new system, a judge pass, which not only allows us to fund some of the event with the small fee for games wanting to be judged, but also significantly cuts down on the workload for us judges. In prior years, the number of entries we had to read kept going up almost exponentially and was ultimately unsustainable at the level we were operating with, as each judge had to read 80+ visual novels within 3-4 weeks (one year, it was closer to 110). Suffice to say, the judge pass has worked well at allowing us to keep the event judged with prizes as well as keep the event afloat.
But, today I don’t want to talk about the logistics of the event—I want to recap it, including some looks at my favorite entries and some trends I’ve noticed.
If you want to see my advice from previous years, you can read my wrap-up posts from 2023 and 2024.
MVPs are MVP
This year more than prior years, I noticed an uptick in games clearly made around an MVP, or Minimum Viable Product. Several entries that made it to the final round of judging, such as Dead Stock and Strange Tales from Longchun: Sacrifice, are games that incorporated alternative ways of digesting a story, which was clearly developed through an MVP. Dead Stock has even been updated since the jam ended to expand upon the base game.
Building out a solid MVP is extremely helpful when you don’t have a linear story, or have some kind of gameplay mechanics integrated into the story. The idea of an MVP is simply “what is the roughest workable version of this game, so we can test it out and improve on it from there?”. It’s a building block that you refine to make better. With gameplay mechanics especially, it gives you a chance to see if there’s anything clearly missing or something you could do better before moving on.
Sometimes, however, overambitious MVPs can lead to not enough time to refine the ending. Getting a solid core gameloop is important, but so is resolving it in a satisfying way. Ultimately, we’re making visual novels here—we’re telling stories, and a lot of stories can be deflated by an unsatisfying or rushed ending. Finding a good balance is hard and requires a good amount of planning ahead.
back to the start
A lot—okay, a handful, but it felt like a lot—of visual novels this year were timeloops or timeloop-esque, where they required you to play through one storyline, threw you back to the main menu, and then made you press start again. And again.
The idea behind this system is to force the player to simulate the looping rather than having it be just a story element. It makes it slightly more interactive this way. I don’t really have a complaint about this system—it works, as clearly several devs went for it and made it work.
However, I did notice some did it better than others. This system works best when it’s clear there is a looping mechanic at work. Having the main menu change is a big help to this, to let the player know that something has changed. However, once the story has fully concluded and the looping has ceased, there needs to be a clear end. Have a credits roll, fade to black, show a restored or “final” main menu, etc. Looping can be fun, as it’s an interesting way to show off a story from multiple angles, but when you require the player to “self loop” (by booting them to the main menu and making them press “start”), it needs to be clear.
Personally, I plan on working on a couple of clown-themed timeloop stories soon, so I’ve been considering the format of looping mechanics quite a bit. For one game I plan on it being a multi-route otome where a single loop is an entire route, meaning the loop resetting would be the player going to a different route. For the second game, a much shorter one, I plan on it being more on-rails where the looping is just part of the story rather than something the player has to initiate—their choices lead to different loops and outcomes, but the looping (and most notably, the restart of a loop) is done automatically rather than forcing the player to the main menu to initiate it.
I wonder how it’d be for a story where at any time the player could restart a loop? At that point, it’d be pretty much the same as quitting the game and restarting it… What kind of consequences and changes could be added for restarting a loop mid-game, however? Something to think about…
the power of polish
The polish of a game comes in many forms. Some go for a sleek & seamless GUI; some go for beautiful character designs; some go for a bug-free and well edited experience; etc. The idea of polish is to make a game more refined (and hopefully more cohesive).
However, some entries had varied levels of polish across the board. When some parts are more polished than others, it makes the less polished parts stand out more. Character designs that are well thought out but the artwork is unfinished; solid art direction but the GUI is default; well-paced mini games but lackluster story pacing; etc.
Pacing yourself and your development as well as cutting scope will help prevent these situations. Don’t be afraid to cut down on aspects of a game if there isn’t enough time—you can always come back to games.
directing the stage
Quite a few entries this year had very solid art direction as well as scene direction / cinematography. A solid art direction is one that is cohesive, where every screenshots shows off a well-thought out character designs, settings, GUI, etc. You take one look at it and go “this person had a clear idea for how this game should look and feel”.
Good scene direction is where certain scenes feel very intentional, where the lead handcrafted the scenes. You look at a screenshot and go “this person knew exactly how they wanted this scene to look and achieved it”.
For me, a good vision for a game can make or break games. If I can see that the developer was going for something—even if they fell short—then I can appreciate the game more. If the design feels muddled and doesn’t feel like they had a clear direction, then it can be harder to be immersed in the game.
My favorite entry by far this year was Dead Ringer. The art was stylish, the character designs were distinct, the GUI was easy to read and navigate, the pacing and writing was well-crafted, and the scene direction was the icing on top. I especially loved whenever the camera would zoom in and do a search spotlight to highlight a character. A lot of care was put into making it a well-rounded experience and it shows.
All in all, this was a fantastic year for Spooktober—we now have 200+ more Halloween & horror-themed visual novels in the world. You can see all of the entries on itch.io! The top winners are listed on the wiki.
This was a fun year to judge, especially since it was less stressful with fewer entries to play. The first day of judging, October 1st, was the final day of my latest Steam festival, the Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival. It went fantastic, with over 200+ visual novels from 100+ developers. We even had a showcase for the festival, where I convinced my friends Lirie and Ran to host it (somehow)!
I have begun planning my festival(s?) for next year, more tinkering than anything solid. I want to take a break from them for the rest of the year and leave that stuff for 2026. November is almost here and I want to write!!
Anyway, go check out all the Spooktober entries~
— Arimia