Again, not clickbait!! I played over 50 entries for Spooktober Visual Novel Jam, a Halloween-themed visual novel game jam, where I’m a judge. Every visual novel in the jam was made in 1 month, with judging taking up about 3-4 weeks during October.
As a follow up to last year’s article I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs, I’ll be talking about some of my favorite entries and what we can learn from them!
audio matters!
Some of my favorite visual novels market themselves as sound novels like Umineko no Naku Koro ni, because the audio does a lot of heavy lifting in conveying the story. While it can be hard to put a lot of work into audio in such a short amount of time, it’s the simple things that really matter. Well balanced audio, accurate sound effects, and music that fits the mood can really turn a decent visual novel into a great visual novel.
Two of the entries that used audio really well were Märchen Line and Epimutation. Both utilized sound effects well and had immersive custom sound tracks to set the horror the characters were trapped in.
Thanks to sites like Freesound and DOVA-SYNDROME, anyone can access thousands of free to use audio SFX and BGMs of varying quality. I have a bad habit of leaving audio as the last thing on projects, so don’t follow in my footsteps!!
good visual direction =/= lots of custom art
Having lots of custom artwork is a good way to make your visual novel feel more lively, but isn’t always the solution. Good visual direction doesn’t meant having lots of art – it’s knowing how to use the artwork you have.
CANIDAE is a visceral horror visual novel with very minimal artwork, and the artwork that is used in it is edited images. But, they’re edited in a way that not only fits the game but heightens the horror.
Another entry that I enjoyed that made good use of few assets was BAD MANORS. There’s only 1 character sprite and some of the backgrounds are filtered photos (filtered photo BGs my beloved), but it fits the narrative. You’re in an escape room with 1 person and he’s the only one that matters in this situation.
And another entry that had a solid visual direction despite few art assets was Let’s Watch Steamboat Willie, a visual novel that entirely takes place during the runtime of Steamboat Willie, where you see 2 film nerds watch it. The animation is just the set dressing for the real plot, which quite literally happens around it.
use preexisting assets
In the same vein, don’t be afraid to use premade assets! There’s a ton of free to use assets out there from music to backgrounds to gameplay features and more.
One example is the RPG visual novel Post Memory. It’s made in RPG Maker and utilizes several publicly available plugins created by others. Work smarter, not harder!
gui is the icing on top
At the end of the day, visual novels aren’t books – they’re pieces of software we interact with to experience the story. Even when there aren’t any choices present, there still has to be some kind of user interface for the user to, well, interface with. To be able to interact with the piece of software.
One of the stand out entries this year for doing more with their GUI was Zodiac Paradigm. The UI isn’t overly detailed with lots of shading or ornate decorations, but the animations give it a sleek feel and it all fits together well.
Another one that doesn’t go for a standard ADV format and instead tries something vastly different is Shut-in Vampire. The story is told in NVL format through chat logs, but it doesn’t feel like a typical chat-sim, rather it’s more akin to older galges.
story and visuals go hand in hand
Visual novels are a marriage of story and visuals. Like any good marriage, they have to support each other to show off their full potential together. The visuals should support the narrative being presented to the reader and the narrative should support the visuals being presented.
This sounds simple, but it’s hard to get from good to great when combining visuals and story. However, several entries this year really highlighted how to merge the two!
As a psychological horror game, MAMA showcases how to utilize realistic horror with psychedelic and uncanny visuals. It exceeds in making you uncomfortable, pulling the reader into a very real horror.
Another entry that lets the visuals accent the narrative is Spirit Driver. The entire story is told from the perspective of a cab driver who deals with human and not-so-human clientele, so the majority of the visual novel is shot from the front of his car.
don’t remove basic features!!
One of the perks of using an engine like Ren’Py that’s tailor-made for visual novels is that it comes jam-packed with years and years of premade visual novel features, such as auto text, history screens, skip text, and more. When you use engines and frameworks made for visual novels, you don’t have to worry about adding these basic quality of life features yourself, which saves development time and hassle.
But you also shouldn’t go out of your way to remove these features – some are quality of life features while a lot are accessibility features that make the experience easier to digest. If the engine already provides the features, don’t remove them without good reason (and even then, you probably don’t have a very good reason to remove them). Players that aren’t frustrated with your interface are much more likely to enjoy the experience than players that are!
please test your games!!
If you want others to be able to play your game, they need to be able to actually play your game. Unfortunately, there were a large amount of possible winners this year that ended up being disqualified due to game breaking bugs, softlocks, and crashes. This happens every year but it felt even more pronounced this year.
Here’s some ways to minimize the chances of your game crashing:
- have dedicated quality assurance volunteers
- test the game yourself
- create smaller games
have dedicated quality assurance volunteers
Get some people who are interested in being QA testers – and make sure they know how to break a game.
Being a tester isn’t just playing the game, it’s throwing hammers at a game and trying to play it with a banana instead of a controller. A good tester actively tries to break the game. They try different routes, different choice sequences, verifying the keyboard and numpad won’t break, etc.
Having QA testers is great but only if they actually test.
test the game yourself
This is something you should be doing regardless – just run through the game a few times yourself. Put it on auto or skip if you have to. At the bare minimum, just verify that it actually runs and you can reach your endings.
If you’re using Ren’Py, run the Lint command as well. It will tell you some possible issues (if there are any), such as images not displaying properly. (On the Ren’Py Launcher, look under Actions and click “Check Script (Lint)”)
create smaller games
(this advice is primarily just for people looking to enter game jams, not for game dev in general)
When you only have a limited amount of time to make a game, the safest option is to make smaller games. There’s nothing wrong with making short visual novels, or having to cut the scope down on them, or even coming back and expanding them later. A short, released game is better than a long, unreleased game.
Typically the people that win Spooktober do so with short experiences, under an hour long. It’s much easier to polish a game that’s under an hour long than it is something that’s 2+ hours long – there’s so many more places the game could crash, there could be a missing variable, etc. Go for a short and sweet experience if you can!
wrap up
This year’s Spooktober was a bit easier going than previous ones as we had more judges to split the work between, but also more heartbreaking for me than previous ones as so many of my favorite games ended up being disqualified for crashes, game breaking bugs, and more. Still, I hope devs realize that it’s an accomplishment in itself to make a visual novel in just a month!
Now that Spooktober is over, I’ve set up the page for Winter VN Jam, a winter-themed visual novel jam during December. It’s a chill (pun intended) jam for making visual novels, with an emphasis on not rushing and just having fun.
I was also pretty busy this month doing scripting work for Canvas Menagerie and Studio Élan as well as preparing for the Dames 4 Games showcase, where Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea: Amaranthine Moon’s new trailer was shown off! Little Lucie is now on IGN’s YouTube channel…. wowee.
Hope you didn’t eat too much candy during Halloween ✨ and please go vote
— Arimia