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What does a modern visual novel release look like?

arimia

Or, “how I ended up releasing 2 commercial visual novels in the same week”.

Visual novels, sound novels, and adventure games have been around for a handful of decades now, with their presence in America & other Western countries being around 3 decades long. A lot has changed in the gaming and doujin industries respectively in that time frame—nowadays, anyone can make visual novels on their own and small groups can even make a living from them.

But what does it look like to actually release a commercial visual novel in the mid 2020s? Today I’m going to compare the releases for two visual novels I worked on, A Tithe in Blood and Asphodelium.

As a quick disclaimer: how I release games is not indicative of how every single visual novel developer releases their games.

Overview

Both of the projects I’m talking about today, A Tithe in Blood and Asphodelium, had Steam page launches in summer of 2024 with their full Steam releases during the week of June 16th 2025.

A Tithe in Blood

A Tithe in Blood is a yuri visual novel developed by Studio Élan over the course of a few years.

  • 65k~ words long
  • several developers (artists, programmers, etc)
  • dark fantasy yuri romance
  • 1 love interest
  • 1 ending / no choices
  • 3 languages (English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese)
  • Japanese voice acting

The Steam page was published in June 2024. The full release was on June 16, 2025.

Asphodelium

Asphodelium is a boys love visual novel I made by myself in 2024 and decided to extend into a commercial director’s cut for its Steam release. I spent around 5-6 months making the entire game.

  • 64k~ words long
  • 1 developer (me)
  • dark fantasy boys love romance
  • 1 love interest
  • multiple endings
  • 1 language (English)
  • no voice acting

The Steam page was published in August 2024. The full release was on June 18, 2025.

As you can tell, these two games have very different budgets. Asphodelium had a very small budget and was building on top of a game jam build, whereas A Tithe in Blood had a lot of hands on deck as well as a focus on multiple translations, high quality art, and more.

The releases also came from different backgrounds. I’ve only recently come back to releasing full visual novels on Steam, so I don’t have an established audience for my works yet. On the other hand, at Studio Élan we’ve released lots of high quality yuri visual novels and have a dedicated fanbase.

So what does it look like to release a visual novel, with both of our reference points being on different ends of the scales?

A Year Out

A Tithe in Blood was announced with a playable demo and Steam page in early June, so we hit the ground sprinting. This announcement was at a panel at OffKai Expo 2024, an annual vtuber convention we always booth at, where we announced it alongside a 2nd game as well. I had sent out a press release a few days prior that was embargoed until the panel ended, which was sent out to people who had signed up on our press list and to a few other gaming journalism sites with open emails.

Asphodelium’s Steam page launched with a “demo” a short time later in August, though the demo was the original build of the game (40k words). It was a much more lowkey launch, as the game was already “released” and I wasn’t entirely sure at the time if I wanted the full game to be commercial or not. (Losing my fulltime job and deciding to do VNs fulltime for a while was the deciding factor)

Both visual novels had Steam pages up a year out (Asphodelium’s was around late August, but regardless), giving them that much time to accrue wishlists. Steam wishlists are something you’ll hear often in indie game dev—essentially, when someone has a game on their wishlist and it releases, they receive an email on release day. That means if you have 3,000 wishlists, then 3,000 people have been emailed that the game has released. Not only that but wishlists and page follows are some of the metrics Steam most likely uses when ranking games in its algorithm—not the only metrics, but still important ones nonetheless, especially if aiming for Popular Upcoming. Asphodelium never had a real chance at hitting Popular Upcoming due to the 10k~ wishlists needed to hit it, but A Tithe in Blood was always aiming for that.

Both games had been in development for some time before their Steam page launches. For A Tithe in Blood, it was in development for a handful of years (I believe 2 or 3?) before we announced it with the Steam page demo launch. For Asphodelium, it had already been released as a game jam game a few months prior.

Most players on Steam won’t play your demo before wishlisting which becomes apparent when you enter any modern Steam Next Fest, but having a demo up months before release brings more eyes to your game. Demos are featured in more places as they can appear on search results and streamers can play demos which will share the game with their audiences. Even if it’s not a proper “demo”, it can help a lot.

I’m talking a lot about Steam, but what about social media? In reality, social media is only one aspect out of many for marketing & releasing games (or any product). Tweets and posts can help get the word out, but you still need a solid foundation–what are you making? How easy is it to understand the story? Why should I play it?

At this time, we were still active on Twitter with 14k+ followers, so our announcement posts looked like this.

For the most part, social media posts are for “gliding”. You shouldn’t expect to “soar” (i.e. get popular) off of social media posts–rather, use them to continue the work you’re already doing and glide along. Even JVN publishers that don’t want to market their VNs realize social media isn’t end all be all. So what does the bulk of marketing look like?

Several Months Out

Once you have a solid Steam page set up and a good demo, the majority of modern game marketing is 2 parts: consistency and showcases.

Consistency is showing up regularly and reminding people you exist. This is where social media comes in, where streamers come in, where monthly devlogs come in.

Showcasing is getting in front of fresh eyes with like-minded games. This is participating in festivals, showcases, events, and conventions.

These two categories have some overlap, as streamers can also be part of showcasing, but in general they serve different purposes. Consistency is for people who already know you and showcases are for people who don’t.

Consistency

Consistency is the “gliding” part I was mentioning earlier, though some of it is more active than passive. For my games, this means:

  • posting on social media at least a few times a week (I post daily on the Élan accounts and a few times a week on my own)
    • new screenshots
    • concept art
    • WIP artworks
    • in game videos
    • snippets of the trailer
    • quick text updates
  • making videos showing off new art, in-game previews, etc.
  • keeping our Discord engaged by sharing updates, having community channels, etc.
  • giving Patreon members updates at least once a month / writing monthly devlogs with progress
  • reaching out to streamers to play the demo

Just like how a game is developed over time, little by little, marketing is something you do consistently, little by little.

One thing I like to do for my own games is make quick videos for YouTube—these can be in-game previews showing off a scene or animation, art timelapses, mini trailers, and more—and using those in my monthly devlogs and on social media. Be efficient and reuse what you have.

When you’re in this stage, you need to figure out the voice of your project. What is the purpose of it? Why are you making it? How do you convey that to a stranger?

I call Asphodelium a game about cults, killing, and killing cults. And being in love. (sometimes, “And being gay”). The majority of the story is a melancholic slice-of-life romance, but the inciting incident is death. This is a game about cults and murder. I later also made the pitch “You killed him once before. Will you make the same mistake again?” with some variations (such as “Don’t make the same mistake again”).

Yesterday was a scripting day for Asphodelium! The extended version contains lots of new endings & ways to interact with your love interest Aster. You killed him before. Will you keep him on the right path away from his cult, or will you make the same mistakes again? 🔪Wishlist it: s.team/a/3139260

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— Crystal Game Works (@crystalgameworks.com) March 25, 2025 at 12:52 PM

Due to focusing on streamer outreach for other projects and the lack of streamers playing SFW boys love games, I didn’t reach out to streamers for the demo for Asphodelium (instead waiting for the full release), but it did get some people interested.

For A Tithe in Blood, we began building a streamer list months out. The list was mostly created by mado who used tools like SullyGnome to find active streamers who would be a good fit for the title. As it’s a linear yuri visual novel with darker themes, we wanted streamers who matched some of these qualities:

  • plays visual novels
  • likes yuri, or is at least LGBT+ positive
  • is okay with games that don’t have choices or gameplay
  • is okay with darker themes

For example, we came across a lot of streamers who were streaming Hundred Line when it released, but we found a lot of these streamers most likely weren’t good fits for A Tithe in Blood as several of them were sponsored streams (i.e. paid to play it) or they normally stream gameplay heavy games instead of visual novels. It doesn’t hurt to send streamers an email asking to play your game, but at the same time you want to focus on people who seem most likely to enjoy it.

Here’s an example of one of the emails I sent out to a batch of streamers for the demo. I keep mine short and to the point, with a clear pitch, reasons they might be interested, an eye-catching image or two, and easy to see links. Streamers want a press kit that contains a logo for the game and any artwork they can use, links to the store page(s), your social media handles, and a clear “you have permission to stream this”. For our visual novels, we allow streamers to stream them in their entirety, which is explained further on our Streaming Policy page. This transparency gives streamers some peace of mind.

Showcases

Showcases, festivals, and events are how you “reliably” get your game in front of new people. It’s reliable when you can get in, but the competition can be fierce.

Steam festivals are events where games that have some similar connection (a collection of short games, of romance visual novels, of wholesome games, etc) and are given a custom landing page on Steam with every game in the festival having a banner on the top of the pages to promote said festival. Some are ran by Valve and can be signed up for on the Steamworks dashboard while others are developer-ran and have to be sought out.

A large part of modern Steam marketing is entering festivals and leveraging exclusivity with these festivals. Some festivals are just a Steam landing page while others also include a livestreamed showcase showing off games. The ones with video showcases are typically the bigger events which want exclusivity, such as a brand new trailer to show off or a developer interview.

With the short turnaround time of a year (yes, that’s short), our options for festivals were already limited. I submitted A Tithe in Blood to multiple festivals & showcases such as LudoNarraCon and several of the women-led showcases but to no avail—just because your game fits the themes doesn’t mean you’ll get in! Both games were able to get into the 2025 Storyteller’s Festival, though, which is ran by the lovely people at Two and a Half Studios.

Visual novels tend to be a hard sell for some festivals, especially the bigger ones that aren’t aimed at story-driven games, so you get used to rejections. Still, a good festival can be an easy 500+ wishlists in a week.

Showcases can also be in-person. At Élan, we attended a handful of conventions while A Tithe in Blood was in development. We announced it at OffKai Expo 2024, later went to Otakon and a few others, and then went back to OffKai the weekend it released. Conventions give you a unique ability to talk to players and explain your game to them, giving them fliers or brochures and even possibly letting them try the demo at your booth. At ours we focus more on selling physical games with merch and handing out fliers, but other convention booths can be more focused on playtests. It all depends on what you want out of a convention and what the convention focuses on.

A Few Months Out

A few months out saw a greater increase on reaching out to streamers for A Tithe in Blood as well as solidifying dates for both releases. …So I suppose now I should explain how I ended up with both releases on the same week.

We were originally planning May for both, but June was decided on so that they could both be in the June Steam Next Fest (I discussed this with the A Tithe in Blood devs and then realized I should do the same with Asphodelium). Next Fest is the festival Valve hosts multiple times a year for showcasing only upcoming games, putting a heavier emphasis on trying out demos and wishlisting these upcoming titles. You’re practically guaranteed a few hundred wishlists from it.

With A Tithe in Blood set to be done in May to meet our physical copies deadline, we decided on June 16th for it—the last day of the Next Fest and the first day we could release it (as you cannot release a game in Next Fest during Next Fest, so we waited for a few hours after it ended). We attend OffKai Expo every year which was happening that weekend, which was another deadline we had to make. A Tithe in Blood needed to come out before the convention.

I was then going to release Asphodelium once I got home, but something else came up—Citrus Con. It’s an online boys love convention held annually, and lo-and-behold, I was accepted to the artist alley almost as soon as we decided on June 16th for A Tithe in Blood. And guess what weekend Citrus Con was held this year…

Realizing I couldn’t release a game while on a plane (as a Steam release is still a manual process) but also knowing I needed the game out before Citrus Con and that it couldn’t release during Next Fest, I resigned myself to releasing it that Wednesday. And thus, the beginning of a hell week formed…

You killed him once before. Will you make the same mistake again? Our dark fantasy boys love visual novel, Asphodelium, will release on June 18th! This is a story about cults, killing, and killing cults. And being gay. 🔪 Wishlist it: store.steampowered.com/app/3139260/… #boyslove #bl

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— Crystal Game Works (@crystalgameworks.com) May 13, 2025 at 12:21 PM

Once you’re a few months out (3~ months) from release, your path is set. There aren’t any more festivals you can enter in such a tight turn around that will happen before release and there’s very little you can do to drastically alter wishlist rates. We announced a few months out that A Tithe in Blood would get a simplified Chinese translation on release which did bump our daily wishlist rate to around 25/day, but outside of big announcements like this (that happen to catch the intended audience), you’re not going to affect the daily stats much. That’s not to say you should give up—rather, you should realize from the time you announce a game that you’re in it for the long haul.

One of the pain points that came up around this time was actually the translations—or rather, my ignorance of languages. I’m monolingual. I speak English and can read kana, but I can’t speak Japanese and definitely don’t understand conjugation and such. Translations are a great way to get your game in front of more players but pose new challenges. How do you properly test a game you can’t read? How do you market a game to people who don’t speak your language?

For prior releases, I usually have been on my own for posts, in the sense that I set my own schedule and post on my own volition. Sometimes I’ll be reminded or told to post something (“hey, here’s a new Patreon post I set to live”) but in general I manage the social media accounts without getting feedback on every single post. When trying to share posts about a translation though, we had to change this. We ended up in a flow where I would draft posts, get them reviewed by the devs, and then they would be translated. This wasn’t hard but it is something to be aware of if you want to translate your own games.

For Asphodelium, I tried seeing if the Tiktok audience would be interested as quite a few yandere and dark romance visual novels are popular there, but I couldn’t get a foothold. Asphodelium is commercial, displayed in NVL mode with not a lot of cutscene artwork, and is low on the yandere scales (despite 2 dead endings), so it’s not as eye-catching as some of the free romance visual novels on itchio. Most players on Tiktok seem to want customizable protagonists in their romance games as well, which made it harder to get a strong response.

@crystalgameworks this is Asphodelium, my dark boys love romance visual novel that ive been making by myself 💕 it follows a group of adventurers after their journey is over and living with the guilt of their previous guild leader who betrayed them. the main character hasn't recovered since this event, but one day he meets a man that looks just like their old guild leader. he agrees to help him, though doubt and mistrust finds its way in….. why is this man here? how much does he know about his previous life? what will he do when he finds out? I'm making this romance visual novel by myself and it's currently playable on Steam and itch.io, so check it out if you like boys love romance or dark visual novels! 💜 #visualnovel #visualnovelgame #yaoi #bl #boyslove #visualnovels ♬ Cute heartwarming BGM(1490583) – sanusagi

Final Weeks

Development wraps up. Visual novels are more complex than they seem, and the more components that you add to it (accessibility features, voice acting, translations, animation effects, etc.) the more that has to be tested and potentially patched. So while the bulk of development should be wrapping up in the weeks leading up to release, it’s not uncommon for even “simple” visual novels to need last minute bug fixes.

While the development team was putting the final touches on A Tithe in Blood, I was busy ramping up my streamer emails and finishing Asphodelium’s development. Development-wise was pretty simple—Asphodelium is an NVL-mode visual novel with only 6 on-screen characters and isn’t as animation heavy as some of my previous games like Canvas Menagerie. I was able to wrap up the game fully before release week, which meant the entire story was scripted into Ren’Py with audio, transitions, Steam achievements, and an in-game art gallery. Testing each of the endings (as there’s 6 main endings and several side endings, including 2 dead ends) took some time but was still done in a day or so.

Streamers, however, were a much lengthier process. In the end, I emailed over 110 people to play A Tithe in Blood, with an additional 50 or so contacted for the launch press release.

In the couple of weeks leading up to the launches, I did a few things like:

  • Sent out a press release to journalists on our press list at Élan and other notable sites
  • Posted cutscene artwork to art share subs on Reddit
  • Posted countdown guest artworks counting down to release

As I was traveling very soon after the release of both games, I began drafting release materials weeks in advance. So what did I plan for the launch day for A Tithe in Blood?

  • Steam announcement post on the A Tithe in Blood page
  • Steam announcement posts on our previous yuri games linking to A Tithe in Blood
  • itchio announcement post on the A Tithe in Blood page
  • newsletter email
  • Patreon post
  • Discord ping in our community server
  • Bsky post
  • Tweet
  • Instagram post
  • Tumblr post
  • Reddit post

Most of the blog posts and social media posts were the same, just being slightly edited to fit the individual websites and content. Getting ready weeks in advance helps fix any mistakes and avoid crunching last minute.

Our dark fantasy yuri visual novel A Tithe in Blood releases in just 5 days! It has an English script with a Japanese translation & Japanese voice acting. Can love bloom in the depths of grief? 🎨: @00myuto.bsky.social 🩸 Play the demo: store.steampowered.com/app/2989270/…

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— Studio Élan @ Upwards Rain July 1st (@vnstudioelan.com) June 11, 2025 at 4:05 PM

Once you hit 2 weeks out from the release date set on Steam, there’s no going back. You can’t change it without a plea to Valve (and a strongly worded email back from them). Be sure your release date and time is exactly what you want it to be before this…!

Release

A Tithe in Blood released just a few hours after Next Fest wrapped with little competition also releasing that day. We hit 12k wishlists right before release, landing us on the top of Popular Upcoming for a couple of hours.

We already had several streamers lined up, so it was a thoroughly busy day! After posting all of the announcements and posts, I monitor our notifications to see what people are saying and anything I’d want to repost such as stream announcements, fan art, staff member posts, etc.

A Tithe in Blood is out NOW! In the depths of grief, Honoka discovers blood magic, but her meddling may have consequences… 🩸 a dark yuri visual novel around 70k words long 📖 English script with JP & CN translations 🎙️ full JP voice acting Play now: store.steampowered.com/app/2989270/…

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— Studio Élan @ Upwards Rain July 1st (@vnstudioelan.com) June 16, 2025 at 4:01 PM

With A Tithe in Blood I had other people helping out with some of the Steam back end details and more, whereas for Asphodelium (since it was just myself) I also had to…

  • set Steam release to live (a manual process)
  • upload final builds to itchio and set it to live
  • make sure bundles are all live (and have proper graphics for each)

Before launch I was able to make a collab bundle with my friend Nia for her game Fearbonding, where we created a toxic boys love bundle together. It took a bit of set up (and most of the time was spent on the graphics), but now we can cross promote our similar games easily!

After release, you sit back, fix any bugs, wait for reviews, and try to relax….

…and then do it all over again for the next game.

Final Thoughts

Although some postmortems go into steps for releasing games, I hadn’t really seen any go into detail on how a visual novel—namely, a modern one—is released. This definitely isn’t the only way to release a visual novel, as every release is different for each game and studio, but I hope it sheds some light and demystifies the process a bit.

Both games also got physical releases, with A Tithe in Blood’s being a beautiful DVD case with a pamphlet inside and mine being handmade CDs. I’ll always love physical media, you can’t take it away from me!!

My next projects are to release Upwards, Rain! The Post Office of Farewells at Élan which releases tomorrow, July 1st (and I’m procrastinating writing the release drafts by writing this) and the Kickstarter for my Victorian vampire otome game, Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea: Amaranthine Moon. I’ve marketed several Kickstarters over the years but never actually ran one of my own. So, time for me to learn!

I’m also already working on my next Steam festival, which is a general romance-themed visual novel festival. It’s open to any kind of romance, from otome to boys love and more, but only for visual novels. Submissions close July 15th with the festival slated for late September.

Until next time!

— Arimia

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