Why visual novel game development matters to me

Hello friends and welcome to the New Year! Its been a while since my last post as Ive been managing a busy schedule between my full-time job as a support engineer and helping my son with his remote learning.

For this article, Im focusing on visual novel game development and why it matters to me tremendously. Since 2018, I was introduced to visual novel programming when I wanted to make a simple game featuring my cow character from my webcomics. Though my art style has changed throughout the years, Im happy that Ive managed to keep on learning new techniques. The satisfaction behind combining code and art makes it worthwhile to share my projects.

Ive played a good amount of visual novel games, and I can tell you that it amazes me to see so many different interactive stories. I enjoy supporting other visual novel developers who are creating their unique games.

Ill be honest - Ive had some folks who berated my projects since they believe that visual novel game development isnt real development. And thats because it falls under the assumed notion that anytime we think of game development, its easy and shouldnt require a lot of brainpower.

Im here to tell you that its not the case. Game development, just like any other development field, requires the ability to plan and develop your project through phases. No matter the language/framework involved, youre building a functional piece of software. Itll require testing, rewriting code, testing it again, maybe refactor to keep the code neat and tidy, and the cycle pretty much repeats itself until youre satisfied with the end result.

Visual novel games, to me, is a beautiful marriage of code and storytelling. As Ive to use RenPy for developing my games, I can incorporate some Python scripts, if needed. Im also utilizing my own writings and art assets in creating my story. To me, its a labor of love and Im in awe of how the pieces interact with each other to make the game come to life.

My end goal for creating visual novel games is simple - to make others smile. Money isnt a motivator when I build my games. I just love creating them.

If you're an aspiring visual novel game developer and don't know where to start, you can check out my series on creating a simple visual novel game using Ren'Py.

Thanks for reading my article! If you happen to like it, I appreciate your thoughts in the comments section. Lastly, don't forget to follow me on my visual novel game development, test automation adventures, and webcomics via Twitter.