[Visual Novel Devlog] White Room Journal 0.2

Avatar for ahmadmanga
2 years ago

"White Room Journal" is a short 5 minutes Visual Novel about a girl in a hospital and her weekly meetings with the player character. I developed this project to practice making a visual novel with Ren'py.


Play Links:


Story

This story is about a girl who likes reading and her time in the hospital, waiting for your weekly visits.

Goals

  • To develop a complete short experience that allows me to practice everything I need to make a longer one.

  • The project should be a "Kinetic Novel" so I won't have to think of alternatives options/routes while writing, which will make the story easier to write & folllow.

  • The project should be easy to port. I wanted to write a visual novel that I could use to learn a new game development engine without worrying about coming up with a new script.

  • The project should be visually appealing. I'm not a great artist, but I'm confident of my art's uniqueness. I choose monochrome coloring since it's easier to let the details stick out this way.

I managed to fulfill all of these goals with this pilot version, and my next goal would be to make it more interesting to read/play.

Devlog

I wanted to write a visual novel like this for a while, but I wasn't confident I could write a short story, but when I finally started writing the story, it basically write itself.

The main prompt is "short meetings once a week," I wrote things for prompts like that before, including the short story "SAYA Is Offline" but it's the first time I wrote it from one character's perspective, I imagine the other character to be the player, but you can think of it as you want.

After writing the story, I decided on an engine. Between Construct 3TwineRen'py I settled on the latter. (I tried Rakugo too, but I went back to Ren'py.) The language of this Renpy is easy to learn. I also didn't need to look hard to find out how to use Text Tags & Transforms. I used both heavily in "White Room."

I drew the art myself using my tablet, that includes the background and the character and her various portrait shots. I drew using tablet before, but this project is the time I finally started thinking, I'm getting used to it.

As for the audio, I didn't do any sound-design in this project. This is a completely silent Visual Novel.

All-in-all, I'm proud of this pilot version of this VN, and I'll edit it some more. Maybe add another twist or two if I had time.

Pieces of Feedback

Before publishing the game, I gave it to a few people to play, including my brother and the Hive user @ditoferrer. I got some nice feedback about this pilot version, but other than a few typos, I won't mention them in this post to encourage you to give me your own feedback.

Please tell me your opinion if you played this project.


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Avatar for ahmadmanga
2 years ago
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Comments

Visual content is always more interesting than purely text content. I am curious about "renpy" and other visual tools.

$ 0.00
1 year ago

I agree... Renpy is also easy to write Visual Novels in after you learn the basics, especially if you don't want to change the GUI and Menu so much. (I didn't change them for this project, but I want to eventually make my own.)

$ 0.00
1 year ago

I am glad you "clicked" on my post, and I have explored your posts, particularly the article on visual content and "renpy." I am subscribing to your blog.

$ 0.00
1 year ago

White Room Journal "At first I thought it was awkward reading the title. I read about a girl and her project connected. At first I had a hard time understanding. Later it became clear that it was a game project. I haven't played yet. If I play then I can move on. .

$ 0.05
1 year ago

Yes, it's a game, and I even though I wrote this title I think it's awkward... I wish you play this Visual Novel and tell me your opinion, it'll help for my next project.

$ 0.00
1 year ago

The title is not awkward. Has been rather interesting.

$ 0.01
1 year ago