Anyone know much about making Visual Novels?

Yozora

A friend of mine is interested in doing this little project and I agreed to help her with the drawings, but neither of us have any experience making a Visual Novel, so we're sorta just looking at popular ones and see what they used to make theirs.

Currently we're looking at Ren'Py (http://www.renpy.org/), I have no idea how it compares with other ones and stuff so I am going to do some research before we do pick it, just posting here as well because someone may know more on this subject

The scripting in Ren'Py seems extremely basic, I'm not sure how advanced it can go - I certainly will feel comfortable "coding" it (if we can even call that coding). But I don't think we'll be needing anything fancy for our first attempt anyway!

Oh also, if any of you have some recommendations for some VN's that you enjoyed, feel free to suggest them too, I'm gonna be checking out a few just for research purposes My friend recommended I should play RE:Alistair and Katawa Shoujo.

R3D

From what I hear, Ren'Py is widely regarded as the only one worth using.

Also check out Juniper's Knot http://www.moddb.com/games/junipers-knot

Zwebbie

I love Ren'Py because it's so easy. It takes only minutes to learn how to set up a visual novel if you're just going by text and choices, which is an ideal way to make something interactive for someone as code-illiterate as myself.

The aforementioned Juniper's Knot is definitely worth checking out, it's one of the most sleekly professional things I've ever seen.

Another recommendation might be Christine Love's latest three games, Digital, don't take it personally babe and Analogue. They're pretty clever in using different ways of communication with funkily coded UIs, while still maintaining the non-game nature of VNs and that slow pace.

Word of warning, though, I don't think there's a (Ren'Py) visual novel out there as yet that's actually good. There's lots of potential, but much writing skill yet.

Ben Apuna

Cinders by Tom Grochowiak and Gracjana Zielinska looks interesting. It's coming out soon. I think they might have used Game Maker, not 100% sure on that though.

Yozora

Cool, I like the look of Juniper's Knot! Not so sure about the art style in cinders, might check it out for ideas on VNs anyway

Thanks for the suggestions!

Ben Apuna

I just learned about Novelty on TIGSource. It might be worth looking into, though I'd still go with Ren'Py just because it's got a proven track record and likely a larger developer community to get help/learn from.