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Eldwood21 days ago(+1)

I recommend starting with Twine. Either that or RPGMaker.

Don’t start by looking for a team. The only teams that will accept a newbie with no experience are doomed to failure because they consist entirely of newbies. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, so try not to be the weakest link, but also avoid teams with weaker links than you.

Don’t start with a general purpose game engine like GameMaker or Unity or Godot. Without programming experience, it’ll take months or years before you can tackle a game that can be called “narrative”.

Don’t start without an engine. Same problem as with a general purpose game engine, only worse.

Do start with a game engine that is specifically designed for narrative games. Twine works, and requires no artwork. If that’s too minimal, RPGMaker also works, and comes with enough artwork built in to get you started. There are also some visual novel engines that could work, but they usually don’t come with artwork built in.

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star_star_x20 days ago

I use the Route VN Creator engine, although it's not well-known, but it's easy to use and designed for this type of game.

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Stitched Realms19 days ago

Route VN Creator engine looks interesting. How's it going?

I've been developing my own tool for creating branching narratives in Ren'py.

But whatever tool you're using build the smallest possible story, then expand. So something like:

  • Intro - choice - endings for each choice.
  • Then do a fairly linear story, with multiple choices, but only one in each leads to the next. All other branches are dead ends.
  • Then do a story with multiple choices in multiple different scenes (adding in locations)
  • Add some dialogue with one character.
  • Add in different character states / emotions for the character.
  • Add in different characters.
  • Make some of the dialogue conditional on choices.
  • Introduce different ways to create outcomes based on the entire game play (not just the last choice)
    • Do a single-dimensional "score." Choice increment the score, and create different outcomes for different score bands
    • Save "choice" flags (a variable holding the outcome of a choice). Create different endings (or an ending with different segments) for important choice flags. Unimportant choice flags might affect dialogue or narration, but not the ending.
    • Combine those techniques for an ending based on a score, with little additions for choices the player did or did not make

At this point, you have a truly branching narratives, different scenes, and different characters. A lot could be done simply by combining these techniques (using multiple scores -> relationship scores associated with particular characters -> outcome now depends on your relationships).

At the point where you done all this, you've probably already gotten familiar with the basics technical pieces of your platform: narration, dialogue, character and scene visuals, variables, conditionals, some UI/menus possibly etc. More advanced features will seem easier. For example, loops where characters can explore an area until a certain condition is met, maps, character stats, inventory will all be easier.

Let me know if you have questions about a more specific step.

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