More about the story
The story is about a male MC who is directionless and wandering through life. At this point in his life, he encounters 3 girls who are imbalanced in some way. For example, one may be obsessed with work but their social life suffers. As the characters interact with each other they will shape their future and hopefully gain a new perspective on things that will take them down a more fulfilling life path.
More about the gameplay
This is a branching narrative with different outcomes and where each choice assigns you a combination of points in the traits of mind, heart, and skill. Each girl needs a combination of different things in order to achieve the highest relationship level with them, (and probably to see their full story pan out). You can end as an acquaintance, friend, or lover, with lover being an option only if the correct number and combination of points are reached.
More about the setting
It takes place in a nondescript city. It's a mesh of cities large cities like Chicago and Tokyo. Other notes, I already have another game idea which will include characters from this game.
Thoughts on making my first visual novel
It's a lot of fun. Although, you couldn't tell by how inconsistently I work on it. At this point I am just focusing on getting the story out and not worrying about the branching logic anymore, as it slows the flow of writing and I get frustrated with Visual Novel Maker, since I'm still learning it. I can tell it's dated, but it works for what I need it to do. I'm looking forward to exploring other software like Godot and Ren'Py in the future.
It's funny that when I sat down to make this I thought it would take a few months and I could knock out a chapter quickly. I quickly noticed that the game I'm making has a lot of branching choices, so it creates a lot of work, but it's fun.