Hey everyone!

I'm a hobbyist game developer working on my first visual novel, 21 Days, and I figured I'd finally stop keeping the project to myself and start sharing my progress here.

21 Days is a choice-driven visual novel centered around three girls and the events that unfold over 21 days. I'm particularly interested in exploring how player decisions can shape the story, relationships, and eventual outcomes.

I've always enjoyed games that give players an active role in how things unfold, so that's something I'm trying to incorporate into this project.

Where I'm at so far:

The overall concept, story structure, and gameplay design are pretty much finished. Now comes the part where I actually have to sit down and write everything, build the scenes, and implement all the branching logic. 😅

I'm developing the game in Visual Novel Maker and using its built-in assets for now. My main focus is on the writing, characters, and interactive elements.

A few things about the project:

• It's a solo hobby project.
• The finished game will be free.
• Player choices and branching outcomes are an important part of the experience.
• I'm hoping to keep the game relatively short and replayable.

I'd like to use this thread to document my progress, share occasional updates, and talk a little about the design process as I go.

I'm still learning as I make things, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of trial and error along the way.

If the premise sounds interesting, feel free to follow along! I'd also love to hear from anyone who enjoys choice-driven visual novels.

Thanks for reading! :)

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.