#renpy

[sharkandpelican]

🐟 COMING SOON!

Road Trip to the End of the World is a crash course on the death of a friendship. When Andy and her imaginary friend Fishy set off on a road trip to crash their ex-best friend’s wedding, will they know when to hit the brakes?

I’ve been working on this game for the past year as my MFA thesis project! It drops on August 31, right on the edge of Summer. Here’s some of what you can expect from this angst-fueled cross-country adventure…

1-2 hours of pure road trip chaos

A fully original soundtrack

Back pain

Questionable gas station food

Multiple diner burger options

An imaginary fish friend who loves you very much

...And a surprise celebrity guest

💙 WISHLIST ON STEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3769330/Road_Trip_to_the_End_of_the_World/

[insertdisc5]

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[yukiicantdraw]

Waoh sprite editing be upon ye🫴

But in all seriousness this was fun to make on renpy (minus the figuring out how to code it in part-) so I might do more of these if I ever come up with more dumb scenarios

because I don't know- playing with renpy sprites feels like playing with dolls but better because 🫵 look it's the weird worm, ghost and shroom trio 🫲✨interacting✨🫱

No text versions are below the cut :D

[nadianova]

*grabs u by your hair* oi. eyes up here. read this NOW

You are hereby cordially invited to take part in a wonderful 18+ adults only evil game jam ran by the brilliant minds behind hits like, HEATWAVE, wormgrubber, DIVINE DESPAIR DEVIANCE, THERA & EASYxSHOT.

Bring your friends and family since this is a beginner friendly environment. Join the discord and you got nerds like me ready to offer you Ren'Py advice so you can make your first VN. It's easier than you imagine.

Let's put our evil brains together because you're all going into the jar to concoct our own kodoku ritual that results in some DASTARDLY cursed gay ass visual novel masterpieces.

Click the link for more in-depth details about the game jam, and to find the discord link in the description.

be there or be decimated into squares 🔪🔪🩸🩸

[quiet-cabin]

OMAMORI IS LIVE!!!

That's right, folks.

🎉🎉 It's here. 🎉🎉

What you have ALL been waiting for! The full game is done, it's real, and it's right here!

I'm not sure what else there is to say besides that we're so, so excited for you all to play it. Omamori is 32k, features over 450 different character sprites, 8 achievements you can unlock, and a couple of fun surprises!

We've thoroughly play tested it and did our best to iron out any bugs, but if you happen to find one definitely leave a comment on the itch page or message on bsky and I can take a look!

In a few weeks we'll share a post mortem, discussing some of the behind the scenes work, what worked, what didn't, what got cut, what we learned, and what's next for the studio!

Thank you so much for your support, we hope you enjoy the game!

Edit: Since we've had a couple people ask, there's now a ko-fi page! This game is FREE and we are not asking for any payment for it (cannot stress that enough lol), but if folks want to tip the studio they're more than welcome to!

[evilnadianova]

malcatras' maiden is a visual novel abt a normal trans puppy girl who loves her kind sisters who all have the best mom and nothing bad ever happens. everything is so consensual . nobody barfs. nobody dies of murder. not even blood in this vn. the maid outfits and super powers are all for wholesome reasons. its all good

malmaid for free now

[sofia-d-asb]

Arcadie: Cold Lands - Progress Update - January 2025

I've spent literal days working on the mobile interface of Arcadie: Cold Lands, and I'm finally happy with the results!

It involved reworking the UI completely and re-coding all the menus, as there was no easy way of making it mobile-friendly like with Twine.

Other exciting news:

I am aiming for a Q4 2025 full release on PC/macOS. Mobile versions will come early 2026.

The public demo will be available in June 2025.

I will be launching a Patreon very shortly! If you choose to support me, you will get access to the alpha version of Arcadie: Cold Lands, playable on both PC/Mac and mobile, updated monthly as I work on the game. More info soon!

[backtoeltingville]

Sketches for basic Josh sprites

Trying to imitate the style of the show but later on the render I will do the usual small changes

+ I'm thinking a lot if I should use 3/4 poses or face to face poses with Josh more

[nopanamaman]

do you have any tips for renpy? I picked up the engine and have been fiddling with it a little

two lifechanging shortcuts:

Shift + E when playtesting to jump to the currently displayed line in the script

Shift + R when playtesting to instantly reload the script without losing progress (make sure to save the changes in the script editor before doing this)

[ligiawrites]

♥ Free chapter update! ♥

In this public build:

save Mathias from a heavy bolt

discover what happened to Mandra (pls fight to save them if you can! i.i)

make choices to defend your new King

decide how you're gonna deal with your DC's brother

see what happened to the castle and your people while you were away

see a hint of how powerful master Curio really is

depending on your choices, kiss someone🤭

find a room haunted by more than just spirits........

This update brings the total word count to 150k words! The next update will be in September! ♥♥♥

Yaaay! Today is also release day for the supporters build (beware of spoilers)

play the next section of the 3rd battle route

leave the castle and see Opala for the first time

meet the best members of the Cereus Regiment and have them join your efforts

depending on your choices, kiss someone🤭

(in the 1st or 2nd battle route) reunite with the other teams and see if they fulfilled their missions (or not).

the routes merge! meet some of the characters of the other routes, including a fanged, short baby who might or might not try to bite you!

New total wordcount: 223k words ♥♥♥

To know more about the supporters build and how to access it, please check my ko-fi! And if you'd prefer to support me through Patreon, please vote in this post, so I'll know if there are people interested in that! ♥

BIG HUGS! ♥♥♥

Ligia

[applottl]

rahhhhh! atom jumpscare!!!! boo!

huh? am i working on my vn? uh. runs away

this vn was such a silly and funny experience!! i know its supposed to be horror or whatevs but atom is such a hillarious lil creechur <333 will never not love them !

[hereisremina]

Happy 4/20 Easter Everyone! Jim (aka Jimothy, Jimitri, Jimbo, Jimbob) is having fun with the Rabbit MC.

[insertdisc5]

Hello, same guy, someone showed me the FAQ...

POINT AND CLICK ON RENP'Y????????

surprisingly easy actually! it's just imagebuttons within a screen, each jumping to a label and coming back to the screen

[vaadazen-codes]

How To Get Started Making Visual Novels

Wanna make a visual novel? Or maybe you've seen games like Our Life, Blooming Panic, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc. and wanna make something like that? Good news, here's a very basic beginners guide on how to get started in renpy and what you need to know going in! Before you start, I highly recommend looking at my last post about writing a script for renpy just to make it easier on you!

LONG POST AHEAD

Obviously, our first step is downloading it from their website

thankfully, its right on the home page of their site. Follow basica program installation steps and run the program. I highly recommend pinning it to your task bar to make it easier to access.

From there, you're met with the renpy app, it's a little daunting at first but let's talk about what all these buttons are for.

Projects

This part is simple, it just lists the current projects in the chosen directory. You probably won't have any in there of your own. You should still see Tutorial and The Question!

Both of those default projects are super helpful in their own ways, i highly recommend testing out the tutorial and playing around with it just to get comfortable with some of the basics.

Create New Project

The first step to actually making your game into a game!

You'll be met with a prompt letting you know that the project is being made in English and that you can change it. You can click Continue.

From here, you'll be asked to input a project name! Put in your games title, or even a placeholder title since this Information can be changed later! (this is also the title the folder will be in your file browser, be sure to name it something you won't overlook)

Now we get to choose our resolution!

If you have no idea what to choose, go for 1920x1080! This is the standard size for most computer monitors and laptops, but it will still display with moderately decent quality on 4k monitors too!

You can choose 3840x2160 as well. This is 2x the measurements of the default, with the same ration. These dimensions are considered 4k. Keep in mind, your image files will be bigger and can cause the game to have a larger size to download.

Now we get to choose our color scheme!

Renpy has some simple default options with the 'light mode' colors being the bottom two rows, and the 'dark mode' colors being the toop two rows.

You can pick anything here, but I like to choose something that matches my projects vibes/colors better. Mostly because depending on how in depth you go with the ui, it minimizes the amount of changes I need to make later.

Click continue and give it a minute. Note: If it says "not responding" wait a moment without clicking anything. It can sometimes freeze briefly during the process.

Now we should be back at our home screen, with our new project showing. Let's talk about allll that stuff on the right now.

Open Directory

This just opens that particular folder in your local file explorer!

game - is all the game files, so your folders for images, audio, saves, and your game files like your script, screens, and more.

base - this is the folder that the game folder is inside of. You can also find the errors and log txt files in here.

images - takes you to your main images folder. This is where you wanna put all of your NON gui images, like your sprites, backgrounds, and CGs. You can create folders inside of this and still call them in the script later. EX: a folder for backgrounds , a folder for sprites for character a, a seperate folder for spirtes for character b, etc.

audio - Takes you to the default audio folder. This is empty, but you can put all your music and sound effects here!

gui - brings up the folder containing all of the default renpy gui. It's a good place to start/ reference for sizes if you want to hand draw your UI pieces like your text box!

Edit File

Simple enough, this is just where you can open your code files in whatever text/code editor you have installed.

Script.rpy - where all of your story and characters live. This is the file you'll spend most of your time in at first

Options.rpy - Contains mostly simple information, like project name and version. There aren't a ton of things in here you need to look at. There is also some lines of code that help 'archive' certain files by file type so that they can't be seen by players digging in code however. Fun if you want to hide some images in there for later or if you just dont want someone seeing how messy your files are. We've all been there

Gui.rpy - where all of the easy customization happens. Here you can change font colors, hover colors, fonts, font sizes, and then the alignment and placement of all of your text! Like your dialogue and names, the height of text buttons, etc. It more or less sets the defaults for a lot of these unless you choose to change them later.

Screens.rpy - undeniably my favorite, this is where all of the UI is laid out for the different screens in your game, like the main menu, game menu, quick menu, choice menu, etc. You can add custom screens too if you want, but I always make my own seperate file for these.

Open Project - this just opens all of those files at once in the code editor. Super handy if you make extra files like I do for certain things.

Actions

last but not least, our actions.

Navigate Script - This feature is underrated in my honest opinion, it's super handy for help debugging! In renpy you can comment with # before a line. However, if you do #TODO and type something after it, it saves it as a note! You can view these TODO's here as well as easily navigate to when certain screens are called, where different labels are (super great if your game is long, and more. It saves some scrolling.

Check Script (Lint) - also super duper handy for debugging some basic things. It also tells you your word count! But its handy for letting you know about some errors that might throw up. I like using it to look for sprites I may or may not have mispelled, because they show up in there too.

Change/Update GUI - Nifty, though once you start customizing GUI on your own, it isn't as useful. You can reset the project at any point and regenerate the image files here. This updates all those defaults we talked about earlier.

Delete Persistent - this just helps you delete any persistent data between play throughs on your end. I like to use it when making a lot of changes while testing the game, so that I can reboot the game fresh.

Force Recompile - Full disclosure, as many games as I've made and as long as I've been using Renpy, i have never used this feature. I searched to see what it does and this is the general consesus: Normally renpy tries to be smart about compiling code (creating .rpyc files) and only compiles .rpy files with changes. This is to speed up the process since compiling takes time. Sometimes you can make changes that renpy don't pick up on and therefore won't recompile. In these cases you can run force recompile to force it. Another solution (if you know what file is affected) is to delete that specific. rpyc file.

The rest of your options on this right hand side are how you make executable builds for your game that people can download to extract and play later!

Sorry gang! that was a whole lot of text obviously the last button "Launch Project" launches an uncompiled version of the project for you to play and test as you go! Hang in tight because my next post is about how to utilize github for renpy, so you can collaborate easier!

[skeletalgames]

Our indie game Kickstarter is now LIVE! 🤩🎉

You're the one whodunnit in this reverse detective visual novel - can you find the perfect scapegoat, get away with theft, and stomach some sickening consequences? 🔎☕

Head over to our project page and support Spill The Beans! 💜