Ren'Py Dividing a large game into smaller ones? Stand-alones or DLC or updates?

[LadyBoyJay]

I have a large game that I'm working on that is basically a collection of kinetic novels. The story is finished and I'm just starting to bring it into Ren'Py (which I'm still learning how to use). During Act 1 you will make choices that will lock you into one of 6 different paths. You will still be able to make minor choices on these paths and they do have variable endings. These paths are very separate from each other in terms of story and fetish content. My original plan was to release this as one big project. However, I'm struggling with the amount of work I'm doing for what feels like 6 different games at the same time and I'm too stubborn to cut content. I'm also very aware that each path will have a very different audience based on the different fetishes that they contain. For example, path #3 is a very happy story with super sweet characters but path #4 is a horribly dark story featuring some very niche fetishes.

I would like to finish one path and get it released to the public for feedback. Should I release the game with one path and then figure out some way to code in the other paths as DLC or updates? Is this even feasible? Most of the examples that I see of games being chopped up into smaller ones are usually done as chapters or episodes that add on more story to where the previous release left off rather than unlocking a gated path. I'm quite worried that doing this would leave a bad first impression with most players. Does anyone have any examples of this?

My preferred idea would be to release this as 6 separate stand-alone games that tie-in together. Each game would have the same first act but would only contain a single path. I'm not aware of any examples of this, if anyone can think of some please let me know. I would like to release this on Steam. My original plan was to release one game for one price (example $18). Some of the positives of doing 6 separate releases is that players could more easily avoid the paths they don't want, prices would be lower (example $3), and I feel like this would leave a better first impression to the players. Instead of waiting a while for your $18 game to get 5 more updates or paying $3 plus another $3 for each update, you could now simply buy whichever ones you want. I don't feel like having to replay the first act over again for each game is really a negative since you would normally have to do that anyways unless you reloaded from a save point. Skipping text will be enabled as well so it wouldn't take long to get to the new content. The only real negatives that I can think of are the added file size, inconvenience of having to open a different game to try a different path, and some extra work on my end of managing 6 different games on Steam.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks for your time and help!

 

[Saki_Sliz]

done as chapters or episodes that add on more story to where the previous release left off rather than unlocking a gated path. I'm quite worried that doing this would leave a bad first impression with most players. Does anyone have any examples of this?

an alternative issue: sometimes I don't finish games, stories, or even show's because I feel like I have an idea for the kind of story it is, how good/bad it is, and I never really feel motivated to continue the story. if you are able to manage to get a complete store line done, to be honest for most projects you could call that the game. and if you are releasing multiple story lines or story line alternatives in the future, I think that may be a lot cooler than 'chapter' updates because if I play the game once and liked it, I'm more easily sold on the idea that its the same game, same characters, but a whole new story. even if its the 'dark path' its no more different than a dark fan fiction of a show I like. and in terms of getting me to like the initial story, so long as my attention span last, you shouldn't have an issue, because I can appreciate a game a lot more when I know that it ends, concludes, and its not just going on and on without end. A lot of the reason I don't resume shows/stories/games, is because the go without actually feeling like I'm getting anywhere. So if you actually got a lot of the story worked out, that's dope as heck!

as for dlc or releases, someone more renpy technical will need to answer that, I've only played with it for 1 week.

to me, someone who focused mainly on C# and making custom architectures for nearly a decade, while there could be some cool way to get the separate games to sort of work together, what may be easier for not only you, but the players, and would be much more slicker to implement, is as you say, implement each story line as its own standalone game. if you are using renpy, again I don't know much, but from a few games I remember, they shipped with their scripts available for realoading, meaning copying and pasting a 'patch' file just directly replaced some scripts with added lines of code, and when renpy starts up it recompiles all the scripts, implementing the changes, thus possible to add all the story lines you want... but that means eventually build the project up into one complete project, which comes with all the problems of having a monolithic project. That's why I say it may be 'slicker' to implement each story line as a separate game. similar to coding, it helps to isolate your work into separate parts. the same can be done to whole projects. Now, while I say its could be a good idea, it may not work in practice. ie, you'll have to try and see if 1 if you can make the story focus on one path 2 if you are happy with how you did this 3 are you able to start writing the start each story line and still be happy or does one of your story line fail, or really depend on data from another storyline, or do you have one story line that is the same 50% of the way and thus very redundant? What happens if you fail at a story line. is it an early game over (which if there is only one story line I would considered acceptable), is it even possible to fail or as you say, more of a kinetic novel thus not many opportunities to fail, or is it written such that the character acts/behaves in a certain way where the player choices doesn't mater too much the story will still progress, but in other story lines the character is different. Basically what I'm asking/saying is, I think the single story line could be good, but depending on how you want the stories to work, they may not be a good match with the idea, and youll have to figure out thorough trying to addapt the stories as needed to see if it works.