Ren'Py Multiple stories in one game?

[Precox]

I have a bit of a problem with having multiple ideas for games and stories going on in my head at one time. So I was thinking about the very ambitious idea to have a single Ren'py game with many stories in it.

What I am imagining is a sort of a "bookshelf" that the player selects the story that interests them.

It would describe the story with a short summary (this is who you are playing as, this is the situation), a list of its contents (fe/male protagonist, incest, interracial), its genre (horror, sci-fi, fantasy), gameplay elements (combat, puzzle, perma-death), and estimate game length (short, medium, long).

I don't know if I'll do this but I just wanted to get the idea out there and see what people think.

 

[MissFortune]

It's certainly doable, without a doubt. It'd actually be fairly easy with some imagebuttons/maps and a wee bit of coding knowhow. It's not really all that ambitious, ShamanLab has something similar, though not quite the same (which is a good thing.). Where it might get a little tricky is patching, if you plan to go the Patreon route, though it's obviously still very much doable. One rather unavoidable issue I can see cropping up with a project like this is file size. No matter how much you compress the renders/files/etc., you're going to hit a mark where it's not realistic for many to download (4-5GB is going to be many people's max.). Ignoring the size limits/throttling by many free hosts, you'd be left with torrents. Which means seeding.

Something like "Seasons" may be the better choice. For example, "The Book of Wet Dreams - S1", and you have so many stories for that first season. Then make a second season and try to keep it the same general length as the first. Then a third, fourth, fifth, and so forth. As many as you want. Something like that might be more accessible to a larger audience.

So, rolling with the assumption that you have skill code-wise, do you have the writing ability to pull something like this off? Do you have the artistic chops or rendering ability to pull this off?

 

[79flavors]

I'd also offer an alternative view...

What benefit is there in packaging all those stories into a single game?

If there are a lot of shared images across the different stories... then I can see a benefit. But if each story has it's own scenes and images with little or no overlap, then you're adding complexity with very little payoff.

You may feel each story is too short to be a "full" game, but I would counter that there is no such thing as too short.
You may feel it's better to package things almost as an anthology rather than a series of novellas... and honestly, I can't say that you would be wrong.

But with the exception of a lot of shared images... I don't see a downside in delivering a lot of small games rather than a single larger one. From a "marketing" point of view, you might want to have a common theme to the naming of those smaller games (Think "Star Wars: A New Hope", "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi", where "Star Wars" ties them all together).

And if you need information/variables to be passed between the various games (like the player's name), here's always

You must be registered to see the links

. Though if there are shared variables... that might be the reason to keep them all as one game.

Your game(s), your call.

 

[anne O'nymous]

What benefit is there in packaging all those stories into a single game?

Not much as you explained, while there's a big drawback.

The idea isn't innovative, nor this ambitious, a doze of games works that way, but to my knowledge all have been abandoned. The problem is that this approach don't really permit to keep the players interested enough.
Firstly the stories tend to be too generic. You can't be too ambitious when you put many stories in the same file, because you don't have the space (physical on the computer, but also mental in your brain) to go effectively wild. This also tend to limit the stories to pure kinetic novels, with eventually one choice time to time, what is less interesting.
Secondly there's the problem of the updates. Either you update all the stories every time, and you'll only add few minutes of game play for each. Or you add worthy content to one story, and players have to wait many updates before the story that really interest them will be updated.
An alternate solution to both issue is to develop the stories one after the others, but then you'll loose support the instant you'll start a story that will not please the actual players ; they'll not wait patiently that you finish this, uninteresting to their eyes, story before coming back to the game.

In the end, you're doing more efforts than the creator of an usual average game, and in exchange you get less support and interest than this said creator.
The game pointed by MissFortune is a good illustration. It use 3DCG and Ren'Py, and the creator is active on the thread, so it draw the maximal attention to it. Yet, after one year of existence and (apparently) ten updates, the thread only have four pages and two reviews. This while the creator never had more than three patrons.
Of course, this don't mean that the game is bad, nor that it's impossible to make a good game that way. It's just that players will tend to avoid your game like plague, solely due to it being a multi stories game.

 

[Precox]

It's certainly doable, without a doubt. It'd actually be fairly easy with some imagebuttons/maps and a wee bit of coding knowhow. It's not really all that ambitious, ShamanLab has something similar, though not quite the same (which is a good thing.). Where it might get a little tricky is patching, if you plan to go the Patreon route, though it's obviously still very much doable. One rather unavoidable issue I can see cropping up with a project like this is file size. No matter how much you compress the renders/files/etc., you're going to hit a mark where it's not realistic for many to download (4-5GB is going to be many people's max.). Ignoring the size limits/throttling by many free hosts, you'd be left with torrents. Which means seeding.

Something like "Seasons" may be the better choice. For example, "The Book of Wet Dreams - S1", and you have so many stories for that first season. Then make a second season and try to keep it the same general length as the first. Then a third, fourth, fifth, and so forth. As many as you want. Something like that might be more accessible to a larger audience.

So, rolling with the assumption that you have skill code-wise, do you have the writing ability to pull something like this off? Do you have the artistic chops or rendering ability to pull this off?

Thank you for your comments. I hadn't consider file size so that's a mark in the Don't Do This column.

I'd also offer an alternative view...

What benefit is there in packaging all those stories into a single game?

If there are a lot of shared images across the different stories... then I can see a benefit. But if each story has it's own scenes and images with little or no overlap, then you're adding complexity with very little payoff.

You may feel each story is too short to be a "full" game, but I would counter that there is no such thing as too short.
You may feel it's better to package things almost as an anthology rather than a series of novellas... and honestly, I can't say that you would be wrong.

But with the exception of a lot of shared images... I don't see a downside in delivering a lot of small games rather than a single larger one. From a "marketing" point of view, you might want to have a common theme to the naming of those smaller games (Think "Star Wars: A New Hope", "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi", where "Star Wars" ties them all together).

And if you need information/variables to be passed between the various games (like the player's name), here's always

You must be registered to see the links

. Though if there are shared variables... that might be the reason to keep them all as one game.

Your game(s), your call.

Thank you too. I did not know about that feature of Ren'py so that's worth looking into.

Not much as you explained, while there's a big drawback.

The idea isn't innovative, nor this ambitious, a doze of games works that way, but to my knowledge all have been abandoned. The problem is that this approach don't really permit to keep the players interested enough.
Firstly the stories tend to be too generic. You can't be too ambitious when you put many stories in the same file, because you don't have the space (physical on the computer, but also mental in your brain) to go effectively wild. This also tend to limit the stories to pure kinetic novels, with eventually one choice time to time, what is less interesting.
Secondly there's the problem of the updates. Either you update all the stories every time, and you'll only add few minutes of game play for each. Or you add worthy content to one story, and players have to wait many updates before the story that really interest them will be updated.
An alternate solution to both issue is to develop the stories one after the others, but then you'll loose support the instant you'll start a story that will not please the actual players ; they'll not wait patiently that you finish this, uninteresting to their eyes, story before coming back to the game.

In the end, you're doing more efforts than the creator of an usual average game, and in exchange you get less support and interest than this said creator.
The game pointed by MissFortune is a good illustration. It use 3DCG and Ren'Py, and the creator is active on the thread, so it draw the maximal attention to it. Yet, after one year of existence and (apparently) ten updates, the thread only have four pages and two reviews. This while the creator never had more than three patrons.
Of course, this don't mean that the game is bad, nor that it's impossible to make a good game that way. It's just that players will tend to avoid your game like plague, solely due to it being a multi stories game.

Ah okay. I see what you all mean.

This was mostly just sounding out the concept and seeing what input I would get. Thank you all for your thoughts.

 

[moskyx]

If you really feel able to develop several stories, do it. Just once at a time, for the reasons explained above. Then, if files are of a reasonable size, you can always release a bundle later on, as Tlaero did with her old Elsaverse stories in here. They are technically unrelated (variables from one story/game don't have any impact in other titles) which simplifies things a lot, but it's still advised to use a similar nomenclature for pics and variables when developing your standalone stories (similar from one game to another, but still distinctive enough, like naming them with a two-letter code at the start that identifies each story) to avoid duplicated names and also to not get lost when you merge them for the bundle. Also, just note that all the titles included in the bundle will share the same save/load screen, as saves will be stored in the same folder, so maybe take a look at how to code an option to automatically name your saves, to help your players a bit.

So yeah, don't start your project with that 'all-in-one' format, but keep always that idea in your mind when developing your standalone stories.