VN Stuck In Conceptual Stage

[Deleted member 2439331]

So I am more so I novice writer than anything else and yet I've had an idea/general concept and story for a visual novel on the back burner for sometime and I've grown quite attached to it. The main premise is actually inspired by the confidant system from the Persona series along with some general theming and allusions. Effectively, our male MC moves back into his old forgotten small town with his mother, older sisters, and his mother's new girlfriend after a long and rocky road of getting away from his abusive father that has impacted every family member's life in different ways. On the first day of his senior year in high school, (everyone is 18 and up obviously), he saves one of his teachers from being hit by a rogue bus which would result in his death. However, he comes too in a strange office space with an even stranger man in front of him going by the name of Eros. In order to pay the debt he now owes to Eros for saving his life, Eros tasks him with finding out the mystery going on within the town under the fall of night, live life to the fullest with his own hands, and conquer/claim all those represented by tarot cards.

Surprise, you thought it was an original idea, but it was me, 'small town harem game' all along! In all seriousness, I do believe this idea has some merit to it. A harem porn game that takes it's writing, and especially it's theming seriously, with every possible character or 'route' being based upon a respective tarot card all the while the hidden aspect of the town come to light. As well as taboo feelings and relations. Very slow burn based, and very heavily centered in romance and developing relationships.

Current Possible Fetishes Are (but are not limited to);
-Incest (mother/son, brother/sister, aunt/nephew, mother/daughter, stepmother/stepson)
-Pregnancy
-Harem (to the stupidly large degree)
-Lesbians and LGBTQ+ in general
-Age Difference
-MILFS
-Public Sex
-Romance and....cuddles
-Possible Loli and potential underage within patches and mods depending on demand.

To get to the point, I am a simple novice writer with a fair amount upon my plate in life so, I come here to ask for either tips or methods for getting started in terms of programming or management, as well as to see if there are any potential coders and/or artists interested in the idea. I'm reaching for the stars with a wooden stick I'm aware, however I figured I'd shoot my shot to see if this could get any bites. I wish everyone the best, and keep on keeping on.

 

[MisterManMuffin]

My advice would be to think about finding an engine that allows you to easily plug in your writing with little coding experience. A program like Ren'Py has tons of tutorials available that you can follow and learn, but there are others that exist as well. Start small, try getting a few sentences to work, maybe utilizing a few placeholder images. You don't want to go all in and try to implement everything all at once. I did that myself with my own game, and ended up redoing a lot of coding because aspects that worked well on their own didn't work well when combined with other parts of my game (also don't recommend coding a custom engine you first time, I'm a masochist). I learned to think about the necessary components to have my game function, and focus on that before trying to work out niceties. It's much easier to make a working system pretty than the opposite. Good luck with your game, preg, incest, and loli interest me quite a bit so maybe I'll keep an eye out for it!

 

[arimouse]

I'd say your idea sounds great. Sounds similar to:

Book of Lust

One comment I'd say though, from working with other people who also aimed to make a visual novel: Don't underestimate the amount of art you'll need.

Ultimately your story will need a lot of art, and if you're not an artist or have an artist friend you'll need to figure out how to buy or get the artwork you need.

Maybe do something with Ren'Py and sketch out your scenes and make sure it feels good and right and you LOVE the story before trying to proposition some artists. See if you enjoy the programming side of things and see how much you can contribute to the game besides story/ideas.

Good luck.

 

[K.T.L.]

That sounds quite ambitious for a first project. I'd be inclined to look for some sort of prototyping tool so you can get all the pathing, etc. sorted out before you write a single line of code of your VN.

Mindmapping software (e.g. freemind) is really useful for projects like this though when it comes to decision trees you'll need some way to create flowcharts or something similar. Lots of people use Twine for that purpose. If you try to 'wing it' and just create all the branches on the fly, you'll probably end up in a big mess and get frustrated.

I started writing a 'story' with a VN in mind but I'm still doing the story, it keeps expanding. I'll have a novel at the rate I'm going. I'm now considering releasing both in the distant future, one as a normal text novel and the other as a VN. I expect the VN to take at least as long as the novel to create. Writing these things is not a quick game.

 

[Whale_Shark]

I second the idea that the premise sounds very appealing, but the scope is pretty huge if this is going to be your first game. I just released my "first game" about 2 weeks ago, but it's not really my first game. I made about 2-3 hours worth of a different game before that, just to learn the engine im using. Then I spent about a month just developing the backstory, plot points, character profiles/backstories, etc. for my current game. Only then did I feel confident that I could start really working on the actual coding and writing.

I would advise you take some time to learn on a simple, throw away project. Don't worry about the story, or whether its even that good. Just use it to learn, then you can feel confident that you have the skills to make a more ambitious project successful.