So, I have good enough programming skills. some artistic skills and a okay level interesting story. Now this game is a hobby project of mine, so I am trying to not overspend.
If you can do the art programming game design and story on your own then it's free there are lots of free tools you can use to make your stuff. If you need to hire someone if one aspect of it then it can cost to very little to very high depending on what you want done.
It depends. Is your game purely a visual novel? Then it will take a lot of hours writing dialogue to achieve the word count needed for 30-45 of reading. Are you making a sandbox game? Then you will need less dialogue, but you need to program functionality into the visual novel engine. And if you do it by yourself, it even takes more time.
You're still gonna have to shell out 150$ for quality testing.
The cost of the RPGmaker, maybe 70$ there.
For Game Character Hub Portfolio Edition so you can make those sprites you want that's 15$
Like 300$? Things spiral out as soon as you involve contractors.