As somebody who has read a large number of visual novels (VNs), I consider Ren'py one of the better engines as a consumer:
- It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic features.
- It is performant. You'd be surprised how poorly many VN engines run really poorly. Fast-forwarding past already-read text is often capped at a surprisingly slow rate, with your CPU pegged at 100%, due to how inefficient many engines are
- It is easily moddable, as you just need to plop a (pseudo-)python script into the game folder, so you can easily tweak or turn off annoying bits of UI
A number of localization companies have also ported (typically older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in the original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine licenses, and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines. Examples of companies having done this includes JAST USA, FAKKU, MangaGamer, and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpasoft. In other words, the heavy hitters of VN localization.
The other main contender for best VN engine (in my mind) is the KiriKiri engine, which I believe is also open source, but which lacks the large, English-speaking community that Ren'py has built.
Despite that, Ren'py does have a bit of a poor reputation in the older VN reading community, more specifically among readers who mainly read localized, Japanese VNs, due to its association with low-budget, originally English visual novels. Typically the same people have only heard of DDLC and Katawa Shoujo, when it comes to originally English visual novels
One thing Ren'Py does well that many other engines do poorly is forward compatibility of saves. When VNs are released in pieces over time it is important to make sure the saves carry forward. Nothing kills momentum like "you will need to start over from scratch after every update".
As far as competitors go, the list is not very long. Sugarcube/Twine works ok, but tends to bog down as the projects grow large because it doesn't have a good way of breaking up the core logic across different files. The save system is also a bit of a problem since the in-browser saves tend to get lost in version updates. QSP is just a buggy confusing mess every time. People try to shoehorn RPGMaker into doing the job but it is just so clunky and slow. Custom engines, typically built in Unity, are almost always massive resource hogs and lacking in one or more of the basic features Ren'Py provides by default. Plus there is just the community aspect of it, with Ren'Py having so many developers there is a lot of institutional knowledge to be had. If you run into a problem you are probably not the first, someone else has probably solved it already.
Forward compatibility of saves is harder than people thought. VN scripts have choices and loops, so in general they are graphs, and upgrading the saves to another version requires matching two graphs. I'd be happy to know if there is a good diff algorithm for graphs
In practice graph matching can be helped by manually tagging the same nodes (labels in Ren'Py) in the two versions, but that cannot cover all the edge cases
I'm developing a VN framework for the own use of my indie VN dev group, and we mostly implemented the diff algorithm for the 'linear' part of the graphs. You can search my handle to know more
I took a quick look via query.vndb.org, and the top 10 most popular engines in terms of releases are Ren'Py, KiriKiri, TyranoScript, Unity, NScripter, LiveMaker, RPG Maker, YU-RIS, Flash, and Artemis (from most to least).
This is of course not an exact ranking, since the same game can have many (nearly identical) releases, but it roughly matches my experience
The best thing about Renpy is that the text rendering actually looks good, which is true of shockingly few VN engines even today.
Especially when you increase the window size or run fullscreen, most VN engines just render the whole game at a fixed resolution and upscale it up but Renpy makes the framebuffer match the window size and renders text at the full resolution.
>A number of localization companies have also ported (typically older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in the original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine licenses, and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines. Examples of companies having done this includes JAST USA, FAKKU, MangaGamer, and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpasoft. In other words, the heavy hitters of VN localization.
That caught my curiosity, but I couldn't find any examples of older VNs being ported to Renpy. Could you share any examples?
Examples include 'Love Duction!' (2014) published by Sekai Project/Denpasoft, 'Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows Refrain' (2011) localized by MangaGamer,
multiple re-releases of late-90s/early 2000s titles published by JAST USA such as X-Change (1997-2004), Water Closet (2000), and Heart de Roommate (2003), and 'True Love 95' (1995) published by FAKKU
Something noticeably missing from almost every other type of text-heavy game which perhaps wouldn't be if games developers were less snobbish about where they draw inspiration from.
On the other hand, writers of games with metatextual stories benefit from their target audience not knowing how well-trod the ground is.
Agree, as a person with accessibility issues, I prefer this engine because it has a basic TTS support that I can mod and plug my own custom TTS script.
I also seen people reinventing poorly the engine in Unity so for me text based games or visual novels in Unity are just a NO , because of TTS support.
I agree as for my own VN I started working with a custom-made engine until I completed the rollback-feature requirements; after seeing the scope of it, I checked renPy and found it basically did everything right already.
In many ways I felt that the engine was designer for beginners rather than developers in a way that are antagonistic to each others.
No real debugger, no support for libraries, leading to re-implementation of basic stuff, etc. I had a love-hate relationship with it. Pseudo-python is the right term for it.
In the end I was happy with the Steam features it already had to make distribution easy, although I had to actually patch the engine as the Steam session ticket function was broken.
Sorry, as others have said, I meant a text log or "history". Basically, the ability to view the last N lines of text. For some VNs, this log also allows you to replay the voice lines, to jump back to specific lines/scenes, and even to bookmark specific lines, separately from saving the game. Ren'py is actually a bit unusual in this regard, since the default behavior is a rewind feature rather than a text log. However, most commercial Ren'py VNs will show the history as a log.
I think they meant scrollback. as conventionally a backlog would evoke "work yet to be done", whereas in this context we're talking about a conversation history one can revisit.
Like you can either read a log of what characters said in a scene so far, or simply go backwards through the story to reach an earlier line and view it again.
Much like books, that depends on what kind of stories interest you. Though it'd be advantageous for you if you enjoy romance, because that genre is heavily over-represented.
But if there are no titles that have already caught your interest, then my personal recommendation is to start with hybrid games such as VA-11 Hall-A, the Danganronpa series, the Ace Attorney series, WILL: A Wonderful World, and 999.
VNs are at their core a reading experience, frequently involving more words than what you'll find in the entire Lords of the Ring trilogy, but hybrid games like the above allow you to dip your toes in the VN genre without it purely being reading
Misericorde volumes 1 and 2 on Steam and Itch - both renpy based I believe. Fantastic example of an immersive novel, a murder mystery set in a 14th century abbey.
For context, visual novels are basically ~novella sized stories that come with visuals like static backgrounds + a few dozen renders per character. The character renders tend to be mostly the same, with small variations in facial expression, pose, maybe outfit.
All that to say, you probably won't like VNs unless you like reading. Don't expect much gameplay / animation. That said, the more famous stories tend to have multiple endings determined by a handful of choices you get during the story. On occasion, some games go for sandbox-style gameplay where you roam the map to grind out currency to unlock visual novel scenes.
In terms of genre I'd say at least half are dating sims, with the rest being some kind of adventure or mystery story. I'd also guess at least half are nsfw / r18. Renpy VNs tend to be made by indie devs from everywhere but Japan, which has a VN industry with in-house engines.
Writing quality tends to be what you expect from indie authors / devs. That is, filled with tropes, tending towards the wish-fulfillment types. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, you'll be surprised what you'd be willing to overlook if the premise / plot seems interesting.
title length (min) engine
HEAVEN BURNS RED 12580 CRIware
Rance X -Kessen- 11085 AliceSoft System4.X
Shoujo Settai 10418
Kamidori Alchemy Meister 8407
Seinarukana... 6858
Lessons in Love 6819 Ren'Py
Sengoku † Koihime... 6744 CatSystem2
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni 6626
Baldr Sky is a perfect title for those who also want some action gaming in the mix. Also, like many great visual novels, the plot takes advantage of multiple endings very well.
Unfortunately, Japan stopped making visual novels somewhere around a decade ago. Creators presumably moved on to work on gacha games. Many visual novel companies are now either gone, inactive, or pivoted to gacha games. I wish I can see more games like Baldr Sky, Steins Gate, and Aiyoku no Eustia again.
The Spooktober Visual Novel jam that happens every September is a good way to both get into VN development and also find high quality games that you can play for free on itch.io.
Some if the entries really push the limits in terms visual presentation and can have a crazy amounts of animations. Plus really talented voice actors use the jam to practice their skills.
This was used to make 'Analogue: A Hate Story', which in my opinion was an interesting visual novel to read, with some more unusual interactive elements as well.
It feels to me like 'Hate Story' and its sequel ('Hate Plus') really pushed the bounds of what a visual novel engine can easily do.
It's an extremely popular engine for visual novels, to the point where it's fairly safe to assume any given VN is made using Ren'Py. For example, last year's Slay The Princess.
Needy Streamer Overload was the big visual novel of 2024 I think, which was Unity.
The most popular modern-ish visual novels I know of, like Fate Grand Order, Dangenronpa, and Ace Attorney, aren't Ren'py.
I feel like Ren'py is in the minority for modern popular visual novels, and it's definitely in the minority if you include re-releases of older visual novels.
I'd expect it to be in the vast majority for independent visual novels.
I really wish they'd implement proper XDG stuff, because the engine is great and I love VNs but all I can think about is the ~/.renpy littering my home.
My 8 year old daughter loves graphic novels. And she's a budding writer. I got really excited to show her some of the links posted here.
Then I dug a little deeper and saw that a lot of it is very sexualized. I'm not opposed to that for adults but it isn't something I want my daughter exposed to.
Anyone have suggestions for safe spaces for kids? I really love the idea of her creating using ren'py but I'm worried it is a gateway to things she isn't ready for yet.
I'm afraid that I don't know any kids-safe spaces for budding VN readers or writers, but you can use VNDB to search for visual novels with an appropriate age rating. The following query returns all VNs with a release rated for 3-8 years, excluding any that have a release rated for older ages:
Though I will caution that a lot of these are either self-reported by the authors or just guesstimates by the person who added the VN to VNDB.
And I will caution that you should never trust it when a visual novel is described as "all ages": For whatever reason, the VN reading community has settled on using that term when we mean "no explicit sexual content". Beyond that, anything goes for an "all ages" VN. The search link above has a minimum age rating of 3+ for that reason
You don't need Ren'Py-like software for graphic novels unless you want them to be interactive. Even so, it may be difficult for an 8-year-old to learn python and debug something like Ren'Py, especially because half of its use is entirely 18+.
I would recommend something like Scratch. It's a visual scripting language that allows kids to make amazing games and animations. It has all the capabilities necessary with ease and kid-friendly forums and comment sections.
I was wondering what it was built with as I was playing. Roadwarden is tripple-A storytelling and world building masquerading as a little indie title. I was very impressed by how much atmosphere it conveys with minimalistic presentation. That takes a lot of skill.
Here it is on Steam, currently on sale for a criminally under priced $4.39
Agreed, Roadwarden is an absolute gem and has earned two full playthroughs from me. It's such a compelling experience for a text-based game, it feels especially so as I'm not old enough to have a nostalgic appreciation for text games.
Honestly I wouldn't recommend DDLC to someone new to VNs. It's hilarious but it parodies the dating sim genre by amping up the defining tropes to 11 before it then (minor spoiler, see footnote [2]). So you kind of need familiarity with the genre to understand some of the jokes. One of the more famous dating sims is probably Katawa Shoujo which is also free under a CC license.
Ah Interesting, I have only played one or two dating sims many years ago, what are some tropes which are specific to dating sims rather than those also found in romance-based anime/manga?
I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up anything else.
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- It has all the basic featured you'd expect, ranging from proper backlogs, to key bindings, and much more. You'd be shocked how many VN developers think that they can just pop out an VN engine themselves, and end up producing something that lacks even basic features.
- It is performant. You'd be surprised how poorly many VN engines run really poorly. Fast-forwarding past already-read text is often capped at a surprisingly slow rate, with your CPU pegged at 100%, due to how inefficient many engines are
- It is easily moddable, as you just need to plop a (pseudo-)python script into the game folder, so you can easily tweak or turn off annoying bits of UI
A number of localization companies have also ported (typically older) Japanese titles to Ren'py, instead of having to struggle with poor to non-existent support for non-Japanese systems in the original engine, as well as extremely expensive engine licenses, and just straight up poorly written bespoke engines. Examples of companies having done this includes JAST USA, FAKKU, MangaGamer, and (IIRC) Sekai Project/Denpasoft. In other words, the heavy hitters of VN localization.
The other main contender for best VN engine (in my mind) is the KiriKiri engine, which I believe is also open source, but which lacks the large, English-speaking community that Ren'py has built.
Despite that, Ren'py does have a bit of a poor reputation in the older VN reading community, more specifically among readers who mainly read localized, Japanese VNs, due to its association with low-budget, originally English visual novels. Typically the same people have only heard of DDLC and Katawa Shoujo, when it comes to originally English visual novels
As far as competitors go, the list is not very long. Sugarcube/Twine works ok, but tends to bog down as the projects grow large because it doesn't have a good way of breaking up the core logic across different files. The save system is also a bit of a problem since the in-browser saves tend to get lost in version updates. QSP is just a buggy confusing mess every time. People try to shoehorn RPGMaker into doing the job but it is just so clunky and slow. Custom engines, typically built in Unity, are almost always massive resource hogs and lacking in one or more of the basic features Ren'Py provides by default. Plus there is just the community aspect of it, with Ren'Py having so many developers there is a lot of institutional knowledge to be had. If you run into a problem you are probably not the first, someone else has probably solved it already.
In practice graph matching can be helped by manually tagging the same nodes (labels in Ren'Py) in the two versions, but that cannot cover all the edge cases
I'm developing a VN framework for the own use of my indie VN dev group, and we mostly implemented the diff algorithm for the 'linear' part of the graphs. You can search my handle to know more
This is of course not an exact ranking, since the same game can have many (nearly identical) releases, but it roughly matches my experience
Especially when you increase the window size or run fullscreen, most VN engines just render the whole game at a fixed resolution and upscale it up but Renpy makes the framebuffer match the window size and renders text at the full resolution.
That caught my curiosity, but I couldn't find any examples of older VNs being ported to Renpy. Could you share any examples?
Dead Comment
Something noticeably missing from almost every other type of text-heavy game which perhaps wouldn't be if games developers were less snobbish about where they draw inspiration from.
On the other hand, writers of games with metatextual stories benefit from their target audience not knowing how well-trod the ground is.
In many ways I felt that the engine was designer for beginners rather than developers in a way that are antagonistic to each others. No real debugger, no support for libraries, leading to re-implementation of basic stuff, etc. I had a love-hate relationship with it. Pseudo-python is the right term for it.
In the end I was happy with the Steam features it already had to make distribution easy, although I had to actually patch the engine as the Steam session ticket function was broken.
But if there are no titles that have already caught your interest, then my personal recommendation is to start with hybrid games such as VA-11 Hall-A, the Danganronpa series, the Ace Attorney series, WILL: A Wonderful World, and 999.
VNs are at their core a reading experience, frequently involving more words than what you'll find in the entire Lords of the Ring trilogy, but hybrid games like the above allow you to dip your toes in the VN genre without it purely being reading
All that to say, you probably won't like VNs unless you like reading. Don't expect much gameplay / animation. That said, the more famous stories tend to have multiple endings determined by a handful of choices you get during the story. On occasion, some games go for sandbox-style gameplay where you roam the map to grind out currency to unlock visual novel scenes.
In terms of genre I'd say at least half are dating sims, with the rest being some kind of adventure or mystery story. I'd also guess at least half are nsfw / r18. Renpy VNs tend to be made by indie devs from everywhere but Japan, which has a VN industry with in-house engines.
Writing quality tends to be what you expect from indie authors / devs. That is, filled with tropes, tending towards the wish-fulfillment types. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, you'll be surprised what you'd be willing to overlook if the premise / plot seems interesting.
Usually, but some of them are infamously ludicrously long. Like 2-3x War and Peaces long.
Deleted Comment
Looks like the median renpy novel (with 100+ votes) takes 250min to complete with the ludicrously long ones [2] bringing the average up to 503min.
[1] https://query.vndb.org/?sql=SELECT+%0D%0A++++r.engine%2C+%0D...[2] https://query.vndb.org/?sql=SELECT%0D%0Avn.title%2C%0D%0AROU...
Unfortunately, Japan stopped making visual novels somewhere around a decade ago. Creators presumably moved on to work on gacha games. Many visual novel companies are now either gone, inactive, or pivoted to gacha games. I wish I can see more games like Baldr Sky, Steins Gate, and Aiyoku no Eustia again.
Some if the entries really push the limits in terms visual presentation and can have a crazy amounts of animations. Plus really talented voice actors use the jam to practice their skills.
laughs in umineko and higurashi
Dead Comment
It feels to me like 'Hate Story' and its sequel ('Hate Plus') really pushed the bounds of what a visual novel engine can easily do.
Needy Streamer Overload was the big visual novel of 2024 I think, which was Unity.
The most popular modern-ish visual novels I know of, like Fate Grand Order, Dangenronpa, and Ace Attorney, aren't Ren'py.
I feel like Ren'py is in the minority for modern popular visual novels, and it's definitely in the minority if you include re-releases of older visual novels.
I'd expect it to be in the vast majority for independent visual novels.
Deleted Comment
Then I dug a little deeper and saw that a lot of it is very sexualized. I'm not opposed to that for adults but it isn't something I want my daughter exposed to.
Anyone have suggestions for safe spaces for kids? I really love the idea of her creating using ren'py but I'm worried it is a gateway to things she isn't ready for yet.
https://vndb.org/v?q=&ch=&f=02N1802a48a23N19a38&s=26y
Though I will caution that a lot of these are either self-reported by the authors or just guesstimates by the person who added the VN to VNDB.
And I will caution that you should never trust it when a visual novel is described as "all ages": For whatever reason, the VN reading community has settled on using that term when we mean "no explicit sexual content". Beyond that, anything goes for an "all ages" VN. The search link above has a minimum age rating of 3+ for that reason
I would recommend something like Scratch. It's a visual scripting language that allows kids to make amazing games and animations. It has all the capabilities necessary with ease and kid-friendly forums and comment sections.
Here it is on Steam, currently on sale for a criminally under priced $4.39
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/
Interesting read/play, but not for everyone.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katawa_Shoujo
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[2] does a 180 and makes fun of the plot holes
I guess "bad endings" and "save then go back" would be specific and played with in DDLC, but I didn't pick up anything else.
0. https://vndb.org/