The game we were planning to make is a visual novel, which is similar to a virtual "choose-your-own-adventure" novel.  Though Libby and I were both familiar with Python, we had no programming experience.  Therefore, we looked for software that would fit our needs.  We've looked around for visual novel programs, and found a few options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We looked at Unity for making our game.  It's a very established game design tool that many people know about.  This means it has numerous tutorials about how to use it and it's proven to be a good resource to make games of many different genres.  Plus, the Person Version of Unity is free!  We found a way to use Unity for our project, but it involved making a 3D world and having some knowledge revolving around camera placement.  It didn't seem like the best tool considering the entire process seemed overly complicated for what we wanted to do.  Plus, we weren't sure how easily we could learn it: we would have to learn a lot to get the hang of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TyranoBuilder was another software made for Visual Novel games.  It has a code-free drag-and-drop interface that would be easy for new users.  On top of that, you can play games in web browsers (for better accessibility) and it allows animation in their visual novels.  However, it costs money ($15).  Plus its "drag-n-drop" interface, while simple, is limiting.  Coding would provide more control over the game design experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We looked at some other software made specifically for visual novels (for a second or two), however it was either expensive, untrustworthy, or lackluster in comparison to Ren'Py.