Made my first renpy (demo) game
nadrah
she/her · Aug 2024
Fulfilling a childhood goal by using an unfamiliar game engine is tough.
Context time: I have always wanted to make my own dating sim after I grew up playing those. I am out of school and officially, an adult with no love prospects. Now's a better time than any.
Arcana Romance is a dating sim featuring my original characters (AKA 'OCs'). The first game was made in 2021 on the Kocho app which has garnered 19.3k downloads. It is the most popular content I have. Since then, I wanted to make a sequel game that explains more lore and has more character interaction. The problem came when the Kocho app became outdated that the app got deleted from the Play Store and became unplayable to some updated phone models. Knowing this issue, I had to move on to other game engines for my sequel game like Unity.
Believe it or not, the sequel game development began right after the first game was made. It has been 3 years. The first year was experimenting with what game engines I could use to make the sequel. My main two choices were Unity and Renpy. The programming was really challenging to learn. I have watched tutorials online, attended a short game development course from MAGES, and messed around with both game engines. After 1.5 years of trying to grasp both game engines, I had to surrender and the reason is because I have a lot of work to do for game development.
I could only afford to hire a few professionals as this passion project was made from my pocket money. I need to do the heavy lifting like story writing, designing the GUI layout, and drawing the game assets. If I were to take my time to learn programming any longer than 1.5 years, my game development would be pushed back a lot. Despite that, I learned the basics of both game engines which is useful later on when I communicate with my programmer. With the limited budget, I knew very much my priority was to hire a programmer who then confirmed what game engine I needed to use which is Renpy. Since then, the game development has been smooth and finally, the demo is finished.
These are some learning points I had during the game development:
- Make the project feasible.
- Have realistic expectations with the budget you have.
- Set a limited time for you to try out something new or learn. Then, decide whether to continue or not based on your experience.
- Get help in the areas you lack.
Thank you for your time! Please consider playing the game if it is your cup of tea and sharing it with your friends who'd enjoy a silly dating sim.
Find out more and play the demo for free here: