Comment by oceansky
8 hours ago
This genre of games are called visual novels.
Doki Doki was created with the Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine by the way.
8 hours ago
This genre of games are called visual novels.
Doki Doki was created with the Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine by the way.
And it's also one of the most impressive displays of RenPy's capabilities you'll ever see.
Plenty of games do amazing things with ren'py that you wouldn't think were possible just by looking at the dialogue DSL. Maps, HUDs, minigames, incredibly dynamic pathways through the game. But DDLC takes it to a different level, partly by looking so "normal" on its surface.
In college I made some spare cash writing Ren'py games for some creatives online who had the writing and illustration chops, but needed programming help. At the time, DDLC was the model for great game design in Ren'Py. There are plenty of more technically impressive Ren'py games nowadays, but DDLC is still a terrific example of technical sophistication facilitating the story.
Ren'py is awesome by the way. A tour de force of software design, in my opinion.
I've played it, but what's impressive about this game (technically)? I don't remember its implementation being anything special as opposed its plot.
I think it's mainly in relation to the constraints of the game engine, and also that the game engine being flexible enough to enable the gimmicks. I haven't played DDLC and probably never will, but from what I've read about it, like games with similar core themes (not dating sim) it has some gimmicks that tend to stretch the capabilities of a closed-down game engine, sometimes requiring patches to the engine itself. In this case the game engine Renpy offers an extensive DSL that makes it easy to add story scenes, media and dialogues, but allows you to fall back to python to do some tricky things.
It does a lot of screwing with the interface and game data in ways most VNs do not.
Any examples of other impressive Ren'py showcases?
I personally helped develop a game with an entire inventory/crafting system, and an isometric map. Final product never saw the light of day, sadly.
People have made some pretty slick turn-based combat systems. Some deck builders, others more spellcasting/mana oriented.
And it's renpy so like 80% of the games are straight up porn, so I'm not naming a single one here lol.
"Analogue: A Hate Story" and its sequel do some technically interesting things, and they both also have interesting stories, I can recommend them.
http://ahatestory.com/
I really enjoyed Roadwarden. Interesting take on an old fantasy genre and gave me “this is ancient history” vibes. I’m not usually into visual novels but beat this game. It’s available for under $3 right now, I am showing 20 hours played, totally worth it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/
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Isn't RenPy basically a game engine under the hood? So if you have the programming chops, you can make anything with Python.
Yeah but its such a standout in there that i wouldnt even consider it part of that genre. It uses the same medium but does such crazy things with it that its nothing like any other visual novels
I really can't agree, there are so many great VNs out there and DDLC only really stands out in that it plays heavily to the English-speaking world's preconceived notions of VNs as "nothing more than simple dating simulators"