Howdy y'all. I'm making a Visual Novel in Ren'Py.
The inspiration of this game is a conversation with my grandmother. I am a trans man, and I was increasingly frustrated at trying to explain how transphobia impacts literally every aspect of my life. My grandmother simply didn't understand, and I was in the moment at a loss for how to communicate effectively. Later I came up with an explanation that I wanted to turn into a zine, but the idea got too big to squash into a zine. So here I am, making it a VN instead. Somewhere along the way this became less about telling my grandmother, specifically, and more about telling a story that I need to tell for myself no matter who else listens.
This game is going to have heavy topics at times, warnings include but are not limited to transphobia (obviously), self harm, and suicidal ideation. If this isn't your cup of tea, I totally understand. I'll keep the discussion of such at a minimum here, and be as non-descriptive as I can.
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July 11th, 2020. Dawn of the first day. 14 days remain.
My idea for the frame of this game is that the Player is directly interacting with the main character as the kid grows up. The Player is prompted to name the kid so that the Player has some emotional investment in the kid's life. The kid is a trans boy, but since he's based on my own personal experiences, he won't realize it until he's in college. So the Player might not realize it either because the game doesn't make it specifically clear until the end. There will be several chapters, each one representing a chunk of the kid's childhood. Toddler, kindergarten, middle school, high school. Each chapter has one significant event in it. Each event is a point at which the kid is exploring his gender identity/expression, and the Player can be supportive or not. Each unsupportive answer is a point that will count toward the "bad" ending. Each supportive answer is a point towards the "good" ending. Tallying these points is a surprise tool that will help us later.
The art style is going to be fairly simplified, both to save time on making assets, and because I think it looks nifty. Every background and sprite will be done on black with sketchy white lines. The opposite from a typical scribbled drawing (black lines on white) should help the game feel somewhat unsettled and unfamiliar. It will also help any additional colors pop even more, since they'll be vibrant in an otherwise dark picture.
I've not thought about music yet. Although I have snagged a nifty knife slash SFX (from Freesound) that I should get some mileage out of. It's a surprise tool that will help us later. Related to a metaphor in the story, not self harm, if you were wondering.
I've tinkered with Ren'Py before and yet, I'm having to learn a few things that I want to do for the sake of this game. I'm currently stuck on making the "player inputs a name for the kid" bit of code, but I'll get it eventually. (Indentation is going to give me gray hair, I'm sure.) I'm probably going to stick a pin in that and get into the main script, since writing dialogue and making menus/choices to jump between scenes is something I can already do, and the player-given name is a flourish I can add later. I want to replace the graphics for the various menus, dialog boxes, and buttons, and I've never done that before. Can't be too hard, right? I'd like to try having a name be randomly generated from a list, if I have the time to experiment with that.