Hello! So glad to see you're joining us this year! Ashe has been posting a series of useful tips on twitter: https://twitter.com/pixelsandpins/status/1362144689386778627
My personal suggestion is to plan to finish making your visual novel in two weeks. Everything always takes longer than expected, so it's a good idea to really keep the original scope very small. That way you can spend the rest of the buffer time polishing and refining what you made.
Thank you! My current plan is for the story to be overall linear and have three possible endings depending on the player's choices. (Good end, neutral end, and bad end, with good and bad ends having specific prerequisites.) Probably about a five-day scope for the story (in-game five days, not "I'm spending five days")? It's about a little girl who's been adopted by an inventor who lives in a small town, and how she uncovers a tragic secret and sets a spirit to rest.
