#ren'py

About

This is a free fangame written by beanandberry (beanandberry.tumblr.com) and illustrated and composited by CanterburyBell (canterbury-bell.tumblr.com), created in Ren'Py between November 2024 and February 2025. It is a kinetic visual novel that takes approximately an hour to play, and it focuses on the pairing of Jax and Ragatha from The Amazing Digital Circus. The Amazing Digital Circus is by  Gooseworx and Glitch Productions. Please support the official release here. Special thanks to PixieVenus (notnights.tumblr.com) and VeeVisions (vadoodlevee.tumblr.com) for playing through as betas and helping us catch typos! : )

Notes

I made another Ren'Py tutorial post! This time about LayeredImages because I had to find a lot of tricks to make my 1000+ image game at least somewhat efficient

It covers:

Basics of layeredimage (attributes, groups, characters, transforms)

Exporting/formatting images

Naming files 

Conditional attributes & variants

Easy blinking

Showing the same image multiple times (LayeredImageProxy)

"It’s date night! Can the handsome-wealthy-and-so-sexy Lupin III impress his lifelong rival-partner Zenigata?!"

But! Since the game has mechanics relating to time, when sufficient time passes in game, the space station that the game is taking place on moves over the earths surface, giving a different view of the earth below!

This was accomplished by taking real life earth photography by nasa from this *fantastic* resource. I took frames every 2ish seconds and cut the video into 58 individual "backgrounds" which I then manually edited to reduce resolution, quantize, and dither. Resulting in images like these!

HEART OF GOLD

A tale of robot dissections and broken promises.

Life isn't easy for labor robots in the 23rd century. One robot, serial number LFTR-03-251, gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she catches the attention of her creator, genius inventor and interplanetary celebrity Eris Promethea. What follows is a passionate week of laboratory experiments, intimacy, and pleasure the likes of which no robot has ever felt before. But when tensions rise and the dream finally ends, 251 will find herself fighting for the future of her kind.

Me and a whole bunch of friends worked together to create this sci-fi visual novel for the Toxic Yuri VN Jam 2! Contributors include @morphimus, @shadolith, @roguemagpies, @realityandrebirth, @alicesilentwitch, and @jeeperssqueakers.

Go play it!

you want to 100% use ren'py i dont make the rules

its straightforward enough that simply downloading, installing and hitting the "create new project" and spamming through the menu and then opening script.rpy to see the code which will tell you like 70% of what you need to make your first vn. there no need to be afraid just because the word 'code' was mentioned. ren'py's own language is just copy pasting stuff back and forth and inserting your own names and pictures. its nothing like C# or java or whatever languages exist cause i know jackshit about any of that and dont know how to do programming

anyway, inside the main script file, script.rpy, are commented instructions on how to name a character, place a sprite, place a background, and put in text and you can basically make a vn with these things. i can not stress it enough KEEP IT SIMPLE, especially if you're starting out. making things complicated or planning massive projects is just shooting yourself in the foot. better to make 2 minute game than get stuck trying to make a epic masterpiece

writing a story is its own thing. however anyone can write and its better to write a shit story than no story. that way you have something to build on and get more comfy with your own art process. its what me and everyone else who makes vns and any other art or skill or hobby have done too.

if you like what some other vn/manga/anime/story does copy it and smash these inspirations together to make your own thing. save pictures and lines you see that get you inspired if you need inspiration and references for your own story. everything in this world is inspired by other things someone else has made. its not stealing unless you get absurd and download someone elses game and take out half the assets and put them in your own game and pretend you didnt

if you have interest do yourself a favour and make a vn. as far as game development goes its one of the most accessible options out there . ren'py is an amazing engine having all the vn necessities already in place since that allows you to just focus on the story and not have to worry about setting things up yourself and scrambling with advanced code unless you really want to

i know the jam is just ending in the following weeks and depending on when you see this post this might be outdated as hell but my yurijam server is still going and will be going until people simmer out and something new shiny takes their attention. still, its a server an people post gay shit there occasionally even outside of jams so me and many others are helpful and like answering questions to help otehrs make stuff. so i think the best way is to join the server rn and just ask questions in the help channel. better to ask stupid questions than no questions

now go make a visual novel im holding a whip and making those scary crack sounds and aiming just close enough to your feet that youre almost convinced it hit you despite your jumping and dancing and DANCE NOW DANCE MAKE A VISUAL NOVEL DANCE GET TO IT MAKE A VISUAL NOVEL DO IT NOW OR ILL GET YOUR FACE NEXT MAKE A VISUAL NOV-