Player Question: The Process of Making Games
Recently, we received an email from one of you asking about the process of making Project Spellstruck, so we thought we’d answer in a blog post for anyone else interested!
“To Candlelight Games,
How do you put a game together? What programs do you use for art, programming, etc? I’m the founder and head writer for the fan-made sequel for Distant Shores, and the whole time it made me think of how any visual novel game is made.
All I know from experience is that it is A LOT of work! My friend who started the DS sequel with me, thought about my insane idea of making our own visual novel game, and if we want it to be good, we want to know what the pros use!
Thank you so much, and my friend and I are excited about your new company!”
Note: this email has been edited for length and clarity. Distant Shores fan-made sequel can be found here.
What software do we use to make our VNs?
This is the software we use regularly and what we use it for:
Adobe Creative Suite - Art
Figma - Design
Final Draft - Writing
Articy - Narrative Design
Unreal - Game Engine
Plus, we use a whole lot of additional software to manage our pipeline, builds, etc. Honestly, it's a lot, but we have full-time engineers on our team to set things up and make sure everything keeps working. For a smaller or less experienced team, we wouldn’t recommend something so complicated.
Screenshot of Project Spellstruck in Articy
What software should you use to make your VNs?
You've probably heard it before but there is no “right tool” for making games. The best tool to use is the one you will use.
Some tools are too complicated, either for the members of the team who will be using them most or for what you actually need them to do (you don’t need an industrial mixer to make one batch of cookies). Some tools don't do enough of what you need them to do. The challenge is striking the right balance for your team.
Personally, if I were making a VN in a small team, I would recommend the following tools for art creation and prototyping.
Affinity Photo ($69) - Art
Figma (free) - Design
Then for the game engine itself, I would use either
Ren'Py (free) -- excellent and beginner friendly tool that is wonderful for VNs
or
Godot (free) + Ink (free) -- more complex, requires real coding, but much more powerful
Lots of Steam games have been made with both options!
I'm certain that there are other good options, and there may be better options for you. But these selections fit my own personal balance between power and ease of use -- which is to say these are tools I would use.
Also, you might have noticed that the full suite of recommended software here is under $100 total. If you used GIMP instead of Affinity, or found another alternative, this would all be free. That saves money for getting some great art from a real human artist.
Hope this helped, and have fun creating!
Royal McGraw
CEO at Candlelight Games
Got questions for us? Send them to social@candlelight.games and we might answer them in a blog post!