So, I started working on this visual novel around the start of this month (September 2026). I've been learning Renpy as I go and treating it as more or less a practice run, but it's going a lot better than I thought it would so, I will definitely publish it.
(You can visit me on itchio here!)
I'm not sure exactly what I'll share here, my struggles maybe, but really I'd rather focus on development 😂 Still, I wanted a place to organize my ideas and thoughts.
It took a bit of work to wrap my head around the bit of coding you need to create multiple paths but it's really not all that confusing. I just needed to find the right resource, for me. This website was a life saver!
The Story
The story is quite simple, you play as Shoshana, a young, single Jewish woman with a rebellious streak who sneaks out via the tunnels under her city to practice fighting in the woods. By chance she comes upon a hut in a clearing one day and that's where she meets Johanna.
If you follow me you may know that this is all heavily inspired by characters from Kingdom Come Deliverance but my goal is for this game to stand on its own with no prior knowledge required!
Admittedly their romance advances fast but as this is a practice game I'm not allowing myself to indulge in my urge to go really deeply into minutiae of character exploration and lore building 🤭
So far...
I have most of the script done although the meat of the game will be in the spicy parts which I am only just getting into now. The game is only about 10 minutes long so far but I'm working on making the spicy scene as interactive as possible, with different art for different "routes" you can take as you interact with Johanna.
I would definitely plan more for any future VN I may create but I wasn't really sure what I could feasibly do in terms of coding for this. My initial plan was to just have it as a completely linear story, so I'm glad I approached it with learning in mind.
What's next?
Think of a title 😂
Redo and clean up some sprites.
Finish the script!
Sart working on a custom UI.
Background sprites.
Beef up the script with more detail (preferably after I have had some folks play text).
That's all for this first post, hopefully it was a little interesting. I'm more than happy to answer questions!