Devlog #2: Design Choices

I've been analysing visual novel games I liked and took some notes on their aesthetics. I am also new to coding in python, and continuously researching how to use Ren'Py.

Design choices:

The font I'll be using for Deep Blood Town (DBT for short) is Noto Sans Japanese, it comes with commercial use and has great readability. I'm not sure if I'll make profit from the game but it's always good to be prepared. Also I actually spent a lot of hours deciding what font to use and I suppose I liked this one most because it was used in the Umineko games.

The style of DBT will resemble visual novels from the early 2000s, using NVL-Mode and a CTC indicator arrow. I find the older style more immersive and easier to read, as there's less need to look at the bottom of the screen. NVL-Mode removes character names from the text, making it more novel-like.

I quite like the abstract style of backgrounds used by 07th expansion games. And since I have time constraints for DBT, I'll be adapting a similar style for my own project to help speed up my production. I'm leaving art lowest priority this time, drawing backgrounds can be really time-consuming and so will character sprites. I also believe that 07th expansion does this abstract style with their games so that players can use their imagination to envision the setting in their head.

The majority of the character sprites will have at least two expressions while in the same pose, although the main character may have more.

Progress:

I'm currently using placeholders for the game (so excuse the quality). Here's what I managed to achieve so far, story is not the problem but getting the game to feel early 2000s NVL-Mode is.

Somethings I need to work on next:

• Fix the spacing between the text, a bit too wide
• Typewriter text effect
• Fix transition speed for background and sprites
• Change blinking arrow, make it something cute idk
• Wallpaper needs to fit entire screen (I put a black fill in the image for testing)
• Work on character sprites
• Add more placeholder backgrounds