Why build a game in RenPy?

 

 

Why build a game in RenPy?

This was something pretty important to settle before I got to work on Piety. It came down to a number of factors and personal experiences.

Mobile platforms

Once upon a time, Flash worked everywhere, and the iPhone was not yet popular. You could build stuff on the web and people looking for lewd content knew about places like new-grounds. Today, one of the most used platforms by far is mobile devices. I was kind of shocked by the numbers shared by other devs by the large number of players willing to play explicit games on their phones. To this end, I was originally looking at using Unity before they threw developer confidence into the trash. This left Renpy as a viable possibility as it has builds across PC and Mobile. I’ll be able to target PC, Mac, Linux, Android and Apple devices all with RenPy.

It just works

Coding is very straightforward, using a mixture of RenPy’s own language and Python, it’s easy to develop and make complex UI or mechanics. It uses just about any popular media format I would want to use, and distribution builds are a breeze. One of the most important features, roll-back, is readily available and easy to maintain as well as making and managing saves.

Free Open Source Softare (FOSS)

Circling back to the issue with Unity, RenPy is FOSS. It will not cost me extra to develop with and is something that is continuously developing. It has a nice community and active developer scene. While I don’t intend to work on furthering RenPy itself, I am happy enough with just using it to build games. Other platforms such as Godot exist, but I have yet to delve deeply into it, and it is also a general purpose engine opposed to targeting VNs. Twine also exists, and I may touch on it if a particular idea strikes.

RenPy games are pretty fun

There’s a huge library of existing games that use RenPy and are sources of inspiration. There are a few great examples of expansion based games such as Hypnosis by Expanding Universe, Research Station M-OO by Galactase and Fattening Career by Bladerune9. I recommend you check these out for their stand out excellence.

 

The next post I will provide some progress on Piety. I’m still hoping to squeeze out some sort of build this month, but am expecting some extra work the next few weeks. If not a release, I’ll at least drop down some news or screen shots.

 

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