Nope! You can write in any language(s) you prefer!

Yes, you're allowed to make an engine to make your VN in before the start date, so long as you're not working on the VN itself beforehand! Like no working on art assets and dialogue that will go into the game before the jam starts, but making sure the engine doesn't immediately crash on startup is another thing entirely.

You’re allowed to put in other styles of gameplay as long as it’s primarily a visual novel. We don’t have a formal metric for that, so if you think it’s a visual novel with RPG elements rather than an RPG with visual novel elements, you’re probably fine!

There's no theme, other than to make a really bad visual novel~!

There’s no limit on how many people per team! If you can somehow have 100 people working on the same game, go for it. Both teams and solo developers are allowed.

You’re welcome to make a thread on this forum to use to look for teammates. Otherwise, if you already have friends who do game dev (or even better, friends who don’t), I suggest asking them.

To us, if the game has visuals and text you primarily interact with, then its a visual novel! Omegabutton also gave a really good answer earlier: "We don’t have a formal metric for that, so if you think it’s a visual novel with RPG elements rather than an RPG with visual novel elements, you’re probably fine!" I also suggest playing not only bad visual novels submitted in the past, but also some good ones here on itchio so you have a better idea!

3 minutes of content! You can split the 3 minutes into as many branching paths as you want.

There’s no limits on character types, as long as the visual novel is bad!

There isn’t a Worst VN Jam Discord server, sorry to say. We wouldn’t be able to put in the time and effort needed to mod it.

Based on what you said, you should probably be okay! The relevant rules are:

No explicit NSFW content! You can get racy, horny, gross, and weird, but no explicit gore, sex, 18+ content, or anything that would warrant your game to be marked as 18+. Keep it PG-13

No content  that promotes bigotry(including but not limited to transphobia, racism, etc).

So depiction of bigotry is okay, as long as you don't promote it. In my personal opinion, depictions of bigotry can still be in poor taste even if it is acknowledged as bad, but I have no way of judging your project without seeing it. If you think it would help, you can include a disclaimer that you don't agree with the ""love interest"".

From the rules:

• No using assets or content that are not yours, are copyrighted, or are AI generated! Assets made by you or a friend, stuff you have bought, and assets licensed under something like Creative Commons etc. are all good, as long as you follow any eventual terms (like attribution and such) and said assets have not been touched by AI.

So if the images are definitely in the Public Domain/CC0 (which is what I'm assuming you mean by copyright free) then yes you're good to use them so long as its not touched or generated by AI! However, unless the images are from well before the 1900s I would advise on making absolutely 100% sure the images are truly copyright free since there may be some attribution or other terms needed for stuff labeled "royalty free" or "copyright free" or may have been reuploaded against the original creator's wishes.