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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!

Hey, this is one of the hosts for Worst Visual Novel Jam. I removed your game because the frequently flashing lights are a danger to people with epilepsy and you gave absolutely zero warning about this. You are able to resubmit the game after you tone down the flashing, make sure its actually not dangerous to other people, and give actual proper content warnings on your page. This is your one warning and any failure to do so will get you banned.

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

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.

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

First of all, I'd appreciate it if you asked this in the Q&A thread that's been stickied in this community tab (and I may migrate your question and my answer to that thread), but I don't mind answering it here since it's a really good question!

The main answer (which may seem perhaps a little too general) is what makes a bad game "a bad game" is entirely up to your interpretation. What makes a game good or bad is subjective since it can depend on what your personal standards of what good or bad games are. Like does the game have frustrating controls when it doesn't need it to be frustrating? Is it badly written and/or have a nonsensical storyline full of plotholes? Does the decisions made for its narrative and gameplay just not make sense? Some devs will interpret a bad game by making something incredibly low effort (drawn quickly/poorly with typos everywhere), and some will interpret a bad game as something incredibly annoying to experience with buttons that don't work or text that's too slow. Some will interpret it by making parody or joke games of a popular concept, or sometimes even make fun of a genre they actually love! Also sometimes it's fun to be annoying to the player lol. I suggest playing some of the previous jam's entries to get an idea!

I'll also give you my reason why I like running this jam and hope to keep it running every year, which hopefully will be a more succinct answer lol. The modern internet as it is currently is incredibly tough for a creative in any medium because of how frequently and constantly you have to make and post good art in order to tide over algorithms and to get your work looked at. This is absolutely unsustainable because one person can't just keep making perfect bangers all the time, and to think that you need to can lead to either an endless perfectionist feedback loop ("I'll publish this when I get better at it") or worse, burnout and self worth issues ("Nothing I make will ever be good"). Alongside resting, sometimes you need to make some bad art in order to make way to get you to make some good art, but the modern internet has made it so that people are incredibly scared to be bad or mid at not only their first attempt at a medium, but several attempts after their first!

My central hopes for this jam is to make some space and give people permission to not be pressured to make something good, and to let loose and just have fun making the thing. Anyone can use this jam to their personal creative advantage, whether its an experimental design that's hard to pull off in a typical game, your first foray into an engine you've never worked with (like me, I'm using the jam as an excuse to learn Godot!), learning your own workflow to help you figure out how to finish your games in general, or just because you like the creation process and wanna make a(n un)playable shitpost.

The definition of what makes a game "good" or "bad" is subjective so what's allowed in is honestly pretty lax, but the main central theme of the jam is to not worry about the pressures of making something good and have to fun making bad art. Anything is allowed provided you follow the jam's rules and have fun making your bad visual novel! :D

If you have any questions about the jam, post them here and we will try to get back to you ASAP! Check out the previous community tabs on the previous jam pages if in case someone asked a similar question in the past, but still feel free to ask away here! Chances are, you may have a question someone was wondering about too.

That being said, if your question is along the lines of "Can I use AI for-", I can already let you know the answer is either going to be a giant bass boosted No or sending you this post.

2024 Community Tab | 2025 Community Tab

Thank you! :D And if you were to have the game be free with donations allowed, I consider that non-commercial. It's when you put a price to your project that I consider it commercial.

Eventually 😅 Admittedly I've been distracted with other projects that I've put this one to the side for a moment, but I still want it finished when I'm able to get to it!

Hey!! I am so sorry for the super slow correspondence on my part, but I appreciate the well wishes, and thank you! :D That's very true for CB, I'm glad I was able to finish it and the trilogy in the end.

Same to you on your Godot journey! I did notice it's pretty similar to python when I was hitting up some tutorials, but I am entirely not used to its workflow compared to what im used to lol ^^; I know it's a matter of jumping in and being bad at it until I get good, but funny enough I have the same issue as you in that with my limited free time I'm constantly interrupted with VN projects to focus on learning Godot entirely lol. Hope you've been doing well!!

I did, yes! :D It really spoke to me and I'm glad you made it. And I've seen all the work you've been putting into Doce Fim and I want to see the full game realized so I can play it hehe

Here's to a better year for the both of us!!

Ah, that's because this version of the game doesn't support phone/tablet/mobile devices yet. When I get around to updating this game it will, but for now you will have to play the downloads or play on a desktop

Aw man, I'm so sorry this is happening! I've been looking into why this has been happening but I truly don't know how to fix it atm, so you may just need to opt for downloading the game instead. Thank you for telling me this

Heya! :D I took a look at the code here on the page and everything seems to work even when switching everything to nvl. Admittedly there wouldn't be anything added to gui.rpy regarding nvl text (only the sayseen color and toggles), so the rest should all be under NVL Screens in screens.rpy. Did you also add the "nvl_chosen" and "nvl_chosen_text" styles from screens.rpy? That's where the color changes should be defined and should happen.

If all else fails, feel free to DM me your code so I can take a crack at it and figure out what's happening on your end

Thank you so much for playing! :D

Thank you for the kind comment~!

As in I never tested it myself lol but in theory it should work! Good Luck! :D

Thank goodness for cats, because maybe my sense of time is effed but at least theres something to keep me truckin' lol. Thank you for playing! :D

Legit I could not figure out if i should just subtitle this game "an autobiography" lmao. Thank you~!

LMAO from the moment the video starts I had been cackling the entire time. Thank you for playing~!

So, my hint to you is that you mentioned 4 options in your vid. The second option is actually super close, well, assuming I coded it correctly lol

yaeh ty!!

It's allowed, however you should at least give credit to the person who made the image or link to where you found the image, and make sure you're not using any stock images that are AI generated. If in case you're uncomfortable with using random stock bgs, you can make your own fake stock bgs with public domain images like I did with This Visual Novel Isn't Like Other Visual Novels lol

I was trying to see if there was one where you didn't have to make an account, but it seems they fell to the wayside. 😅 This one works tho!

I personally use FontForge and import glyphs from SVGs I've drawn in a vector program (like Affinity Designer or Inkscape) to make my fonts or remix them if the font licenses allow. That being said, there's a bit of a learning curve to doing fonts like that compared to something that'll streamline the process like Calligraphr

I'm having trouble finding it but there was a website where you uploaded a template you draw on to make your own handwriting font. I feel that would have tons of potential if you wanted to make an unreadable font~ 

The no copyrighted works rule isn't exactly a hard rule because some things can fall under Fair Use or your local equivalent of copyright laws regarding remixing an existing work. However, you should be aware of your local copyright laws and be aware of what you're risking if you decide to include it in your game. That being said, if the advert has AI generated materials in it, it will be banned.

Sorry for the late reply! Thank you for your kind words! :D 

As for the floating text, I'd be glad to share:

image textsnow = SnowBlossom(Text("{color=#ffffff50}...", slow_cps=1, size=88), count=10, border=50, xspeed=(-20, 150), yspeed=(-100, -200), start=0, fast=False, horizontal=False)

Image below has it in colors for easier understanding:

Once that code is in, you can use "show textsnow" in your games code like you typically would for an image. The idea is that you still use SnowBlossom and its usual settings for speed/direction, but instead of an image you use Text as a displayable like it's an image. You can use text tags in that Text displayable for more visual options, though I would highly recommend using {noalt} for actual non punctuation words so the text-to-speech function doesn't go wild lol. 

Yeah p much lol. Here's a hint: it's not violet

Omg thank you for the kind words!! I'm honored it resonated with you so much

And thank you for organizing this bundle! :D

Thank you for the kind words! :D Would you mind if we discuss this through email?

I'm glad you liked it! :D Thank you so much for playing!

Thank you so much for the kind words! :D

Thank you so much for playing and thank you for the kind comments! I really appreciate it! :D

I'm sorry for the late reply, but thank you so much for playing! I always appreciate your vids :D

I'm sorry for the late reply, but thank you so much for playing and the kind comments! :D

As in time loops because MC is stuck in one. You'll know you've reached the end of a loop when the game crashes. When it crashes, hit Ignore and start the game up again to do another loop!

Oh no that's intentional lol

The initial due date was July 5th 2024, but we decided to extend the jam to be a little longer to help everyone get those finishing touches in! The deadline is now on July 14th 2024 at 11:59 PM PST.

As a reminder, you don't necessarily need to 100% complete the game you're fixing. We accept submissions for incomplete games, though we do encourage you to post somewhere that it's incomplete.

Good luck with getting those games fixed, and hope to see y'all make! :D

Thank you so much Heiden!! 😊

Thank you so much for the kind comment~! :D

Thank you so much for the kind comment! :D It's funny how a good portion of us grew up with these book, huh?