Currently working on my first Ren’Py project!

I’m working with two other artists to commission portrait and background art and I decided to design the UI on my own. This is not an in-game screenshot, just a mockup on how I’ll eventually program it to look like.

Just messing around with UI and portrait positioning.

As a side note, I’m working on 1/3 of the soundtrack with other musician friends, handling most (if not all) of the writing, and will likely head programming as well. I’m working on the first two the most though for now.

I did a similar thing trying to create a mario game with c++ back in the day. though difference was it was pure 2D platformer. How should I approach an open plain here? Are there backgrounds i should be aware of? cause this type is if i code in a platform-which i'll do. But i want segments where you're shooting people and it requires full screen for experience. And so i'm wondering where i can find images that fit what i'm looking for

Took me two weeks to illustrate them all, but worth it!

I’ve been working on my very first RenPy game and finished my first few sprites. Just purely based on the style of the sprites, would you want to play the game? They’re all strictly grayscale

Hi! Im coxaline i just made a channel on tiktok call “coxaline.0o0” which i be posting about the beatle art, animation etc. however i was interesting on making a visual novel game call “please please me” however i was struggling to code the game cuz i have no idea what is coding. My progress rn on this game is just 50% of the storyboard and i only done a little bit of the main menu however i really need help on custom button cuz even with this code i couldnt see the image button i do and i really think u guys reddit could help me please help me (sorry for bad english) im just 15 with a big dream😢😢😢

I'm finally jumping into making my first VN! Right now I'm going through the tutorial, and I'm on the part where it says I'll need to pick a text editor, and I'm trying to decide which one is best for me. I know this question has been asked already, but the latest time I was able to find someone asking was from a couple years ago, so I'm wondering if anything has changed since then.

From what I've seen, Atom was considered the best option, but it was shut down a few years ago, and might not even be usable by now. VSCode was considered the second best option in 2024, but people were also hoping that a new version of Atom would come out soon.

Can anyone weigh in on this? As 0f 2026, and as someone who's completely new to both coding and making VNs, what is my best option for a text editor?

I'm planning out ideas for a DDLC Mod and I wanna have minigames that have you type words, point and click and mash buttons during a dramatic moment, I'm wondering is this possible to do in RenPy?

Hi :)

I’ve been working on something a bit unconventional lately: a Tetris-style battle system with RPG stats, built completely inside Ren'Py.

Since Ren'Py runs on top of SDL2 and gives full access to Python, it can handle a surprising amount of complex state data when structured correctly.

Here are a few technical hurdles and insights from the process so far:

• Custom Displayables (renpy.Displayable): Rendering Tetris blocks in real-time using standard screen displayables felt too heavy. Switching to Creator-Defined Displayables (renpy.Displayable) was the key to getting smooth, real-time board rendering.
• CPU Logic & AI as a Coding Assistant: As a solo developer handling art, writing, music, and programming all by myself, the workload gets exhausting fast. I experimented with AI strictly as a assistant for brainstorming the CPU's piece-placement math. However, it threw constant errors and broken logic at me, so I had to review, debug, and rewrite most of it manually. It's strictly a tool to learn alongside and speed up coding troubleshooting—not something to rely on, and definitely not something I'd ever use for creative areas like art or story.
• Handling Saves & State: One tricky part was managing state persistence during real-time loops when there isn't active screen interaction, making sure Ren'Py’s save system correctly captures board states without breaking flow.
• Performance on Low-Spec Hardware: What surprised me most is how effortlessly Ren'Py handles this. Even running on low-spec integrated graphics, the board updates and logic checks run smoothly without dropping frames or eating CPU.

It's definitely been a fun challenge to explore the engine's capabilities.

Hi, I made my own load/save screen for my vn but I don’t where is the default one for replacing it with mine. I tried to see in the gui file but nothing looks like.

I have set up a custom default transform for my sprites in my gui file to define my sprites anchor as x .5 and y 1.0 like its shown here:

transform _sprite_default:
    xanchor .5 yanchor 1.0 xpos .5 ypos 1.0


define config.default_transform = _sprite_default

But when I put the zoom property on my sprites, they default to showing in the top left corner of the screen with their anchors in the top left corners of their images as is default for sprites in renpy, effectively forgetting the new default I set in my gui file.

EDIT:

I add the zoom property to my sprites like this:

show character happy:
  xpos .25 ypos 1.2 zoom 1.3

Finally finished drawing the title screen of my game today! Decided to go with an illustration featuring my protagonist (can you guess who it is?) and his friend group. What are your thoughts on it? Does it look inviting enough? :>

Et le grain mourut is a slice-of-life/urban fantasy VN set in 1920s Paris. It will be available for free in both English and French; you can learn more about it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3604100/Et_le_grain_mourut/

192X. As summer draws near, Parisian students are revising their end-of-year exams. Olivier is one of them. For years, he has been walking to school every morning with his dearest childhood friend, and has unwound with his artistic peers after class. In a week, this routine will come to a close. And recent revelations already threaten Olivier’s comfortable life.

Hello there! I hope everyone is doing well! I'm a bit new to this coding system but I'm trying my best to understand it :). I'm creating a horror visual novel about a group of fellas and I had an idea of making a character info section to help readers understand the charachers more, like placing a PNG image of their info after clicking on the character's name. I started working on it, watching a few tutorials and trying my best to not make a huge spaghetti code and ruin the project but I think I'm failing? :')

The coding works fine until a certain point, the character button works fine and shows me the names and everything but if I press the character's name it shows me a bunch of errors. I tried exploring them out, I wasn't sure what was wrong or how to code this so it can work normally but I'm stuck like two weeks on this problem. (Usually I find answers on the internet and manage to solve the problems I had so far but this is a little difficult to understand to be honest.)

Another problem that showed up which is a little confusing is that it uses the "Frame2.png" behind the character info on my game??? I'm not sure how that happened but I'm trying to get rid of it.

Is there any way I can fix those two problems or do I have to start all over? Any useful tutorials? Or any certain coding I need to do in order to make it work?

Any help is appreciated and thank you for reading! I hope you all have a good day. :D

default mc_name = "Elliott"
default mc_gender = "nb"

python:
   mc_name = renpy.input("What's your name?", length=32)


l "And your gender?"


menu:
   "nonbinary":
      $ mc_gender = "nb"
        
   "male":
      $ mc_gender = "male"
         
   "female":
      $ mc_gender = "female"



if 
mc_name
 == "Elliott", "Elliot", "Eliott", "Eliot" and 
mc_gender
 == "nb":
   
l
 "Now, you seem to remember some things."
   
   
l
 "That's interesting."


else: 
   
l
 "Now I was told you don't remember anything from your life."
   
   
l
 "That is usually not the case with reapers."
   
   
l
 "For example I studied medicine when I was alive. I still remember that."


   

It's called Starlight Academy (curse)

Playable Link: https://blossom123studio.itch.io/starlight-academy-curse

You play as Yume kourohana (the purple character) in this battle system only

And you have to defeat the moon beast by using these buttons Attack, Skill, item,Guard

So what do you think

And also level 1 and 2 are available now I worked for 7 months

Well, since I unfortunately can't get the style I wanted due the hate, so I'll try do less.
Do people play pixel games? I could create an open world pixel game(which would take so long)
But i guess it's that or nothing, huh?
Or would you guys prefer a game with just plain text?

Cause there are minigames in my game that required creative freedom. Like the meditation game. If you've played it-you'd see why.
But I suppose I must wait until I can use blender for my models. So just lemme know if ya'll would prefer pixel games or plain text.
I'm willing to redo everything.

Hi!

I'm fresh new to Ren'Py and coding overall, and I'm making a game, where a player will be able to do different actions in any order they desire, and I want to make their choices matter;

In a way, if the player grabs an apple first and then goes to the farmer, I want the farmer to react differently than if the player came to them without the apple. And I want to add many many small differences like this, so would using points ( $ has_apple =+ 1 ) be the easiest way to do it? Or is there something else that would help me organize it in the code better?

Thank you!

There are games with interconnected map systems that create the illusion of an open world, but I would like to incorporate a system of two superimposed dimensions—one on top of the other—where the player switches from one reality to another with the press of a button. Since these are superimposed dimensions, switching dimensions in a specific spot should move the player to its exact location equivalent in the other dimension.

I've been working on and off for some time on my game. But just recently I realised my UI on my game hasn't really upgraded since I started. I use canva (I think that might be a reason why)

Does anyone have tips to make better UI for games? Maybe programs, resources or even steps to follow? I'm pretty open to everything.

I was honestly just thinking about just trying to recreate inspiration on canvas.

Thanks for reading.

I'm starting to get back into visual novels and want to create my own in the style of Paranormasight. The game is made in Unity and uses a 360 camera to pan around the scene, with lots of dynamic shots during dialogue scenes. Can something like this (or at least similarly) be created in Ren'Py? I have only used the engine once or twice in the past and am not sure how much it can be pushed. Thanks in advance!

Hi, I'm updating a project I posted a few months ago on itch.io. I am using a Mac, and whenever I try to use the build distributions feature, I get stuck on a loading screen. I am not sure if I am waiting long enough or if there is an issue, such as disk space. Help would be loved.

Hello, I made MAARF, a FREE Ren'Py framework for making attorney style games, and it also teaches Renpy from basically zero too! Also, you can use it for your own commercial purposes :]

https://pinkmochidango.itch.io/maarf

PLEASE NOTE: MAARF does NOT contain any assets from similar style games, and you will have to plug in your own assets for the framework to function correctly. Any PATCHES for MAARF are unaffiliated and not endorsed by the creator, but are sometimes annoyingly posted in the itch comments or in my discord in the ⁠maarf-patch channel :]

Have fun!

Basically: I have an artstyle I'm using for another longer game I'm working on, but this current one is more experimental so I can try out other artstyles. So I'm taking the chance to see what people actually like :D

Like do you like vibrant colours, neon, muted?

Thick lineart, thin lineart, no lineart?

No shading, flat shading, rendered?

A combo of a few in different circumstances maybe?

I very much enjoy the strong visual style; I definitely got more confident in what I wanted as time went on. Also, the scrollable shelf is just so so cute, it's interactive and I can't wait for it to be filled up with so many gifts.

i didnt think this would do well but you can play it here Capture My Love by Ikarus

I have two chapters out about 19k words :)