What is a Visual Novel?
A visual novel is a storytelling medium that uses text, visuals, and audio to convey a narrative. They often involve player choices that can lead to different story outcomes, similar to "choose your own adventure" books.
Usage of a Visual Novel
In education, visual novels can be a powerful tool, as they provide an immersive, interactive way for students to learn and engage with material.
As an example, a visual novel could be used to teach history by allowing students to experience key events and make decisions as historical figures.
Similarly, in language learning, visual novels can provide contextual, interactive practice with reading and comprehension.
Moreover, the creation of visual novels can also be an educational exercise. Students can learn about narrative structure, character development, and visual design, as well as practical skills like coding if they use a more advanced engine.
This makes visual novels a flexible, valuable resource in an educational setting.
In this post, you will find the best apps and engines to create visual novels. Note, that some of these apps requires some coding skills.
1. Monogatari
Monogatari is free and open-source visual novel engine that comes with dozens of useful features to create a rich visual novel stores and apps.
Features
- Responsive out of the box
- Supports videos, text, images, audio and more
- Plays nice with Electron for Desktop apps and Cordova for mobile apps
- Simple Syntax
- Progressive Web App (PWA) Features allowing offline game play
- Allows you to use any kind of media supported by browsers
- Compatible with all major browsers
- Includes libraries for animations and particle effects
- Allows saving/loading games
- Extensible, you just can't imagine how much!
- Supports multiple languages
Monogatari2. Ren'Py
Ren'Py is a leading visual novel engine, supporting a variety of game genres and platforms.
Its user-friendly script language simplifies the creation of visual novels, while its Python scripting handles complex simulation games.
As an open-source solution, it is accessible and free for commercial use.
3. Tuseday.js
Tuesday JS is a low-code visual novel editor that operates in a web browser. It's written completely in JavaScript, and uses standard rich HTML5 elements.
It also supports any media format that browsers can handle.
There's also a standalone version for Android and desktops, and all versions are fully compatible with each other.
The library, engine, and apps are totally free and open-source. It also supports multiple languages out of the box.
Kirilllive4. Rakugo Visual Novel Kit
This is an awesome visual novel editor for Godot game engine, that makes it easy to create interactive visual novels within the game editor. It is highly inspired by Ren'Py.
You can also add and include several open-source addons to your editor to enrich the user-experiance.
rakugoteam5. UVNF-Unity-Visual-Novel-Framework (Unity)
Unity Game Engine users can use this amazing open-source starter to create cool visual novels without a hussle
Velorexe6. Coda
Coda is a simple, cross-platform, and open source visual novel game engine using PyQt5. It can run for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
The downside is that you should install it from scratch, because it does not have any executable packages.
segnolin7. Oxygengine
Oxygengine is an amazing game engine and visual novel engine written in Rust and WASM.
Oxygengine is a comprehensive game engine with a focus on web platforms, but is expanding to desktops and consoles. Its goal is to be a Rust version of Unreal Engine for 2D games, and it is designed to be asset-driven with a game editor primarily for Game Designers and Artists.
However, it requires a good coding experience to use.
Cons
- Require a good experience in Rust.
- The book and documentation are not complete
8. MatchaNovel for Defold
MatchaNovel is an open source multi-platform engine for narrative works, like visual novels and adventure games.
It can be integrated with the Defold game engine or other Lua based engines, to use narrative features like a writer friendly scripting system and automatic textboxes in other genres as well.
Features
- writer friendly scripting language
- you can make a full release with only MatchaScript code, or you can use Defold to edit the GUI and scenes in a WYSIWYG editor
- strong math and logic support by using Lua expressions and math libraries in the script, or import full Lua files as extensions
- Spine support
- FMOD support
- particle effects
- inbuilt pronoun system
- make your own syntax by changing the MatchaScript definitions
- can be used as dialogue system in a full Defold game, or use mini games made in Defold in your visual novel
- small build size: less than 5 MB, plus your assets
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux
- macOS
- iOS
- Android
- Web
Parts
It consists of these parts:
- MatchaScript: a Lua based scripting language for narrative works, that can be imported into an engine
- MatchaNovel: a Lua backend for visual novels that extends MatchaScript, and allows renpy-like scripting
- MatchaNovel for Defold: a library and GUI for the open source 2D+3D game engine Defold
- Jasmine: a textbox library for Defold
Cons
- Requires experience in Defold game engine
HalfstarDev9. WebGAL
WebGAL is a free, open-source, web-based visual novel engine with a visually appealing interface and rich features. It requires no web development background, supports all features of mainstream visual novel engines, and allows for easy development using WebGAL scripts or a visual editor.
Features
- Super friendly user-interface
- Powerful functions
- Rich media support
- Works for WIndows, Linux and macOS
- Requires minimal hardware support
License
- MPL 2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0)
OpenWebGAL10. AVG.js
AVG.js is an open-source web-game framework designed to facilitate the development of various game types, including AVG, puzzles, renai simulation, kancolle-like, and TCG/CCG. The goal is to enable players to enjoy games anytime, anywhere via the internet and to simplify the game development process for creators.
Please note that the project is still in its alpha stage and is not suitable for large projects due to ongoing significant changes.
avgjs11. NovelRT
NovelRT is a cross-platform, flexible Visual Novel and 2D game engine targeting both designers and developers, with many designer tools and features yet to be implemented.
novelrt12. Ayaka
Ayaka is a free and open-source novel editor and visual novel creator that is written using Rust, Tauri and Vue.
It features a cross-platform runtime, a YAML-based config file format, an embedded custom script, CLDR-based i18n support, and a flexible plugin system based on WebAssembly.
It is released as an open-source under the MIT license.
Uni-Gal13. JS-ViNE
JS-ViNE is a Visual Novel Engine written in JavaScript. It was created to transfer a tutorial, originally made in the Ren'py visual novel engine, to the web.
It's not intended to replace Ren'py, but rather to offer a web-based alternative. The engine allows you to proceed through the visual novel by clicking in the novel window.