RenPy: Freeware Visual Novels Game Engine Review
Make Story-driven RPG and Simulation Video Games for Free with Renpy
Feb 10, 2009
RenPy, more correctly hyphenated as Ren'Py, is an open source game engine which allows the user to make 2D story-centric video games for Windows or Linux PCs or the Mac using an intuitive easy to learn interface. The most simple of these games is the visual novel, which is the computer equivalent of the choose-your-own adventure books that reached the height of their popularity in the mid-'80s.
However, with integrated support for Python scripting, RenPy is capable of far more complex projects than simple visual novels. Games such as sophisticated management and dating simulations, roleplaying games with combat and inventories and tile-based strategy games have all been made with RenPy, making it a more versatile game creation platform than its nearest visual novel making rival, the Blade Engine.
RenPy Free 2D Game Engine License
Being open source, the creators of RenPy have phrased the software license in such a way as to allow users to create commercial games without having to pay any royalties or other fees to the RenPy organization.
The developers of RenPy do, however, suggest that any successful game developer who makes a profit with a game created with RenPy might wish make a donation to support further development of the 2d game engine.
RenPy Visual Novel Maker Features
Each new game created in RenPy includes a host of predefined features that allows the game maker to concentrate on designing gameplay and developing story rather than on the game engine mechanics. These features include:
- A main game menu shown before the game starts.
- An in-game menu featuring load, save and settings adjustment.
- An automatic save feature.
- The option to choose windowed or fullscreen mode.
- Text-skipping and text auto-advance.
- Game rollback, allowing the player to backtrack through the game.
- Predictive image loading, for faster unobtrusive graphics display
- Fully integrated sound options, such as voice and effects volume control, and manually defining the game soundtrack.
Any or all of these features can be adjusted or disabled by the game developer.
The RenPy 2D Game Maker
With its clean, simple to use interface, excellent forum and documentation support, powerful Python scripting and cross-platform compiling capabilities, RenPy is a very attractive 2D game engine, made even more so by being free and featuring an open source license for commercial game development.
RenPy is absolutely ideal for the hobbyist or beginner game developer interested in making video games for free, or for a graphics artist with no or limited programming experience. The introductory tutorials provide a gentle learning curve, but the apparent simplicity of RenPy conceals what is, with a little creative thinking and a little Python scripting, a powerful, stable, proven platform for 2D game making.
RenPy can be downloaded from the offical RenPy website.
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