Recent reviews by Firgof

TOPLINE: Excellent short (4-8 hours) experience which uses its budget and framework very well.
For the first game from a small indie company, this is an excellent first showing.

Its mysteries are not as in-depth as the games listed below, but they're much more cinematic and dramatic. Excellent light puzzling, sharp and concise writing, a very clear intention and design for the gameplay, and an engaging and well voice acted story.

If you liked the following games, there's a strong likelihood you'll enjoy this one.
* The Black Watchmen
* NITE Team 4

The more I use it, the more I understand it. The more I understand it, the faster I create with it. The faster I create with it, the less burdened I feel and the more I can concentrate on the pure act of creation and writing.

After feeling intimidated by the unfamiliar flow of the UI I've quickly grown (thanks to the built-in Help file's tutorials) to be able to nimbly navigate through the editor. In any 4 hour session of work, I can generate about 20 minutes of playable content [some of it even reasonably polished] - and that's a really nice ratio to me, having used most of the popular VN writing software on the market. Especially nice when I haven't even mastered the software yet - so that workhours to playable minutes ratio is certain to improve.

VN Maker comes with a huge suite of resources to help jumpstart your project. 220+ BGs (many of these are morning/night/lit - so you can also re-use locations with a different time of day to adjust for mood), 302 Character CGs (each character having 7-10 emotions built-in), 20 transition masks, and 8 movies to enhance your scenes (e.g. rain, snowfall, fog, sunrays). On the audio side the resources are no less impressive: 12 Music tracks and 58 Sound/Music Effects - more than enough to get your project started - and all of them at a consistenly high and well-mixed quality.

All this, combined with time-saving tools such as a translation database feature that collects every piece of text in the game for ease of translation, the ability to modify the program's interface itself inside the program, and a great deal of flexibility in the database-system all add very valuable tools that'll help speed your Visual Novel's creation process. Note for programmers: VNM uses the highly flexible JavaScript for its plugins and extensions and is the language used for the IDE/API.

All that said, this isn't developed by a large studio - so expect there to be bugs here and there (non-showstoppers, mainly QoL stuffs). Nonetheless the devteam is responsive and nimble on finding and fixing patches - patches often only being a week apart - if not days! (Which is very fast turnaround for game development software)

My final recommendations:

If you love RPG Maker and want to make Visual Novels: Get it. The UI will be at first unfamiliar to you but if you open your mind and really follow the helpfile's tutorials (which even includes tips on how to write VN scripts) you'll find yourself rapidly coming to grasp the interface.

If you're looking for software to avoid having to buy and learn packages for Unity: VNM has a faster workflow and comes with a whole host of prototype assets built-in. That faster workflow will translate to faster production time and less manhours/cost.

If you're a newbie to games development: Firstly, welcome~! The tutorial included with the software will help you out a lot and you don't need to know how to program games to build your own Visual Novel with this software. If you can learn how to use Microsoft Word or Sony Vegas/Adobe Premiere you can learn how to make Visual Novels with Visual Novel Maker. Even if you're all thumbs, there's a supportive community here (and development staff!) ready to help you out.

If you're hesitant over the cost: Ren'py and TyranoBuilder are always options available to you but neither comes with such a huge amount of resources as VNM. The money you spend here can pay out dividends in what you'd pay to contract CG artists, character artists, foley artists, programmers, and musicians later. If you want to make something commercial and you want to make it fast this is definitely one of the most cost-effective ways to go about it. Take it from someone who's spent more than 30,000 workhours in games development software - this is a clean, efficient development environment that comes with an amazing amount of built-in resources.

Great for the price. Narrative driven and semi-linear - but with good writing and interesting subject matter.