A visual novel game on social anxiety / Ayra Nur Alisha Azman and Ahmad Harith Syah Md Yusuf

• Main Authors: Azman, Ayra Nur Alisha, Md Yusuf, Ahmad Harith Syah
• Format: Book Section
• Language: English
• Published: Academy of Language Studies 2023
• Subjects: Developmental psychology. Including infant psychology, child psychology, adolescence, adulthood
• Online Access: https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/81930/1/81930.pdf; https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/81930/; https://irole-uitm.com/

Taking spots from normal novels and illustration books, visual novel games are an interesting method for writers to express their imagination. Compared to illustration books, visual novel games employ various visual elements including sounds to enhance players’ experience when playing. The games are also interactive which avoid players from getting bored by only reading texts. It is practically a perfect balance for those who enjoy both reading and playing. Therefore, in this project, the challenge of developing a visual novel game which employs both creative writing and coding skills was taken in order to produce a visual novel game that is focused on social anxiety which consecutively could give the public an insight to the experience of those affected by the condition. Ren’Py, an easy-to-operate software game engine, was a huge help in making the project a reality as the storyline, characters, music’s, and sound effects were eventually combined into one long script of codes. Followed by the release of the visual novel game project on itch.io, a platform where many visual novel games were also released on, many interests in the project could be seen through the analytics provided by the site. Additionally, there were also some positive comments given through the feedback survey answered by the players of the visual novel game project. All in all, it was an enriching experience of tackling the challenge of making a visual novel game for the first time with only the internet and search engine as guides.