Carnival Unending
A narrative-driven visual novel built in Ren’Py during a game jam, blending branching storytelling, atmosphere, and rapid collaborative production.
Visit repositoryBuilding a visual novel in a game jam
Carnival Unending was created during Narrative Driven Jam #12 as a short visual novel set during the Venice Carnevale. The project was developed under strong time constraints, which meant every design and implementation choice had to support fast iteration, narrative clarity, and a cohesive player experience.
Translating narrative into interaction
A visual novel lives or dies by the way its writing is delivered. Beyond simply displaying dialogue, the challenge was to structure scenes, choices, pacing, and transitions in a way that supported the tone of the story and maintained player engagement.
This required careful integration of branching sequences, presentation logic, and scene flow, so that the narrative could feel playful, strange, and emotionally coherent without overwhelming the player with unnecessary complexity.
Working within jam constraints
Because the project was created in only a few days, development had to stay focused and pragmatic. The goal was not to over-engineer systems, but to build the right level of structure to support the story and ship a complete experience within the jam deadline.
A complete playable narrative prototype
Carnival Unending resulted in a fully playable visual novel released during the jam, combining narrative writing, original art, music, and Ren’Py implementation into a finished interactive piece. For me, it was an important first step into game development: a project where storytelling, programming, and collaboration all had to come together under real production constraints.
