I'm a writer/designer with 4 years of experience writing commercial visual novels in the mobile games industry. I've used a ton of writing workflows and scripting languages ostensibly designed to get interactive words from brain, to script, to game as quickly as possible. I've also experimented with pretty much any bespoke visual novel creation software you can think of, from Renpy to Tyrano Builder to highly specialized in-house studio stuff. In my opinion, Unity+Naninovel blows them all out of the water. By a lot. It's not even close. While Unity has a nontrivial learning curve--and Naninovel likewise takes some getting used to--once you've got your arms around it? Hoo boy. I have literally NEVER used a tool that lets you iterate branching visual narrative content this quickly. I can do things with this engine, on my own, that I used to have to send emails to accomplish. Things I love: - Like Ink, Naninovel smartly handles 99% of its program flow via written text in a script file, rather than making you click around a dumb node-based editor. This should be considered "best practices" for any game writing workflow, as far as I'm concerned. It's just so much faster. - The dynamic live-preview that rolls back the gamestate every time you save an update to the script is just insanely cool. Hard to overstate what a cumulative time-saver that is. - Pretty solid documentation, with lots of example scripts, demos, videos, and shiny gifs. (Some of the more exotic API commands could use more examples, but most of the core stuff is fairly well covered.) Things to be aware of: - Yeah, it's got a custom scripting language you'll need to learn. Kind of unavoidable with this approach. - While pretty versatile (just by virtue of how robust it is), Naninovel is, by design, *primarily* focused on being an end-to-end solution for visual novels -- and it fires up at runtime, rather than handling stuff in the editor. You can get under the hood and play with it if you know C#, and it's got support for a couple big state machine plugins like Playmaker, but in general: if you need more of a middleware thing that integrates with a lot of other systems, this might not be the best fit. (That said, I suspect a studio with a dedicated C# coder could probably hack it to do anything they needed. It seems pretty extensible and user-friendly in that regard.) Overall: great plug-in, well worth the money, does exactly what it says on the tin. Highly recommend.

Already published 2 project in Steam, 1 on progress. The Good: 1. Highly customizable with painless. 2. Well maintained document with mutiple language. 3. Scaleable and Teamwork friendly. 4. Built-in locailzed features. 5. Naniscript is very easy 4 use then Excel Sheet more and more (think about over 2mb scenario text). The Bad: 1. No 2D frame-based Animation (But you can use Unity built-in Sprite animation and State-machine to instead). 2. NaniScript not support Macro or Mixin or Function to Standardize screenplay (Like sim Step-in/Step-out, eye open), But you can use prefab or custom camera effect to expand it. 3. Asset loading flow need more optimze (50+ 4K CG Illust, 10+ Character with over 30 face changes) Suggest for: 1. VN with Gameplay (Mini-Game / Custom UI) 2. Already know how to use Unity prefab / Animation Comp 3. Professional Indie Game Maker 4. Game Prototyping for any type game with lot of dialogue (Even FPS or RPG), Naninovel also a good Game Flow Framework Result: Secret Unity Weapon that must have and learn. Now buy and learn it, grab Naninovel and join your local 48 hrs Game Jam. Or just publish your Naninovel game to Steam.

So after we left the beta program, I need to make a review for this time. I have the first impression in the past about Renpy, Thyranobuilder, and Visual Novel Maker. They are good for starting the Visual Novel journey. But they have cons for developer. Cons of; Renpy - It is all about programming not writing a story. Thyranobuilder - Somehow in the past, it always crashes that I need to write my story again. Visual Novel Maker - So many bugs. Besides the cons of them, Naninovel fixed that cons and made it to fully functional Visual Novel Engine ever! There is no software that can match full-featured Naninovel + Unity. Pros of Naninovel - Full detailed manual and tutorial made by the developer - The developer will help answer your problem in Naninovel case - Growing community on discord - Using Unity Engine (that always update every year) - Integration with 3D Game - C# > Python - Await/Async > Coroutine - It is so easy to make a fast story choice game - Can integrate with IAP - Export to any platform - Unity Asset where you can add some tweaks Cons of Naninovel - Expensive for a starter but it is really worth it for investment. If you have a super big patient, wait for sale. - Slow response but the developer will always be there to answer you. In case you don't know, Naninovel is developed by one man. Last Note There is a one-star review that they said Naninovel is difficult to integrate. I prove them wrong. Here is the video about integration Naninovel + Survival Engine https://youtu.be/Mo5fjGaJHEs. I have no background in programming but I can make it works. If you are like me who don't have any programming skill, I recommend Naninovel.

I've been using Naninovel for a while now and finished a few projects with it, so I thought it was time for me to write them a review. Amazing documentation. It has everything you need to know and if something ever seems confusing, the support team is extremely helpful answering all questions. Follow the set-up instructions once and you won't have to do it again any time that you use Naninovel, which is awesome and a huge time saver. The API is super intuitive and the documentation for it is impeccable. The demo projects are also helpful references if you are trying to add other fancy features to your VN and you are not sure how to go about it. Honestly my favorite asset in the store, worth every penny. Thanks to everyone that worked on making this!

I have tried several Unity VN-engines, and Naninovel is better than anything I have tried so far - and it's still beta! If that isn't enough to convince you, here's my findings... Building everything around the script instead of rigid node-structure is just mind blowing idea - you can concentrate fully on the story and art, and just insert action tags in the middle of the text as you go... no rigid node structures, just the story. Want to change the background after every word? Can do, easily. This script-driven idea takes away to need to have any kind of "node visualizer", because there isn't any nodes. And most other engines I tried didn't have even that either, so I lost the big picture fast - but not here. And you don't have to use only one script, you can break it down to several smaller ones and jump between them, like chapters in the book. You can of course do jumps inside one script too, and have the usual "choices" for branching out the story any way you like. Being a professional 3D Artist I really appreciate the wide range of ready-made effects that can be applied to the backgrounds and characters, and the ease of animating & manipulating the character sprites. Auto voicing is also super feature if you have voice overs! Ready-made (and configurable) game save slots are also a must. I'd like to add to all that also the best VN-engine documentation I have seen, and the outstanding level of support from the developer - you can ask anything (and I have...) and get your problems solved fast - or even get new features added in if there's something you need and it's deemed to be generally useful too. Just try the demo, and check the documentation... and buy it now when it's on sale!

It is hard to review this engine because I started from hate it to love it. The documentations doesn't cover crucial information, It is lacking of enough examples. It just covers de very basic scenarios. but after more than two months of frustration I think it is a great engine but every new feature I want to use I know it means hours of testing and guessing. I would like more videos or more examples in the documentations to really love Naninovel

Naninovel does away with the node-based workflow of many other tools, replacing it with a very clear, readable script style approach to writing dialogue and directing the scene. It is similar Ren'Py in this way, but without the python formatting. It goes above and beyond many other VN/narrative tools for Unity with built in visual novel features, such as history log, rewinding (!), automatically advancing text, skipping, etc... I absolutely love this tool and highly recommend it.

While it's obvious from the outset that the asset is both usable and powerful, what isn't as obvious until after you have access to it is its service architecture makes the library extremely flexible and extensible, and its configuration menu allows you to easily enable and disable not only internal components but even your own extensions. On top of that the maintainer is very active and knowledgeable, and extremely helpful. It's the very model of what a good library should be

When it comes to Visual Novel engines on Unity, Naninovel is the clear best. Its thorough documentation makes it easy to understand and implement while still being incredibly versatile, enough to integrate into any project. I made a mistake and didn't pay attention to the minimum version of Unity required when purchasing the asset. I reached out to the developers with my dilemma and they responded within only a few minutes with a solution! The asset itself is top notch, the documentation is clear and thorough, and the developer support is fantastic. Easily a five star product!

Pros: - Easy to use interface - Easy to use back end within your nani script to manage the Game - Cool features - Easy to drop into your project and start learning - Quick turnaround when ask for support Cons: - animation feature is absent,if you want a pauseable ,controlable animation,loop animation,composite animation,frame animation.you must implement it by youself. -Atom plugin is awesome,but visual studio code i used more often.i wish one day have a plugin with visual studio code. -i know naninovel have the charlayer,but sometimes i need just some composite with appearance.like appearance1(head,body,..)appearance2(head,hair..),and if animate support composite with appearance,that would be perfect - without animation and composite appearance feature missing,it is perfect engine,no more need to be improved. in the unity asset store,it is the best novel engine,may be the animation feature is absent,but other novel engine 's animation features are absent too.if this plugin improved the animation feature,may be i want to buy it for 150$.but now?At most 100$ is equal the value of it,naninovel is the Best NOVEL Engine,but some parts need to be improved. edit0;the developer is so fast,animate feature is added,but animate with charlayer or with composite appearance is not support yet,it is away from perfect just a little. edit1;all done,dont talk just buy!