English
The Question
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About the game
The Question is the little visual novel that comes with the Ren'Py engine, the tool behind thousands of story games. You are a university student who has been carrying a question around for days, a question for Sylvie, the friend you have known since you were children and who always listens. The lecture is over, she is waiting outside, and it is time to decide when to ask.
The game has only two real choices and it takes about five minutes to read, so it is quick to see both endings. It is a good first stop if you have never played a visual novel: you read the text, click to go on and pick an answer when the story asks for one. Along the way you will notice the things the genre is made of, such as backgrounds that fade in and out, character pictures that change expression, and a soundtrack that keeps going under the dialogue.
Playing it here
Click Play and wait while the game loads: the engine is about 30 MB and comes first, and the pictures and the music are fetched only when the story reaches them. At the main menu choose Start. The game works with the mouse alone.
You can save from the game menu (Esc) and come back with Load. Saves are kept in this browser, so they stay on this computer, and clearing the site data erases them.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Click, Space or Enter | advance the dialogue |
| Click on a choice | pick it |
| Ctrl (hold) | skip text you have already read |
| Esc | open the game menu (save, load, preferences) |
| Mouse wheel up | roll back to the previous line |
| H | hide the interface to see the picture |
Tips
Try both choices. The first question decides when you speak up, and the second only changes one line, but the first one leads to very different endings. The game is short, so see them both.
Roll back. The mouse wheel takes you back line by line, and from there you can choose again, so you never need to start over.
FAQ
Is it a game or a tutorial? It is a real, if tiny, game. It was made to show what a visual novel in Ren'Py looks like, and the Ren'Py documentation walks through how it was written.
Is it in English only? Yes. The original demo has translations, but this edition keeps only the English text.
Does it work on a phone? It loads, but this page is made for a computer.
Does the game collect data or open other sites? No. It makes no requests outside this site.
Credits and licence
The Question is a demo game distributed with Ren'Py. Written by mikey, character art by Deji (original character art by derik), background art by Mugenjohncel (original backgrounds by DaFool) and music by Alessio, as credited in the game's About screen. The Ren'Py licence states that the artwork of the demo is released by its various holders under the same terms as the engine, the MIT licence.
For this edition the language picker, the translations and the developer console were removed. It runs on Ren'Py 8.5.3, whose licence is MIT with some parts under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The source code of the engine and of its build, together with the patch applied to the game, is hosted next to it, and the complete licence texts are linked from this page.