Reading Ren’Py: Game Engine Affordances and Design Possibilities

Abstract

Game engines have largely become synonymous with the production of certain game genres, and creating games outside those genres is at the least cumbersome if not outright impossible to do. This study demonstrates how the affordances and constraints of particular engines, working in consort with the creative community around a particular engine, shape both game engine use as well as the game engine thinking that determines what is and is not possible. It does so by looking at a game project developed using the Ren’py engine. Using Fiadotau and Bogost as conceptual springboards, we focus on our decision to use Ren’py and how that decision shaped the game and our production processes. In addition to discussing the engine itself, we also look at how the practices and discourse of the Ren’py community—most notably represented on the engine’s official forums—also shaped our work.