Hi. I work at a conpany that makes digital card games.

Start by making the rules work. We generally use a callback implementation. We have a class that handles the game and enforces rules and dictates flow, classes that represent players, and then a rendering class.

The game will call relevant functions to prompt the players for an action, passing the game state with them. The players respond with what they want to do. The game calls the renderer to draw it out, and the renderer will then call the passed callback action. Repeat until the game is over.

When a human is involved then you just hook actions to buttons and pieces and clickable elements that the game catches and responds to if needed.

Really you can use any principle or design paradigm you want, but since you are making a “simple” turn based game just having it simple and well segmented is an easy way to keep a handle on it.

I personally am a fan of jet-lagged, the game. Sam, Ben, and Adam from wendover productions/Half as interesting compete in various travel-based games across the world.

I’m going to give you the advice I usually give new Gamemaker users who come to the engine expecting to make their dream game in a week but quickly realize that isn’t happening. You’ll have to adjust it a biy for renpy but the core idea is the same:

Start small: smaller than you thought possible. Start by making pong. Start by making asteroids. Learn how to do collision and movement by making a platformer where the one goal is jumping over a single ledge. The goal is to break your learning down to tiny, incremental steps, so that you are only learning one new thing or mechanic at a time. As you get more confident and start to get a feeling how to think like a computer and solve problems that could arise slowly expand to slightly more complicated projects, move from pong to brick breaker, to pacman, to something else small but has a few more moving parts.

Ask questions (find f.i the forum), look up tutorials, and do not be afraid of experimenting, of breaking things, of taking projects others made and changing things to see what haooens, of really asking “why” things work the way they do.

So, just take a bit of time. No need to be afraid of failing, programming is a skill like any other, it takes time to learn, you are going to suck for a bit. People learning the piano sound awful the first few months, and then suddenly with practice and diligence they start sounding kind of ok, then good, then actually really good. Same with cooking, knitting, writing, painting, building, and programming. All things that take time and effort to get good at. You wont make your dream visual novel today, nor tomorrow, but you will make something, and something is a lot better than nothing.

I feel that given the current trendyness of AI and large language models it seems prudent to mention Façade, an interactive play that used AI and language processing to let the player “speak” to the characters and influence tha narrative. It was very janky and you could break it rather easily, but the concept was solid - the technology was just a decade and a half away.