narrat VS RenPy

Narrat is an open source narrative game engine I have been working on as a side project. It is inspired by games like Disco Elysium to create a similar layout where interactible visuals are on one side while the dialogue is on the other side. Most visual novels are based on dialog boxes overlayed on top of images, but I find this less readable. When Disco Elysium was released I was impressed with how nice it feels to read text in a more vertical format that feels like reading a book and where you can see previous dialogue for context.

There is also a string templating feature for inserting variables that isn't yet documented or in the examples but is actually used in my dev testing example (which is a version of the example where I insert random code to try features) to do pretty much what you asked about :

Ren'Py - Visual Novel Engine. Python, Cython, C

Here are 2 interactive story game engines: * https://www.renpy.org/ * https://twinery.org/

###################################################### Credits label credits(): $ credits_speed = 20 scene black show text '''{b}Blabla:{/b}\n\n{i}Me{/i}\n\n\n {b}Clacla:{/b}\n\n{i}You{/i}\n\n\n {b}Dladla:{/b}\n\n {i}He{/i}\n\n\n {b}Hlahla:{/b}\n\n{i}She{/i}\n\n\n {b}Brrr:{/b}\n\n{i}Grrr{/i}\n\n\n {b}Drrr:{/b}\n\n{i}Hrrr{/i}\n\n\n\n\n Made with {a=https://www.renpy.org/}Ren'Py{/a} v[renpy.version_only]\n\n\n{b}Ren'Py License:{/b}\n[renpy.license!t]''' at Move((0.5, 1.0), (0.5, -1.0), credits_speed, xanchor=0.5, yanchor=0) with Pause(credits_speed+4) return init screen about(): tag menu add "main_menu" use game_menu(_("Credits"), scroll="viewport"): style_prefix "about" fixed: xalign 0.5 yalign 0.5 viewport id "vp": draggable True mousewheel True has vbox: spacing 3 textbutton _("whattheheeeeellll") action Jump("credits") init -1 style about_label is gui_label init -1 style about_label_text is label_text init -1 style about_text is gui_text init -1 style about_label_text: size gui.label_text_size

You can also check https://www.renpy.org/

I can't speak for in-game stuff, but I encourage anyone who wants to to try making a visual novel! It's way easier than you'd think it is. The only tools I really used were Ren'Py (the engine), CSP and Paint.net (for the art), and KKT (for the models).

If you want full creative control, I would suggest going your own way and making indie games. The visual novel engine, Ren'py, is free to use and fairly easy to learn. They have a lot of helpful resources including Lemmasoft Forums, which is a great place to ask questions and find talent such as artists (we found our sprite/CG artist, BG artist, and GUI artist here, along with one of our voice actors).

Make your text game, but not "within ChatGPT". Instead, make a game. You could use Ren'Py or really anything.