Im currently working on a visual novel, and of course for it to be a VN and not a KN it needs choices, etc. so far I have worked both unimportant (‘fluff’ choices as I call them) and important story affecting choices.

Here is an small idea of what I have planned:

Ending A (Good)

Side A (Perfect ending) & Side B (Impefect ending)

Ending B (True)

No sub endings

Ending C (Bad)

Side A (Lighter ending) & Side B (Darkest ending)

Ending D (Alternative / Neutral)

Side A (Neutral Good) Side B (Pure Neutral) Side C (Neutral Bad)

The 3 main endings all follow one path, that splits later in the game and then leads you down either a side ending (Like AB or CA etc) or you manage to get the true ending, even after the paths have split you can still end up switching path while on your way to the end.

The Alternative ending would be a completely seperated route that allows you to get an ending very different from the main games endings.

The issue is I feel like I am either cluttering the game too much or not providing enough and its hard to tell whether or not im in the middle.

Let’s take another VN into consideration, Steins Gate. It has about 6 endings last I checked and every choice can have some sort of effect on the story. SG is a great VN and extremely popular, I enjoy it because of the amount of variety between each individual playthrough, but is that really a majorly important feature for a VN? Or should I stick to making the first playthrough the best possible experience? Which means focusing less on endings being individual paths and letting them switch between like I am now?

Also for clarification, a side ending is not its own ending, it is essentially the same ending as the other side endings for its main ending but with slight differences depending on some choices.