I think the fact they just so happen to be every other’s opposite on certain values would still come across as artificial and primarily intended to increase chance to appeal to the player as a RO and/or a pawn in a story, than to be their own character first and foremost. Even if those values may not be associated with the most common tropes.
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Even for dating sims 16 is way, way, too much, imo. I don’t think I’ve ever played a dating sim with more than 10 ROs lol. Average is usually, like 5 or smth.
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It may be a bit more common in 18+ VNs which often go for width (though rarely accompanied with depth, due to aforementioned workload issues) A notable example would be Our Red String which has 13 ROs plus two protagonists (who are also “main” ROs for each other, making it 14-15 in total depending how you count them)
I’d say no more than 9
Make it in school but also a murder mystery. I can see it being done. Slowly kill off ROs.
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Lol this reminded me of an old CS WIP set in a dating reality show. The RO I initially picked died lol.
It’s on itch.io now btw. Body Count
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Too many ROs? No. If author(s) can do it, they can have at it. If they can’t. Several will end up blending into one.
I look at MC and then what are the options for the MC. If man only, its a nope out the door. A woman and only men, nope as well.
Played games with wlw and only 1 as well as several LI options.
The story, world and how much I make the MC ‘me’ in world matters as well as RO options.
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19? Geez, at times like this all arguments about switchable genders can go and jump out of the window - the cost of work would be cut in half if you just make them gender-selectable. Twelve as a result. Much easier.
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That’s based on completely unfounded presumption that the 7 male ROs are identical with 7 female ROs in all aspects but gender and thus possible to reduce in this manner. While they might be 14 very different individuals.
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Reading all these responses that address the issue of character depth, and your responses, (3 years! wow!) it seems like that’s not going to be a problem for you. I can definitely relate to building out a world’s characters to an excessive extent. My initial reaction to 16 RO’s was horror, to be completely honest with you. But then I thought about the way certain worlds work, and honestly, that amount of characters wouldn’t be too much of a stretch depending on the scale of the work’s world; they all genuinely could be that drastically different from eachother, and would give you completely different insights on specific sections of the work’s worldbuilding that another might never brush up against.
But given you said the setting is a small school, I don’t think that’s the case (the character’s lives being so incredibly insanely different from eachother, I mean. Their internal worlds and personalities and viewpoints etc. etc.? Absolutely. But they all live within pretty much the same setting, no matter how different their lives outside of class may be.) With that amount of characters, I’m going to assume they all have relevant and fleshed out relationships with some of the others, which makes the temptation to make them all RO’s understandable if you’ve already spent all that time fleshing out a character’s best friend, or chess club rival, or whatever. My suggestion would be to really consider which characters are relevant/most rewarding to the player’s narrative, and the arcs they might go through. Which would be the most satisfying to read through, or the most fun for you to write? Something something the old writer’s creed; “kill your darlings.”
My bias is towards the three platonic options, though I understand they probably aren’t as fleshed out as the others, sdhbfksjdbhf.
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We actually did decide to do that! The number of ROs has gone down to 10, and they all play different but important roles with the main plot. The other 6 were honestly just side characters, but since we don’t have much experience, we didn’t know what to do with them. If I’m going to be honest, this story actually started off as a roleplay, and we just threw characters at each other and hoped things would stick, so the cast turned out drastically from each other. If you were interested in looking at them, I did post a short blurb for each in the interest check thread.
Actually, the platonic characters are platonic because they can’t be romanced. Two of them are aromantic asexual or on the spectrum, but in terms of the narrative, they play slightly bigger roles than some of the ROs. One of them is a teacher who makes everybody come together and is the main driver of the plot. I’m a sucker for mentor-mentee dynamics though, so I threw him in there.
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OH?? My bias is cemented, lol! (I am aro myself, so that’s really nice to hear!!)
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Now my question is, who’s the MC. The ROs seem to be appealing.
What do you mean exactly?
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Hello. I think how many ROs you want to put in is how many you should put in! However, there is the issue of maybe overworking yourself. So here’s what I would do: Make a list of prioritized ROs, like a tier list of your favorite characters. Work through the list! If you think you’re getting too complicated or something isn’t working out, that’s okay! You can always add in ROs later if you make your game into a series.
In my personal experience having many ROs does not affect with my enjoyment of a Choice Game, in fact, it makes me enjoy it more with multiple playthroughs!
Like, who’s the main character in relation to the plot. Are we a new student, are we a mutual friend connecting the different characters, etc?
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That’s really nice to know! One of our major concerns was that there would simply be too many characters to keep track of for the average player, but we’ve already reduced the number of options.
We haven’t completely planned this out, but we were thinking that the player’s character has always attended the school as a scholarship student. They know of the characters, as they’re some of the top students, but they don’t really know them until the events of the plot bring them all together.
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This is sounding like a game I’d want to play. 
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