itch.io

Thanks for replying earlier—I’m really glad my suggestions were helpful 😊. Since you mentioned you’re stuck on the issue where character relationships reset to 0 (or even negative) every time the game closes and reopens, I brainstormed a few simple things you could try. I don’t know coding, but I’ve seen similar problems mentioned a lot in itch.io comments and Ren'Py forums, so these are the most common fixes people talk about.

Quick summary of what usually happens: only the relationship stats reset, but story progress saves fine. That almost always means the relationship variables aren’t being properly saved/loaded by Ren'Py. Here are the top things to check or try (easiest ones first):

Make sure the relationship variables are declared with 'default' at the top

A lot of people forget this. Try adding lines like these near the beginning of script.rpy (before label start):

default rel_ana = 0

default rel_juan = 0

(or if you’re using a dictionary: default relationships = {"ana": 0, "juan": 0, ...})

Without 'default', Ren'Py resets them to zero every launch. Add them and test a quick close/reopen.

Check for accidental reset lines in the code

Search your script for anything like $ rel_ana = 0 or relationships["ana"] = 0 that might be running in label start, an init block, after_load, etc. If you find one, either remove it or wrap it in a condition so it only runs on a brand-new game (e.g., if rel_ana is None: rel_ana = 0).

Switch to 'persistent' variables for relationships

If the above doesn’t fix it, try making them persistent (they save forever, even across updates):

default persistent.rel_ana = 0

Then in game: $ persistent.rel_ana += 10

This is great for affection/relationship stats you want to survive no matter what.

Force more aggressive auto-saving

Add these lines at the top of script.rpy:

define config.autosave = True

Or increase quicksave slots. That way even if the player doesn’t manually save, the game should reload the last auto-save with relationships intact when they reopen.

Quick console test to debug

In-game, press Shift + O to open the console, type the variable name (e.g. rel_ana or relationships) and hit Enter to see the current value. Save (F5 quicksave), close the game completely, reopen, load, and check again in console. If it resets, it confirms the variables aren’t saving properly.

If any of these click or you’ve already tried them, let me know what happened—I’d love to help narrow it down more. These bugs are super common in Ren'Py and usually turn out to be something small like missing 'default' or an sneaky reset line.

Cheers 👋