What Should You Check on a Novelez Title Screen Before Sharing the Link?

You send a Novelez link to a tester. They open it in a browser without signing in, and the first thing they see is not your opening dialogue. It is the title screen.

That makes the title screen a useful final checkpoint. It has a small job, but it performs that job before the player knows anything else about the story. The background establishes a place and mood. The music begins before the first scene. The time it takes to load shapes whether the link feels ready or unfinished.

Novelez keeps this setup focused. You select a title background image and title background music in Project Settings, then the share link opens directly into the playable title screen. The practical question is not how to build a custom menu system. It is whether the two assets you chose make a clear, fast, and legally shareable entrance to this particular story.

Start with the promise of the opening scene

Before choosing an image, write down what the first playable section actually promises. A quiet mystery at a closed station needs a different entrance from a bright school comedy. The title screen does not need to summarize every route. It needs to prepare the player for the emotional temperature of the first few minutes.

Check the project title and description at the same time. Novelez allows a title of up to 30 characters and a description of up to 200 characters. These fields appear around the project, share link, and gallery contexts, while the title background carries the visual mood inside the game. If the description promises suspense but the title art looks like a relaxed holiday, the problem is not image quality. The two parts are introducing different stories.

A useful one-sentence test is simple: "When this screen appears, the player should expect..." Finish it without naming a feature or an art style. If the answer is "a cautious reunion on a rainy night," you have something concrete to judge. If the answer is only "a beautiful visual novel," the choice is still too vague.

Choose one image that survives a wide frame

Novelez recommends a wide image, with 16:9 as the practical target for the title background. The manual also recommends WebP for faster web play. Those two constraints are helpful because they force you to judge composition and file weight before sharing.

Use one strong focal point. A character, doorway, empty seat, or distant light can suggest a story without filling every corner. Leave enough quiet space that the title-screen controls remain easy to find. A detailed illustration can still work, but important faces and objects should not sit at the extreme edges where a smaller browser window may make the composition feel cramped.

Avoid baking essential words into the background. Text inside the artwork cannot adapt when the display changes, and a decorative title painted near a button may fight with the actual interface. It also makes localization harder later. Let Project Settings carry the game title as text, and let the background do the visual work.

After selecting the image, replace the editor window with a player check. Make the browser narrower, then wider. Look at the center of attention, the contrast around the controls, and whether the image still reads as the same scene. This is not a demand for a perfectly responsive illustration. It is a check that the most important part does not depend on one exact window size.

Test the music as a loop, not as a song

A title theme is rarely heard from beginning to end in the way an album track is. One player may press Start after three seconds. Another may leave the tab open while answering a message. The useful test is therefore not whether the track has a dramatic ending. It is whether the beginning works immediately and the repeated section remains comfortable.

Novelez lets you choose the title background music from the asset picker and clear it again if it does not fit. The manual recommends OGG over MP3 at comparable quality because the file can be smaller for web loading. Do not convert a track merely to change its extension. Listen to the actual converted file and make sure the opening, ending, and loop transition are clean.

Run three short listening passes. First, open the title screen and press Start quickly. Does the music establish a mood without a long silent lead-in? Second, leave the screen open through at least two returns to the beginning. Is there a hard click, sudden volume change, or exhausting musical peak? Third, listen at a low device volume. Can the track still support the image without demanding attention?

Silence is also a valid choice. If the available track misrepresents the opening or adds a long download for little effect, a quiet title screen is better than a mismatched one. Novelez allows the selected music to be removed. Use that option deliberately rather than treating every empty field as unfinished.

Check rights before the link becomes public

The title assets are easy to forget during a rights review because they sit outside the script. They are still part of the published experience. Novelez requires creators to own the material or have permission to use it. Built-in assets can be used within the scope Novelez provides, while external images and music need their own license check.

Record four things for each external asset: where it came from, who created it, which license applies, and whether that license allows this public use. Keep the original license page or receipt with the project record. A filename such as final_title_music.ogg does not preserve any of that information.

Also check whether the license requires credit. Novelez has a Credits area in project settings, but adding a name later is not a substitute for confirming that the license permits the use in the first place. If you cannot explain why you are allowed to publish an image or track, replace it before sharing.

The same review applies to generated assets. Keep the tool and generation record, check the service terms that applied when the asset was created, and avoid recognizable characters, trademarks, or a deliberate imitation of a living artist. A new file is not automatically a clear file.

Open the real share link as a player

Preview inside the editor answers whether the project can play. The public link answers what another person can actually reach. Novelez share links open without login and go directly to the title screen, so test that exact path after the background and music are set.

Use a signed-out or private browser window. Paste the link rather than navigating from the editor. Check the following in order:

• the link opens without asking for the creator's account
• the expected title background appears instead of a missing or old asset
• the controls remain visible against the image
• the title music begins as expected after the browser allows playback
• starting the story reaches the intended opening
• returning to the title screen does not produce overlapping audio

Then repeat the first minute on a phone. The Novelez manual says share links work on mobile browsers, but large assets can consume significant mobile data. You are not trying to approve every phone model. You are looking for obvious failures: a long blank wait, a cropped focal point, controls that are hard to distinguish, or audio that behaves differently after a touch.

Browser audio rules can require a player interaction before sound starts. Treat what the browser actually does as the result. Do not promise autoplay in a message to testers if your real phone waits for a tap.

Make one change, then retest the entrance

Novelez keeps the same project ID when you switch a project back to private and later share it again. Edits made after sharing are reflected on the same link. That is convenient, but it also means an old test link can expose a new title screen as soon as the project is public.

If the check reveals a problem, change one part at a time. Replace the background and reload the public link. Then change the music and reload again. When image, audio, and copy all change together, a slower first load does not tell you which asset caused it.

For an 18+ project, sharing has another gate. The Novelez policy requires administrator approval before the share link works normally, and availability differs by user region. A successful editor preview does not replace that approval. Confirm the project's current policy state before promising a tester that the link is ready.

A short pre-share pass

A reliable title-screen check can fit into one focused pass:

1. Match the project title, description, background, and music to one clear opening mood.
2. Use a wide background with a stable focal point, preferably an efficient WebP file.
3. Listen to the music from first sound through at least two loop returns, preferably using an efficient OGG file.
4. Confirm the usage rights and required credits for both assets.
5. Open the real share link while signed out, then repeat the first minute on a phone.
6. Start the story and confirm that the title screen leads to the intended opening without stale media or overlapping audio.

Novelez does not ask you to build a title screen from code. That simplicity is most valuable when you spend the saved time on the check a player will notice: whether the first image, first sound, and first click belong to the same story.

When someone opens your current Novelez link for the first time, what should they understand before pressing Start: the place, the relationship, the danger, or the tone?