Rollpie Novel Maker is a free visual novel tool that runs in your browser with no install. You build a linear story simply by stacking rows. A row holds one background on the left and its lines of dialogue on the right. A line can carry a speaker (a character and an expression), and a line with no speaker becomes narration.
Click the speaker to open the Speaker panel, or a row's background slot to open the Background panel. Rows and lines are reordered with the up and down arrows, and a line moves across the row boundary into the neighbouring row. Characters and backgrounds are added and removed in their own panels, and each key doubles as the asset directory name. Your work is kept in the browser automatically, and Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) undoes any step.
The Image panel lays out a slot for every character expression and every background. Click a slot to open the Album, and the picture you choose there goes into that slot. The Album also opens from the menu at the top left, and the plus loads a new picture into it. One picture may be reused in as many slots as you like, and a picture you place shows up in the rows and the panels as well as on the sprites and backgrounds when you play. Pictures are kept in the browser, so they are still there the next time you open the page.
The Music panel loads your tracks and places a cue on the line where the music should change. Music runs on its own, apart from the dialogue, so a cue belongs to a line and not to a row. From the line you cue, that track plays; a line with no cue simply lets the previous track keep playing, and Stop the music leaves silence from there on. Cues appear in the roll as well, so you can follow where the music changes and where it stops while reading the script. Tracks cross-fade when they change, and a track that carries on never restarts. A track may be up to 5MB, and your tracks are kept in the browser.
The File panel exports and imports the project as JSON. The JSON carries the pictures in the Album and your music too, so a single file holds the whole work. Export HTML, in the Project panel, produces a single HTML file with no external references at all: the pictures and the music you use are baked into it, so you can put it anywhere and the story just runs, with a title screen, a typewriter effect, and save and load. Double-click a panel title to switch between the movable and fixed panel layouts.