Crossbone

Created by: Daniel Olsén
Released: August 2003
Engine: RM2000

It’s got pirates, robots, explosions and an old man who talks to birds! What more could you want? Back in the Gaming Ground Zero days I would occasionally browse the main site. There was no way to know of an upcoming game release or anything, no notifications or popups. You’d just go through your daily sites and hope to see an update. Games weren’t user submitted on GGZ you see, they were often approved and placed by the webmaster. One early morning, I happened across a game called Crossbone with only a couple of sentences and a title screen to go by. That was the thing about GGZ, you never really knew what you were going to get. Yet the games from that site were always a step above most RM games due to the curated nature of the members and the community.

Replaying this for the first time in 15 years, I realize this game still has a lot of heart. While the battles are a bit rough (enemies are sometimes higher HP than they need to be), the sequences are just so imaginatively crafted. A lot of the scenes often take a page out of a Final Fantasy’s idea of comedic relief. Where nameless henchmen have just as much personality as the main characters. A lot of the events play out like a Saturday-morning cartoon with a pint of seriousness. You play as Breeze, an anchor wielding (swords aren’t cool enough for him) freelancer who always has trouble following him wherever he goes. After getting entangled with some pirates he gets knocked out by a wave caused by an unknown being. This spirals into further crazy adventures.

“I was planning to pack so much into that game that it would have been unwieldy. I did learn a lot about being creative within limitations thinking back on it, even if it creeps up on me from time to time. Now my problem is usually the opposite, I tend to over-plan so I end up exhausted before I even begin haha.”
Daniel Olsén

The art is comprised mostly of original art overlayed on an RTP chipset framework. For example you might see the standard RTP ship tilset, but covered in metallic tiles made by the author himself. A lot of the scenes are accompanied by drawings that act as comic book panels of sorts. They give a really good cinematic emphasis in the flashbacks and important segments. I could talk about the individual aspects of this game, but it really comes down to it feeling like an adventure. I think RPGs always have that problem of sometimes starting out with hometown + chores or like fighting rats in a sewer dungeon. Crossbone just says screw that, you’re fighting a robot with an anchor in the first 6 minutes. There’s a sequence where this old man summons a giant owl god thing with a sword to fight this giant bug thing. There’s another section where a ship you’re on gets raided by dragon people using a slime infested coral reef that stops the ship from moving, but like, it can also turn into a mech? AND A UNICORN LOOKING BOAT ALSO TURNS INTO A MECH TO STOP IT.

“The ship battle sequence for Crossbone is made by the creator of Mog’s Adventure, in return I created the maps and such for the final dungeon of that game. A lot of the non-sprite art in the game is embarrassing looking back since I tended to draw the heads before the body so the proportions came out all janky. But it is what it is and every experience is valuable for the future. After Crossbone I went to college, I experience various things and worked as a freelance illustrators for a few years.”
Daniel Olsén

The dungeon in Mog’s Adventure that Daniel worked on

The author Daniel Olsén still works on game projects from time to time. His passion for fiction and art has never faded and mostly does art and comics. It’s easy to see the connection between how bombastic and theatrical Crossbone was and his current artwork. Although that can take a lot of effort and time, sometimes leaving an impression is worth it in the end. It certainly added to the surprise of browsing through RPG Maker games all those years ago.

Check out Daniel Olsén’s portfolio!

Estimated Length : 2 hours or so

Download Here (Archive)
GGZ Archive and History
Youtube Playthrough (Chapter 1)

Huey the Kid

Created by: Taylor`y`Josh
Released: July 2003
Engine: RM2003

Back in the early to mid 2000s the site Gaming World became my go-to place for everything RPG Maker. It would just keep appearing on google whenever I was looking for resources or games. At some point the site stopped, everything was frozen. Coaster Craft Gold was permanently on the front page for all to see. But my teenage self didn’t care, the site was still functional and I could still browse the many pages looking through content even if nothing new was going to be posted. Since a lot of RM games were funneled/re-posted through GW, it was a time for me to catch up on the RM games I had missed. One of these games I randomly remembered from this time was Huey the Kid.

It’s one of those RM games where it’s hard to tell if it’s a comedy or serious game. You play as an RTP kid sprite edit and the story dispenses the ‘save the world’ hooplah in favor of a small incidental adventure. A kid dares you to test the raft, but after a frantic mini-game you realize you’re off course and away from home. This leads to adventures involving slaying monsters and being ignored by adults. There’s a rugrats-like wonder to the perspective that doesn’t quite get committed to, a lot of NPCs have weird funky things to say occasionally. Yet there’s an odd goal of finding out “where you came from” involving angels. Your cat is also named “Teddy Boy.”

It’s the first rm2k3 instance I can remember that used Battle Animations instead of Battle Charasets. Battle Charasets were sets of 3 frame animations meant to make swapping weapon graphics easier, but there was lesser known option to use Battle Animations instead (which were used for things like spells but had way more control and frames of animation). Huey also uses a hammer, which wasn’t the weapon of choice by most RM heroes. There was also a great deal of editing in the animations such as head tilts and manually holding puzzle items. It also has a very strong grasp on cliff based mapping, where elevation is carefully considered. These kind of details perplex the “People who use RTP are lazy” stigma this game would normally be placed in.

Huey the Kid didn’t get the best of reviews. It’s somewhat average by a lot of standards. The puzzles are longer than they should be, the battles don’t really demand much, and there were better RM games starring kids. So why did I remember this game? Why did I pick this game to review? I dunno. There doesn’t have to be a crazy meaning to everything, media doesn’t always have to go through holding up against the test of time. What matters to me the most about this game was the simple context of when and where I was playing it. I’d like to think that when GW’s main site froze, the flow of time really did stop.

Estimated length: 1 Hour

Download Here (Archive)
GW Game Page (Archive)

Youtube Sample Playthrough

Zeara – Tales of the Matrielle

Created by: tomohawkjoe
Released: January 2008
Engine: RM2003

RTP always had a stigma. By 2008 people were weary about seeing the default graphical style in screenshots. Despite this, RTP went through a resurgence on GamingW. Hero’s Realm for instance combined RTP with 16×16 sized characters (you’d typically see in Final Fantasy 4). Meaning the door ways and various assets would have to be resized in order for the world to make sense. The user tomohawkjoe was often known for experimenting with a style similar to that, while still taking advantage of the ease of use.

Zeara’s charsets and monsters are custom while the chipsets are heavily edited RTP to match with the style. There’s a very cute aesthetic to the entire game, and it looks rather unique as a result. The gameplay is really what makes this game feel very 2008 era. There is no exp, stats are dependent on your equips and the combat customization is very trade off-ish. It also has the “Defending heals your MP” mechanic which I remember being a trend around that time. The boss fights are actually pretty heart pounding, they force you to manage both your HP/MP and how much damage you want to deal. Additionally I love the way the animations look, the screen fading a bit before the spell appears is a nice touch.

When it comes to the story, the world is rather interesting. You’re called in to exterminate a horde of monsters, but then find a crystal that ends up sending you to the lands below. As a whole, it isn’t long enough to reveal all the details (in fact there’s a cliff hanger twist near the end I won’t spoil). There are some unfortunate spelling errors here and there though, and some of the background details are hard to follow. In conclusion I think this demo is pretty neat for what it is, it leaves me with a feeling that tomohawkjoe’s efforts were underrated. By the way I’m still searching for another game of his that starred a Zack look-alike character.

Estimated length: 30 minutes

Download (Demo + Original Topic html file)
Youtube Playthrough (Full Demo)

Redmoon Saga

Created By: Axis / Fallon
Release Date: August 2000
Engine: RM2000

After the RPG Maker 2000 english translation was released, a few of the first submitted games were probably really bad. Although mainstream JRPGs and the RM95 catalogue existed to take notes from, RPG Making software on the internet was only starting to gain momentum. A Blurred Line is one of the earlier games considered a classic even to this day, but what notables came before? Aside from the Don’s Adventures sample game, what games stood out from the rest in such an early time period? Redmoon Saga is considered one of them. Created 2 months after the RPGMaker 2000 translation had been released, clocking in at around 1 hour squeezed into 15 maps, this demo managed to impress people at the time.

From the moment I opened this game in RM2k,just looking through the maps, I could already tell that the author really had given some time and effort to his game. I didn’t get disappointed when I first started to play either, a cool title screen and an amazing intro was what I first got to notice. I think this author was the first to use the fog effect for the RM2k, and the first time a saw it was just blown away. That kind of eye-candy is what shows the real power of RM2k
Punk84’s Review, circa 2001

Although the majority of it is RTP, there was effort to make it feel less default. Even the chipset colors was altered to give the towns a vivid look. Aside from a few novelty firsts (such as the fog effect mentioned by Punk84) you won’t really get too much out of this game ultimately. MY GOD are the random battles relentless, they’re even in places that have puzzles or story events. Your characters don’t seem to learn any skills so the combat and progression is really lacking. Despite that, the game accomplishes a lot with the small stuff. The name/dialogue is properly formatted, spelling errors are kept to a minimum, the maps are quite elaborate, and the story’s flow is pretty straight forward. It avoids a lot of common beginner faults and shows what the engine was meant for.

The story is a little generic, starting with an in-media-res where you fight the villain and lose. Surprise! It was all a dream and you wake up out of bed. Even if the cliches are in full force, there is some demonstration of scene direction. For instance there is flash-back scene that happens in the same room that you trigger it in. Transparent past characters appear in the room to show a lapse in time. Flashback writing was common place in just about any RPG, but this game does take a step further into presenting that. The oddest part in the game is when our hero extorts a key from an NPC in order to gain access to the dungeon. He’s a total asshole about it and even his friend tries to reign him in. There’s no prior context to prelude this and it’s kind of just moved on from.

At the end of the day, sometimes it’s not about making the best game ever. It’s just enough to cross over whatever the current standards are in order to show others how it’s done. Creative works often evolve from each other, and it’s pretty easy to observe that in early RM.

Estimated length: 1 Hour or so

Download (Queen’s Court)
Download Mirror (Monkey Productions)
Punk84’s Review (Archive)
GamingW Article mentioning Redmoon Saga (Archive)

Youtube 1 Hour Play-through