scifi – RPG Maker Historia

I thought I’d plug what I’ve been working on these past months. It’s not an RPG per say, nor is it even made in RPG Maker. Though it does contain a lot of aspects of those things (Top down perspective, tile based, dialogue text, exploration oriented). It’s a Survival Horror game with an emphasis on inventory management and navigating through underground areas:

>> Click Here << to check out the Steam store page (Wishlists appreciated)

The core gameplay is a huge love letter to Resident Evil (the original specifically). Past the first game I never felt they really nailed the balance of having just enough ammo to defeat the necessary enemies. Obviously as Resident Evil rose in popularity there were other gameplay avenues and trends to consider. But as someone came into the series really late (2015) first picking up the REmake on gamecube, I couldn’t find any other game that matched the way item pick ups changed the way you explored the environment (even games way before RE4 barely bother with this). I realized most other Survival Horror games really just cared about the story, pacing or puzzles (which is fine!).

My goal with this game isn’t merely to scratch an itch relating to one specific game. There are a lot of ideas I mixed in because I thought they’d change the flavor of the typical genre I’m working in. The setting is very much a post-apocalyptic underground scenario in which you just wander around and discover the history for yourself. A big inspiration is the manga BLAME! In which the plot is somewhat scarce with some intrigue throughout, but the substance is in the background, the strange spaces that unfold in the panels.

BLAME! A manga that has developed a cult following over the years

There’s a certain feeling I can’t describe that I want to recreate in an interactive fashion. Though I don’t know if I’ll be successful or if it’s even possible to convey. It falls somewhere in the camp between appropriating German Expressionism and wandering around abandoned areas IRL.

If this sounds like a value proposition to you then I hope you’re one of many. I want to find out that I’m not isolated in my search for a game like this, it just so happens I decided to make it myself. Somewhere along the way a lot of Sci-fi RPGMaker games have probably influenced my sensibilities in how the maps were constructed and laid out.

Anyway I’m pretty close to release and things have been busy. So that’s why I don’t have much extra time other than to promote it and constantly think about the launch.

Appreciate any support and don’t forget to wishlist!

Created by: Mr. Nemo
Released: June 2009
Engine: RM2003

Solar Tear was a game I had my eye on for a long time. It was sandwiched between the GamingW to RMN era, when the communities were shifting (though it did first appear in GamingW around 2004). A demo for Solar Tear was debuted for the Release Something! VII event which was a traditional community driven effort to get people out of the Screenshot Topics, chin up, introduce your game to everyone, and actually expose it to the world to get some feedback. Though the events slowly turned into a deadline date for everyone’s demos (hell, even an excuse to game jam a full game), it was originally intended to have games release “as is” or even just random snippets. They didn’t have to have a carefully molded cliffhanger, some tie in to the next chapter or even some bombastic intro. Aside from making sure the “Start Event” was in the right spot and things lined up, the work in progress clunky-ness was the whole point.

Now I played Solar Tear back in its 2008 release (apparently there was also a 2004 demo). I recall not liking it very much despite enjoying the setting and vibe. Playing it now I can see why this game was the ultimate monkey’s paw. Your rpgmaker cyberpunk dream game is released, but it has every recipe for being a bad experience. Slow walk speed, slow ATB bar, a status effect christmas, needing to know monster weaknesses ahead of time, really bad economy balance, skills that don’t seem that useful, and somewhat obtuse puzzles. The author doesn’t need to hear this, he acknowledged the faults of this project long ago. Still, if you open up the editor and cheat some of the problems out, it’s still a neat slum romp experience.

So hypothetically: what if the author never released this demo and just kept going towards the full game? He would likely not have found these problems sooner, or knew that these were problems. There would have been so much more to lose if the author had held back on the release. I’m glad that wasn’t the case. But it’s interesting to think about in the grand scheme of things, what we tried to encourage and discourage in the community. The perfectionist mentalities were rampant, but so were the expectations and the standards. It’s sometimes hard to release with so much pressure on the line. In any case I was glad I got to experience this cyberpunk landscape once more. Luckily the game is still being made after all these years. It’s under a different name and likely a revised scenario, but the same appeal of the game is there for me. Like every sucker who hinges their hype on someone’s spare-time-motivation, I’m still waiting.