the era of rpgmaker games

[cinni]

this thread is about rpgmaker games!! did you ever play any? or make games yourself? share it here! I was really into rgmaker3000 and have a few games i started and gave up on lol.

i think what really inspired me tho to get into them was a game called pen pals!!



i was in college when i played this game and i feel like it encapsulates early 2010's tumblr haha. it's very charming and personal about a kid's inner conflict. it also featured a song which i couldnt get out of my head, it fits perfectly lol. peach moon by the unicorns

what i like so much about these games is the ability for self expression.. i remember liking this talk i read by emreed.net, called videogame engines as tools for mass art.

here are some assets from my games that i long abandoned, haha. a part of me still wants to finish them..

-->memento mori::



~space disaster~



the prequel to jade's world :-p


also, i really loved OFF!, even tho i never played it haha. the ost rocks.

[m15o]

These assets look absolutely incredible!

I've never finished an RPG Maker game, but I remember my friend and I working on one. We tried to reproduce a Role Playing game our friend group played. One of us was building the graphics while the other the game itself. And while we didn't finish it, all the fun was in the creation. Building something is weirdly addictive! The prospect of sharing the creation with people is as well.

what i like so much about these games is the ability for self expression.. i remember liking this talk i read by emreed.net, called videogame engines as tools for mass art.

Thanks for the link! Almost makes me want to start working on a simple game engine. I started to create a little MMORPG a few months back. And while a whole MMO is too much time commitment, perhaps extracting a little game engine can be a nice project.

[Guest]

Penpals! I loved that so much when I first played it... oh, the memories.

I have RPGMaker MV and 2003. Never finished anything with them, but it's really fun to mess around with the programs.

[Obspogon]

I played OFF and Oneshot, also Last Word.

[TheEnderDraco]

ahh yes i love rpgmaker stuff! esp the horror games like ib, yume nikki, witch's house, mermaid swamp... (and off! i'm not sure if it counts as a horror game but i find it rly cool either way) ive been working on my own game but progress has been kinda. nonexistent lately lol

also those unfinished games look super cool cinni, you shld totally continue them if you want to!!

[easy_breezy]

RPG Maker games are poggers

I wanna play some of them. Maybe even use the engine to make games myself.

[sans]

I'm actually working on one rn! it's a huge project and it's actually super fun and challenging especially when i was trying to do it with the older engines. i'm getting playtesters once i finish it too

[Darmodej]

love yume nikki and its fangames, especially 2kki
here's a good tumblr blog with yn fangame gifs/screenshots

[Kutan]

I don't think the era of RPGmaker games ever really ended! They definitely got a new lease on life through Steam. There's so many good modern ones. LISA is brilliant, and I've been meaning to check out Omori (waiting on the Switch port).

I did make my own RPGmaker game ages ago, on the PS1 version! It was about a dog doing dog things. Mostly I got it so I could play other people's games, but I could never get my DexDrive working...

[cinni]

I don't think the era of RPGmaker games ever really ended! They definitely got a new lease on life through Steam. There's so many good modern ones. LISA is brilliant, and I've been meaning to check out Omori (waiting on the Switch port).

I did make my own RPGmaker game ages ago, on the PS1 version! It was about a dog doing dog things. Mostly I got it so I could play other people's games, but I could never get my DexDrive working...

I've never gave LISA a chance but I've certainly heard of it! same with omori! i remember when it started fundraising ages ago and kind of forgot about it BUT anyways it looks interesting! :-)

Also, I never realized there was a ps1 version of RPGmaker! man I would've loved to see some of those games!

[Ajota]

I know that I was addicted to rpg maker because of the horror ones, I never really played another genre of rpg maker so much.
I played all the well known games, Mad Father, Misao, Ib, etc. It was so fun, but eventually I just stopped playing, for no particular reason.

Recently this game Lily's Well launched on steam, and it brings back my love for rpg maker! (And also my love for pixel art)

But I'm also searching for another genres to play too, change a little bit.

[Darmodej]

yooo been binging japanese rpgmaker horror for the last week
really liked ib and witch's house so far

[pleb-hates-the-modern-web]

recently rediscovered my love for horror rpgmaker games; mostly the well-known ones like misao and mad father, but also some much smaller and more recent ones like soulvoid (which i cannot recommend enough)!

[Karius]

This takes me back... I used to play Yume Nikki and Ib all the time when I was a young teen!

- Danny

[brawler]

Oh man, I could go on and on about my love for rpgmaker games (and i will, sorry in advanced for the long post :evil:smile:! They have so much charm to them, especially the ones from 2009-2014 era. I especially love Ib, played that on the family computer when I was in middle school and been down in the rabbit hole ever since. One of my all-time favorites has gotta be Space Funeral! The music, graphics, and story make it such a memorable experience.

Some honorable mentioned of course: Ghost Hospital (i wonder if that got finished..  :dunno:smile:, Ao Oni, OFF (of course), Five Nights at Fuckboys, Mogeko Castle... So many good ones.

I have made/worked on a few as well! My friends and I made a series based on what was happening in our lives at the time (we were in highschool, so it was overdramatized) back in 2014-2015. We made 3 games, as well as a "final version" of the third game. It was a blast. We recreated our school and houses, then made it as silly as possible with a Fist of the North Star-esque flair to it. Also made small cutscenes, using iMovie! Each game is about 3 hours long.

In 2019, we tried doing the same thing again but with our new artistic experiences, but I found myself being the only one making any assets/programming the whole thing; it never got finished

Also made my GF a game for her birthday, it was a short collectathon with a bunch of inside jokes and modified sprites from Melon Journey.

I hope to revisit RPGmaker to make a game for my current "brand", and really build one from the ground up now that I have the skills to do so