I constantly have ideas for games in my head. I’m sure it has to do with my love of gaming and my wild imagination. I took a break from my JRPG creation after I realized that I was not experienced enough to throw together something of that level.

I worked on a farming game that was done completely with mushroom people. I didn’t completely finish it and here are a couple of screenshots for while I was working on it. It ended up slightly different, especially the changes not shown in the first screenshot below. I mostly learned more about customizing, coding in timing systems and their effects on things (such as crop growth), as well as a romance system. It was pretty fun though.

Currently I’m working on a zombie fighting game I’ve been calling Zombocalypse. I have a storyline and the first two characters designed. The fighting system I’ve been learning to implement is an ABS, or action battle system. It’s basically fighting on the screen instead of going into a separate menu system, similar to Zelda or most side-scrolling games. The game has a SNES vibe to it, as I seem to like that style, and takes place in a gritty city over-run by zombies. I don’t have an screenshots of it currently, but I think a little game clip would be cool to post some time so you can see the fighting in action, especially the brave dog Butch. He’s the cutest companion you could ask for, but I could just be partial because I spend to much time designing him. I’m currently working on my signs, decor, and vehicles for the game. I’m also terrible at doing maps/level designs, so that is my next big thing to work on. I’ve added a small gif of Butch below.

I’ve been working a lot on my rpg maker game this past month. Different factors in my life have made me really want to complete it. I’ve been working on some aspect of it almost daily. I spend one evening a week in a local cafe enjoying coffee, music, the smells, and just feel the creative flow come alive in me. It’s a pretty great feeling.

I’ve been writing a lot of the game story lately. I had an outline for the gameplay complete but now I’ve been working on fleshing it out further. I’d say that is close to 70% complete. I’ve outlined the characters and written up most of the sequence of events. I’m saving dialogue for when I actually start putting the game together. As someone who has done a lot of writing in the past I find that I really like to let my characters create themselves as I go. That really can’t be done with an outline so I won’t even attempt that yet. I have a pretty good grasp on all the areas I need to build as well thanks to the outline.

I spent all last week and this past weekend working on my timesheets to make my world look better. I’m pretty set on what I want things to look like so will be working on maps for my game soon. I’ll probably just draw them all out first and then decide how to build them in the game. I still need to finish creating NPCs but it might be easier once I know exactly what I need for each map instead of just blindly creating them. I’ve made some maps so far just to test out the tile sets and see how everything looks. Of course that made me want to pick background music, so that’s what I did before bed last night.

I really like the sound of Joel Steudler’s music so might use it in my game. https://joelsteudler.itch.io Once I have a better idea of all the maps I can play around with music to set the atmosphere better. Music really helps tell a story and I’m big on creating playlists to fit my personal mood all the time, so it’s a very important part of the game to me as well.

Anyway, that’s it for this short update. I hope you stop by again to check out my work as I go.

Here’s a preview of my player characters I’ve been working on.

As you can tell, the character photos don’t perfectly match the animated sprites. RPG Maker MV comes with a character generator built in. There are a lot of limitations to it and the characters are about half the size of the ones I created, maybe even slightly smaller than that. I mostly use the generator to get the character portrait and the sprite faces created as a starting point for creating my characters.

The angel character portrait was actually for a base character that came with the program so her parts weren’t in the generator. I ended up changing her hair color and creating completely custom armor and wings for her. She’s much different then the portrait now so I’ll have to create a new one from scratch sometime.

The pink-haired monk is designed to be the main character of the game. I originally designed her without hair, but didn’t like the way she looked once I imported her into my game and started moving her around. Just a little to masculine on-screen. I’ve worked pretty heavily on her skill tree but still have tons of animations to do for the fighting parts of the game. Lots of work to do there! Otherwise, her character portrait matches her good and I’m pretty happy with how she turned out.

The green-haired character is the party druid. I decided I would like her sprite to depict her spirit animal so I added antlers. I still need to draw some for the character portrait, but haven’t yet. Her costume is closely based on a default RPG Maker MV character with lots of editing to make it fit and to change to more natural colors. I really love the way she turned out and the look of her costume overall.

My last player character is a demon. He’s the only male in the group but not intentionally. A 50/50 split would have been so generic anyway. He’s a mercenary, so the a big weapon-wielding character. There will be plenty of weapon and armor types available for him to use and I’ve even been experimenting with a customization system to allow him to change the elemental damage type. You can tell by his custom portrait that he will have a bit of cocky attitude as well.

My characters are fairly fleshed out, but I think as I go through the final story writing and level creation they will flesh themselves out even more. Either way, it’s a huge start after hours of sprite design!

The last two pics are screenshots from my first dungeon. This is all default monster and dungeon tile stuff so not a ton to see here really. I have a TON of work to do to customize the game but have decided NPC sprites will be next so I can start throwing together more villages and cut scenes. Monster designs will come later once I decide on an art style. Pixel or hand drawn? So many decisions. I have a lot to learn to do scenery with but have sprinkled in some custom stuff here and there in my first few areas as well.

Well, I heard that having a dev log for a game you are designing is a good idea. I’ve kept mine in a notebook for years so I might post it up here. Or not. Might just start from where I currently am.

I’ve been gaming for most of my life. I can remember playing the Atari and at arcades in Germany in the early 1980s. Seems like a million years ago, but it for sure changed my life.

I’ve been working on a hobby roleplaying game for more years than I’ll admit and hopefully in the future I can share it with the world. I’m not the best at coding but I do pretty good at writing and designing, so I’m doing my game on RPG Maker. Currently I’m on RPG Maker MV but will probably upgrade in the future if the newest edition goes on sale before I finish this game. I’ll add in some photos from my actual game and post up some things I’m working on. It will be a fun project whether I finish it or not.