#randomly decided to start working on an rpg maker game

[t00nyah]

If you could make your own video game (think of an idea l and it just snaps into existence somehow) what would it be about and what mechanics would it consist of? What platforms would it be available for? Who's the target demographic? Or anything else you want to ramble about... I like to think of creating my own games sometimes.

haha they dont know i have a joke rpg game i made in a day to test my abilities.

in all seriousness though, i actually did have bigger projects that i never finished... so, just gonna drop that i'm a big fan of RPG maker games, horror ones, PSYCHOLOGICAL horror ones for even better score. and i am kind of a liiiittle experienced with rpg maker.

warning!!

this answer ended up containing a lot of sensitive topics(in my opinion??) and i tried my best to make sure to include them in tags AND before each idea's explanation, please check the tags and not proceed if those topics are sensitive to you personally!!

i had a project that i started making as a vent. that's the closest i had to actually making something. it was called zepphire's lair. zepphire is my sona from 2015 that had very bright neon colours that were probably UNBEARABLE to look at, then i tried redesigning her years later into something pastel. and then, umm... in 2022 i had issues with my style because i used to be VERY caught in 'oh,,,this one line is weird,,,how do people even like my art there's a stray pixel there...god.' and decided to do something about it. this 'something about it' was changing my art style to PURPOSEFULLY unpleasant to look at, messy and annoying. it was bright, i didnt care, and honestly i think it helped with being that critical to myself. anyways. sorry im rambling but it is important

so in 2022, when i had a giant relief of drawing in the most unbearable(and stunning at the same time) art style, i reused zepphire. FUCK PASTEL said me. NEONS ARE GOOD. it was a great decision.

so zepphire's lair was meant to be an rpg game where you play as zepphire. who in her head is still her young self that doesn't have to think about what happened. but in reality, her magical world she was meant to become a god of was destroyed and ruined because she wasn't responsible enough with powers granted to her. she is now the only resident of the Forbidden Location, an alternative world that people could get into by just clipping randomly. like you know when you find a spot in a videogame that doesn't have an invisible wall and you go OH. that. i wasn't sure how to continue working on it because it lacked story to tell as present. it had a past story to unfold, but i had no idea what would happen now. i had a thought of someone getting into FL somehow after long time and zepphire trying to solve this because they're clearly not meant to be there while in her head she's still stuck struggling with herself.

i want to put a little bit of assets i made for zepphire's lair, but since it's all very bright toxic neon i think i'm gonna place them at the veeeery end so you don't have to look at them if you can't stand it.

CW: cartoon blood!! a little bit of it!!

next up is my cool idea of a fangame! so, purrfect apawcalypse is one of my favourite game series. and i've been following it since first one and i have a LARGE fanmade setting set in the same universe! (in fact, two! i also made a reference for kitsune high which is set to be in an agricultural town inhabitated by foxes! it was a cool project)

the game idea was to make an rpg (because, again, that's all i know, lmao) that follows the Chatting club - a school interest club literally dedicated to rumors and just having a good time - as they unveil the secrets their school holds. cats and dogs disappearance cases? rumors of ghost around? who the heck lives in the garden and what're they up to? what is up with the Detective club's president Seraphima? there are many mysteries. it would have an overall vibe of the original novellas' series - a cutesy game about very cute furries and weird magic stuff happening, while also having a little bit...darker tone. like i was actually going to explore a very dark topic with this one but honestly? right now i really don't like the way i wrote it back then. if i were to pick up the idea again i deffo would try to rewrite it and make more sense into it. i like the detective vibe it had going though!

here are some references of the characters that are important to the plot! a lot of twists were planned for this story and i'm not going to tell them all because it's a secret tee-hee.

also as i searched for the refs i found that the working title of the game was 'purrfect meowting'

another concept for a game i had...which is a lot.

CW: contains themes of child neglect, probably abuse, general cat mistreatment, probably a bit of ableism(im unsure about this one) and maybe a bit of weird racism because one of mc's character's parent is weird and very stupid and we are allowed to hate her for that...i hope i mentioned it all.

i have a little ocs setting with three main characters that i refer as 'kitty girls' this story is tragic and is based on idea i had about making a story...about girls...but put them into life situations that would reflect what cats sometimes have to go through bc some humans are trash, but put it through a human lens, although not exactly. it also ended up a story that portrays children who've lost their childhoods for various reasons. idk how to explain.

these are Snowwhite, Rouge and Patches. their names were meant to be reflecting what another one's kitty sona is, but i fucked up, lol.

Showwhite is a picture perfect girl for her parents who's mostly been treated as a prize all her life, making her feel sick of herself. Rouge was neglected by her mom because 'she wasn't born red'(as in orange...like a cat...i used cat allegories every time i explained it but i think the implications are clear enough - her mother wanted her to look different.) and she lived a happy life with her grandparents. and Patches...is a deaf girl whose parents just couldn't take care of her properly so she ended up in an orphanage. she has awful attachment issues.

i won't explain the whole plot but their stories were meant to be kind of a portrayal of how some people treat animals as just objects, things they can just get rid of. a cat of specific breed, bred for specific traits which may be hurtful to it, a cat whose owner just threw it away after it not meeting the expectations, and a general theme of people not wanting to take in cats with injuries that make them 'not pretty' for them. i don't know why im tearing up right now but these make me so upset and i smh wanted to portray these issues though human characters, and while adapting them i realized that those awful stories ended up overlapping with how neglectful parents end up treating their children.

in the end they end up in cat heaven, where they all meet and get to be happy and be themselves. snowwhite learns to love herself for who she is and find out hobbies there, rouge just finally gets friends she lacked. also patches doesn't magically start hearing in cat heaven, she was given an option to but she felt overwhelmed a lot and ended up sticking to being deaf but not treating it as a bad thing, just a different thing.

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BONUS SECTION

i also have this unused character and concept art that i just made bc i finally felt like i could do something back in the day

her working name was 'vogel'

so. returning to zepphire's lair. one thing i forgot to mention earlier is that i also even made OST for it (didn't feel like it would fit the text above). this one is just the theme that plays in the first playable area

main menu theme...is too heavy for tumblr apparently. huh. it's a very simple tune it just goes on for very long (bc there's an easter egg if you listen to it for too long!!!)

next section contains bright images that im gonna put even deeper below!!

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title screen!

intro cutscene! small baby zepphire, and then zepphire acquiring her godmode key, and then ending up becoming a photoshooter!! the camera is important .

here she is!!! the cat herself!!!

a photo that she has in her inventory!! it's mewtona, her sister!

gameplay-wise i was gonna make it so you can collect random photos zepphire made and have to learn the implications of that and what it has to do with 'the photoshooting incident'. it would be somewhat close to omori - part of story is in reality and parts of it in headspace that explains the story.

I THINK that's all. sorry this took so long that was a lot of yapping!!!

[voidzonegameblog]

[ VOID ZONE ] || Sci-Fi / Fantasy RPG

Beneath the surface of our planet exists our world of caves.

It is within the cave-cities that our protagonist, Kigg, makes a living as a member of the Void Scouts, a courageous group of explorers, protectors, and monster hunters pledged to protect the people of the caves. The Void Scouts work constantly to assist the cave-bound cities they live in from the potential threat of the Void Zone, a dangerous field of psychic energy which can quickly kill those who enter unprepared and untrained.

The caves are plagued with uncertainty: the people have been going missing without a trace, and between mysterious robotic beasts, volatile energy seeping into the physical realm from the Zone, and talk of strange monsters abound, Kigg, starry-eyed and eager to help others, must assist the people of the caves. His eyes are fixed on a sky he has never seen, but his heart lies with helping the people around him. Surely, he cannot reach for the stars and protect the people of the Caves…

The Void Scouts protect the people of the caves, but when calamity befalls the Void Scouts, who will protect them? There is only one choice: survive.

In Void Zone, you will explore unique cave cities, battle mysterious creatures, gather items from your surroundings, and unravel the mysteries of the strange psychic Void Zone surrounding the pockets of civilization around you. This game features turn-based combat, item gathering, and an elemental battle system!

==============

Development thus far...

Void Zone started about 8 years ago. In the beginning, it looked like this:

And while it was a labor of love, I was not sure what I was doing at all.

After a few years and quite a lot of effort, I had most of the story written and quite a bit of the game playable... In RPG Maker VX Ace, which is written in RubyScript. Unfortunately, I am very bad at programming, so despite years of work on the project, my inability to make things work the way I wanted them to really frustrated and upset me.

Eventually, I decided to switch over to a Javascript based engine - RPG Maker MV - which has suited me much better. Along with it, the game has gotten a lot of graphical updates, both thanks to a larger tile size and my own art skills improving over nearly a decade.

Now, it looks like this:

The now-defunct "Alpha Version" was admittedly probably 60% complete. The new build is probably 30% - most non-'dungeon/puzzle' maps are complete, almost all features have at least a basic working version, many sound effects as well as music and story are still intact from the Alpha.

Dungeon and puzzle design, monster art updates, player combat animations, final story revisions, NPCs, music, and a whole pile of eventing and balancing lay ahead still.

==============

Planned + In-Progress Features

Turn-based combat with an element system

The basic skeleton of the combat system is complete; it currently lacks balancing, graphics, and some skill abilities.

Planned: a skill-steal ability, an item-steal ability

Maybe: an elemental weakness-resistance share ability

Combination of pre-designed and randomly-generated maps

Thanks to the incredibly amazing Aerosys, randomly generated maps are possible for a total coding dummy like me!

That said, the randomly generated maps are currently very barebones.

Planned: Map-based effects, varied map generation procedures, pre-designed 'static' dungeons

Maybe: Restoring MP while traveling (possibly only in certain areas)

Gathering and light crafting system

A very basic gathering system is in place, as well as a very basic fishing minigame.

Planned: Light crafting system - think of basic cooking!

Maybe: A more robust fishing minigame, character food preferences (Ex: +5 to a food's effect if the character likes it)

Bestiary and codex entries; Quest-tracking journal

These features have been set up, and simply need to be edited as needed for story progression

Maybe: Bestiary gallery; this would require me to be better at JavaScript or find someone to help me out. Right now the bestiary can display static images, but cannot display animations.

Maybe: UI Updates

While I can get the UI looking pretty nice by messing with RPG Maker's settings and supplying my own graphics, it's still frustrating to be confined to the parameters set by the engine as opposed to nicer menus designed by hand. Unfortunately, this is not something I think I can do on my own (right now, at least) - so this is just a possible update, not a planned one.

I may also add small 'splash' illustrations when traveling from area to area, either only once (and then shown in the codex after) or very quickly every time. However, this may be annoying for players moving around many areas quickly.

Shops with interactive shopkeeps

Basic function is in place, but it hasn't been refined much.

Planned: Shop scenes (a background illustration and a character illustration for each shop)

Ultimately, there is a lot of work already one on Void Zone, but also a lot more to go.

==============

From here...

...I will keep working on Void Zone in my free time. For a while I kept this blog detailing my progress on the Alpha version; from here I'd like to update as I go and keep track of my progress.

A very generous timeframe would be to finish the game before 2024; I don't know if I'll reach that goal. But I want to keep going until I finish, and I hope if you've stuck with me through this post so far you'll maybe come check out how it's going from time to time.

And to end this post, here are some enemy animations:

Until next time!

(This post is also on my Itch.io thread - I plan to try and keep updates the same on both the Itch forums and this blog.)

[moonanagames]

Good and bad news, CHECK THIS OUT PLZ

(are... are you ready)

Haro my fellow earthlings and interplanetarian folks!

Today I bring good and bad news altogether, so please bear with me for a bit! Firstly, I wanted to talk about how development has been going since the very beginning, so let us go to our nice time capsule :D

This is a timeline of the development up until now, I tried to be the most accurate as I could, but it can be a bit difficult when I don’t remember many things anymore lol

The game is in development since January 2017. The timeline goes like this:

2017

From January to May, 20, I developed on my own my first public demo of Virgo Vs The Zodiac. It took longer as I was all by myself.

Then my Grandma said she wouldn’t be able to support me anymore if I was going to quit college to develop games. From May to August, I prepared the Crowdfunding Campaign to help me fund the project and my EXISTENCE. The Campaign was launched in September 2017, I think.

After the campaign ended, I could finally get Anglerman onboard! Ay! He does animations for enemies and some party members animations too and is also the greatest deity of our lives. A legend. He helped me a lot with the Game Design Document I was working on because new people would join and I needed to make the things in my head to be a bit more concrete.

From the end of the Campaign until October we were working with a another programmer, but that didn’t work too well since they had another big project they were working on at the time. We had to change the programmer. It was when I found Ben here on Tumblr, current lead programmer. Our lord and savior.

After that I was browsing tumblr randomly and I found Veyerals among asks sent to this tumblr and thought his work with menus was pretty cool (and I liked his game as well, played a lot of that back then). Veyerals joined the project too as the UI programmer and would also be working with the SHMUP mini games, which he had experience with. Bless the UI G.O.D.

From that point on we had to basically rebuild the game from scratch from the moment we got the new programmers. Not only develop the game from scratch, but doing everything RPG Maker already had built in for us into the new engine because that was the only thing I knew in terms of “programming”. That and adding everything new I thought for the project. It was a huge amount of work, and we only had a battle system working fine in December, where we started developing a new build.

(concept art of lady nurse)

2018

In this year things got a bit complicated!

At first, when the battle system was mainly “complete”, as we thought back then, we delivered a 15 mins build for ID@XBOX to be shown at the Game Developers Conference, on January 2018.

We had billions of problems from january to august with the development and also unrelated to the development, like dealing with US taxes. A lot of things weren't working as we wanted them to be, this time was mostly spent on making the timed hits to feel nice, rebuilding the base systems and trying to make the game to have the same feeling as the RPG Maker build had of it being challenging. Also, overall asset production. That was demanding as heck. In RPG Maker the enemies didn't move, while in Game Maker they were animated. I had never worked with Game Maker before, so me and Anglerman (the animator and fellow game designer) had to learn the engine from scratch while developing the game, that resulted in a lot of set backs, but lead us to where we are now. We're confident with the overall game's scaling, difficulty, battles and systems. In Game Maker the maps are also bigger and have way more polishing, so that took a lot of time to get used to on the new engine.

(a really weird, but solved, bug)

From that point on we built Capricorn, and started working on Taurus and other realms at the same time. After some time we determined that doing several realms at the same time, even though we knew which level the player would be wouldn't work well, and we decided to finish the realms before heading to other realm.

Billion lines of code later, in october we started development of the first 2 hours and a half of Taurus. All of it took one month and a half. It was a significant improvement from the previous 5 months to develop the same amount of gameplay! We determined that we can finish the game on the first half on 2019 upon seeing the progress of the development in Taurus. Now we have a stable work flow, as our lead programmer only has to work on random tiny things, for example, "I would like for Virgo to throw Alpacas for an event, can you add that?". Those are small details that Ben can do easily. Everything that was promised on the campaign, like SHMUP minigames and the crafting system is also all working nicely and well.

That brings us to the bad news: The release will be delayed, for all the reasons exposed before. At first we thought of keeping with the date announced in the Crowdfunding Campaign of December 4th and release the game in Early Access. However it all seemed unfair to the Beta Backers who donated first to get access to early builds of the game. Other than that, a save system of something like a RPG such as Virgo Vs The Zodiac wouldn’t work well with the early access system of Steam. Just imagine your save messing up every time the game is updated. That would be just bad. xD Unfortunately I didn’t know that back then when I announced the date, and I didn’t know the amount of hassle I would go through to learn the engine while developing the game. I can only blame my naiveness, honestly. Other than that, December isn’t a good time to release games because of the Steam Sale that makes it harder for new games to be noticed with so many games on sale.

With that being clarified, I can say now that the game would most likely be released in the first half of 2019, around Q2. I apologize deeply and am extremely sad, I was even avoiding saying this here and avoiding social medias in general due to anxiety attacks <_< I’m sorry for that as well! For anyone who said their birthday was in the same day as the game’s release, I apologize immensely, and please send me a message and I’ll send you a card of Sagittarius wishing you a happy birthday. It’s the only thing I can do now, to be honest. S O R R Y =(

O U T R A G E O U S

New possible release date: Q2 2019.

As for the good news now:

Taurus Realm Build For Backers

The Taurus build I was talking about will be sent to backers this week! :D You can expect a bossfight with a Zodiac, millions of new characters, around 1800 new lines of dialogues, new equipment to check, new fellows to beat or spare, quests and the SHMUP minigame, now implemented on the game! Also, as seen on the trailer, you can throw enemies off screen now :3

Kinda Funny Games Showcase

We’ll also be participating on Kinda Funny’s Games Showcase that’ll be happening in December 8th! You’ll be able to see a new trailer of Virgo Vs The Zodiac on the stream that’ll be happening on Kinda Funny’s Twitch. That’s a really cool opportunity for us, so eternal thanks to Greg Miller for chosing VvtZ. That got me by surprise! xD

Date: Saturday, December 8th

Time: 10am PT

I think that’s it! Basically we had a lot of setbacks, but we’re in the right path again now and I can say doing anything is faster as is! The game’s quality improved and the development became more demanding of our skills, but it’s also a nice challenge for everyone. I’m glad to have started this project, my life was pretty dull back then, I had lost many important things before and VvtZ brought sparkle back to my life. That’s important, as even in the most difficult times I can remember I’m creating something I have so much fun with. I’m blessed to have all the people who support me on Virgo Vs The Zodiac discord, who supported me in the campaign and everyone around social medias. It’s what makes my days happier, tbh.

Ever since I began development I lost contact with many of my friends from the other city I lived in, but I also made many other precious friends who helped me along the way! All the good and bad memories on my life shaped this place I created for myself in the world. I like this place, it’s comfy :3 Again, I’m sorry for ruining your expectations to have the game up on Steam this year, it’s a first delaying the development like this. As a Taurus I can say it pains the most to not have things done when I need them to be despite the hard work going behind this game. Damned Bugs. I want the bugs to die. Gotta work even harder from now on to extinguish bugs the maximum we can!

[ideahat-universe]

So we’re looking at another Youtuber and this one is special because it has almost no videos and only a few thousand subs but it has a very interesting story behind it that has to do with another topic I've apparently found myself wrapped up in. 

It all starts with a game called Space Funeral. 

Space Funeral is what I would call a Surrealist Dark Comedy about creativity with a bit of satire for the audience. 

Very little in the game makes real coherent sense if you apply it to any sort of real world logic which I would consider a grievous mistake. The strength of the game is that it’s couched in a very familiar system (being RPG maker) and thus you can kind of see the seams of what the game is supposed to be which clears up any mystification of how things operate. 

The humor of the game is that there’s no motivation for the player character to fix everything, all the strange stuff in the game is accepted by the majority of the characters and fixing it just means you've stripped the world of it’s identity. 

It’s a criticism of artists who feel there is a meta to art that they have to adhere to and while the game puts you on a path to reinforcing that meta you ultimately walk away appreciating all the faults in the game a lot more than you did when you started playing. 

The sequels to Space Funeral however were all fan creations. Space Funeral 2 is merely a tribute and Space Funeral 3 is considered a true sequel and Space Funeral 4. Well....

It’s Peculiar.

It’s done by Sqrly Jack and it’s very different to the other games. Namely it has much better artwork which curiously clashes with the theme of Space Funeral. On top of that the game introduces a lot memetic humor that isn't put through the filter of surrealism and it loses a lot of darkness as well and it mostly becomes satire although I don’t quite understand how it wants to approach the most dynamic element in the game, Bubsy. 

Bubsy was in Space Funeral 1. One of the Lions was randomly called Bubsy but this Bubsy appears to be the one from the titular franchise as opposed to Space Funeral 1.

So Bubsy is in this game and it also has furries and brony references and even references to it’s detractors although they are disappointingly made into strawmen (and again they aren't surreal or lacking in coherence when relating this to real life). 

There are also other odd aspects to the Bubsy character.

It’s um. It’s not the Bubsy Mysteriousmrtheenter or SomecallmeJohnny reviewed. Nor is it strictly the character from Arcane Kid’s Bubsy Museum experience. 

But it technically has the same past and it was supposed to be one of the main characters from Space Funeral 4, a washed up video game icon that has gone through the ringer and is in some relatively unknown game franchise as a last chance to revive her (his?) career. 

Well, that didn't go over too well. People reacted towards the game poorly. I think there is a universe where Space Funeral 4 was well received while still having the furry angle. The important bit probably required fully imitating and recycling the rest of the series while having yet another commentary on art critics that doesn't really come together until the end again. 

It would have been a lot harder to write despite it being a retread of the first Space Funeral. It also wouldn't involve Bubsy and I would get rid of the grinding. Nobody plays Space Funeral for the RPG mechanics. It’s not Persona for pete’s sake. You really only need the story and the gameplay is just an excuse. 

 But that’s all hypothetical now. Bubsy’s brief appearance is just a footnote in his return to the gaming scene which I've mentioned not that long ago along with my post where I tarred and feathered him for being the shameless, incompetent, stupid, redundant, annoying, badly designed, aberration that only exists now because he is the very remnant of the worst of the Mascot Platformer era. 

His new game isn't out yet but it looks very boring albeit more mechanically stable than Bubsy has probably ever been. 

This isn't the only Bubsy “Reboot” on the horizon. There’s also Sqrly Jack’s retooled version of Space Funeral 4 minus Space Funeral where it’s now. Um. 

What is it again? Actually I should say “what is it now?” and to answer that question I have no real idea (other than the fact that everyone in the game is renamed for copyright purposes). The basic concept of the character is transferred from the previous game and into this one which is now knee deep in development and it seems like none of the Space Funeral fans know (or care) at this point Space Funeral 4 effectively no longer exists. 

It says it’s a satire but I don’t think the execution is there. Surely they have some practice in parody?

That’s the perfect segway into looking at the channel’s main attraction if ever I heard one. 

So you may be asking at this point. “Why Sqrly Jack Oda? I know you’ve talked about Bubsy like twice but what’s the real skinny?” 

The real skinny is that there is a lot of people like Sqrly Jack in the art related social media communities. Very talented people with various odds and affinities that I don’t mind but it’s a real big thing of contention when they get discovered by the public at large and the funny thing is, Space Funeral was all about odd things finding acceptance when you realize that the alternative is just being everyone else. 

HOWEVER. Space Funeral wasn't part of a community and on that note it didn't take along any baggage or nonsense from anything it could have been associated with. 

That’s the key to it’s magic. It’s just itself. You can’t be yourself if you have all the earmarks of other things and other people and other people’s work. 

You really have to do your own thing. When you really find yourself and express that you get a lot of strange looks but you’ll find that people are more open to strange than you might originally think. 

All right. That’s all for now. Play me out Jack!

Knocked that one out. Hopefully that will be the last time I talk about Bubsy. That reminds me. I thought about doing a gag where Bubsy possesses Cool Cat in an attempt at being famous again but I decided not to because the controversy blew over pretty quick.  Man that controversy. There was like what? Three videos? 

One of them had Adam in the thumbnail. Let me find it. 

WAIT. 

He’s been right under my nose this whole time!

[bunnyandbirb]

Birb’s Steam Cleaning #1: Weeb Trash RPG

Not too many years ago, I had an addiction called the Humble Bundle. I was suckered in by the pay-what-you-want (what I wanted to pay was usually around 1 cent) model for one game that looked interesting, plus four others I didn’t really care about. This weak-willed behavior has left me with a mountain of games in my Steam library that I’ve never beaten, never played, never even read the description for…

So now it’s time to unearth some shit.

While scrolling through my library, I read titles that I’ve never seen before in my life. Project Root? Leviathan: Warships? Super Chain Crusher Horizon???

In the end I just randomly choose to install something I don’t recognize: The Clans - Saga of the Twins.

It’s only after I’ve installed the game that I go to its store page and read the description.

“Experience a point-and-click adventure RPG game like never before featuring seven playable female characters and a male vampire in this not-so serious tale. Catz and Kitsune desire to go on an adventure with Xenonight who have no choice but to follow them.”

���I’ve made a mistake.

Now you may be a much more open-minded person than me. “Come on, birb,” you might say. “You haven’t even played it yet. Maybe they’re just bad at writing descriptions and naming characters. Give the game a chance.” And you know what? You may be right.

BUT I START THE GAME TO SEE THAT THIS IS THE MAIN MENU:

There is no hope left for me.

Not only is this wannabe-waifu’s character design an assault on my eyes, but there is also an infuriating retro arcade-sounding techno track playing on repeat in the background, featuring some overly autotuned guy speaking in tongues as the accompanying vocals. Also, that (three option) “menu” located right on the girl's crotch is so clearly ripped straight from RPG Maker that it physically hurts me. By “point-and-click adventure RPG game” I guess I should have guessed that it was going to be another amateurish RPG Maker product, but really? You couldn’t even have customized the UI for the first screen the player sees? And this is being sold on Steam for $10???

I tentatively click “New Game” (because there is no ‘Options’ button, I can’t even try to change the wonky resolution, lower the music volume, or do anything other than dive headfirst into the void. Lord help us all) and am instantly introduced to our protagonist, Catz.

Catz has… cat ears. Two seconds into the game, she randomly decides to go on an adventure. No, seriously. The game starts as Catz is having a conversation with her bodyguard, Kitsune, (who has fox ears oh my god kill me) and this is a transcript of the first three lines of dialogue:

Catz: Your food is as great as ever.

Kitsune: Thanks. Even though you hired me as your bodyguard, I’m also a capable cook.

Catz: I feel like going on an adventure.

At this point I’m wondering whether my laptop charger’s cord is long enough to strangle myself with.

I find out that I can access a settings menu from here, and eagerly try to turn down the volume of the music. It doesn’t work. It turns out, nothing on the settings menu is actually clickable. Utterly defeated, I go back to playing the game.

Catz goes to find her “despicable sister” to tell her that she’s going on an aimless adventure. It turns out that this girl is the one we saw on the main menu! Catz’s sister, Sakura (please jesus why) proves that the two are related by being equally horrific at exposition.

The subtlety there is astounding. Catz leaves after saying a bunch of nonsense (she doesn’t want to be her sister’s ‘Master’ or something?), and now I get to control Sakura instead. She goes to a control room and talks about creating battle mechs, activates the “Dream Web”, and then uses her magical powers to beat up some random trash ghost-things that spawn. None of this is explained. Even though the trash ghosts didn’t even touch her, she says she needs to go to the infirmary.

Here, not even five minutes into the game, is where I find my first bug.

Obviously I’m going to tool around instead of actually going where the game tells me to. I make Sakura walk up to a train and try to hop in:

Why the hell is Catz’s sprite coming up and telling me this? Is she the conductor? Does she hide behind that vending machine just to bitch about the train when people walk by?

Anyway, I just walk to the infirmary after this because I don’t want to prolong my suffering any further. Sakura blows up two more trash ghosts on the way with her magic lightning (I have not manually battled a single thing so far) and goes in to take a nap.

We’re switched over to Kitsune’s perspective, and are introduced to a new character: Xenonight.

This is the conversation we are treated to:

X: Finally you are here.

K: Who are you?

X: I’m Xenonight.

X: I will also come to help Catz with her adventure.

K: Well, welcome aboard.

The two find Catz watching some practice fight on a holographic battlefield. She doesn’t even bother to ask who the fuck Xenonight is and why she’s so edgy. Instead, she’s just like, “oh yeah! I was supposed to go on that adventure.”

And then they do.

Yyyyuuuuuuuuuup.

I now enter Catz’s dream sequence, which demands that I pick a difficulty level for the game.

The sound of laughter = having fun, right? Might as well click on that one.

Instantly, I’m placed in a battle sequence where some guy is holding a weapon in the most inefficient manner possible.

I hit him once with a basic attack, and three more appear. None of the combat is explained, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. Just click on a type of attack and then on the enemy you want to hit. Basic attacks seem to do around half as much as the mana-based one, so I end up just torching everything I see. The first battle earns me exactly one wood log.

The rest of the dream consists of meeting some gothic lolita chick named “Lilith Bloodrose” (sigh), miscounting a group of four people as three, and fighting a dragon. Then Kitsune wakes up the MC and we’re in a forest.

I played this game for about another hour, and I can only say that it gets worse. The dialogue is SO cringe inducing, with the characters making XD XD I’m so randumm~1!1! jokes in every conversation without fail. There are also grammatical errors everywhere, and the characters’ names aren’t even spelled right sometimes. The combat is incredibly repetitive and boring as shit. All I have to do is just spam click forever - I might as well just play Cookie Clicker, at least that game gave me some shred of satisfaction.

All in all, I’d rate The Clans - Saga of the Twins a ReconsideredAllofMyLifeChoices/10

~Stay tuned for nonsense~

- birb

[ghostsonabiketonowhere]

Ghostman: The council calamity retrospective

Well christ, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I know literally nobody follows this blog, but as of this writing, i’m waiting on the steam direct fee i paid to be fully processed (Basically, in a week i’ll be able to publish the game)

I’d like to take a second and stroll down memory lane for a little bit, and why it took so fucking long to make this game, this is basically going to be a list of every time i tried and failed to make a game, so strap in, these aren’t in chronological order either, and i’ve kinda forgotten the proper order.

Bill’s excellent adventure:

There’s incredibly little to say on this one, after reading a 4chan thread on games development i downloaded GM:S, tried making a platformer, saw my art, didn’t see any progress after trying a little bit, and gave up.

Mugman:

Mugman was the first time i tried making an adventure game, other than the main character, i had no ideas for the game and dropped it like a rock.

Radiation Seat:

Radiation Seat, for the more dedicated gamers in the audience, is just a synonym for nuclear throne, i tried messing around with random generation in GM:S, realised i’m not very good at coding and gave up, the game actually kinda works though, so theoretically if i’m a moron/psychopath i could try working on it again.

Asterodis:

First real game i ever made, it’s an asteroids clone, but with a bunch of the stuff i saw in Vlambeer’s game feel talks crammed in, it’s essentially idenitcal to a tutorial on youtube except shooting takes away points and there’s a limit to the number of bullets on screen.

Poltergeist (Aka: Ghostman when he was a person)

I posted a lot about Poltergeist (the version of ghostman with good art and a completely different setting), the secret to this was having a good artist, Robert Thomas helping me out, we never finished it, and Bobby got caught up in school work, but that’s almost over so if he’s willing to pick up the pen again, i’m willing to do the coding and fix the reall weird bugs (randomly the game would massively lag for a reason i never figured out, i assume it had something to do with the way AGS handles characters over non walkable areas)

Grall and Foegart goto whitecastle:

I’d had the idea of wanting to make a high fantasy adventure game after reading a couple of discworld novels, these games didn’t get far, but it did have an interesting character switching mechnic similar to DOTT, this also appeared in a couple of other half finished games i’d made, why i thought it’d be funny to make a game based on it when i’d never seen Harold and Kumar go to whitecastle? Iunno.

H.E.L.L:

H.E.L.L (Hyper Energetive Love Lab) was a shot at making a VN, i’m probably going to still do this, so i don’t know if putting here’s sensible but eh, fuck it, i’d had the idea of a reality show crossed with a death game for ages, and tried writing a short story about it, which went nowhere.

Gender Girl:

Gender Girl was the first video game i ever made, it was a scratch program with the cat repainted to be pink, moving left killed you by a spike, moving right displayed a message that gender girl had liberated herself (Hohoho, very ludonarratively insync, 12 year old me), i uploaded it to the scratch website, and it, containing swear words(such a rebel was i) it was deleted 5 seconds after publication, truly, a light gone from the world, what did it have to do with gender? If i remember literally nothing, or you were supposed to cut your dick off with the spikes.

Yeah.

PAGAN:

Pagan was a pokemon rip off i was making, i didn’t get far beyond changing sprites and types, world design is hard, as of writing it’s still on my site, i ought to take it down buti just don’t have the heart, poor Pagan.

BORB (Ghostman 1)

Borb, as it’s affectionatly called in the files, is ghostman 1, it’s the source of the Alien King sprite, and the Ghostman sprite used in Ghostman: The council calamity, and was distributed amongst my friends for like, 5 seconds, it’s 4 screens and one “Puzzle”, which doesn’t actually work because the last time i did work on it, it’s fun to see how my humour changed, in GM1 we’ve got the classic line “It’s locked up tighter than a jewish bank” and a character named Snil, whose ribbing snarky asshole persona was basically every persona i used to write until i started playing dnd with my friends, and had to make more than 1 character, i don’t really like anything about GM1, but i find it oddly charming, it’s terrible perspective and total lack of story or theme (You’re kidnapped by bandits and the game ends in leaving on a spaceship having never seen a single bandit.) just makes it like lenny from of mice and men, it probably should die, but i can’t help shooting a game that thought the way to add taste was to remove the words “Fuck off” from a wall.

Rebet:

Rebet’s the first time we see the actual character “Rebut” appear, in some weird tron like backround, i remember wanting to make something that looked like tron, and failing, other than that Rebet remains a total mystery, even to me, andi made the fucking thing, looking at the code, i remember a little bit more about the game, the main gimmick was having a variety of ray guns that could effect peoples emotion, the example in the tutorial was a “calming ray” to prevent a drill seargeant from screaming at you, this didn’t go anywhere.

Wing Wang:

This is literally an empty ags game, there’s nothing in it, i don’t know why i haven’t deleted it.

Ye Men of Valour:

Ye Men of Valour was a weird idea, i’d read a book called “The decline and fall of the British Empire” (Based upon the work, the decline and fall of the roman empire) and decided to make a game based upon a variety of British figures from across time entering into a house they must escape, only to be killed by Aliens, the goal of the game was to get players to reload the game with the knowledge that following the puzzles as they were laid out would kill them, and use a different method to escape, Ye Men of Valour really ended up going nowhere because i was in a pretty dark place and wasn’t motivated, like at all, i’m gonna put this in the “Might come back to it” pile.

Ghostman 2:

Ghostman 2, like Grall and Foegart, had a character switching thing, this ended up breaking the game, so i scrapped it, Ghostman 2 was when the idea of Ghostman being a space adventure comes from, following from Ghostman 1, where you leave on a ufo with an alien, it’s what i thought would happen next, if i remember there was literally no story, just the characters, and switching gimmick.

I.A.C.M

I.A.C.M was a project i worked on with Bobby very breifly, the idea was to make an adventure game set inside a mentally disturbed girls mind, this basically didn’t pan out due to AGS engine limitations, the sprites sent in were too big and ended up looking kind of lame squashed down.

You cannot name this file, insect.:

This wasn’t a game, this was shit poetry at a time in my life where i knew my poetry was godawful, there was no story here, just a Shodan like figure who’d insult me, like personally, i’d write insults about myself into a script and then play it.

Robot Initation:

Adventure game, starring “some random guy named mike”, drew the first character sprites, hated them, didn’t want to improve them, gave up.

Assault and Battery/BatteryMan:

This was a go at 3d platformers made in unity, fell apart because the models i’d made in blender weren’t done properly at all, breaking practically everything.

PirateTextAdventure(ActualTitle):

Sounds exactly like what it is, never got a single line down for this.

Shield Slide:

A rip off of free ski based on the idea of riding a shield i think i saw i a lotr movie? Never got to prototype.

AAAH!

AAAH (Aimless aeronautical adveture, huzzah!) was an experiment i wanted to make, an adventure game that was procedudrely generated, every game would involve a one minute timer, which upon reaching zero, would result in the player dying, the story was the player had just survived a plane colliding with another plane in midair, and had to find a way to live without a parachute just using debris, lessons learned: Random generation is hard, i also ripped off the title from AAAAAAAAAAAAh for the awesome.

Sweet Goodnight:

Sweet goodnight was an rpg i planned to make about dying alone in a spaceship, it never got far beyond idle doodles and some game design docs that i’ve since lost, may go back to this in future.

Spaceman and Woodboy:

A mario and luigi superstar saga ripoff, never got to properly playable state, GM:S is hard.

Quest of Halden:

Shit rpg.

Ghostman: CNC :

Ghostman: CNC (Caverns and creatures) was a weird idea, i wanted to make an Rpg based on my dnd campaign, but for some reason i felt the need to justify it with a weird ghostman shell, may go back to this one.

Legend of Negro:

I don’t know why the fuck this is on my computer, i tried pissing around with a legend of zelda game maker thing.

Generic Units:

Supposed to be an xcom like, fell apart.

Airman/Pacifist run:

Something i still want to do, an fps with non violent weapons and stage hazards that you have to use to defeat enemies, got as far as modeling a single gun.

Sepsis man:

A 3d platformer starring a drinks machine, modeled main character, gave up.

Slime Game (actual title, again.)

Slime game (Or Slime Quest) was going to be an incredibly clever subversive take on the Rpg genre by having the grand villain actually be a low level mook, think cave rats and dungeon bosses, that kind of thing, stopped making it because i thought “Woah, that’s dumb, and lame, and i really don’t like making art for ideas that are dumb and lame!”

Zug’s Glorious road trip for the glory of the party and wealth of the nation:

ZGRTFTGOTPAWOTN for short, this was a text adventure based on wormhole shenanigans and Soviet propaganda films, never really got that far, fun little fact, Zug’s the name of the alien in my twitter profile pic.

Ghostman: The council calamity:

I didn’t quit, i made the game.

THANK GOD FOR THAT.

[moonanagames]

Hello everyone! I am here again to show you guys some of VvtZ history and to reveal the campaign date release! First of all, for the Campaign date:

The Crowdfunding Campaign will be released on August, 29th!

But fear not, if you think you won’t be able to help in that date, your credit card will only be charged if the campaign is successful, not immediately, so you have a bunch of time to program yourself if you plan to donate to help this project come to life (and get all those exclusive goodies)! :3

Now this is the final date, and everything is mostly set up for that! I’m doing some more research for the rewards but already did all the assets I needed done for that! It was a long run, full of difficulties, but I’m nearly there and I’m extremely excited to share this with you all! Thank you for being with me(!!!!)

I would also like to show today some changes the game went through since the very beginning! I hope you’ll like it, even though the first screenshots were very uh... cringy! So, be prepared!

The full development of Virgo Vs The Zodiac started in january, but before that, I guess around end of december? I had posted this on a rpg maker thread on 4chan, just something I called at that time “Waifus and Astrology”:

(Very substantial dialogues)

This was the very first Virgo. She already had her ponytail, but I was trying a greek approach that didn’t work out very well. At the time I was still trying to figure out Anime Art and was wondering what the hell people did to make things to look good and consistent, I wondered a lot on if it was just magick or if I would be able to, someday, make something tolerable to my eyes.

This here is the very first... Dungeon? At the time I was still fixed on the idea of making VvtZ to be a randomly generated thingie. You would be able to go to any realm at any given time, making it impossible to really create a storyline of events. The realms would have dungeons, instead of being scary themselves, so it was a lot more ‘simple’ at the time. Of course, I couldn’t hold myself and made a bunch of political lore behind everything making it impossible to remain as random visits from the Zodiac Killer.

Virgo was also like this a long time ago. I can’t even. I was really proud at the time. What is even happening in her clothes. What, indeed. (the dialogues for the first sequence were basically the same, just a little better in the final version with the help of the proofreaders!)

The scenes were like this, and Virgo was... pink? At the time I didn’t had the exact colours for the Zodiac Qualities System yet, so she was just fixed because I like pink. This scene took an absurd amount of time to be finished so I decided to change it to pixelart to do it faster! 

Also that one time I was struggling with the interface. It took me two days straight working to figure this thing out. I don’t even know how I came out alive from that battle.

And here we are now! This game still has a lot of room to improve in terms of consistency, but I am happy with all I’ve learned over time! I learned tons with the release of the demo, basically on how to deal with criticism and to move forward and even deep life lessons. I am extremely grateful that I could be able to step out of the tough times I went through to begin the development of something I would enjoy so much like this and I’m extremely grateful for all of your support until now!

I hope you are still alive and well after all this cringy material, and I look forward for the Crowdfunding Campaign! I need need need to show you all everything ASAP!