I Created A Video Game in Eight Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ

A Disclaimer:

I wound up getting hired to work in television when I was on Week Five of this project. That was ten months ago and I haven’t found the time to dive back into this project at the pace I want to, in order to keep the ‘eight weeks of (nonconsecutive) work’ integrity.

Therefore, this project, while technically still in-progress, has been temporarily paused on Week Five while I find the opportunity to dive back in, full-time.

...A recently orphaned boy, on the verge of adulthood. 

...A mysterious summons from an ineffable presence. 

...A cult that sprang out of a famine. 

...A choice that impacts the lives of many.

Welcome to Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A., a video game I made from scratch using RPG Maker MZ! 

It is a hilarious romp with a dark storyline, that will take you through the full spectrum of human emotion--sorrow, glee, probably gaseous, etc.--and will stay with you, long after you finish playing. 

Grounded in emotional realism, yet swimming in absurdism, Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A. has multiple endings that each emphasize the impact and consequences of the players’ choices. 

What will happen to the people you encounter? How will meeting you affect their lives? Only you can say.

Click here to play Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A., on itch.io!

Password: beginning

Making Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A.

Prior to making Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A., I had never designed a video game before; I had never written a video game; I had never crafted branching narratives that led to multiple endings. I had never even used the RPG Maker MZ software before. I opened up RPG Maker MZ for the first time (and immediately began to panic-search for tutorial videos) on day one of the project.

Eight weeks of making-a-video-game-for-the-first-time later, I have fallen in love with this storytelling medium that gives and gives and gives. I feel like a giddy kid at the playground who just discovered the monkey bars, and is experiencing the freedom and exhilaration of swinging through the wind like an untethered fairy.

My background is in fiction and creative nonfiction. I am used to linear storytelling that assumes a captive audience (i.e. a reader is likely to read page three after reading page two, and to continue reading past paragraphs they find boring to get through to the best bits). 

I quickly learned that video game creation is its own beast. 

No longer did I have the ability to control the order in which world-building details were received--nor whether they would be received at all; I no longer had control over what order someone might encounter characters, overhear conversations, learn backstory, or touch those delicious little details that breathe life into a squirming, bawling, bleary-eyed, brand-new world.

But not being able to predetermine how a player interacted with and crafted their own experience brought with it an exciting opportunity: the ability to create several stories at once, all existing and making sense within the same universe, the same questline, and letting the player chase down the one they enjoy the most. 

Sounds addicting, no? Like storyteller catnip. 

Designing the branching narratives, characters, dialogues, object interactions, and secret goodies within Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A. felt like creating without rules--even though of course it involved many, many rules, restrictions, and limitations. 

...Turns out, creating video games is fun. 

I’m hooked!

Why This Project?

If I told you that I realized ‘video game writer’ (in its many title variations) was a job ten weeks ago, would you believe me?

Throughout all of the years I gazed in awe and wonder at the ever-evolving storytelling medium of video games--including the time spent actually studying them. Even as an undergraduate, majoring in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, a disconnect existed in my brain between me ravenously gobbling up the stories in video games, writing stories of my own, and realizing oh wait, this can be my job.

So, I started the job search. And found a few amazing ones. The problem was: each job required me to already have at least one writer’s credit on a AAA published game. It felt like a Catch-22: I needed to have already written for a game, in order to be allowed to write for a game. 

“Well,” I thought. “It sounds like the only way for me to have my name on a game is to make my own.”

So, I did! 

Here’s how my project went, week-to-week.

Weekly Updates, Or: “How to Slowly Lose Your Grasp on Reality”

Week One: Potato Churches, Nose Foam, and the Software Equivalent of 'Open Sesame!'

In Week One, I learned how to make/design maps, how to create interactive objects, and how to successfully transfer characters from one map to another (or, in layman’s terms: learned how to let my characters walk through doors). 

Week Two: Plot Outlines, Blushing Statues, and Desperate Potatoes

In Week Two, I wrote a full plot outline, made a fully-interactive potato church, learned how to create branching dialogue and text choices, and crafted a fully-customized main character.

Week Three: Spooky Dreams, Emotional Stakes, and (Hopefully) A Boatload of Suspense

In Week Three, I created my video game’s intro! It only took me multiple attempts, the creation of a completely new character, and finalizing a lot of information about the overarching game’s ending (the larger game outside of the potato church questline) in order to establish motive, emotional stakes, and the “So what?” question that every game begins with.

Week Four: Sex Dormitories, Homemade Deodorant, and Why You Should Never Accept Hot Chocolate From a Friendly Raccoon

In Week Four, I focused on villains, theme, tone balance, and map design.

Week Five: Silly Epitaphs, Mr. Fluffybuns, and the Game-Over Casserole

In Week Five, I finished every aspect of the bedroom map, started the town map, designed my first forced expository conversation (trap the player, but make it fun!), and...oh, redesigned the messiah’s character (and as a result, the entire second half of the game).

…Weeks Six, Seven, and Eight are coming soon!

How to Have a Great Work/Life Balance. Just Kidding...Here’s More Work.

“The Man Who Promised the Moon” Full Plot Outline (Part One)

I Learned How to Use Self-Switches in RPG Maker MZ, in Order to Interact With a Sack of Flirtatious Potatoes

Suspense, Tone, and Exposition: Creating a Video Game Intro

Creating the Bedroom

How to Have Itch.io Accept Your Game's Files, Instead of Blocking Them Like an Angry Bridge Troll

What This Project Says About Me

I now have first-hand experience in multiple aspects of game-making: level design, character design, map design, sound design, and of course, writing. Dipping my toe into so many waters, so to speak, has given me an increased understanding of how each department has to work together to create the most complimentary version of all of their work combined, in order to make the best player experience possible. This will be a strength when creatively collaborating with other departments, and when creating solo, with the other departments’ needs in mind. 

What I Would Do Differently

If I were to do this project all over again, I would show it to people much sooner. Each time a friend looked at a piece of the game and said “This part/aspect doesn’t work,” the game got better. 

I would also do more “Learning out Loud,” by which I mean writing down what I learned as soon as I learned it. I had a bad habit throughout this project of dismissing a skill as “unimpressive” once I gained it. It wasn’t until five weeks into the project that I looked back and realized what a colossal amount of skills I had gained, that at that point I was taking for granted. Working in silence (not “learning out loud”) also made documenting the project much more difficult. 

Week Five was my busiest and most productive week game-wise, and my least-productive week, documentation wise. By the time I sat down to write about what I had done that week, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information I wanted to include, and had no idea how to approach the deluge of information in my brain. 

Conclusion

I didn’t expect an experience as solitary as creating a video game by myself to feel so interactive and collaborative. 

Working on this game felt like telling a story with multiple future creative partners (possible players), all at once. Which, in a way, I did. I essentially proposed and presented several possible avenues through which a player can craft their own experience, all while maintaining an emotional narrative core. 

My responsibilities were expanded from telling just one story, to telling multiple. 

Making Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A. has been an exciting experience that felt like it opened up a brand-new avenue of storytelling. I didn’t expect to feel just as curious and energetic at the end of the project as I did when I began it, but I do! 

I still feel like a kid in a candy store, and I’m not ready to let her (the game) go! 

I want to do more!

"Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A." Week Three: Spooky Dreams, Emotional Stakes, and (Hopefully) A Boatload of Suspense

Welcome to Week Three of my project, “I Created A Video Game in 8 Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ,” where I create a self-contained video game quest with impact, choices, and multiple endings, from scratch, using RPG Maker MZ! 

Last week, I wrote a full plot outline, learned how to create branching dialogue and text choices, programmed an interaction with some flirtatious potatoes, and crafted a fully-customized main character. Read all about it, here! 

Want to play the game in its current form? Click this link! 

(The password to access the game is: “intro.”)

A few things to know before playing the game: 

• The game works in Firefox and Safari, but people have experienced loading issues when using Google Chrome.

• You will need to make the game full screen in order to read any of the text boxes. You can do this by clicking on the ‘fullscreen’ icon on the bottom right.

---

This Week’s Goal

My goal for this week was to create a complete, fully-playable, exposition-heavy video game intro. 

I also wanted to finish the entire bedroom map, start the town map, and basically get one third of the game completed. HA. That didn’t happen.

Surprise! It turns out that creating a video game intro is a LOT of work. It’s a mixture of programming, narrative design, timing (that was a new one for me), sound design, visuals, and of course, writing that tells the player whether or not they are interested in continuing the game at all. It’s a high-stakes creation, and I was feeling the stakes!

This week was my most self-taught one. 

In previous weeks, I relied heavily on tutorials to show me how to use RPG Maker MZ. By this week, however, I had enough under my belt to learn a lot on-the-fly. 

The result was a series of interlooped cutscenes to begin the game, my first-ever designed jump-scare, and the first time I programmed a character’s scripted movements. 

It has been a very exciting few days!

Crafting the Beginning

The name of the game this week was: exposition, exposition, exposition. And tone. 

This week was all about the beginning of the game. Which, surprisingly (or not, for anyone more familiar with creating video games) meant that the entire week was really about the ending of the game, and what information had to be established and conveyed in order for that ending to make sense. 

I would compare it to: not preparing a grocery list until you know what you’re planning to cook with the food you buy.

In my case, the information I needed immediately on-hand was two-fold: 

• Who/What is G.R.A.N.D.M.A., and what information do the characters have about G.R.A.N.D.M.A. prior to the beginning of the story?

• Why is the main character trying to visit G.R.A.N.D.M.A. to begin with? What are his motivations behind doing so?

Firmly convinced that I had all of this information in-hand (I didn’t), I confidently set out to learn how to create cutscenes that would suck the player in, and not let them go. 

(Click here to read the full post about creating the intro!)

(A Fun Continuation of Last Week): Customizable Character Skills

This was a small part of my week, but I also figured out how to add personalized skills to my character! It was the final piece of the customization puzzle, and I’m so excited that I finally figured it out! 

He now has two “Special” skills: Empathetic listener, and Drunk Dancing.

Conclusion

This week felt like that scene in Legally Blonde, where Warner is surprised that Elle is attending Harvard, and she says “What, like it’s hard?”

Except in this case, I WAS WARNER, looking back at baby-faced me from 7 days ago who had no idea what I was about to get myself into. 

I am in awe of all of the game developers who do this for a living. I hope to join them soon, but hopefully next time I will have more than 7 scheduled days to create a video game intro that... 

• Establishes lore and a long-term goal

• Introduces characters 

• Introduces emotional connections

• Introduces suspense

• Provides a logical reason for the game beginning where it does

• Provides incentive to keep playing

(But if I only have seven days to do it...I’ll make that work, too!)

Before beginning this project, I had no idea how many game designer hats I would have to put on. Turns out, making video games is hard? Who knew? (This is sarcasm.) Anyone? Bueller? 

Overall, I am incredibly proud of this week. 

I’m so excited to have a working intro! 

My goals for Week Four are to:

• Create maps for the Messiah’s manor

• Make as many interactive spaces in the opening bedroom map as possible

• Implement the feedback I get from my upcoming test players (very exciting)!!

Click here to read all about it!

"Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A." Week Two Update: Plot Outlines, Blushing Statues, and Desperate Potatoes

Welcome to Week Two of my project, “I Created A Video Game in 8 Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ,” where I create a self-contained video game quest with impact, choices, and multiple endings, from scratch, using RPG Maker MZ! 

Last week, I learned about map design, how to make objects interactive, and how to transfer players in-between maps. Read all about it, here!

Want to play the game in its current form? Click this link! 

(The password to access the game is: potato.)

A few things to know before playing the game: 

-- The game works in Firefox and Safari, but people have experienced loading issues when using Google Chrome.

-- You will need to make the game full screen in order to read any of the text boxes. You can do this by clicking on the ‘fullscreen’ icon on the bottom right.

--Everything that the player can touch is interactive. This means statues. This means barrels. This means weird demons in the corner. If your character meets resistance while moving, it probably means that he’s touching something interactive.

Let’s Dive Into Week Two!

My goals this week were to:

—Write a full plot outline for the entire quest

--Finalize the design for my potato church, and make every single object within the church interactive

--Learn how to create characters and NPCs

--Learn how to use “self-switches”

A Full, Spoiler-Laden Plot Outline

This quest is titled “The Man Who Promised the Moon.”

Once upon a time, there was a starving community, struggling through a famine. 

One day, a man came into the community with the promise of a better life. He had been to the moon, he said, and discovered that it is a giant potato--enough to feed everyone in the community for their entire lives. 

Everyone was thrilled. Their children would no longer die from hunger, frail and withered, in their arms. But there was a catch. 

This stranger proclaimed that in order to protect the potato moon from being stolen from others who would take the potato moon for themselves and leave this community starving once more, he would safeguard the secrets of how to reach it. For the good of the community, you see--not because he was lying his face off. (By the way, the stranger was starving during this time as well--not that he let the others know this.)

The stranger--the messiah--the church founder--”HE”--set up a system. Once a month, anyone in the “We’re going to reach the potato moon” community (cult) needed to pay him an elaborate tribute--Food, drink, women--and if the tribute were worthy enough, the stranger would give one yes-or-no response to a single question about how to reach the potato moon. 

So, for example, they would bring up dozens of goodies, and then get to ask something like “Did you use a rocket?” 

They would get something useless, like “Hmmmm…yes,” and that would be their question for the month. 

By the time the player finds the church, this has been going on for a while. For so long, actually, that the outside community isn’t starving anymore. The famine is over. All non-church members are enjoying prosperity and full stomachs, which the church members are still sending most of their food, goods, and women as tribute up to this messiah figure, in exchange for their one-question-a-month. 

The quest begins in the throes of one of these tributes/offerings. The church members are getting ready to create a tribute good enough to earn a yes-or-no question, because they have to earn that knowledge. If their tribute isn’t good enough, the messiah says “Ha, nice try; bring me more next month,” basically. 

The player winds up going to the messiah’s house (only it’s huge), speaking to the messiah, speaking to the women there, and learning what’s going on. I think that the player gets introduced to what’s happening, because a family begs them to safely escort their daughter up to the mansion to become one of the tributes. 

Along the way, the player can speak with her and find out how she’s feeling, and get more details on the whole situation. The player can attempt to reason with the girl to run away, but the girl will FREAK OUT and refuse. She is fully indoctrinated. She may even threaten something with G.R.A.N.D.M.A. if the player doesn’t take her, to give the player a reason to do so, rather than just feeling peer pressure to deliver this sex slave up to a literal cult leader. 

When the player delivers her, the women take her in, and the messiah says. “I haven’t seen you before. And you look extremely well-fed. You’re not from the church, are you?” 

The player calls out the messiah for his deception. And then we get background on the messiah--will definitely get backstory and a sob story, and show the messiah’s personality as a sniveling, cowardly loser, who displays no remorse.

Example:

--Messiah: “Listen, my mother told me I would never amount to anything, but look at me, now! All of these people love me! They send their daughters to me! They trust me to help them eat when they reach the potato moon.”

--Player: “But the potato moon isn’t real.”

--Messiah: “Well, sure. But they don’t know that.” (The messiah’s character portrait will wink while saying this line.)

It’s likely that the messiah will offer the player a cut of the pie, so to speak, in order to entice the player into keeping the messiah’s secret. OR, much like the girl’s threat from earlier, threatens to mess up the player’s journey to G.R.A.N.D.M.A., or their experience there, or chances of being let in, or something (depending on what G.R.A.N.D.M.A. turns out to be). 

Example: 

--Messiah: “I have connections! Do you want G.R.A.N.D.M.A. to turn you away? I can make it happen! I WILL make it happen! You watch!”

The player will then have two choices: to expose the lie, or to maintain it. Both have severe consequences, but for different people. 

If the player chooses to expose the lie, the messiah gets torn to shreds by the church members. Or eaten (they are starving), or--this is the really dark version--kept alive as a prisoner to “pay tribute” every year in the form of a body part in a celebratory stew that they DON’T EVEN EAT. They just make it, celebrate making it, and leave it under the moon for irony, and let it rot or get eaten by animals. Those are three ideas floating around. But safe to say, the messiah is in for a world of trouble if he gets exposed.

Also, the women go home to their friends and family. 

If the player chooses to maintain the lie, almost all of the potato church members will die. They will starve to death--probably with the exception of a small child in order to give us an explanation, while they cry over their parents’ bodies. 

The women up at the mansion with the messiah will be wracked with guilt and horror: they entered into sexual slavery to save their families, and it did nothing. And here they are, with full bellies but in hell, with all of their loved ones dead. The player can speak with them after the rest of the church community starves to death, and the women will share their guilt and fears, and worry about what to do or where to go. 

They are worried about going back into town, and having people see them not as tragic heroines who sacrificed themselves in order to increase their loved ones’ chances of reaching the potato moon--but as women who ensured that their own stomachs stayed full, while their family and friends slowly starved to death. 

They aren’t sure what to do: do they stay where they are, do they take the chance in town, or do they leave for somewhere new, altogether? The player can convince them to do any of the three. 

If the player convinces them to stay where they are, where life is awful, but food is ensured, then if the player returns, the women will tell the player that they’re miserable, but fed. And the messiah will confide in the player that the food stores are running out, and he’s not sure what will happen when they are finally empty. He’s nervous about the near-future. 

If the player convinces them to take the chance and go into town, then when the player next visits town, he will see that the women have been welcomed with open arms, have adopted the child that survived the mass-starvation, and are working together in a kind of commune to build a better life. 

If the player convinces them to take the chance and start an entirely new life elsewhere, then the women just disappear off of the maps. And when the player next visits the messiah up at the mansion, the player finds him surrounded by alcohol, lamenting his lost luxury. 

Example: 

Messiah: “I had everything. Food, wine, women...where did it all go wrong???” 

If the player chooses to maintain the lie, they will end up indirectly killing a LOT of people. 

Regardless of what they choose, the maps will change, the interiors will change, and the conversations with townsfolk (hopefully; I only have 20 general switch slots, which [as I understand it] means 20 “if-then” computer triggers. For example: if the player chooses to expose the lie, this dialogue gets triggered, this map change gets triggered, these NPCs disappear, etc. I’m really hoping RPG Maker MZ has the space to accomodate all of the changes per each ending, in the same game file) will change. 

The player will know that they have shaped the world in a huge way. Their choices had really big impacts on the lives of a lot of characters, maps, communities, etc. Whatever they decide will be the catalyst for what will become a whispered story from town to town for generations (I mean, there’s no proof of that, but the gravity of the situation implies it). 

---

Surprise! I actually wound up redesigning the messiah to make him a more interesting, three-dimensional character, and it wound up changing the entire second half of the game! 

To read the full plot outline for the new second half of the game (including the new multiple endings), click here! (Coming soon!)

Potato Church

This week, I put everything I learned last week to use, and created my potato church.

The potato church design has been set, every single object in the room has been made interactive, and NPCs are available nearby with finished designs and dialogue (with the exception of the main-quest dialogue, which is evolving in time with the project). 

Here’s a breakdown of what I learned this week: 

1.) Self-Switches

2.) Character Design

3.) Sound Design (I’m at the very beginning of learning this)

4.) Dialogue text manipulation 

5.) Branching Dialogue/Text Choices

Character Design

LOOK AT THIS VERY GOOD BOY

“The Man Who Promised the Moon” Full Plot Outline

Hi! My name is Charlotte Toumanoff and I am a first-time game developer. This post is part of my project, “I Created A Video Game in 8 Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ,” where I create a self-contained video game quest with impact, choices, and multiple endings, from scratch, using RPG Maker MZ. 

The quest, titled “The Man Who Promised the Moon,” is the first adventure available in my debut video game, Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A.

To see the rest of the project (and play the game), click here!

“The Man Who Promised the Moon” (Spoilers!)

Once upon a time, there was a starving community, struggling through a famine. 

One day, a man came into the community with the promise of a better life. He had been to the moon, he said, and discovered that it is a giant potato--enough to feed everyone in the community for their entire lives. 

Everyone was thrilled. Their children would no longer die from hunger, frail and withered, in their arms. But there was a catch. 

This stranger proclaimed that in order to protect the potato moon from being stolen from others who would take the potato moon for themselves and leave this community starving once more, he would safeguard the secrets of how to reach it. For the good of the community, you see--not because he was lying his face off. (By the way, the stranger was starving during this time as well--not that he let the others know this.)

The stranger--the messiah--the church founder--”HE”--set up a system. Once a month, anyone in the “We’re going to reach the potato moon” community (cult) needed to pay him an elaborate tribute--Food, drink, women--and if the tribute were worthy enough, the stranger would give one yes-or-no response to a single question about how to reach the potato moon. 

So, for example, they would bring up dozens of goodies, and then get to ask something like “Did you use a rocket?” 

They would get something useless, like “Hmmmm…yes,” and that would be their question for the month. 

By the time the player finds the church, this has been going on for a while. For so long, actually, that the outside community isn’t starving anymore. The famine is over. All non-church members are enjoying prosperity and full stomachs, which the church members are still sending most of their food, goods, and women as tribute up to this messiah figure, in exchange for their one-question-a-month. 

The quest begins in the throes of one of these tributes/offerings. The church members are getting ready to create a tribute good enough to earn a yes-or-no question, because they have to earn that knowledge. If their tribute isn’t good enough, the messiah says “Ha, nice try; bring me more next month,” basically. 

The player winds up going to the messiah’s house (only it’s huge), speaking to the messiah, speaking to the women there, and learning what’s going on. I think that the player gets introduced to what’s happening, because a family begs them to safely escort their daughter up to the mansion to become one of the tributes. 

Along the way, the player can speak with her and find out how she’s feeling, and get more details on the whole situation. The player can attempt to reason with the girl to run away, but the girl will FREAK OUT and refuse. She is fully indoctrinated. She may even threaten something with G.R.A.N.D.M.A. if the player doesn’t take her, to give the player a reason to do so, rather than just feeling peer pressure to deliver this sex slave up to a literal cult leader. 

When the player delivers her, the women take her in, and the messiah says. “I haven’t seen you before. And you look extremely well-fed. You’re not from the church, are you?” 

The player calls out the messiah for his deception. And then we get background on the messiah--will definitely get backstory and a sob story, and show the messiah’s personality as a sniveling, cowardly loser, who displays no remorse.

Example:

--Messiah: “Listen, my mother told me I would never amount to anything, but look at me, now! All of these people love me! They send their daughters to me! They trust me to help them eat when they reach the potato moon.”

--Player: “But the potato moon isn’t real.”

--Messiah: “Well, sure. But they don’t know that.” (The messiah’s character portrait will wink while saying this line.)

It’s likely that the messiah will offer the player a cut of the pie, so to speak, in order to entice the player into keeping the messiah’s secret. OR, much like the girl’s threat from earlier, threatens to mess up the player’s journey to G.R.A.N.D.M.A., or their experience there, or chances of being let in, or something (depending on what G.R.A.N.D.M.A. turns out to be). 

Example: 

--Messiah: “I have connections! Do you want G.R.A.N.D.M.A. to turn you away? I can make it happen! I WILL make it happen! You watch!”

The player will then have two choices: to expose the lie, or to maintain it. Both have severe consequences, but for different people. 

If the player chooses to expose the lie, the messiah gets torn to shreds by the church members. Or eaten (they are starving), or--this is the really dark version--kept alive as a prisoner to “pay tribute” every year in the form of a body part in a celebratory stew that they DON’T EVEN EAT. They just make it, celebrate making it, and leave it under the moon for irony, and let it rot or get eaten by animals. Those are three ideas floating around. But safe to say, the messiah is in for a world of trouble if he gets exposed.

Also, the women go home to their friends and family. 

If the player chooses to maintain the lie, almost all of the potato church members will die. They will starve to death--probably with the exception of a small child in order to give us an explanation, while they cry over their parents’ bodies. 

The women up at the mansion with the messiah will be wracked with guilt and horror: they entered into sexual slavery to save their families, and it did nothing. And here they are, with full bellies but in hell, with all of their loved ones dead. The player can speak with them after the rest of the church community starves to death, and the women will share their guilt and fears, and worry about what to do or where to go. 

They are worried about going back into town, and having people see them not as tragic heroines who sacrificed themselves in order to increase their loved ones’ chances of reaching the potato moon--but as women who ensured that their own stomachs stayed full, while their family and friends slowly starved to death. 

They aren’t sure what to do: do they stay where they are, do they take the chance in town, or do they leave for somewhere new, altogether? The player can convince them to do any of the three. 

If the player convinces them to stay where they are, where life is awful, but food is ensured, then if the player returns, the women will tell the player that they’re miserable, but fed. And the messiah will confide in the player that the food stores are running out, and he’s not sure what will happen when they are finally empty. He’s nervous about the near-future. 

If the player convinces them to take the chance and go into town, then when the player next visits town, he will see that the women have been welcomed with open arms, have adopted the child that survived the mass-starvation, and are working together in a kind of commune to build a better life. 

If the player convinces them to take the chance and start an entirely new life elsewhere, then the women just disappear off of the maps. And when the player next visits the messiah up at the mansion, the player finds him surrounded by alcohol, lamenting his lost luxury. 

Example: 

Messiah: “I had everything. Food, wine, women...where did it all go wrong???” 

If the player chooses to maintain the lie, they will end up indirectly killing a LOT of people. 

Regardless of what they choose, the maps will change, the interiors will change, and the conversations with townsfolk (hopefully; I only have 20 general switch slots, which [as I understand it] means 20 “if-then” computer triggers. For example: if the player chooses to expose the lie, this dialogue gets triggered, this map change gets triggered, these NPCs disappear, etc. I’m really hoping RPG Maker MZ has the space to accomodate all of the changes per each ending, in the same game file) will change. 

The player will know that they have shaped the world in a huge way. Their choices had really big impacts on the lives of a lot of characters, maps, communities, etc. Whatever they decide will be the catalyst for what will become a whispered story from town to town for generations (I mean, there’s no proof of that, but the gravity of the situation implies it). 

---

Surprise! I actually wound up redesigning the messiah to make him a more interesting, three-dimensional character, and it wound up changing the entire second half of the game! 

To read the full plot outline for the new second half of the game (including the new multiple endings), click here!

Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A. Week One Update: Potato Churches, Nose Foam, and the Software Equivalent of 'Open Sesame!'

Welcome to Week 1 of my project, “I Created A Video Game in 8 Weeks, Using RPG Maker MZ”!

During the course of this project, I will endeavor to create a self-contained video game quest with impact, choices, and multiple endings, from scratch, using RPG Maker MZ. 

The quest, called “The Man Who Promised the Moon,” exists within a larger story (and a possible full game, if I expand this project), titled Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A.. 

A few things to know:

I have never used RPG Maker MV before. 

I have never designed a video game before.

I have never created a video game before. 

My background is in fiction and creative nonfiction. I am hoping that both will be useful to me as I set forth, but I have a feeling that video game creation is its own beast. 

...Let’s dive into Week One!

The Story

A recently orphaned boy, on the verge of adulthood. 

A mysterious summons from an ineffable presence. 

A cult that sprang out of a famine. 

A choice that impacts the lives of many.

Welcome to Visiting G.R.A.N.D.M.A. 

Learning the Software

This week, my three big goals were to: 

--Learn how to create maps in RPG Maker MZ

--Learn how to make characters and NPCs in RPG Maker MZ

--Learn how to make interactable objects in RPG Maker MZ

My week was a combination of feeling incredibly on-pace and incredibly in over my head. It’s not that I’m behind on schedule, it’s that I’m realizing that my schedule was wrong. This is not a short project. But I’m going to give it my best shot. 

Creating Maps

Learning how to create maps was relatively simple. And infuriating. 

RPG Maker MZ has a limited range of visuals available for you to play around with. 

This looks like a lot, until you go through each individual tile (which I did), and find out that the purpose of these tiles is to form bunches of thematic visuals that all fit in together, to answer various questions like: what if my character lived in a dirt village, with a dirty, tiled roof? What if my character lived in a mansion? What if my character explored a golden temple?

For example:

Do you want to create a demon castle? Here’s the demon castle tileset: 

--One wall choice

--One stairs choice

--One roof choice 

--Etc.

This is incredibly helpful when you want to create a demon castle with matching walls, stairs, and a roof, but less helpful if you aren’t immediately in love with the one design available to you.

(These are the basic demon castle exterior/interior designs when put together.) 

Don’t get me wrong; RPG Maker MZ is an incredible program, and I’m having a blast with it. But it’s not great for variety. If you’re a picky designer, you have to purchase your art from licensed tileset creators. 

Which I did. 

Except, the tiles I bought turned out to be too fuzzy to use. Or, rather, too fuzzy to use without causing them to be incredibly distracting. 

Here’s an example: 

RPG Maker MZ’s artwork is crisp and clear, with definition. 

The details are easily identifiable, and the lines are sharp. 

In contrast, here is the ‘bloody tileset’ I purchased (and is a good example of the usual artist-rendered tileset problem.)

If this level of detail and definition were uniform throughout the game you create, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The problem is that even if you were to create a game entirely out of fuzzy tilesets, your character (unless you purchased a fuzzy sprite) would be visually out-of-place. 

Case in point: 

Apparently, this is a common problem. 

The internet is filled with suggestions for how to minimize this, but if you start with 32x32 pixels (which is the amount of pixels per tile in an earlier iteration of RPG Maker) and then blow them up to 48x48 pixels (the amount of pixels per tile in RPG Maker MZ), you’re going to get a fuzzy image. A lot of RPG Maker artists selling their work (I assume) did just this. 

There are a few tilesets that have definition and detail, but they’re few and far between and almost always require a license for RPG Maker MV to legally use. Considering that RPG Maker MV is currently $70, that’s a no from me. 

Rant aside, the visual mapping system of RPG Maker MZ is extremely intuitive, and there are a lot of helpful tutorials on the internet that helped me walk through it. 

I’m still undecided about what I want my maps to look like. The design will depend entirely on what the quest shapes and forms into. 

That being said, here’s an example of an interior I’m playing around with: my potato church! (The barrels on the left are filled with vodka, and the sacks/crates on the right are filled with...you guessed it! Potatoes.)

Creating Characters and NPCs

Check out how I learned to make characters and NPCs in my Week 2 update! 

Want a sneak peek? Here’s a screenshot of the main character (his class is “A Very Good Boy”)!

Making Interactive Objects 

To be clear, when I say interactive, I mean ‘creating objects that you can click on to learn things about and/or have the character make observations regarding’; I have not yet learned how to make a door open with a special key, how to make a skill increase if you drink a potion, etc.

This was just pure narrative goodness. Playground-enabling. 

Walking around and clicking on things to learn more about the world is one of my favorite parts of video games, and I wanted to make sure that players could do it in mine. 

I love seeing worlds blossom through all of the details that you are invited to interact with, but aren’t required to. If I play a game that has a lot of object interaction, I get EXCITED, I get GIDDY when I enter a new map, because I know there are so many goodies waiting for me to find and read about.

It was so confusing, navigating through the software. Sometimes the object vanished from the table; other times it refused to trigger the interaction; my personal favorite was when the player somehow couldn’t reach the table the object sat on at all. But, I eventually figured it out! 

Here is a character successfully interacting with an object!

Don’t pay attention to the NPCs, the design environment, or even the text. They’re all notes and rough drafts laying around as I learn the program. 

The point is: THE OBJECT IS INTERACTIVE! 

The choices worked and successfully triggered the correct interactions! Different portraits came up to imply different speakers! The mugs showed up as images, and didn’t vanish as soon as I hit “play”! Hitting the space bar activated the interaction! And to top it all off: all of the text fits inside of the boxes!

Moving In-Between Maps

I also learned how to let the player move in-between maps (i.e. if you walk through a doorway, you can go inside). 

(Again, there is no sense or reason to the setting; it’s all notes while I learn the mapping system.)

This looks simple, but it was so exciting to learn! I felt like I was unlocking the gateway to Platform 9 3/4; we now have magical travel from one area to the next! 

Conclusion

I have so much more to learn (especially character creation), but I feel good about how much I’ve accomplished so far! 

My goals for Week 2 are:

--Write a full plot outline for the entire quest

--Finalize the design for my potato church, and make every single object within the church interactive

--Learn how to create characters and NPCs

--Learn how to use “self-switches”

(Spoiler!) I wound up doing all of these, and a little more! 

Click here to read all about it, and to access the first playable portion of the game!