Welcome to Week Four 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 created my video game’s intro! (Did anyone order a boatload of exposition?) 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.
--If you reach the “naming your character” screen without seeing any text appear, you need to restart the game in fullscreen mode.
Let’s Dive In.
This week was a hodgepodge of creation.
A flurry of activity.
A hotbed of ideas.
...We’re talking theme, we’re talking sex dormitories, we’re talking sympathetic villains. It was a little bit of everything, all rolled into one (cue Alanis Morisette voiceover).
Soft Skills Gained
Character Design: making interesting, complex, 3-dimensional villains
Theme: knowing your game’s overarching theme and figuring out what kind of lasting impression and impact you want to have on the player once they finish playing (the “echo effect”)
Tone Balance: fitting humor, tragedy, sorrow, and curiosity all into the same space, without it being distracting or off-putting
Hard Skills Gained
Health Points: having a character gain or lose health points (HP) as a game mechanic
Event Animations: making a fire look like it’s burning, or making a character look like they are hopping in place, etc.
Map Design: shadow work, having the map design be both shaped by narrative demand and informing it
I’m not sure how spoiler-laden I want to get with the soft skills, so let’s focus on the hard skills.
When Narrative Informs Map Design: The Dormitories
This is the second floor of the Messiah’s Manor (name pending).
It was born out of the question: what would it look like if a narcissistic, egomaniac cult leader slept in a room with 14 women that he was allowed to do anything he wanted to and with?
My answer was: luxurious for him, and functional for them. I wanted the room to serve both as a testament to his “importance” (his ego) and as a display of the stark, utilitarian nature of the women’s existence (from the Messiah’s perspective, at least).
The women were there to ‘fulfill roles,’ and in turn, the room fulfills a role for them: it offers a place to sleep, and a place to wash. That’s it. There’s no warmth or personalization for them, because from the Messiah’s perspective, that would be unimportant. Unnecessary. Even silly.
I want the room to look beautiful, but awful; like a sanctuary on one side, and a punishment on the other. I want the player to enter the room and immediately feel like some aspect of it is off, somehow. Or wrong.
I want warning bells to go off, in the player’s mind, where they become curious enough about the room to start exploring it.
I want to encourage object interaction within the room, so I can deepen the story and enrich the player experience..
I want this room to tell a story to players who won’t go searching for it, and I want it to hint at and encourage object exploration to players who are willing to go searching for Story on their own.
When Map Design Informs Narrative: The Fireplace
Sometimes RPG Maker MZ elements inspire story creation. In the case of the fireplace, the creative process went like this:
“I remember seeing a tutorial on how to make a fire animation within the hearth.”
”Now that the animation is on, what kind of interaction would the player have with the fire?”
“The fire is warm.”
“There is something inside of the fireplace, underneath the ashes.”
“What if you could grab this item, and look at it?”
“...You would hurt yourself.” (Thus introducing the necessity of learning how to change a character’s HP.)
“Now that you have the object, and are hurt, what have you gained?”
“What if the object were a locket from a proud parent, wishing their daughter a Happy Tribute Day?”
“Why would this locket be in the fireplace?”
“What if each woman who arrives was required to burn all reminders of their previous life, in order to ‘better focus’ on being a good tribute?”
“This would open up new dialogue options with the women, and get them to share some personal details, and expand them as characters.”
“If we know more about each character, then their fates--whatever they may be--will hit harder, because we will care about them and what happens to them.”
“The emotional impact of the questline will be deepened.”
“Hell, yeah.”
All put together, it looks like this:
Or, if you want to see a slice of it in action:
As for soft skills...
Character Design
I am currently going through a redesign of the Messiah’s character.
I recently had a meeting with Praxis’ Module One advisor, Avery Moodie, and he reminded me that the most interesting villains are not the paint-by-numbers paradigm-fillers, but ones that are as complex as you or I.
The most interesting villains are the ones whose motivations we can empathize with, even if we can’t sympathize with them.
Villains that are in a tight spot, villains that are vulnerable, villains that see themselves as the protagonists in their own story, villains whose actions make sense and cause the player to wonder whether or not they would have done the same thing in the villain’s situation--those are interesting characters.
I’m currently trying to figure out how to make the Messiah a more complex figure by increasing his vulnerability, and adding emotional context to his decisions.
Most of my ideas for the Messiah’s character are coming up against the very real roadblock of him accepting women as tributes, while other ideas are making the choice between “maintain the lie of the Potato Moon” or “expose the lie of the Potato Moon” too easy to make.
I want conflict.
I want indecisiveness.
I want replayability.
Hopefully I come up with a solution that fulfills all of these things.
Theme
In the same conversation with Avery Moodie, he asked me what I wanted the theme of my game to be: what I wanted the player to come away from the experience thinking about and pondering. What do I want to linger around in their brain, like a sticky sap? I had two answers.
I want the overarching theme of the game to be: self-sacrifice versus self-preservation.
I want the theme of the “The Man Who Promised the Moon” quest (or Chapter One; should we call it Chapter One at this point?) to be: unintended consequences.
From there, he directed me to look at how I am designing dialogue, and how to best get these themes across. He even suggested what I call ‘the SEO of dialogue,” where you sprinkle in key words related to your theme throughout conversations between characters, in order to get them percolating in the back of the player’s mind.
I won’t have the opportunity to establish the overarching theme of self-sacrifice versus self-preservation within this small, self-contained quest, but I definitely have the opportunity to make sure that the quest theme of unintended consequences lands home.
Tone Balance
It’s important to establish the varying tones within my game as quickly as possible to prevent the player from experiencing confusion or tonal whiplash.
Like the complexities and paradoxes of life, the tones should be able to coexist within each space, simultaneously.
I’m currently working on achieving this in the first map of the game: the main character’s house.
When we meet the main character, we receive a lot of information at once:
His mother is dead
His brother is missing
He has been summoned to visit G.R.A.N.D.M.A.
I need the room to match this tone, while also introducing the humorous and playful elements of the game.
As it stands, most of the sad object interactions have a hint of humor in them, while the humorous object interactions have an element of sadness in them.
Sad with a hint of humor:
Humorous, with an element of sadness:
I hope that I’ve struck the balance I’m searching for. At the very least, I’ve created a room that I enjoy exploring, so I already have something to be proud of.
Conclusion
This week was a heavy concentration of learning the soft skills of game creation--narrative design, theme, and how to create complex, interesting villains--while implementing the hard skills that I have gained over the past few weeks.
Overall, I’m thrilled with the week’s progress, and have a lot of tough narrative decisions ahead of me! I’m already buzzing with the plethora of options available. It feels like I’m at some kind of overwhelming, exciting story buffet, and I’m ready to EAT.
My goals for Week Five are to:
Finish making every single space in the bedroom map interactive
Design the town map
Redesign the Messiah character to make him a more interesting villain
Figure out how to craft the necessary expository cutscenes and/or exposition-filled dialogue needed to give the player information they have to have.
Click here to read all about it!