Why RPG Maker MZ?

I started using RPG Maker MZ in 2021 and finished my first project in 2022 and I started on a second project soon after, so I don't know weather to call this my second or third shot at RPG Maker MZ, but it's not my first rodeo, that's for sure.

I decided to use RPG Maker MZ purely in response to the Unity engine debacle. I originally planned for this game to be a 1 room collectathon in Unity, but with the terrible business decisions and backtracking that felt more like the whole ordeal was a 'foot in the door' method of increasing how much money they get from developers, I decided to make this game in RPG Maker MZ instead.

It seemed like the perfect chance to demonstrate my experience in the engine without doing the equivalent of showing someone a beloved plush toy; I get to share a project developed in RPG Maker with a more professional mindset instead of having to share my hyper-personal projects to anyone who asks about my skills in this engine!

The original plan for this game had three random ingredients selected and was planned to be more of a speed game, but after the engine change, it changed from a speed game to a mini RPG and increased the minimum number of ingredients needed each run to be nearly all of them, but kept the slight random nature of what ingredients you do need.

The benefits of RPG maker was that I didn't have to code any menus or the movement. Settings, the battle mechanics, saving, loading, item management, and more is all baked into the base engine, so I could focus on the specific gameplay mechanics. Namely, the objectives and making the game randomly pick at least three of the four random ingredients that the potion requires on top of the rabbits foot, attempting to make sure that the items locations are logical and that the player can find them without too much random clicking, balancing the encounters to be more puzzle-like, adding some secrets here and there, and trying to get the garden wolf and the second delivery path wolf to be linked so they seem like the same wolf.

Using RPG maker let me experiment with mechanics in this GameJam, where in other engines, I'd have spent more of my time on art assets, menus, and the core functionality instead of on the parts the players would find fun.

On the topic of art assets, I used a lot of default RPG Maker MZ assets that come with the engine. I stated this in the description, but the cat, enemy soldiers, battle images for the wolf and soldier, and 99% of the scenery comes with the engine. I sometimes edited sprites if I needed to, namely the summoning circle so that I could have it centred on the cauldron.

Knowing I had a fall-back if time ran out, I was able to make all the overworld sprites for the player (potion witch), Gia, and the wolf without needing to worry about the deadline. The wolves have two different defeated sprites that are picked at random. As the player character needed portraits for menus and battles, I also made the portrait for Snow Witch, starting out by drawing the linework for it on paper before taking a photo of the drawing, shrinking it to size and turning it into a portrait of suitable size. When developing the game, I needed a cauldron, but couldn't find a cauldron, so wound up making my own in order to have the game have a cauldron for the potion witch to actually make her potions in. I also found myself in need of a doormat so that I could telegraph where the door is when inside the house, so I made the doormat as well.

Here's a compilation of the assets I made:

But despite my experience in the engine, bugs were bound to happen.

You can move during some cutscenes. For some beyond bizarre reason, you can move during cutscenes. I don't know how or why and didn't know what would fix it, so as it didn't break the game, just made it a bit goofy if you rapidly clicked the screen during a cutscene and caught the game at a time where a text box wasn't up or some other thing that doesn't lock the player was going on, I let the bug slip.

Regardless, I managed to figure out a lot of new things about the engine, and by using common events as functions, I feel that I've took a dive into the shallow end of what this engine is truly capable of now, and I can only go deeper! I might look to make more games for here using RPG maker in the future, or I might just make stuff for fun* and pour too much of my heart into it to put it anywhere but GameJolt. Who knows, maybe I'll take my internal cringe barriers down some day and share that with you all.

*fun: I did have fun making this, and do have fun making games. I just have two types of personal project; portfolio worthy personal, which is what you get on my itch.io page here, and fun personal, which is fun, but embarrassing to share solely because it's too close to my heart.