Progress has been continuing on the RPG Maker game I’m working on (which is called One Year Later if you missed the slightly spoilerish post a while back). I’m very pleased with how things are going, because I’ve pretty much figured out How It All Works and am picking up speed with actually making things happen.

Here’s the gist of things. All of this will be common knowledge to the player before they start playing if they read the accompanying “manual” or help file or website or whatever I put out alongside it, so these aren’t really spoilers. I will keep specific plot details that aren’t immediately apparent under wraps for now, however — I’d like people to explore this game’s story with “beginner’s mind”, after all!

The game is set one year after the conclusion of a typical JRPG, when our plucky band of heroes drawn together by fate successfully defeated the demonic overlord T’Bon and restored peace to the land. At the end of their adventure, they had one last meal together in a pub they’d grown fond of, and agreed to meet back up again exactly one year later. The game begins on that day.

There are six main characters in the story.

Amarysse “Ami” Jerhynsson is the game’s main character. She’s a 30-year old woman from the farming village of Wishford, the destruction of which set her on her path to adventure when she was rescued from the wreckage by a wandering mercenary. She became the de facto leader of the group thanks to her level-headedness and rationality, despite the fact she never saw herself as particularly remarkable. Since her adventure, she’s spent the last year helping the citizens of Wishford rebuild their town, and has been taking after her parents by tending the farm beside her house, much to the pleasure of Wishford’s citizens.

Daren “Dax” Zael is the mercenary who rescued Ami from the wreckage of Wishford. No-one knows exactly how old he is, but he appears to be of a similar age or slightly older than Ami in appearance. As soon as he opens his mouth, however, his immature sense of humour and crudeness generally makes people think a little differently about his otherwise seemingly noble bearing. He was a strong fighter and was always the first into battle to protect his friends from harm.

Feena Denimore is a priestess of the Order, the organised religion that worships the divine entity known only as “The Goddess”. She is skilled in divine magic and is a beloved priestess, but when she lets her hair down outside of her holy duties, she’s cheeky, spunky and flirtatious, and more than capable of drinking someone like Dax under the table.

Hiro Nagase is a teenage boy who spent his formative years learning to fight with a sword under the tutelage of his father. These skills were put to the test shortly after the party came across him in his seemingly-abandoned family home — his parents had been killed by T’Bon’s forces, and Hiro decided to tag along with the party in an attempt to get revenge. He likes to make out he is braver than he is, gets easily embarrassed and frequently says stupid things without thinking them through first.

Lily Cole is a teenage girl who came from the small fishing village of Bannford. She once had the strange ability to summon “Guardians” — supernatural creatures thought to be nothing but a myth — and eventually used this skill to seal away T’Bon once and for all. Since the final battle, she lost her powers and is now nothing but a normal, rather cheerful and optimistic teenage girl — traits she somehow managed to retain even in the party’s darkest hours.

Zero is a powerful, knowledgeable mage whose real name is unknown. The party rescued him from torture at the hand of one of T’Bon’s lieutenants, and he adopted the name “Zero” as a mark of spite against those who had abused him — an attempt to reclaim the word and give it positive connotations. Zero is typically stony-faced, contemplative and quiet, but occasionally displays a dry, dark sense of humour.

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The game begins with Amarysse leaving home and heading for the capital, then meeting up with her former comrades-in-arms. Exactly where the story goes from there depends on the choices the player makes as Amarysse — which aren’t always explicit choices from a menu. Sometimes taking a particular action (or choosing not to act) has an effect on the unfolding story and its eventual conclusion. There will be multiple endings as well as a “true ending” that is only accessible once certain conditions have been met. Discovering the “true ending” will require that the player make use of the New Game+ feature to carry over certain data from one playthrough to the next when they see one of the conclusions.

Interacting with the game will largely be like a regular top-down sprite-based JRPG. Players will control Amarysse and any party members tagging along with her as they visit various locations. The emphasis is very much on the story, so what needs to be done next in order to advance the plot will always be very obvious, though charging straight for the next story trigger without completing certain side objectives may mean you miss out on certain events — or perhaps trigger new ones later. Through the New Game+ system, the game will reward the player for experimenting and trying all the possibilities in various playthroughs.

Amarysse collects “topics” as discussions unfold between her, the party members and other incidental characters. Topics have three levels — at “bronze” level, they’re something Amarysse is curious about; at “silver” level, they’re something she’s found something out about and wants to know more; at “gold” level, they’re a truth she’s discovered beyond any doubt. Advancing the plot will sometimes require Amarysse to use the topics she has collected to trigger various events or discussions between characters. At other times, she will have the opportunity to relax a little by herself and contemplate some of the things that are weighing on her mind. Sometimes, whether or not Amarysse has knowledge of a particular topic will have a significant impact on whether or not she can resolve a critical situation.

Currently, I have a plot outline in my mind. I know how the whole thing is going to end, and I know a few snippets of things that are going to happen along the way. I just have to work out the specifics, which I’ve found tend to flow quite naturally once I start actually composing scenes. I’m very much looking forward to exploring these characters through writing, and I hope some of you will take the opportunity to explore them through playing the game when it’s finished. At present, I have no idea when that will be, but I will, of course, keep you posted!

I’ve been working a bit on my game over the weekend. And just to prove I’m not just all talk, I present to you two world exclusive screenshots.

“Boy,” you’re probably thinking. “That sure looks like an RPG Maker game.” And, of course, you’d be absolutely right. The relatively generic appearance and use of stock assets is deliberate for several reasons, though: firstly, it allows me to concentrate on what I feel is the important part of the game, which is the writing and overall structure, and secondly, if you read my vaguely spoilerish post from a few days ago you’ll doubtless be familiar with why I’ve chosen to stick with the “default” aesthetic for the moment.

What these screenshots perhaps don’t clearly show is that I’ve built a little on the stock assets with some additional material from the RPG Maker community and beyond. The portraits you see in the second image, for example, were created by RPG Maker community members Archeia and Scinaya, who took the time to make some “emote” variations on the stock characters’ portraits. This means that I no longer have to have characters smiling even while they were being angry or upset, which was a little disconcerting.

What you really can’t tell from the screenshots is the fact that I’ve found some great royalty-free music to use for the game’s soundtrack. While I would absolutely love to compose the entire score to the whole game, again that’s something that would distract from the important part of things, which is actually writing and implementing the game’s story and structure. I’m not ruling out the possibility of composing a custom soundtrack in the near future, but for now I’m very happy with the high-quality stuff I’m presently using, as it suits the atmosphere I’m going for quite nicely.

Insofar as the story and scripting is going, it’s going slowly but well. I’m almost finished with the interactive introductory sequence, which is probably one of the more complicated parts of the game, as it will branch off into more linear “paths” shortly after all that concludes. I’ve been taking care to incorporate hooks for my intended game structure, which will help encourage people to replay with variations on scenes and alternative ways for events to unfold according to the player’s past actions and decisions. I’ve implemented these in such a way as to make them hopefully seem pretty “seamless” when playing the game for the first time, but those with a keen eye playing through again will notice the places where it diverges slightly. I believe doing this sort of thing is quite important, as no-one really wants to read through the exact same material several times just to see the whole game. Plus there are other rewards and incentives in place to explore all your available options, too, but I’ll refrain from discussing that side of things too much for now.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve figured out my ending, or more accurately, my “true ending”. Again, no spoilers for now, but the structure of the game will be such that you’ll need to play through all the “normal” paths and meet a couple of other conditions (which I’m debating whether or not I should make explicit) in order to see the definitive conclusion to the game’s narrative. I can see how the ending will unfold in my mind’s eye, and it’s a good ‘un — in my humble opinion, anyway. I actively want to get the story to that point, to bring the characters to that finale. I’m half-tempted to make the finale events now while they’re fresh in my mind then go back and fill in the middle part of the game, in fact. But we’ll see.

So far as writing the rest of it goes, I have a vague idea of how each path is going to go, but not the specifics as yet. I have a firm idea of who all these characters “are” in my mind, though, which will make it easier to write scenes with them as I progress onwards. I like the characters, too, which is important, and the introductory scenes I’ve created so far hopefully help to establish their personalities and other character traits. The challenge from here is, of course, ensuring they remain believable and consistent as the rest of the story progresses, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Anyway. In summary, things are going slowly but well. I’m enjoying myself. And hopefully at some point in the next fifteen years I’ll have something more to show those of you who are interested.