This is my first solo game project that I've started seriously working on for over a year now. It's a 2D pure stealth RPG made using RPG Maker MZ (yeah I know what that sounds like but just bear with me). The project is still ongoing but I'm hoping to release a free demo of it some time in the near future. Until then, the game is not available to play.
(Insert cover image here when it's done)
The heroes of this world are long gone, evil has triumphed. What happens in a world where everyone has forgotten traditional virtues of kindness, selflessness, and courage? That's what I wish to explore in this dystopian science fantasy game. Virtue and vice have been inverted by the forces of evil. They've established a totalitarian grip over the once free peoples of the galaxy, drilling their propaganda into their minds to keep them confused and subdued. Their subversive meddling has resulted in the rotting of society, creating several failed states. The task of recovering from a great generational amnesia falls to a handful of deeply flawed individuals. What will they do?
Sneak and scavenge your way through a dark new world. Make choices that determine the outcome of the story. Survive the death of civilisation.
Originally, the game started out as a turn based combat JRPG-esque game that I was making for fun since that is the type of game that the RPG Maker engine series is tailored towards. After a while however, I realised that I wanted to seriously develop this game into my first true solo project as a game designer. In order to do that however, I had to change the genre. I have barely any experience whatsoever in turn based RPGs and it's not a type of gameplay that I personally enjoy, know how to replicate or build upon effectively at all. Due to my limited experience and inability to program anything, instead of going down the messy path of installing a plugin that adds real time combat, I decided to convert the game into a pure stealth game and design levels around the core mechanic of avoiding enemies instead of fighting them. Additionally, I feel this alteration will allow for my game to stand out among others.
Stealth Gameplay
Stealth is supposed to form the core of the challenge of this game. I faced a great deal of restrictions from working in RPG Maker MZ, but there was still a great deal of potential for implementing varied and challenging stealth encounters. The first most basic obstacle I thought to implement was patrolling guards. The idea is simple, the player avoids the gaze of roaming NPCs, slowly charting a path through them to reach the end. Unfortunately, this was not simple to implement. I needed a way for guard events to detect the player and run a script when they do as well as visually communicate their detection radius to the player.
With help from an AI, I managed to program a view cone system for enemy guards that follows them and projects forwards from them in whichever direction they're looking. Using a plugin called Psychronic Rave Lighting, view cones are represented and visually communicated to the player with red flashlights projecting from guards. This flashlight also follows guards wherever they go.
Due to technical and skill limitations, getting caught in a guard's flashlight is a hard game over. You don't enter combat and you don't get chased. This presented a unique design challenge for me to overcome because I had to find a way to make the core gameplay of avoiding guards at all costs a fun challenge for the player. Instead of attempting to improve the core mechanic, I opted for complimenting it with level design that focuses on player choice. This felt like the right direction considering my specialty in level design and experience modding Half-Life.
The "pub scene" is perhaps the earliest example of a functional quest and cutscene I've implemented in the project thus far.
Although I consider myself to be fair at pixel art, I couldn't draw the character sprites which were critical to the story of the game, nor their portraits that appear in their dialogue boxes. Thankfully, an artist called TikkiBlossom graciously helped me with this. She drew me a great collection of sprites and portraits for free which I highly appreciate. I guess that technically makes her a dev too and this an indie game as opposed to a solo game.
Different character sprites in the game represent different factions in the world, so they needed to be visually distinct from each other. The outcasts are ragged and dirty, scavengers, survivalists and other chaotic factions wear muted colours, state law enforcement wear pink or red accent colouring and loyalists wear clean uniforms with different coloured armbands denoting their status. Additionally, any NPCs associated with hostile factions typically have their faces obscured in some way. This is a deliberate visual choice by me to disassociate the player and their friends from the people they're supposed to avoid.