This series will follow my development of Rapunzel’s Flower, a Dungeon Crawler RPG I started a few weeks ago. The idea was to write as I go, updating my log document as I worked on the game.
THE START OF A GAME IDEA
It is 10:45pm. Aekashics released a new character pack for their KemonoSD series earlier today, and now there is enough characters for me to justify buying these cute furry animal people and making a game with them.
BUT WHAT ABOUT REEL DREAM?!
Oh, that’s still being worked on. Don’ worry.
Here I just want to see what sort of game I can come up with when the characters are already chosen for me. It’s almost like what I did with Well, Yu; I had a limited tileset, and created a story using those limitations.
I want to do that with KemonoSD characters. And write about it.
We’ll see how far I get. I’m not promising I’ll even complete the game, I just want to write about my thought process as I make a game.
PART ONE: Basic Scope
Before we even think of a story, before we even look at the characters, we’re going to think about the type of game we want, and how long/big it will be.
First, it will be a short game 1-2 hours of playtime. It will be an RPG with a turn based battle system (RPG Maker MV of course). We don’t want too many crazy features, but let’s say we want a kind of dungeon crawler that will have some replay value after the initial storyline. Also, I just bought this cool ingredient based crafting system (to use with Reel Dream) so lets make this a crafting game too! We find pieces and loot in the dungeons to make our weapons/potions/etc. Floor bosses drop special items to make the more powerful weapons. Our crafting level will determine our success rate of items. The higher the level the higher the success rate.
That crafting system could get out of hand and put us out of scope for a small game, so we’ll put other limits on ourself to make sure things stay in scope. Remembering that Well Yu lasted roughly 1 hour with 3 small dungeons (1-3 small maps each), 3 towns and 3 (I think) mini-quest areas, we will limit ourselves to 3 dungeons:
- Beginner dungeon with 4 levels (3 levels and 1 boss level)
- Mid-Game dungeon with 7 levels (6 levels and 1 boss level)
- End-Game Dungeon with 11 levels (10 levels and 1 boss level)
Two towns:
- Capital City w/ Castle and Mid-Game dungeon
- Hometown
Two wooded areas (with monsters):
- Between Hometown and Capital City with entrance to Beginner Dungeon
- Between Capital City and End-Game Dungeon
This honestly sounds like we’ll go over the 1-2 hour scope, however, I think these dungeons do not have to end at the boss level, the boss level could be mid-dungeon and the deeper levels left for post-game.
I’m also thinking that this game would benefit from on-map encounters instead of random encounters, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the map sprites to do so that match the KemonoSD packs. I plan to use Aekashic’s free battlers as well, so I’ll have to dig through those to see what we have.
As I am a pixel artist I’m not opposed to making some map walking sprites, but this will also affect our scope.
I’m also thinking the amount of floors may be lessened as we go through, but we’ll see where we go.
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