RPG Maker is a cheap, cheerful series of game development engines that give you everything
you need to make your very own RPG right out of the box with minimal experience.
Each engine comes with its own graphics, music and sound effects which you can use to make
your own game.
If you have an idea for a game that you really want to make but this is your first time using
the engine, I would highly recommend temporarily shelving it, and making a smaller, more basic
game in the engine first.
The time you spend making a smaller game will help you get to grips with the engine much
faster, and it’ll be a much smoother process when you start making your original idea into
a game.
The best place to start is by preparing your story, characters, scripts and dialogue.
It’s also important to work out what features your game is going to have, how to implement
them using RPG Maker, as well as some kind of gameplay loop.
You can prepare your story and characters in any format that works best for you.
Some developers do this with physical pen and paper, or use a computer for spreadsheets
and word documents.
There are also several pieces of software available that can help you create a visual
database to keep track of your ideas, such as Articy.
While the player might never explicitly learn about a character’s full profile including
details of age, birthdate, family members, history, etc., it might still be worthwhile
to make a note of this information to yourself in case you find yourself referencing it later.
Once you have planned all of your story and its characters, it’s time to think about
gameplay.
A gameplay loop is essentially a cycle of actions and rewards that the player will repeat
throughout the game.
For example, in a typical RPG, the player must participate in battles to increase their
stats and get better equipment.
They fight against smaller encounters to gain experience, level up, and earn money which
can be used to buy better equipment.
Then, they are able to progress to a new area, which is generally guarded by a very strong
enemy or boss battle.
Once they beat this enemy, they will unlock a new area with new enemy encounters and repeat
this process.
This loop compels the player to keep playing and unlocking new challenges.
It’s important to create a loop like this for your game and keep it in mind from the
beginning, as it can help your game stay on a consistent path and it can be a good way
to avoid giving in to scope creep.
The next step of the game development process is to start putting together the assets you
will need such as graphics, music and sound effects.
You could use the assets that come with the engine, including the Character Generator
that comes with many of the later engines in the series.
However, if you are looking to create something more original, there are a few ways you can
do this: creating them all yourself, buying premade assets, or recruiting team members.
Creating them by yourself will take the longest amount of time, but will be the cheapest option.
If you are not comfortable with creating certain assets, you may also not achieve the desired
results that you were looking for.
There are plenty of premade assets available on the internet through websites such as itch.io,
or even RPG Maker’s official website.
These are often reasonably priced and high quality, although you run the risk of other
games using similar assets to yours.
If that’s not something that bothers you about your game, or if you’re looking to
use something for placeholders until you can find something better, this is probably the
best choice for a hobbyist developer.
There are also several places where you can recruit team members, such as the official
RPG Maker forums or Discord servers.
This is the most expensive option, unless you can find someone who is willing to work
without payment upfront, but it’s most likely to match up to the vision you have for your
project.
The next stage is to start putting everything together in RPG Maker.
This will involve drawing all of your maps and events, including transfer events to take
the player between each location.
You will also need to add any gameplay that is not built into RPG Maker by default, such
as evented puzzles.
You will also need to populate the database with actors and stats, items, enemies, etc.
Finally, you should playtest your game from start to finish.
Ideally, you should playtest it multiple times to check for errors and bugs.
You can also recruit other people to test the game for you, either for free or for payment
depending on how much work you are expecting from them.
The best way to develop your game is to do each of these steps in small chunks, and then
play test each section regularly as you go along.
This is a good way to ensure the game is consistent throughout, and it makes it easier to focus
on squashing bugs.
And that’s how to put together a basic game.
You can look into ways to have your game released by a publisher, or even self-publish on platforms
like Steam and itch.io.
Thank you for watching, and good luck with your projects.