RPG Maker 2025 Game Jam (and some other things)
Date: 2025-04-21
So a new uh... month, a new entry. What? That I skipped like two months already? Well... I didn't say a new month every month I just mean it's new month, perchance I can.
Anyway, hello it's me, your captain Orochii Zouveleki, again posting a thing. I'm honestly taking a minute from what will be productive day at work, and well.. might be more than a minute, like two. Anyway, I've been very stressed for the last month or so, and uh it's all related to the title of this blog post. Yeah, this thing took away all my peace of mind. Thank you, but also god fucking dammit I did it.
Yes, I did a thing! It's called Metal Girl. I will now proceed to not talk :). Ok no. This post is basically for that alone. Oh I must also quickly mention, I'm working on Drekirökr, if anyone was wondering, I'm currently finishing another feature nobody but me asked for: widescreen support. Yay, ok got all that? Now let's go back to Metal Girl.
So the idea for the game came "organically" from me watching Saber Marionette, this time I finally watched all the series, from J to J-to-X, to the original R (btw god damn gratuituous sex and violence, I kinda love it but not the awkward... oh god I am thankful the J and X are so clean the seggsy stuff was so uncomfortable). Anyway, uh, I was kind of watching stuff looking for inspiration, and I like androids and so on. I had also kind of just watched both Bladerunners (still need to watch the rest of stuff), and uh I think Bladerunner first one especially started my search for more android stuffs. Yeah ok, Bladerunner isn't exactly about androids explicitly but uh it's complicated ok? and my brain is simple. I don't understand I never said I am inteligente capischi? Hehehehe anyway.
The rain for example, it's totally a Bladerunner thing. I hope it came through. There's infinite rain because I wanted the mood. Even elements from the rooftop I was really thinking about the final scene with Batty. You know what scene everyone knows the scene.
Some other stuff I watched was uh first episode of Mahoromatic. I uh... didn't continue. I remember this series being sweeter or something? It kinda is-- actually I stole a bit from it too, even considered naming the "android" things in mine after the stuff there for half a second, but ended up going for generic android. Despite main girl being woman and thus should be I guess... uh... ginoroid? Dunno I kinda like my robutts to be genderless, fuck gender. Anyway.
So yeah that's where inspirations came. Now uh... I honestly don't remember which came first, if I knew first of the damn jam's theme or not. Because oh god I had no idea how to adapt Beyond Expectations. I kinda settled on some random interpretation, and I think it's fine, but my problem is... sure it's in multiple parts of the game in some way, but it's also kinda just plot or flavor. I guess I should go piece by piece.
Ok now let's talk about development. If you know me you'll not be surprised, I mean, it's part of why I also use Godot. I like to do things from scratch. Which is good but also terrible, because these jams are definitely designed around "hey buy our DLC", or "hey, assets from community", or just "hey just install Llanflae you got a game done". I don't like using-- ok I lie. I like using mkxp-z which is from someone else. But besides that, I don't like-- ok I lie again, I can't compose a single thing, and I also make use of as many sources for audio as possible. And also, I readapted an old script from some guy that I had already adapted for Drekirokr. There's frankenstein everywhere. I could rip that off tho no problem, should have done it. But uh anyway.
Point is, it took a good time of me fiddling with systems to even start, and for the most of the month my time was VERY limited, because I have a job. I wouldn't have done something playable if my country didn't have like half the holidays this month! Bless you mycountry sometimes you're cool.
First off, battles. I started sketching a bit, I wanted battlers visible. But also I wanted to try a 3/4 view like Breath of Fire / Suikoden and so on. Doodled the first and only visible with animation, boom done. Coded stuff for animating battler, basically same code as Dreki just cutting corners to simplify a bit. It's not a copy-paste it's an actual rewrite. Even from Dreki, there's little straight up copy and paste because I'm like that.
This is what I came up with. There's stuff I'm not going into detail but tl;dr there's CTB, cooldowns and max uses (coded from scratch, just assume, there's a reason why 2 weeks in I had zero gameplay). Many features go unused in the demo, yay me! But I don't care I had fun.
Then uh... this I wish I started dabbling with sooner, but making maps and making the intro kinda got in my way. Yes, I was doing intro because I had a hard time coming up with how I wanted to introduce the story, and I honestly didn't want to do anything else without that solved. It's my problem. I can't work on two things at the time, ok? I had to go from game designer to scenario writer, it takes me time to change hats.
Sorry I derailed myself. Thing I wish I started sooner was the stealth mechanics. I wanted you to avoid fights, despite how much time I threw into making battles cool and fun! The reason is, beyond expectations. I need to lower the expectations you have over your main protagonist, she's meant to be a complete useless service droid, not meant for battle, and thus you *can* battle but you should be demolished even by trashed droids. Yeah that's the concept behind the skeldroids if you hadn't noticed. They're trash. You get beaten to a pulp by literal trash, because your droid is not meant for combat, is a maid, and no, Mahoro second classed into meido you're not coming to me with that bulls-- anyway.
The thing is, again... goddammit I keep derailing but I write like this. I think the mechanics are there, I just think my level design sucks, and it's because I didn't have time to polish it up. There's too much dead space, which I did leave knowingly because I was struggling to get to the minimum of 15 minutes. Again, RPG Maker jams expect you to make RPGs the old RPG Maker way. Make a story, you got everything else covered. When it is not like this, it's because you got a dedicated artist and a coder besides you, story writer. I am all three of those so hey more fun for me! (kill me... ok no don't do it, gimme money 😳).
I know I always shoot myself in the foot but hear me out, I can't not do things this way. I'm way too egocentric to now have it all my way. After all, what are arts but a reflection of the self? And whatnot.
I think this kinda covers my current gripes and oh god it's been like an hour of writing already, need to go back to work and thing finished doing the thing so uh thanks for reading.
See you later aligator,
Orochii Zouveleki
