Maze of the Lost

The game is titled Maze of the Lost, its basically a Dungeon Crawler/JRPG hybrid. This is my first official project so I'm not going to make it all that complicated and will keep it rather simple as far as story and plot. I will probably use default RTP with a few additions, I'll be using a lot of VG Music from dungeon crawler games as well as some from other NES and SNES RPG's. I'm not very good at mapping so it'll more than likely be auto-maps with a few altercations. The game will feature 12 Maze-like floors that will be about 100x100 tiles. The floors will be pretty lengthy and will have several things to do on each floor not to mention alot of treasures, traps, secrets, and interesting NPC's to meet. There will be puzzles and riddles also but not to an extravagant degree.

STORY
A mysterious cavern was discovered by travelers one day in a forest near the castle of Farberg. Many seem to be allured into this cavern upon passing and are never seen again. It almost seems to have appeared out of nowhere as many have passed that area before and it was never noticed. The king sent many scholars to study the cavern but many were drawn in as well. After sending several groups of scholars, doctors, soldiers, mercenaries, merchants, soldiers of fortune, heroes, farmers, criminals, and common peasants alike and having none return the king started to grow desperate. People seem mysteriously alured to enter The Maze resulting in almost one-third of the loss of the kingdom. He is now offering his kingdom to any person or persons who can discover the origin of this mysterious cavern and come back out to tell about it. You get to create that group and venture in. What is this Maze? Where did it come from? Find these out and more.

GAME WORLD
The game will take place in The Maze where people are desperate, monsters are abound, and there's seemingly no way out. Life is hard but people have banded together in colonies and collectively help one another to survive the harsh and dark desolation. There are all sorts of different groups of people caught in The Maze as stated above and you get to interact with each. Food and water are scarce but available and its the collective rationing of goods and materials between the members of these colonies that allow them to exist. Some will try to get greedy and horde everything however. Merchants have set up shops in The Maze also using the same gold currency as the world above. There's profit to be made even in The Maze.

CHARACTER CREATION
You will get to pick your 4 characters out of a pool of 15, this will just be cosmetic, there will be 8 skill pools that each character can learn from. Anyone can learn any skill so in a sense there will be "open" classes. Equipment will also be open and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. So you can make a character that uses healing abilities and battle skills that uses an axe and wears robes if you want. So in a sense YOU get to create the classes. Here are the 8 skill pools and a few skills in each:

Combat skills - Power Strike, Double Slash, Cover
Rage skills - War Cry, Frenzy, Wrath
Thieving skills - Steal Gold, Steal Item, Assassinate
Exploration skills - Disarm Trap, Pick Lock, Detect Secrets
Healing skills - Mend, Regenerate, Cure Poison
Support skills - Strength, Protect, Empower
Elemental skills - Fireball, Earthquake, Nexus
Affliction skills - Shatter, Poison, Disease

I've always been a huge sucker for creating characters and choosing classes and abilities for them. A big part of the fun is creating a team. I hope to bring that to this game.

GAMEPLAY
-Dungeon crawling action! I want the game to be somewhat difficult to have that dungeon crawling feel so it won't be a hand hold fest but won't be frustratingly difficult either. But be careful even random encounters can prove fatal if you don't think about what you're doing.
-It'll be a modified front-view battle. Numbers will be somewhat low so don't expect to get 9999 HP by the end of the game. The levels will also cap out about 50 but that's with heavy grinding, I want to make the game beatable between level 30-40 depending on player skill, equipment, etc.
-There is a JP type system to acquire your skills. It will be a style between Etrian Odyssey and Final Fantasy Tactics. But learn wisely because there will only be so many points to spend. You will gain 3 points to spend at each level up and you'll get bonus points for defeating bosses and finding rare items also.
-There are accessories for a slot type system to add some customization to element/state attack/defense among other traits.
-There are quests you can get from NPC's and such. The characters you make won't have a set personality but what you give them. There will be a few smaller stories in play also that will all tie together in some way towards the end of the game.
-There are 3 different "towns" in the game called colonies (at the beginning, after Level 4 and after Level 8) where you can talk to inhabitants and get quests, do some shopping, heal up and save, among other things. There will be hidden teleports and such to make dungeon navigation quicker and easier.
-The overall game should play between 30 and 40 hours. The version I premade on VX had 3 floors and the gameplay was about 8 hours, multiply that by 4 and you've got 32 hours, so if you're good at mazes and blaze through you can probably finish it in 30 or so or if you like to grind and/or get everything look at about 40.