A COLLECTION OF FIRSTS

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Pages: 1
First games - the bane of all developers who seek to make something from nothing. They're rarely any good and tend to be quite embarrassing to look back on, but sometimes they're worth sharing with the world.

Let's celebrate our shitty first games by sharing them in a thread (because let's face it, most of them won't get past site standards). Use either your locker or an off-site host for linkage.

Use this handy form:

[b]NAME:[/b]
[b]ENGINE:[/b]
[b]DOWNLOAD:[/b]
[b]DESCRIPTION/PLOT:[/b]
[b]FEATURES:[/b]
[list][/list]

[b]SCREENSHOTS[/b]
[hide][/hide]
NAME: Mimi's Mountain

ENGINE:
RPG Maker 2003 (tsuk3 but later converted to legal version)

DOWNLOAD:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwkbZtSsRhuiUVhDVW9BUnlvNFk
(note: there might be some errors from the conversion. playing it via easyrpg will bypass those errors but will skip the movie files.)

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
Mimi So&So must climb Mt. Frozberry to rescue her best friend Amanda! Visit many places through portals to ascend higher! But watch out for Antwan!

FEATURES:
  • default battle system that you might as well just hit autopilot for (Note: you can find the beta stick at the end of the giant mole's digestive system if you skip the chest in the basement of the house next to the dojo. you'll thank me later.)
  • full-motion video cutscenes!
  • at least 10 locations!
  • a surprisingly coherent plot and worldbuilding!
  • is beatable!
  • kirby

SCREENSHOTS
I think I got like two games to share here?

NAME: Cave Adventure R

ENGINE: RPG Maker VX Ace

DOWNLOAD: Right here on RMN! Click here to check the game page for all the descriptiony stuff

DESCRIPTION: This the earliest RPG Maker game I've made that still survives to this day. The game before that (The one that this "reimagining" is based on) was uploaded to RMN before but it got bugged and rather than try to fix it I decided to just delete it because I'm a bad developer.

I actually like some aspects of it! A simple game about exploring a cave with random monsters that talk and with pieces of comedy is fun. And this was before Undertale, heh. And my mapping wasn't as awful as I remember? Though the balance is horrid, many jokes are awful, the dialogue is stiff and awkward, and stuff just happens without a reason. Still, this is one of those games that I would love to revisit some time, maybe just polish some stuff here and there (Again) to make it more playable and finally change out that Tsukuru 2k3 to switch to the modern version. Or heck, do it all over from scratch and amp up everything. More personality, more places to explore, more everything.

As mentioned before, I had many games before this one, but most of them never a playable state or even saw the light of the internet. So many games deleted over the years: from random games where I just threw shit at it without rhyme or reason, to Castlevania fan games, to awkward non-games made in RM XP, and even some badly put horror games and zombie games with questionable difficulty? I wish I could say that I got a lot of experience from them and now my games are amazing, but it almost feels like only really started to learn the ins and outs of RM this past year. And there's still a lot to learn!

SCREENSHOTS:


---

NAME: Doodles

ENGINE: Stencyl

DOWNLOAD: Kongregate

DESCRIPTION: Here's the other side of the coin! After getting frustrated with how poorly received rpg maker was and having to use pirated versions because I never could buy the official ones, I decided to switch to free engines. There were many options, Game Maker was a strong one but I couldn't get into the code back then so I never got far. It was then that I discovered Stencyl, which was free, easy to use and it could export to flash! Since I was a frequent user on Kongregate, a website full of flash games and small communities, it seemed like a no-brainer to switch to it! (It was before I knew that flash games were dying and that Stencyl is a steaming pile of shit).

Technically my first game on it is a Snake clone, but that doesn't really count since I just changed some graphics and added music to a copied and pasted freely available code from the Stencyl market thingy (A place where anyone could upload resources and make them available to everyone.) So the next game is the one that counts for me (even though I copied and pasted the movement code to, derp) and that is Doodles. A platforming game with a sketchbook aesthetic and cool music.

Look, the game is very barebones, the graphics repetitive and it's clearly unfinished with levels I just threw in because I thought they were cool. And you know what? I still like this one, it has that certain charm. This is another game that I wouldn't mind revisiting and making from zero, playing more with the sketchbook theme.

After that I made some more games: Raid, which I tried to get more creative by adding shooting and enemies all by myself... but the game is so damn dark and hard that it plays worse. And Pinkie Jumps, an MLP game that also sucks and that I uploaded briefly to RMN before I realized it was utter trash and then quickly deleted. Both games are also playable on Kongregate.

I'm sure I'm missing some other side projects but these are the ones that come to mind right now. I haven't touched Stencyl ever since or any other non-RM engine (Though that may change with Game Maker soon.)

SCREENSHOT:
Vaccaria
You'd think MZ would use a dictionary for switches/variables by now?
4936
NAME: Shattered Memories

ENGINE: RPG Maker VX

DOWNLOAD: https://gamejolt.com/games/shattered-memories/35827

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
There is a story about a boy who forgot his own memories. He doesn't have a single memory about his own life but he can only remember his own name. One day, he woke up in a deserted mansion. After reading the diary of the last occupant of the deserted mansion, he started to find a way out and regain his own lost memories. But,

"He doesn't know what danger lies ahead while he's finding the way out."

FEATURES:

  • Just simple horror gameplay... that's it.
  • And maybe some chases.
  • Stupid puzzles
  • STUPID WAYS TO DIE XD (i dont know what i've been smoking years ago)




SCREENSHOTS

Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I think the only game I have that survived those early years is...

NAME: Legacy

ENGINE: RPG Tsukuru 2000

DOWNLOAD: I've put a copy in my locker.

DESCRIPTION: The evil-bad supposedly died ten or so years ago, but, his death was technically faked. What ended up happening was that he ended up switching souls with the man that killed him, who has since risen to the top of the governing Order of Jade. Suffice it to say, the once-honorable Jade Order has become corrupt over the years, and it's up to you to fix things up.

FEATURES:
  • Unchecked, dyslexic, spelling!
  • Interesting characters?
  • Crowning moment of awesome: "You wanted to be defeated!?"

SCREENSHOTS: Some screenshots that are still on the gamepage of the VX remake, Legacy Reborn, are indicative of how badly it was mapped. If that doesn't quite count, I could take some screenshots later.


*Edit: I'm inclined to mention...

NAME: Summoner

ENGINE: RPG Tsukuru 2000

DESCRIPTION: A student of magic fails his third attempt at passing his Final to become a Wizard. There is some question as to whether or not his last failure was a set-up, or not. However, with no proof, he's tossed out of the school, and all he can think about is taking revenge on those that wronged him.

I think this game began while we were playing Arc the Lad - Twilight of the Spirits. More specifically in response to Darc's half of the game, and asking ourselves what kinds of evil there are in the world. We considered the "calculating evil" (the protagonist), the "insane evil" (and old man who's forgotten more than anybody has ever known), the "cute evil" (an ancient goddess who's trapped in the body of a 12-year-old), and the "torturous evil" (a demon who enjoys 'playing' with his victims).

For full disclosure, portions of this game's premise and a good number of it's character appear in this game. However, neither my brother nor I ever backed this game up, and longer exists in it's original TsuK form.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Not my first, but I don't have my first game saved anywhere and this was the first game I ever actually published on the internet.

NAME: Calm Town

ENGINE: Rpg Maker XP

DOWNLOAD: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jcyxv8gmakxipwk/calm%20town%201.4.rar?dl=0

DESCRIPTION/PLOT: As a kid I never understood that Harvest Moon is about farming, so I just went around town for hours simply talking to people. That's sorta the concept behind this, you talk to people (and lame enough, they each only have one line of dialogue to say), and try to solve the mystery of the town's stolen jewelry.

FEATURES:
  • Broken english
  • Made-up words
  • Puzzles even I don't remember how to solve
  • Almost all map concepts stolen from Harvest Moon DS, badly
  • Complete silence the entire time because I forgot to add music
  • Uhhh there's like a joke about Selena Gomez or whatever


SCREENSHOTS



ITEM LOCATIONS (Seriously, there's no way you can find all of them by yourself)

Hammer: Check the pond in the map with the merchant, cat and child until you find it.
Planks: Inside the big wooden house right under yours, in a cabinet.
Rope: Inside a barrell outside the mansion.
Teddy bear: Bedside cabinet in your house.
Bag: From shopkeeper, bought for 10G that you receive after giving Jenny her teddy bear.
Parrot: In the map the wooden house, requires bag to catch.
Love letter: In the map with a large tree with a circular opening, you can go inside the tree, and talk to the bartender for it.
Blue beads: Deliver love letter.
Red beads: Deliver parrot in bag.
Axe & Pickaxe: Bought from the merchant for beads.
Vooloo ore: Inside the well, the white crsytal. Requires the rope and pickaxe.
Weird key: Give the vooloo ore to the witch. Unlocks small box in the bar's backroom.
Fairy King's key: Talk to the bartender again after delivering the love letter. It unlocks the backdoor in the bar (it says it will unlock the door in the next update but it actually works in the current version.)
Silver key: Inside the backroom of the bar, in the small box. Requires both keys. Unlocks the sideroom in the bar.
Bomb: Sideroom of the bar, inside the chest. Requires both axe and pickaxe. Used at the "treusare" island to blow up the cave wall in the bottommost room.

Extra secret: If you go to the shop after finding the lost man and stand in line with the newspaper on the wall, you get some extra dialogue.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
The earliest of my games that still exist to play is Chase for Divinity. It's either my second or third game, or something like that. It's hard to say because I worked on it off-and-on for awhile.

My real first game was an RPG Maker 95 disaster that never got finished and starred an overpowered demon. It has been sadly lost to time ;_;
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I used to have a website forever-and-a-half ago that hosted some of my early work, before discovering RMN. I don't remember exactly when this was, and I don't think it was a Geocities account/page. It certainly wasn't a premium service, as there was a definitive cap on the amount data attributed to the account.

That, combined with a not-so-great internet connection meant uploading stuff without the RTP was an absolute necessity. I must have had up to seven terribad games on there at one point. They also must have been all made within a week or two of each other, because I remember part of the "manual" I included in them was what games I was playing while making the games, and I seem to recall Suikoden 5 showing up a lot. XD

While I don't necessarily remember all the games I made back then (probably a good thing), but, there was the XP versions of what became Matsumori Days and Nakaishi Wars, plus a VX version of what became Uchioniko. I've no doubts the site is inaccessible now, though, I have zero memory, or archived information, of where it was, even when it did exist.


That aside, I know I had my birthday almost a week ago, but, Dargiaaz. I feel so incredibly old. ;_;
NAME: Delicious Breakfast

ENGINE: Inform 7

DOWNLOAD: here

DESCRIPTION: Delicious Breakfast is actually a 2010 recreation of the first game I ever made, which would have been about 2007 or so. (I distinctly remember debating with myself over whether I should submit it to that year's IF Comp.) It was more testing out Inform than anything else, and I think my frustration with the engine shows itself in the, uh, tone the game takes.

Looking back it's definitely got some issues, but I think you can see a pretty clear impression of my later "style", so to speak.

FEATURES:

  • 7 points to win!
  • One full room of activity!
  • Shocking plot twists!
  • Delicious Breakfast!!!



SCREENSHOTS: Since this is a text-based game, how about some quotes instead?
author=Delicious Breakfast
Kitchen
Your cozy kitchen is very useful for making all sorts of things, but especially Delicious Breakfast! And you just love your new curtains! They go great with the window!

Your counter is spick and span just the way you like it!

On the counter are a bag of bread, a box of cereal, a bowl, and a mixer.

Your beautiful kitchen table that Mrs. Marcia gave you is in the middle of the kitchen. It's too bad she had to go!

On the table are an apple, a banana, a plate, a fork, and a spoon.

Underneath one of the table legs you spy a scuzzy fruit thing. Mmm! Looks Yummy!

Your lovely refrigerator, or fridge, is pressed against the wall, waiting for you to take its treasures.
author=Delicious Breakfast
You gobble the banana down. The peel was the most Delightfully Delectable part! Mmm! Delicious Breakfast!
author=Delicious Breakfast
>x milk
The carton is a few months past its expiration date, but that doesn't stop it from being a source of Delicious Breakfast!

>eat milk
(first taking the carton of milk)
You open the carton and guzzle the milk. Mmm! Gooey and slimy, just the way you like it! Then you swallow the carton. Mmm! Delicious Breakfast!
I WISH, WISH, WISH I still had my earliest games.
JustAShyDoge
Still a dumb and shy doggo
9731
NAME:
Doge Quest

ENGINE:
RPG Maker MV

DOWNLOAD:
here

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
A plot of madness honestly. Let's see, you play as a dog living with a cat, your owner's missing, next thing you know, the town's infested with zombies and ghosts and weird other stuff. You're stuck in an abandoned school, your only safe haven left is the internet. (No one said this game made any sense)

FEATURES:
  • 2/3 bgm I composed back in the day.

  • some sfx I composed

  • Playing as Doge

  • Die a lot.

  • Lots of stupid meme and dialogue.(Alright it's not that stupid, I find it funny ok?)

  • Bash some enemies, yes I said BASH

  • Terrible grammmars

  • some custom map





SCREENSHOTS
NAME: Hero's Realm

ENGINE: QBASIC

DOWNLOAD: Sadly, I no longer have the source code for this

DESCRIPTION/PLOT: It was an RPG I created during Computer Science class in highschool, back in grade... 9? 10? So that would have been about 1995 or 1996. I had implemented a rudimentary battle system, "sprites" were just subroutines using a draw command, maps were stored in an array (iirc) and the map renderer was just a series of if statements that would call the subroutine of the tile I wanted in order. Maps were fixed (no scrolling) so it was kinda like Legend of Zelda in that setup. Your hero was also a subroutine draw command, and I was actually able to move around the map with the arrow keys! I don't think I figured out passability, though. Some other kids were super into the music part of QBASIC and did chords by playing notes very fast, and I copied their rendition of Enter Sandman into my game. Eventually I hit some hard limit on filesize for QBASIC programs...I think. And then we moved to Windows 95 machines one semester and Visual BASIC 5, so that kinda ended. I used to have this (and a few other games I made like an Asteroids clone) on a floppy disk. I do not have that disk anymore. The featured enemy was an evil interdimensional triangle (it was simple to draw). There was no plot.

I ended up reusing the name for a later game I made.

FEATURES:

  • MAPS!
  • BATTLES!
  • SPRITES (kinda)!
  • ENTER SANDMAN!
  • QBASIC!


SCREENSHOTS
n/a

NAME: Zodiac Quest

ENGINE: Half translated Super Dante 2 Rom

DOWNLOAD: Nope

DESCRIPTION/PLOT: Something along the lines of rounding up 12 magic swords to save the world. I was still in middle school, sooo... probably 1995 or 1996. kenton is older than me wtf

FEATURES: Goo, the AI controlled slime party member. You save him in an ice cave while he was being bullied by other mean slimes.

SCREENSHOTS Also Nope
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I mean, if ya wanna go off the deep end...

Name: Destruction Derby

Engine: Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit

Description: Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit is/was a Commodore 64 game-creation kit. Which probably means I was about ten or so when I made this. Which would place this game's creation somewhere between 1989 and 1990. It was a top-down scrolling shooter (surprise!), where the player goes through waves of enemies such as Rotor flotillas, and Blobicons. The final boss, Mr. Sunshine, didn't really have a name until the sequel. Of course there was a sequel!

Screenshots: While I obviously don't have any screenshots, I do recall insisting on making the game's graphics and sound effects myself with whatever tools the engine gave me to do so. The results would probably be what you'd expect from a 10-year-old. However, I will say that "Blobicons" basically looked like MS Paint blobs, and "Rotors" were basically crosses. While "Mr. Sunshine" didn't have a smile, it was definitely a yellow circular-looking object that had spikes coming out of it's top, bottom, right and left.
author=kentona
I had implemented a rudimentary battle system, "sprites" were just subroutines using a draw command, maps were stored in an array (iirc) and the map renderer was just a series of if statements that would call the subroutine of the tile I wanted in order. Maps were fixed (no scrolling) so it was kinda like Legend of Zelda in that setup. Your hero was also a subroutine draw command, and I was actually able to move around the map with the arrow keys! I don't think I figured out passability, though. Some other kids were super into the music part of QBASIC and did chords by playing notes very fast, and I copied their rendition of Enter Sandman into my game.


I had no idea you were so..... awesome.

author=Illy
NAME:ENGINE: Half translated Super Dante 2 Rom


ABSOLUTELY ICONIC i really wish i had some of y'all's SNES/PS1/PS2 RM games to play tbh. I enjoyed my time on RPG Maker 3 on the PS2 so much as a kid. And then on the PS1 and SNES as a slightly older kid.

My very first game... I can't remember the hell it was but I do remember shortly after playing around with RM2000 for the first time I got pissed at my scratched Parasite Eve CD, then had the brilliant idea to "remake" it on my PC... Obviously it was laughable, I wish I still had it.

Well, my real first "game" (as in, the first thing that I made that is playable and has more than 1 screen) is...

NAME:

ENGINE: RPG Tsukuru 2000

DOWNLOAD: https://rpgmaker.net/games/4963/

DESCRIPTION/PLOT: Seraphine, a young woman that lives in a cramped garage-turned-apartment in a tropical island, goes on a quest to rescue her best friend's boyfriend..... that's actually the story of how i met my ex and all characters and locations are real, conversely i stopped working on it when we broke up god that was a... moment.

FEATURES: Self-inserts, self-referential jokes, a touristic guide through the lush island of Santos & São Vicente, A pathetic attempt at emulating Final Fantasy, a pathetic attempt at emulating Epic Elf, an all-original almost-20-track soundtrack (!!) I composed in 2012... But then I proceeded to mostly not use and instead open the game with the iconic To Zanarkand, an Art Gallery with like 3 artworks and I don't think it works properly, a music listener which I'm pretty sure is buggy too.... A steal-from-npcs-mechanic that works for the entirety of one screen............... ok enough ,JDFGSKDFFJHSDFGFFGNJH



Oh well. That was fun. I wish I still got these stories to tell. Now if I were to make a self insert game like that again it'd just be about... IDK? A dungeon simulator. With a computer. You work on the computer then you pay the bills that are delivered to you through the bars of the dungeon room. Lol.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Jo your first game has great lighting and custom 3D battle backgrounds. Your skill, your talent. Iconic. A myth. A legend.
NAME: Red Riddle | Triskaideka

ENGINE: Drupal Forums (originally)

DOWNLOAD: hosted on GitHub Pages
Red Riddle - choose-your-own-adventure
Triskaideka - maze

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
Ignore 'About' section. Scroll down and play.
I was speaking nonsense at the time,
trying things in a forum thread.

Unrelated note: There was a hacker incident in September 2013. Permanently shutdown forums.
I didn't keep contact with anyone. At the very least I'm content with my efforts.

Original web archive links: (not recommended)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130511054515/https://forums.wildshadow.com/node/201474
https://web.archive.org/web/20130511070955/https://forums.wildshadow.com/node/203136


FEATURES:

  • Thread restored on GitHub Pages
  • Images and few gifs
  • Basic clicks
  • Skip by scrolling
  • Bad grammar
  • Obscure references
  • No audio
  • Very short (less than 7 minutes maybe)




SCREENSHOTS

NAME: MinST

ENGINE: Custom

DOWNLOAD: http://rpgmaker.net/users/Irog/locker/MinST_ascii.zip

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
MinST is a strategy game set in the middle-age period. It’s turn based and units move on an hexagonal grid. You’ll smartly use your troops to fight numerous battles and achieve victory.

FEATURES:
* 3 types of troops: footmen, horsemen, archer
* 10 maps
* a map editor
* play against the AI or face a friend in hot-seat
* No graphics, just ASCII
* No sound, just beeps

SCREENSHOTS



This game is the very first version of MinST.
It's pretty cliché (even AFTER my later revisits to improve it and make the hero actually a little more interesting) and the combat system has nothing special going for it unlike everything else I've made since (on top of stats being kind of stupidly balanced).

Also my normally meh mapping skills were atrocious back then. Expect most maps to be bland and way too big, with the occasional NPC blaming the bland decor on someone OTHER than me.

But sure, it you really, REALLY wanna see the first serious game I tried to make when I was still in my late teens, here it is.

NAME: The Last Mystic

ENGINE: RPGmaker XP

DOWNLOAD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/czy4rbdzaf7m0wb/Last%20mystic%20remake.exe?dl=0

DESCRIPTION/PLOT:
In an age long past, there was endless war...Then someone basically opened a portal to hell. The RTP heroes saved the world and the world had it's first age of peace! ...Until there was a coup and an evil empire took over!

Cut to our hero, Hyriu Lumina, who lives in a secret village of Mystics and is about to come of age and gain his magic...But everything changed when the empire attacked and burned down his village!

Cue a quest for revenge, as well as hoping to find his lost friends! Lots of "AHA! The empire was one step ahead of you all along!" and trite My-just-outta-high-school-self-thought-were-"mature" villain clichés ensues.

Would have eventually led to:
- Turns out the Crystal that gives the Mystics their magic is the Earth key, one of two/three keys needed to re-open the portal to hell which the empire wants to do to create a common enemy so they can unite everyone against it!
- Loving angels who just want to help our hero and turn him into a paladin! (Blame my catholic high school for the symbolism!)
- Turns out the Empire is correct in the sense that without strict centralization, the various nations would all go to war and kill each other again.
- Your basically-a-gunslinging-terrorist opponent you meet at one point joins you! ...Also he's in the right, because the empire did an almost-genocide of his home country.
- The hero coming to terms with the fact he's really not actually an adult, and that he loves combat but hates killing, and doesn't feel worthy of being a hero or being made a paladin by the angels


FEATURES:
  • - There's Limit Breaks!
  • - Fun little support conversations with your party!
  • - A total prick of a bully for the tutorial fight, who ends up being a pretty decent challenge when he randomly shows up later!
  • - One EXCELLENT dungeon and town story that caps off the experience! (As long as you don't keep picking the wrong minecart and have to go all the way back down from town)
  • - Hints of a nifty Elemental Summoning System that would have created neat puzzles later!
  • - An Alchemy system that never really got finished!
  • - A cheat code item that you can use to skip the grind!
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