• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

Announcement

Three Ghostly Roses Remake

A Ghostly Rose

Wishlist on Steam





For a long time, I considered making Three Ghostly Roses deluxe. Enhancing some graphics. Adding more features. Then I realized, it would be better to make a whole new game.

Three Ghostly Roses is very special to me. I'm happy I just kept the game as it is. But I knew I could do more with it. So I made A Ghostly Rose.

It comes out on April 5. If you liked Three Ghostly Roses, I hope you'll check it out.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy.

Miscellaneous

Featured?

I'll be honest. I've had a stroke of luck with Three Ghostly Roses in the past month. I got two really positive reviews, more fanart than I ever dreamed of, and a surge in downloads for my standards.

Then I wake up today and see that I'm Featured. I'm not dreaming right?

I can't thank RMN and its staff enough for this honor! I cannot express how much I appreciate it. I had a blast making it. When I started this up again, I wasn't sure if I was making the right move. It turns out I did.

I also want to mention that Red Nova REALLY helped me improve the game during the final stretch of development. He's a great playtester. Really did the job well.

Thanks again everyone!

Now I celebrate with the fanart I have received for this project.



Credit to: http://visitorsfromdreams.tumblr.com/post/154769093142/three-ghostly-roses-is-a-turn-based-rpg-developed



Credit to: https://rpgmaker.net/users/Kylaila/





Credit to: http://pollinating-art.tumblr.com/post/155132541835/edmund-from-three-ghostly-roses-aka-another

And last but not least...



Edmund being included in that was the first fanart someone made for me I ever saw. It's great. I recognize a lot of the other characters as well!

Credit to: https://rpgmaker.net/users/BerryRMN/

This is a great way to start 2017. I hope it sets positive vibes for the rest of the year.

Edit:



Credit: http://pinkuboa.tumblr.com/post/155237056301/if-ur-still-taking-requests-edmund-brigham

Edit 2:



Credit: https://rpgmaker.net/users/suzy_cheesedreams/

I am gonna keep editing these in this post because I want everyone who visits this page to see all these wonderful arts. I am truly lucky that artists seem to like my game a lot haha.

Game Design

Before Three Ghostly Roses

It's been over a month since I released this. The reception has been pretty good so far and it's being featured as a Hidden Gem on the front page of RMN this month. I passed the 100 download milestone and the number of subscriptions and page views are still rising. I say things are going pretty well.

Originally called Four Ghostly Roses, I want to talk about this project's history a bit. (there might be a mild spoiler or two ahead eventually for those who haven't played yet)



Beautiful! If you like the bland default stuff.


Back very early in 2013, I was gifted RPG Maker VX Ace after using RPG Maker 2000/2003 for many years before. It was the first time I had a legal copy of RPG Maker and I was hyped.

In a brainstorming session for a platform game with a group of friends, I had a concept idea rejected once. I drew a terrible picture of a man dressed in rags holding a flower. I decided he was dead and going to try and contact his daughters via their dreams. They said it wouldn't work for a platform game. I don't know why, but I quite believed in the idea. (I wish I still had that picture!)

Months later, I had just recently received RPG Maker VX Ace and I decided that was the idea I would first try the engine with. I did not like the default chipsets. I had some previous experience with pixel art at that point, so I decided I would give that a try. Making my own chipsets was a total disaster for Four Ghostly Roses. Pixel art back then was a total nightmare. (Thankfully I grew to enjoy it!)

So I decided to make the best with default chipsets of RPG Maker VX Ace. Looking back, I totally did NOT get how to use them properly. I always had such precise visions for my game worlds. It made using default chipsets for anything extremely frustrating to me. So much so that it inspired me to git gud at my own art eventually.

I shall show off my first time using VX Ace RTP and the disasters that came with it.



Edmund meets "Death" for the first time. I think changing his name to Gatekeeper was quite necessary, because he was never actually the grim reaper. It was more or less a style choice he thought was fun.




Beautiful inexperience. Look at all that empty space.




Sure, it's just default RTP. I like this picture because I kinda made my own versions of the enemies in the picture. Edmund STILL uppercuts a Seer all these years later.




My God this was the Garden Tower entrance. What was I thinking?




This was the Jungle... Kill it with fire.


The concept of the game remained relatively the same. The drastic changes were all in the level design, writing, graphics, and music. I also cut down the playtime by a LOT. The original one took me about 8 hours. I thought that was short back then.

There were a lot more battles and they were lengthier. I also had an additional dungeon area (The Castle) that I included as just the boss stage instead in Three Ghostly Roses. A daughter altogether was scrapped.

In battles, Edmund would eventually gain FOUR turns. He had healing skills and his blast skills had three elements instead of one.

Four Ghostly Roses was full of inexperience. When I finished it, I was quite proud. I thought I had done something good. I quickly realized the severity of its flaws and it kind of bummed me out. The game was scrapped for many years.

Yet, it kind of stuck with me. Every time I started the brainstorming a new game project idea I would go back to that and try to figure out how to pull off. Hell, I almost redid it for IGMC 2014 before I realized 30 minutes - 60 minutes was way too small for my idea.

I eventually cracked this year and finally went ahead and started making it again. I think the reason why it stuck with me so hard was because of how fond the memories were when I was made it. It was the first time I ever made music that I considered good. The world was really fun to be in, despite not coming out the way I envisioned.

As one can tell from playing Three Ghostly Roses or even looking at the screenshots tab, I had made MAJOR progress over the years. Hell, I learned a lot from Three Ghostly Roses itself and realized some important lessons.

I'd totally do things differently if I had the chance to make the game again. Yet, I am happy with it. I feel no need for it. I realize that I will always be in a cycle of improvement as long as I try my best while making games.

In Three Ghostly Roses I included a select amount of songs from the original project as bonus content. I thought the choices were appropriate. 95% of the new songs were pretty much me recreating an older song. Sort of like siblings. They weren't the same songs, but they were for a very similar purpose... If that makes any sense.

There was one song I wanted to include but I felt like it didn't fit in the actual game. The song itself is kind of spoilerish, seeing how it's the last boss song of the original. Yet, the game is different now, so no harm. I hope those who have beat Three Ghostly Roses enjoy it!



For everyone who downloaded and played Three Ghostly Roses, thank you! Every time someone posted feedback it made my day. I hope this post of my remembering was interesting.

Announcement

Three Ghostly Roses Release

I'm not sure what words I can say at this point. It was supposed to be a two month development time yet here it is 10 months later. This project is a redemption of an older one, as I've stated before. I spent these 10 months making the game the best I possibly could. I've been trying my best to do a game idea I believed in justice.

I've obsessed over the story and the details of it beyond belief at this point. It was a tough one to write. A small change would create a butterfly effect and I ended up having this complex weird world I had to make sense. I think I finally got the story I wanted to tell.

I love this project to death, however. I let my imagination run wild then had the terrible challenge of trying to make sense out of it. I hope you guys can enjoy it even half as much as I enjoyed making it.

I think it's time for me to finally let this one go.

Three Ghostly Roses is finished.

Your turn, George R. R. Martin!

Any bug reports or feedback is most welcome! Have fun!

Progress Report

October 9th Progress

It's been a while since I've said anything about the project. Life got kinda intense there for a few months, so I did not have much time nor the willpower to tackle the final stages of this game.

A couple months ago, the project was play tested and some issues were found. I also had a while to reflect on the game.

I've started the intense process of fixing the final issues of the game. Such as:

- Improving overall dialogue.
- Adding graphic fixes and additional graphics when needed.
- Fixing some technical issues that I overlooked.
- Attempts at making gold of some use.
- Taking out frustrating game design mechanics (such as how the later arts and blast skills are learned)
- Improving the soundtrack.

I've been going through every single event and polishing every bit of dialogue I see that could be improved. It's not like it was bad before, haha, more like it just needed a good amount of polish. I did that side of the game rather fast. Now is the time to do it justice.

The biggest issue, besides one of my story arcs that contained some holes in the plot, was how I did gold. I never thought gold would give me this much of a headache in an RPG.

My solution is not to make the gold incredibly useful in the game, but more or less a fun side mechanic. I plan on having a couple of skills purchased by gold still, but none of the necessity skills.

For those few who have played the demo know of the notes I have scattered through treasure chests. Instead of finding in chests, a robed one will sell them to you for a price.

I will also have more or less a bonus section, where throughout the game you unlock the chance to purchase songs in The Keep's newly added basement. The songs won't be from Three Ghostly Roses, but my old and much flawed Four Ghostly Roses (the cancelled game that Three Ghostly Roses is a remake of.)

One of the few reasons I made Three Ghostly Roses years after cancelling the original is because of how much I loved the original soundtrack. Alas, for I ended up scrapping the soundtrack anyway, but there are many songs from it that I still love. I'm not sure how many people will care about old songs I made, but I'm personally fascinated by stuff like that.

I hope that makes gold add SOMETHING st least.

All in all, I'm having a blast finishing the project up. I'm 1/4th through my great polish. I'm hoping to release the game within a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Progress Report

July 4th Progress Update



Yep, I've (almost) finished Three Ghostly Roses. I have one last mega important task for the game, and that is polishing. I need to test it myself and I think I'll select a few people privately to playtest it.

This game became quite the beast on my back. It's very bittersweet to finally let it go soon, haha.

About keeping the file from the demo for those who have played... I apologize, for I've changed enough for the beginning to need to be played again, and I accidentally made it impossible to keep the same file in the first place. I hope that is not too much of a problem. I original intended for you to keep the same file, but stuff happened. With that said, I think you can tackle what was in the demo in about half an hour anyway. There is much more to come after as well.

In the next couple of weeks or so I will polish and ready the game for release.

Thanks for reading!

Progress Report

June 23 Progress Update



Progress is going very well. I only have one dungeon left. The game is turning out quite nicely.

I've been working quite hard on this within the past month. My goal is to get the game finished by July 5th where I leave on a two week vacation. I don't want this game hanging over me while I'm trying to enjoy myself, haha.

With that said, if I do finish before then, I won't release it until I polish and have it playtested.

Thanks for reading! I'll go back to trying to make this the best game it can be now.

Progress Report

Progress Graph and Battle Mechanics

I want to start this off showing a rough estimate of Three Ghostly Roses' progress via a graph.



By Maps, I mean all maps and events. By Tiles and Enemies, I mean the graphics. By data, I mean the enemy and battle data. By Music, I mean the music.

As it is now, I have a good chunk of the game done. I have a lot more maps and events to make, but that progress will go fast as long as I sit down and work at it, haha.

The main point of this blog is to discuss the game mechanics seen in the demo and the game mechanics that will appear beyond the demo.

Battle Mechanics

Edmund will begin every battle with zero FP, which is short for Focus Points. To gain FP, Edmund must attack an enemy normal and will gain 1 FP per attack. Then Edmund must exploit the weakness of an enemy with an Art and if an enemy dies Edmund will gain 1 FP and recover some HP. That way, if you exploit the enemy good enough, you could chain FP gain and HP recovery.

Edmund will have no access to weapons nor healing items/skills. He must survive via his martial arts. Enemies will have 3 stages of defense: High, Middle, and Low.







Those three skills are Edmund's signature arts and will decimate an enemy that has a weak defense to the Art's assigned element. Uppercut is High, Dropkick is Middle, and Leg Sweep is Low.

Enemies have a fourth element, and that's their mental defense against Blast skills.



Blast skills are more powerful and require more FP to use.

As you proceed through the game, enemies will have powerful defense all around and Edmund's signature Arts will not do very well. Though you will gain access to to defense breaker skills that will allow you to decimate an enemy once more.

Face Jab will stun the enemy's face, which will leave their Low element wide open.

Gut Knee will stun the enemy's middle part of the body, which will leave the High element wide open.

Shin Kick will stun the enemy's lower part of the body, which will leave the enemy's Middle element wide open.

When you find the correct skill to break the enemy's defense, you must use a signature Art on the same turn as the defense breaker or else it will be useless. Edmund will gain more actions per turn as you proceed. So a defense breaker would be something like this: Face Jab > Dropkick on the same turn. Each skill costs 1 FP each.

Three Ghostly Roses will have a tight knit amount of enemies that each will be based off a different battle mechanic. There are no healing skills or items so comboing enemies and gaining health from their defeat is a necessity to survive.

More Art and Blast skills will be available to purchase as you proceed.

I hope to finish the game within the next couple of months or so. So far the mechanics are working nicely and the game is coming together better than I expected. If you played the demo, know that there is much more to come.

Thanks for reading!

Announcement

Three Ghostly Roses Demo Is Out

Hi everyone! I just uploaded the first demo of Three Ghostly Roses.

Some things are still a bit rough, but I put a lot of effort in this one.

Hope you all have fun playing! Feel free to feedback and or report any issues.

Edit: I had to re-upload the download to include rtp due to a conflict I saw when someone tried it. Sorry about the extra download space!

Progress Report

Progress Update

Things have been changing for Three Ghostly Roses in the past couple of months. Progress has been slower than I wish, yet things are going quite smooth.

First things first, I want to talk about changes that have happened. One day I woke up and realized how unhappy I was with how I was telling the story. I was pretty much telling it exactly how I told it before when I made this years back and never got it truly finished. Yet it always bothered me. So I completely re-wrote the story and am telling it in a much different way.

In the original, you kind of get a bunch of explanations thrown in your face before you get started. This time, everything starts off as sort of a mystery and you learn the world as you go rather than have it forced all at once in a 10 minute description. I'm super happy with the changes so far. The game's story flows muuuuch better now.

Then there is a change that happened last night. I was planning on using the soundtrack I made years ago for this game, as I thought it was good enough. The original soundtrack was probably the first time I made music I deemed good. It still is good, in my opinion at least. Though three years have passed. I'm much better now. And the past months I have been trying to make new music for the game and I failed every time. I could not top the original.

I kept asking myself. "Why change the music? It's already good." Yet I kept trying. The answer came to me last night, when I actually pulled it off. I made new music that was better and fit the game more. I kept trying to change it because the old music was not matching the new vision I had for the game.

So now, I have to redo the whole soundtrack. I already made 4 new songs in pretty much 24 hours. Music is easy for me anyway, especially when I get things going.

I am still aiming for a demo. Honestly, the demo is super close to being done. The bulk of what needs to be done is the menu ui, which is gonna suck. Other than that, I just need to make a few more small maps, finish the dungeon (just need to make the boss and story at the end now), and a decent amount of polishing. Oh, I also need to make 4 additional songs for the demo, as I decided to remake the whole soundtrack last night.

The demo is roughly 1/4th of the game. Once its done, it will be a great milestone. The rest of the game will go a lot smoother.

I'm gonna try and get this demo ready as soon as I can. I have had some time off work. (I got sick with the chicken pox, at age 23 ): ) Well, I still have to be away from work until I am completely healed, but I don't feel like absolute crap anymore so it's a ripe time to get some game making done.

I can't estimate how much longer until the demo will be done, but I'll give a quick estimate of within three weeks. Now to kick this game's ass!
Pages: first 12 next last