ORANGE-'S PROFILE

@momeka, likewise! I actually fell in love with that kind of aesthetic some time ago when playing the first Shin Megami Tensei on SNES for the first time. Of course your stuff looks way more impressive than that, but the general look is along the same lines.

The trees look really awesome here! I really like the colour palette used in maps in general too!

I think you should definitely get the artist under the same Patreon/monetization you guys intend to be. I've got a decent amount of experience in making jRPGs with fully custom assets and I'd say 70% of the entire work load in making a jRPG is making graphics. (this of course varies from game to game but it's still a huge amount of work) Leaving a person who'd do that much out is madness. So my tip is to look for someone who'd be a dedicated team member with equal importance to you.

I guess I could share my experiences here too. First of all, I think people should definitely get their RPG Maker games on Steam or other sites where they can earn some money from their hard work. I mean the rest of the indie development scenes are doing it, so why not RPG Maker scenes too? Like you guys said RPG Maker has got a stigma because of all the horrible shovelware. We can only get rid of that stigma by releasing some actual quality.

I released a RPG Maker game on Steam last year and it was pretty successful release in my books. I'm currently making a sequel to the first game and if things keep on growing in same pace I could easily see myself being a full-time game dev for few years.

I didn't have any paid marketing or promotion for the game either. I only tried to be relatively active on multiple different platforms, like tumblr, twitter, itchio, discord, sites like this, etc. The biggest spikes in sales came clearly from youtubers. I'm talking about like 5000% spikes or even more in some cases. I can't talk enough about the importance of Let's Plays in getting your game out there. Of course my game was a kind of horror-jRPG hybrid so it was something more youtubers typically pick up and play. I think if you made a more traditional jRPG, it might be more difficult to get your game out there...

Also when it comes to those wishlist things, I never had the game up on Steam before I actually had the download available too. So I didn't create any hype with that. The fanbase grew on itchio mostly before the Steam release. Still Steam ended up being clearly the most popular site when it came down to people who bought my game.

I think there are many gems in RPG Maker scenes that could get fairly decent audiences if they got released on Steam. Of course many of the old-school gems use ripped assets which would require pretty big overhauls to get them into publishable form. Still I think RPG Maker games are a truly viable option in getting your game dev career started.

author=Frogge

author=KoopaKush

author=Frogge
just make the screen super dark thats what literally all rpg maker horror developers do

The secrets have been revealed. Come to think of it, can you think of a pretty bright contrast game that's horror?

There's one on steam called Brighter Day and that's about it.

We need more good plain daylight horror. Or night time but still well lit and colorful like The Shining.

The game I'm currently making is taking place during day time. Although I just have mist replacing the darkness lol

To be honest, I really liked the concept idea of Resident Evil 5. Unfortunately Capcom wasn't able to deliver what they set out to do. The game was going to be taking place under the bright sun, but naturally such harsh light creates big contrasts, so the areas that were left in the shadow were like pitch black and you couldn't see what's lurking in there before your eyes adjusted.

That kind of intense light system would've probably been too hard for the PS3s and 360s of the time, but it would be interesting to see more recent example of that.