Premise

Treasures of Dragoon (Working title; too similar to The Legend of Dragoon) is an RPG I've been working on for RPG Maker 2003 (though without any of the built-in RPG systems RPG Maker provides. You might be wondering why I'm even using RPG Maker, in that case...!
The answer? Stockholm syndrome)

The game will feature six playable characters, each representing a specific class. The game itself is meant to be non-linear, ideally opening the door for challenge runs or unique builds, since acquiring the other characters as party members (or visiting a majority of dungeons) is not required.

Dungeon crawling will likely be a primary focus, as well as accruing miscellaneous treasures (a la Great Cave Offensive) that may affect what dungeons can be accessed, what skills can be learned, and what endings are unlocked.

The project is inspired by retro fantasy anime and Dragon Quest, to give you an idea of what the vibe'd be like. I'm also making it difficult on myself by designing it around a PC-98 styled window UI, where the game is viewable in a smaller space, surrounded by game information like health bars, map information, etc.

I'm aware it doesn't sound terrifically original, but I'm pretty excited to make it! There aren't many screenshots either...................... yet

Screenshots

Click an image below to view it in a new tab!

Development Diary

I've been working on this game (at time of writing) more frequently than Agricultura, but it's still slow going -- a notable programming hurdle being the combat system in its entirety. Did you know that making an RPG using an engine *for* that type of game, but without using any of the actual RPG features is a bad idea?

If I'm going to keep this window frame UI, I'm also going to need to have a lot of control over the UI in combat as well. RPG Maker absolutely refuses to let me do that without special plugins which I find to be too much of a pain to use (shoutouts to my guy Cherry, but I can't read German).

It may sound like some asanine restriction (which it is) or some personal challenge (which it is), but I don't think it's unreasonable to wish an engine for making RPGs gave you a little control over how the gameplay itself operates. It'll probably be too janky to even be worth playing, but this wouldn't be an issue if RPG Maker 2k3 would bend to MY will for a change.

A custom combat system becomes a necessity under these circumstances, but to basically no one's shock, the engine gets unwieldy when you try to force it to do anything other than horror games or RPGs in the style of Final Fantasy. I may just scrap the RPG Maker idea and start over in Godot.

Let my tale of woe and hubris dissuade you from following in my foolish little footsteps