It happens to everyone. You sit down in front of your epic masterpiece and you just can’t seem to get anything done. Or you don’t even sit down at all. What used to be fun is starting to look a whole lot like boring drudgery. If you’re starting to lose enthusiasm for game-making and can’t […]
So you want to make a battle where the boss shapeshifts into his true form halfway through? Or the villain loses a piece of their gloriously ostentatious armor in the middle of the fight? We can transform enemies right in the middle of the battle, and we don’t need a plugin. (Although there’s a glittering […]
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love RPGs, even the old school ones, and I’ve wiled away many an hour with the classics. However, if you’re going to write a better game, you can’t gloss over the fact that sometimes what happens in old school-style games just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here’s a […]
Having trouble designing that boss lair? Take a look at our dungeon design tips! On the surface, it looks like it would be pretty simple to design a decent dungeon. After all, most of the rest of the parts of games are comparatively simple to design; towns really just need enough space to walk around […]
Don’t get me wrong. Incompetech is a great site. A really great site. Honestly, I think Kevin MacLeod is a great fellow for writing so much high-quality music…and then sharing it with the creative community. For absolutely nothing. People don’t get enough props for sharing free creative stuff for nothing. The problem with being such […]
When RPG Maker MV came out, with it came the possibility to make RPG Maker games that, well, had a window size bigger than a postage stamp. These days, for new games, you probably don’t need to resize RPG Maker windows by default. But what about older, pre-MV games? Even now, game makers are developing […]
Today I’ll show you a way to show a player character or event using custom poses. If you haven’t already done something like this, it’s great for showing characters who are… sleeping fighting hugging shocked casting a spell hair blowing in the wind dramatically any other pose that will fit on your sprite sheet. Sadly, […]
I don’t know where you are in your creative journey, whether it’s in game-making, art, writing or whatever pleases you, but maybe you’ve had the “luxury” of having a particular Negative Nelly in your life. One of those possibly well-meaning individuals who, whether they’re capable of artistic modes of expression or not, are by their […]
It goes without saying that love stories are a real thing in RPGs so it’s worth the time to craft them well. (And many games…well…don’t. What’s passable in a game would get laughed out of a literary agent’s office.) So today I’ve moved outside the realm of game design and writing theory over to romance […]
Improve character dialogue – take your character interactions to the next level! Tight writing is the stuff that memorable RPGs are made of, and good characters are the stuff that fandoms are made of. It’s the stuff that we remember long after the game’s ended…we may not remember events or battle systems very well, but […]
