Danger Zone Friends & Other News

Announcing: Danger Zone Friends!

This is older news for those of you who follow me on Twitter, but for the rest of you, I am pleased to announce my next game... Danger Zone Friends! It's a JRPG about a turtle and a pantsless otter who make a grocery run for shredded cheese, but take a wrong turn into the DANGER ZONE. As our heroes attempt an escape from this strange and dangerous land, rumors spread of the return of an ancient evil, the Dairy Demon, Cheelzebub...

Spoiler alert - it is.

This is, undoubtedly, my greatest game to date, featuring some of the best encounter design, art, storytelling, comedy, and music I've ever produced. 3-6 hours of playtime, 20 minutes of original music, over 25 enemy types, so on and so forth. It's been an undertaking.

This game was originally made for my girlfriend, who asked for a "cute game" for her birthday with animal characters. She plays a fair amount of Persona and Pokemon, so I thought she would appreciate a *cough* short JRPG. As a supposedly casual project, it seemed like a good excuse to dust off the copy of RPG Maker VX Ace I got in a humble bundle a while back, and just have fun making something without having to code original mechanics from scratch. Many of my favorite RPGs of all time - Off, Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle, and Space Funeral - were vanilla RPG Maker games created without a lick of original code. It felt like a rite of passage to produce my own RPG within the (very limiting) constraints of the tool.  A lot of folks question the legitimacy of RPG Maker as a development suite, and while I know it was the right tool for the job, I still feel self-conscious about using it. At the end of the day, though, you can't argue with the results.

Despite my aspirations for this to be a tiny, casual, and sloppy game, it quickly turned into a serious endeavor. It became clear, after I had drawn, written, and programmed the initial cutscene that I was onto something special. I started development in June, missed my girlfriend's July birthday deadline, and continued to work for the following three months, pushing myself to push myself as an artist, composer, and writer.

As this game was made for my girlfriend, it includes a number of elements - inside jokes and scenarios - that will only truly be understood by the two of us, making this the most personal, expressive, heartfelt game I've made, strangely enough. However, the game should be just as enjoyable for the rest of you. Remove the insider knowledge, and what remains is an unusual story filled with non-sequitur humor.

But if you didn't know that about Astrodon Johnstoni, that's okay.

The combat is mostly what you'd expect from an RPG Maker game, building upon the default turn-based battle system. What sets Danger Zone Friends apart from other RPGs is the increased importance of non-damaging support skills, namely, abilities that cause buffs, debuffs, status effects, healing, and MP manipulation. Out of the three characters in your party, only one of them is any good at dealing raw damage. The game places more emphasis on providing adequate support and changing the flow of battle. As a result, battles are slowly paced, thoughtful affairs.

Despite having the same core battle system as nearly every other RPG Maker game, I attempt to make combat in Danger Zone Friends deeper than in other games in its genre.

All in all, the game's loaded with jokes, cool monsters, and a rockin' soundtrack. Currently, my girlfriend is about 80% through her playthrough. As soon as she's done, I'll start preparing it for general release. I'm also going to wait until a lot of the hype around (the admittedly fantastic) Deltarune starts to die down - it shares a lot of tonal similarities with Danger Zone Friends, and there's no use in competing with it.

Anyway, the most important thing is, I love Danger Zone Friends, and I hope you will too!

Updates to Monster Truck Power Fantasy and Bloodjak!

In other news, both Monster Truck Power Fantasy and Bloodjak have gotten patched! There's minor bug fixes with both, but the largest changes are that Monster Truck Power Fantasy now has a subtitle option, and Bloodjak now runs at a constant speed, regardless of its framerate. These were mostly made to address technical issues when showcasing the games live, but for those of you who are hard of hearing, hopefully the subtitles allow for you to better enjoy Power Fantasy.

Baltimore Game Collective: Now Featuring John D. Moore!

Tomorrow night, Stephen and I from Baltimore Game Collective will be showcasing our collection of work at Colorspace Labs' First Friday Indie Arcade in Philadelphia! What's new this time around is that we'll also be showcasing some games by our newest member, John D. Moore. John is a prolific developer whose diverse creative output spans over two decades. We'll be featuring three games of his this time around: Monster Hug, Dr. Creepinscare's Pumpkin Patch Match, and Ungrateful Birds. Happy to have you on board, John!

That's all for now. Please stay tuned for the release of Danger Zone Friends later this month.