The Power of Design is Now Yours
/Think back to the late 90s. You’ve just played through the final parts of Final Fantasy 7; you’ve laughed, you’ve cried, and you enjoyed the hell out of the game. But now that you’ve beaten it, what do you do now? Wouldn’t it be great if there were more games similar to Final Fantasy, or wouldn’t it be cool to play a fantasy version of Doom? But who’s going to make a game like that?
While it may have been difficult, if not nigh impossible during the days of my childhood, these days it has become an easily achievable goal. Below are a couple of my favorite programs for use in game making, and ones that can help you design your own future masterpiece!
RPG Maker MV and Others
(C) KADOKAWA CORPORATION./YOJI OJIMA, Enterbrain Studios, DEGICA Co.,Ltd.
With the first rendition, RPG Maker 95. being released in Japan in the year 1997, (but with later renditions being released in North America as well) this is probably one of the staple game-making systems out there. It has a very simple interface, its easy to use and it is relatively cheap as far as game making programs go. All of them can be purchased on Steam, with the cheapest one going for as low as $22 Canadian. It hails itself as the simplest game development program available, perfect for beginners and people who have minimal experience with coding, and through my time using it I completely agree with this claim.
The program has many tutorials available for it, and even then, most of the program itself is easy enough to figure out. While it comes with some basic sprites and plugins, there are a plethora of resources available online to purchase or else download and use for free (with the right credits of course, some of which can be found here https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php) making RPG Maker one of the most widely diverse programs to use.
I personally am a big fan of RPG Maker MV (some info here), having clocked in over 930 hours on it, but I have used RPG Maker VX Ace (more info found here) in the past as well as RPG Maker 2003 (click here to learn more). While I have never actually finished a game, procrastination friends, I have been working on a singular project for the past couple of years and hope to one day release it. The best part about RPG Maker, in my opinion, is that Steam has a partnership with Enterbrain allowing you to publish your games directly to Steam and earn a profit from them. When you purchase any of the RPG Maker systems you are purchasing a licence to be able to make a profit from the games you make, something to me that could spark interest in potential future game makers.
(C) KADOKAWA CORPORATION./YOJI OJIMA, Enterbrain Studios, DEGICA Co.,Ltd.
SRPG Studio
This program is a new release, the English version having been released on Steam in August of 2018, and holy hell its been a lot of fun to use thus far. I’ve been a big fan of the Fire Emblem series of games since I played Path of Radiance on the original Gamecube, but once again I’ve wanted more, going as far as searching up games that may be similar.
Unfortunately for me, most of the similar games have only ever been released in Japan and that has made it hard for me to find similar games that are fun. When I first heard about this program back when it was released, I thought it was too good to be true. I waited for a bit to purchase it and finally got my hands on it in July of 2019. Boy was it ever a great purchase.
The way it works is fairly similar to RPG Maker, but instead of making a game in the vein of Final Fantasy you make a strategic Role-playing game. You have characters with stats that can use certain weapons, there’s a weapon triangle where each weapon has one weapon it is good against and one it is weak against. Characters are fairly plain looking at the moment, with only a set amount of default content available for it, but the option to edit and make characters in a 3rd party program (such as Photoshop or even a sprite making program) is there, but otherwise, you only get a few things to play with.
Copyright (c) 2002-2008 Xiph.org Foundation
I’m excited to see where this program can go in the future, as it has a lot of potential to be great, especially if you’re a fan of the types of games it caters around. Here’s hoping that one day it sees as much modding support as the RPG Maker series sees. Check out more in for on it here
These two programs can help you see your future gaming career jump-off, and I highly recommend both of them if you’re ever thinking about trying your hand at designing a game. Until next time, this is Kevin, signing off. Happy gaming friends!
Kevin Mazurimm
Kevin Mazurimm is a second year student at Algonquin College in the Professional Writing Program. He is an avid lover of video games, owning over 400 on steam alone, and is an up and coming writer of fiction.
