The Cursed One - an adventurous RPG

[Nanna]

Hi! I want to share my developing process with you and tell you about my awesome game The Cursed One.

The Cursed One is an adventurous indie game made with RPG Maker MV. It is inspired by games like "Legend of Zelda" and other old-school pixelart games.
I focus on making a great story that is fun to play. I want a balance between interaction, exploring, puzzles and battle.
You can read more about the game at my brand new website http://thecursedone.com/. I will continue to update the site with more information as the game takes shape.
In this forum I want to share my developing process and talk with all of you about it.

When you were born a terrible prophecy was announced.
"She shall be the one to bring chaos and death."

I know that's why you chose a simple life with me away from everything. But Ellie. Honey.
It its time for you to step out into the world. I need your help. The world needs your help.


It all began with a two week course I took November 2018 in writing scripts for video games. The first week was all about writing and the second was about using RPG Maker MV. I began working on my game at the course and I've continued since.
Friday 18th I went to a reception and showed some of the game to people in the game industry as well as attended some amazing talks from people in the business.

My ambition is to make a small-ish game, that might not be gigantic, but is extremely solid as a game and a story. I want it to be fun and I want people to have a great time.
I plan on releasing a free demo and later the entire game (in price range of €1-5).

Please feel free to hit me with any questions 

Oh and here's some screenshots:

[Jubal]

Nice! And good to see a thread about this! Have you made most of the art/tilesets, or where did you get them from otherwise?

[Tusky]

Looking really nice!

Looking forward to hearing how you get on!

[Nanna]

Nice! And good to see a thread about this! Have you made most of the art/tilesets, or where did you get them from otherwise?

Noooo, I can't draw at all! The program RPG Maker MV comes with beautiful tilesets. And I've added some from PandaMaru at Deviantart. That is why I'm so excited about RPG Maker. It makes it possible to make a video game even if you lack graphic and/or programming skills.
The program is also easy to work with. I basically learned it from watching a bunch of Youtube tutorials.

[Nanna]

Nice! And good to see a thread about this! Have you made most of the art/tilesets, or where did you get them from otherwise?

Noooo, I can't draw at all! The program RPG Maker MV comes with beautiful tilesets. And I've added some from PandaMaru at Deviantart. That is why I'm so excited about RPG Maker. It makes it possible to make a video game even if you lack graphic and/or programming skills.
The program is also easy to work with. I basically learned it from watching a bunch of Youtube tutorials.

That being said. I've made all the characters in the build in character builder, and not using the default characters. I wanted my own.

[Jubal]

Ooh, cool. I guess I do a lot of my gamedev partly to stretch my legs on programming skills so I've never really looked into RPG maker much. It's really nice that it comes with such good graphical tools anyhow

[Nanna]

Gamedev update
Lately I've been working on the storyline in order to structure the game and get a better picture of it. I've kind of just jumped into the project and started working on it right away, but since then my ambitions have grown. So I've been doing a lot of 'ground work'. Part of that is to write down all the dialogue that I've already written in the game in another document (and not just in the game coding).
I've also come up with the core game concept and developed some of the main mechanics that will make the game more unique.
In short, I want to do this properly so I've had to take a step back and do the ground work I should have done to begin with.
Now I have a more clear picture of the over all game and what I need to work on in order to finish the free demo version (hopefully this May).

I'm considering making it possible to sign up to a newsletter that will let people know when the free demo is available (and maybe an option to just get a notice about that or to receive a news letter max once a month). Any thoughts on that?

I'm looking forward to get back to working on the game and away from the papers. The demo seems to be reachable.

[Jubal]

Yeah, getting a design plan is worthwhile. My games always end up spiralling out of manageable project scale because I rarely manage to make decent plans/ground-work.

Newsletter sounds a good idea though I'd counsel either not to invest too much effort on one or to invest a lot; my experience is that the newsletters etc I've done for previous games, I've often had little to no take-up with a list of 30 or so folks when I was ready to actually contact people. It's tricky to get people to read the emails you want them to read, let alone click the links in them!

Looking forward to seeing more stuff

[Nanna]

Game dev update: Close to beta-testing
The last couple of nights I've worked on the game and I have now finished the gameplay that will be featured in the free demo version. I believe a focused play through will give about 30 minutes game time.
What is left before I make calls for beta testers are bug detecting (and solving), some minor story changes (including some cut scenes and dialogue), more details when interacting with objects and more NPCs (to make the world feel more alive).

I plan on having beta testers in April and hopefully will be able to release the game late May.

Last night I struggled with a plug in on light settings, since I wanted a dim light in a cave and a magical crystal should shine. I succeeded in the end and am quite fond of the result. You can see the two different settings below.

[Jubal]

I may have some time to do a bit of beta-ing in mid April if that'd be useful