Theres something almost magical about the fact that we can move images around and interact with virtual worlds, a living fantasy presented for us to interact with however we please. But what about the common person: the person for whom the term memory leak conjures up images of their grandfather, pipeline is where the water flows, and blitting is unheard of? Well, everyone can get in on the game creation process, and you dont even need to learn real programming to do so.
The gaming market is monstrous. Right now there are six consoles, three handhelds, and the ever present PC you can buy games for. That’s 10 different ways you can get your game on, so if you’re someone who doesn’t have the ways or means to buy all 10 platforms and every halfway decent game that arrives for any of them, you’re probably wondering which way you should go to get the most bang for your buck. Based on reviews, user comments, and my personal experience, these are the best ways to go.
The Japanese RPG market exploded in the 32-64 bit days, blowing out with a new game seemingly every week. Nowadays there are hundreds of options out there, and the Japanese market isn’t the only one around. North American companies have their own answers to the RPG boom and now it’s a veritable flood of options.
This list was hard because there are so many left off. You may notice I exclude the PS3, but I can’t really offer any PS3 RPGs for you until they’ve actually been created. We’re waiting.
1. It’s take on the fantasy RPG genre blended into the realms of reality, bleeding over in church and demonology lore.
2. Disgaea – This is probably the best strategy RPG released for any console ever. Released by Atlus, a brand name that has grown in and of itself of recent years to the respectability that names like Square and Level 5 now carry with their games, Disgaea is about the young prince of hell and his quest to regain his domain after being awoken. With more than 200 hours of gameplay here, count on playing for days on days. And it’s funnier than hell. These are great characters.
So where do games start? Games, like all fiction, require an idea to be successful. Sure, in the same way you can just sit down and write a story without foresight, you can jump on in and slap a game together. However, unless you get ridiculously lucky, the best works are usually the ones that have been well thought out beforehand.
3. Suikoden III – The Suikoden series is the cult series. Of course it’s slowly sliding out of cult status and into the mainstream with releases occurring every couple of years since this one. You play through the tale of their war, but as seen through each characters eyes. Truly epic.
There are two methods of planning a project. You can start from a known technological standpoint and build your project on top of that or you can just go for the design, add as many features and ideas as you like, and then remove the ones that you cant use when youve decided on the technology youre going to implement the game with. When youre first starting out however, the first option will save you many headaches.
4. Each character is fully realized and a part of the action, their story an intricate part of the game. There’s no fluff here, and the rebuild of the decades old RPG formula was all for the better, working for the complete and total betterment of the game and hopefully the series.
So, for a first game youre going to want a pretty simple idea. Really. Many people try it; none that I know of have succeeded. Imitation is the best way to start out. Simple games such as Space Invaders, Tetris, Pacman or even Pong are great places to start. All are largely simple to create but have some inherent challenges. I recommend that you start even simpler than that for your very first attempt. You can make a simple, complete game without much effort and its almost infinitely extensible.
If youre stuck for an idea, pick a genre that you enjoy. Do you love adventure games such as Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Space Quest, Kings Quest etc.? Design one of those. Do you like first person shooters such as Quake, Half Life or Doom? Feel free to be as generic as you like, this is a learning experience after all.
5. DragonQuest VIII – Dragon Quest has always been huge in Japan, but only now did it find the same success here in the US. Dragon Quest VIII is the huge (extremely huge) result of Square Enix’s jump to full 3D glory in their series. The graphics are incredible, the characters hilarious and deeply involving, and the story arresting. The battles aren’t half bad either. And the usual monster catching glory is intact. A long game, it will keep you busy for days.
Gamecube (and Wii) – The Gamecube got shorted on the RPG options, much like its big brother the N64. Here’s hoping for more, because the Wii is perfect for the format.
1. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – The newest Zelda adventure, Twilight Princess, is by far the best reason to own a Nintendo Wii. The game is a masterpiece on almost every level, to the point I’m almost willing to call it the greatest game ever made. We’ve heard this a lot, that this game is the greatest. That it surpasses what Ocarina accomplished 8 years ago. And as my own favorite game, it’s hard to ever put anything above Ocarina in terms of scope, depth, and innovation. No need to go into detail. Read my review of it here for more thoughts on why it’s so amazing.
2. Tales of Symphonia – The first really good RPG for the Gamecube, and still one of the only ones really. The newest entry in the hugely popular (in Japan) Tales saga, Symphonia was a huge, fun, well told game. The characters were fun, the battle system is one of the best around, and the action was fully inclusive and crafted a long game.
3. Skies of Arcadia Legends – Originally released for the Dreamcast, Skies of Arcadia was given a second life on the Gamecube, again fated to anonymity due to the failure of the console. This is a great game. It tells the story of two sky pirates who must traverse the sky ocean and save the world from a shattering war and so on. You attempt throughout the game to build your pirate rank and build up your ship. Unfortunately so few actually had it, and now it’s not exactly easy to find.
Now that you have your idea its time to flesh it out. Dont worry about the technology or the fact that you may not know how to actually implement a game just yet, just grab yourself some paper and a pencil and go crazy with ideas. Describe the main characters, game play, goals, interactions, story, and key mappings, anything you can think of. Make sure you have enough detail so that someone can read through the notes and play through the game in their head with relative accuracy. Changing game design during the coding process is almost always a bad idea. Once its set, it should remain set until the tweaking phase (Ill go into this more later) or youre likely to enter development hell, where the project goes on and on; more and more work is done with less and less outcome.
4. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – The infamous Wind Waker. Nintendo’s foray into cel shading and the horrible foray into ocean mechanics. This game is still amazing. It’s Zelda afterall, but it’s flawed on more than the basic levels. It’s hard to get around. The ocean is huge, and the game is short. But the parts you play, in between sailing around Hyrule are beautiful and incredibly fun.
At the end of this period of your game creation, you should have the following:
5. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – The Big N rounds out the five with another in house effort. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was a return to the Paper Mario fun they coined in the N64 days, this time around with the RPG elements the game seems to work best with. Incredibly easy yes, but fun as hell at the same time.
Xbox (and X360) – The Xbox, not surprisingly saw no Japanese development. Every game listed below was produced in English Speaking countries, mostly Canada actually. The style is noticeably different, but the quality is equally incredible. The strive for realism by Western developers can be seen in each of these entries. Although the lack of humor is equally as prescient.
- A written outline of the games characters and possibly a sketch or two (be they space ships, yellow circles, cars or the prince of the dark kingdom of Falgour, you need to know who or what the player will be and who they will compete against)
- A written outline of the story (if there is one, this isnt too vital for Space Invaders or Tetris, but for Uber Quest: An Adventure of Awesomeness its a really good idea)
1. Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion – The Xbox 360 has some serious horsepower. Not only is there room to spare, but the graphic output is insane at time, and what better way to show this off than with an Elderscrolls game. Monstrous, huge worlds in which you can freely roam wherever you want and interact with your environment. This game is huge and intense. Hundreds of hours can be spent just wandering around and completing a main quest. As for getting the rest done.
2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Star Wars games were starting to get a bad rap for a while, until Bioware arrived with the first full fledged Star Wars RPG. Built on the click and wait action of the D&D ruleset games, KOTOR was a brilliant game that took Star Wars fans back a few thousand years to the height of the Jedi/Sith wars. It also had one of the most surprising and amazing endings in any game..ever.
- A description of game play, written or storyboarded. Storyboards are visual representations of ideas. Draw your characters in actions, with arrows showing the flow of action and short written descriptions detailing the events occurring in your image (because some of us arent fantastic artists and our images can be a little& open to interpretation&)
3. Elderscrolls III: Morrowind – And another Elderscrolls game. This one was equally as huge as its sequel, and had just as amazing graphics for its time. Elderscrolls truly stretches the imagination in terms of open world RPG exploration and making a game that will take a long time to finish. A truly wonderful game.
If youve gotten to this point and are worried that youre going to have to spend years learning complex programming languages in order to implement your idea, fear not! Others have already done the hard yards for you. There are many RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools available for game creation, a number of which are available for free online. Ive compiled a brief list of some of these I have found at the end of the article. The free ones are listed first, organized by game genre.
4. It’s shorter and simpler than the original games from Bioware, but they make up for it with the attention to detail and the battle system upgrades.
5. Fable – Touted as an amazing achievement in world interface, Fable turned out to be a little bit of a letdown. Starting as a bland adventurer you could become either entirely good or entirely evil through the actions committed during a quest. The ending however leaves something to be desired, and they could have done with a few more reasons to openly explore. For a sandbox RPG, it was surprisingly linear.
Gameboy Advance – Yup, no DS games. I imagine soon, with the release of the new Pokemon game, and the surprising announcement of Dragon Quest IX coming exclusively to the DS, the RPG options there will explode, but for now your best bet in the RPG realm on handhelds is with the Gameboy Advance. Here are a few of the best.
Well, that should be enough to get you started in the creation of your game. The most important thing to remember once youve gotten this far is that you need to complete your game. When you get to this stage you will always have a huge number of things that you wish to change, fix etc. but youll get a great feeling from knowing that it is, in its way, finished.
1. Golden Sun – It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not legendary. First off, the gameplay is top notch. The battle system is built around a simple premise and sticks with it, but it’s still fun. The story is nothing special but it reminded me a lot of the 8-bit glory days, keeping me involved without making it impossible to keep up when I have to turn the game off every 20 minutes. Solid play and go action
You may want to discover more research here on How To Draw All Sonic Characters and also How To Draw Super Sonic Step By Step.
