Created by: Polly
Maps Created by: John
Sexy Sax Music by: Dr.SaxLove

So, so, so much to say about a game that literally came together in the span of one week...

I've been playing with RPG Maker since I first got my hands on a pirated copy of RPG Maker 95 at a friend's house in 1998. I bought RPG Maker on PSX in 2000, I spent untold hours with Don Miguel's translation of RPG Maker 2000, and I was there when RPG Maker 2003 got a quick and dirty fan translation shortly after its release. I even played a lot with O.H.R.R.P.G.C.E., but I am in no way an artist, and at the time the coding was just a little much for me to wrap my head around.

It was always a fun tool to play around and dream big with, but even with all the hours I spent learning the systems, I only ever completed a project on the PSX version, and that thing's locked to a 20+ year old memory card that could have already failed by the time I'm writing this. It's almost a running gag with RPG Maker users at this point that games rarely ever get past the idea or really elaborate demo stage. I've been just as guilty. It's almost always a case of over-scoping, which will be the death of any pie-in-the-sky dream project.

The solution? Game jams! They're a great way to keep your scope down, because you're often on fairly short deadlines to put something out. They're conducive to on the spot creativity and cute smaller games that I think feature a very concentrated dose of someone's gamedev voice. My only experience with game jamming prior to this game was Operation K.A.T.B. for Ruin Jam back in 2014.

In early February, John got bulled into kicking up his own game jam, the Cookie Cutter RM2k3 Jam. As the title implies, it's a gamejam where devs were tasked to create a game in RPG Maker 2003, with the catch being you could only use the maps provided in the template project.

I scoffed at this at first because, boy howdy, do I not like RPG Maker 2003. For the brevity of this piece I'll keep my nuanced thoughts on that to myself, but a lot of it is to do with hating the combat system and the new artistic direction some of the default assets had taken. But man, oh man... that combat system...

Using the 2k face sprites WAS allowed (and they were provided for the jam), but I decided to keep things in the spirit of it being an RM2k3 jam as much as possible.

John also ended up somehow lucking into RPG Maker 2003 going on sale for a crisp $2 shortly after the event started, which suddenly opened up access to lots of people making games.

I had no intention of participating largely due to my issues with RM2k3, but one morning, I jumped on the $2 sale and opened the template maps up and the idea for this game just immediately hit me.

A game about hating RPG Maker 2003 and being forced to be inside of a game created with it. In a way I guess this game's narrator and Tessa are stand-ins for John and myself.

That was the base idea, and I wrote the opening scene off-the-cuff of Tessa (name chosen completely at random) waking up and being forced into having to complete a game made in RM2k3, and not being allowed to leave the house she was in until she inspected all the items in the room.

The jokes and character tone flowed pretty immediately. I felt that writing inspiration again that I'd felt when writing Her Lullaby and Afterward. Everything I typed in just felt right. Once I'd finished the scene where the antagonist is introduced, I knew I was bought in.

The structure of the game started taking shape in my mind. I had a rough idea of what I wanted every area in the game to be and planned to use every map provided. I needed to think of ways to keep leading the player around, dropping some carrots on sticks here and there, and then solving those problems with satisfying (read: stupid) solutions.

I wish I could tell you that I planned any part of this game in any way, but I'm being 255% honest with you in that this game was entirely improv. From the dialogue to the solutions to progress through the game, I just let my mind run free on the playground John had provided and let the game start to take its own shape. I knew the tone I wanted to write with, and I had a rough idea of how I wanted the game to end, but every step along the way was either something that hit me off-the-cuff while I was testing things in the editor or just random thoughts I'd have in the shower or working on something else. I wasn't entirely sure it'd all fit together the way that I think it ultimately does.

Being an RPG, I still wanted to have combat, despite me hating RM2k3's combat. My solution to the problem was to just strip as much out of it as I could to make it as mechanically shallow as possible, but have all of the encounters still feel like they're close fights, despite the fact that you can auto-battle through most of them.

As for approaching the characters, quests, and dungeon aspects, the question I kept asking myself was, "Can this be dumber?" This led to some of my favorite lines being written, Coffee Joe and his hot air balloon becoming a thing, and other one-off gags like going to the tower before the finale.

There's some great character stuff in here I really like a lot too. I'm not sure how well it came across, but Dark Dead Emperor Brad is actually deaf. He never responds directly to Tessa and simply monologues at her, and even mentions her words falling on "deaf and dead ears". He also never hears her banging on the door to the tower or when she really sets things off during the final dungeon.

Victorialettaberg ended up being something I dove into way deeper than I intended to. She was meant to be a joke character that if you talked to her at every point during the story that you could, you'd get a silly gag cheesecake "sexy" scene at the end. The more I kept writing Tessa and Victorialettaberg's interactions though, the more I just started liking their dynamic and actually had the big brain idea to add a hook in my dumb jokey game that could mean something more down the line. (Yes, I do plan on making an entire game about these two now.) I do wish I'd dropped a few more hints in Victoria's lines prior to her reveal in the final boss fight and the epilogue, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.

I guess that's just how I feel about everything though. I'm just over the moon with this game. I think it's one of the best things I've created. I don't know HOW this game came out of me in a week. When I started, I dedicated every. single. second. of free time I had to its creation, adding dialogue and jokes all the way up through the morning it was finally released. And when I was finished and playtested it the first time, it felt tight as hell and the pacing was absolutely perfect.

I think what I got most out of creating this game is that for one whole week, I was unplugged from the awfulness of the world in service of creating something centered entirely on my completely unhinged sense of humor that I hope makes somebody's day a little better.

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