RPG Maker RPG MakerI absolutely love RPG Maker and seeing what people make with it. XP is my true love, but I'm not picky. In fact, I've bundled in a few WOLF RPG Editor games on this page, since they're often listed alongside RPG Maker titles.
Despite this fondness, I spent a long time taking about as long to play RPG Maker games as it took me to make them, AKA about one every five years. To rectify that, I've been making a point to play more of them more often. This page is to catalogue the RPG Maker* games I've played (or watched someone else play), as well as my thoughts on them!
My special interest and favorite RPG Maker games of all time. RPG Maker fantasy at its best: goofy, with a lot of charm and heart. I love the way these games use the RPG Maker XP engine, especially when it comes to their mapping. The use of parallaxes in the first game in particular are absolutely gorgeous.
Thoughts on each individual game to come in my Aveyond shrine!
I was absolutely blown away by this game and its storytelling. Despite its focus on themes that don't tend to pull at my heartstrings - namely, parent/motherhood - this game had me crying by the end of it.
This game is gorgeous, atmospheric, and emotional - I was genuinely surprised by who ended up being at the top of the stairway, and it really touched my heart. The developer said it was intended as a relaxing experience and absolutely hit it out of the park.
When I played Yume Nikki, I immediately understood why everyone adores this game. There's something so eerie and evocative about this game that immediately drew me in. I love the use of parallax backgrounds to create such surreal, dreamlike environments. I really felt a sense of success every time I was able to find an effect, too.
I also really respect and appreciate how pared down and randomized this game is. It really shook up my perspective of game design: it made me rethink what makes a game fun and reconsider my own approach to game development. It's obvious why this has spawned dozens of fangames; I'll probably try some of them out later.
Five stars with a huge caveat, because I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to... almost anyone, but. I went into this game expecting it to be a miserable slog that would teach me important things about game design and instead ended up finding it incredibly engaging and fun in a way I've never experienced before. Watching the dungeon unfold and fit together was equal parts satisfying and genuinely exciting to me. I've only gotten one ending so far, but I intend to play more as soon as I'm ready to settle back into its fucked up save system.
I love a good death game, and this is an excellent fucking death game. If you've heard of the term "ludonarrative dissonance", YTTD has the opposite - some of the best ludonarrative cohesion I've ever experienced in a game. The gameplay is absolutely phenomenal, and extremely unique for an RPG Maker game. It's hard for me to settle my thoughts on the story, especially since as of writing this only half of part 3 has been released, but I've really enjoyed it so far and am excited to see where it goes.
Another review described this game as the best use of real time combat in an RPG Maker Game they'd seen, and I absolutely agree. I also think it's the best use of the default RPG Maker VX-style graphics I've ever seen - while the blocky, square shapes are often criticized for being unnatural and claustrophobic, in Eternal Senia that feeling enhanced the experience rather than taking me out of it.
This game also made me bawl like a baby each of the three times I played it. I genuinely loved the characters and story.
Playing Pom Gets Wi-Fi over a decade after its release was an experience, but definitely a positive one. I found myself unexpectedly moved by the good ending, especially as someone whose made recent efforts to get out of my online shell. I think I unexpectedly played this at exactly the right time for me.
This is a game I've watched multiple playthroughs of, rather than play myself.
This game is not fucking fair, in a way that made me reconsider game design. I'm too much of a scaredy cat (pun unintended) to play it myself, but I really respect it. It makes me wish I could steel myself to play it.
I fucking love the ending. It is, as often noted, one of the most shocking and heartbreaking twists I've ever seen in a video game.
I feel weird about its use of terminal illness/disability, in that I feel like I should dislike it, given the horror genre's mistreatment of disabled people, but as a cancer survivor, I absolutely love terminally ill characters who turn desperate and do whatever they can to get a chance at life. I spent a long time with my only exposure to my illness in media being characters lamenting that treatment was too horrible to be any better than death, and so I get a lot of satisfaction and resonance over characters going "no! I'm going to do whatever I can to live!"
Ultimately the ending, from the way the twist recontextualizes to game to Ellen's absolute conviction, is incredibly satisfying to me, as tragic as it is.
Short and sweet and packs an emotional punch.
This game was very atmospheric - the tilesets are pretty and the maps are put together in really appealing ways, and the music is gorgeous. Sound effects heighten the experience by adding detail to the world - water drips only play as you approach the droplets, for examples, or unearthly groaning plays in maps as spirits appear.
The story is simple and straightforward, but very compelling, especially as you unlock memories. They add a depth to Orea and Ceress's relationship, fleshing it out as you go through the game, even though only you only control Ceress as you do.
The puzzles were easy enough, with most of them feeling more like an excuse to just explore the world of the game, but frankly it was such a stunning one I was very satisfied to do so. Heads up for a chase scene.
Stargazer is charming, warm, and funny, with a great spin on the RPG Maker XP battle system and unique maps. The story revolved around a central romance, where the majority of the game is driven by the leads' shared bonding, not the grand quest the player can see rumbling in the background.
The gameplay was fantastic, taking exactly what I love about RPG Maker XP and giving it personal flare. The battle system is strategic without being overwhelming, and serves as an excellent storytelling and characterization tool. The maps emphasized elevation in a way that both made for a really fun exploration experience, and mimicked the game's focus on summits really well. There are times when you get to interact with the map in unique ways, slowly learning new ways to explore an area, which are some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.
My biggest complaints are with the writing. Some of the character dynamics were inconsistent, and some of the jokes became grating when they were plot relevant for long stretches of the game. I also didn't feel like that final quest delivered very well.
A bite-sized, Christmas-themed version of Stargazer's humor and puzzles. It swaps out the heart for more meta jokes, and Mel from Aveyond. For a smaller game, it's a worthy tradeoff. I almost called this "scaled-back", but it's worth noting that the jam-packed puzzles make this game delightfully dense.
Overall, this was a really cute and fun game. The central love story was sweet, although there were some opportunities for drama and complexity that I felt like got skirted over. The other characters were also compelling, and there was one twist that genuinely got me!
Combat was more complex than I was expecting, in a good way - I'm used to RPGs, especially in RPG Maker, giving you obvious best choices for weapon and gear, but almost every piece of equipment in this game had trade-offs, which made strategizing way more fun.
I had my issues with a few aspects of gameplay and a couple one-off jokes that I felt weakened the story and characters, but overall this was a great time.
This was a really interesting little game. The quick time events were a little frustrating for me, but the gameplay was very forgiving, and it was a really interesting way of showing magic. The story was intriguing and it was fun to watch things click together, both mentally and literally through the clue system.
A straightforward but charming game featuring an admittedly adorable party.
This is a game I watched someone play, rather than play myself.
Pocket Mirror is a gorgeous game with stunning backgrounds where every world feels truly unique. However, its stunning veneer feels like it covers very little actual substance.
The whole game feels like it's building to a tragic mystery, but it never pays off. The ending only hints at a conclusion that to me relied too much on stock tropes about DID to be compelling.
A cute but very slow game, despite its short length. The characters skewed a bit too young-and-cutesy for my tastes.
I wanted to love this game. The concept was fantastic and the art style was gorgeous. But the ending really soured the experience for me and felt like a romanticization of suicide.
I had expected this game to be more of a commentary on the creative process and parasocial relationships related to it from the description, but instead it was much more a heavy-handed metaphor for religious tolerance. There were a couple very funny meta jokes in there that I appreciated.
I do not like this game at all. I feel like this would have made more sense in a number of different mediums: visual novel, comic, movie. I'm not opposed to walking simulators, but To The Moon throws in random gameplay elements as if to prevent itself from being one. That would just function as a bandaid, though. I suspect I would have disliked the storyline no matter what. This comic summarizes the issues with the story better than I could.
