A Game For My Wife

Rather than tell my whole history with RPG Maker, I'd like to talk about my most recent experience with it. I'd been wanting to get back into using some form of RPG Maker for a while now, but after hearing that Ace was coming out, decided to wait. The new features sounded very cool and I thought if I'm going to get back into this, I might as well do so with the best version available.

In early July, I downloaded the program and began re-teaching myself how to do everything. Right away, I was struck with an awesome idea... for my first project in Ace, I would make a game for my wife's upcoming 30th birthday.

This was an ambitious idea insofar as I haven't tinkered with RPG Maker in half a decade and was pretty rusty. In theory though, it sounded fun, both for me to assemble and for her to play. This gave me a window of about three and a half months to think of a basic game, make maps, populate it and test it. I decided to go with the base tilesets because this didn't seem like a good time to mess around with something too unfamiliar.

The obligatory mine cart level.

The basic idea was to make a large building that served as a hub for a game about exploration and simple puzzles, wherein she would find clues that revealed the whereabouts of her birthday presents in real life. The scavenger hunt aspect was cute, but ultimately, my main goal was to get birthday messages from as many of her friends and family as possible and put them in the game.

I got to work and immediately found it very easy to pick up the map-making again. I started with a vague plan to have a three floor mansion with three or four areas per floor, a basement and vast underground area, and a small adjacent town. Since the game was based around exploration rather than narrative, it was necessary to make all points accessible, yet equally survivable at all times, which meant tailoring the fights to be either escapable or beaten with only the main character.

Speaking of characters, I also put sixteen of her favorite fictional characters in the game to serve as party members. Malcom Reynolds, Repairman Jack, Wheatley, Indiana Jones, Arya Stark, Dr Horrible, Jack Sparrow, Eric Northman, Sherlock Holmes, Dagny Taggart...

Other small features around the game:

• a gallery that brings up pictures of my wife's favorite things when you click the paintings
• a music and picture slideshow memorial for her dog that passed away a few years ago
• coordination mini-games, like avoiding spikes, boulders or flames, or chasing kids around
• cognitive mini-games where you solve riddles or push blocks
• a chess game where you fight the pieces instead of play chess

All party guests assembled.

In the end, the game wasn't as polished as I'd intended, but I finished it on time, everything pretty much worked as intended and it made her happy enough to cry when she listened to all of her friends and family sending their love. Shockingly, she had no idea I'd made her a game until I presented it to her. She had a great day, and that's all I really wanted. In the meantime, I can't wait to start my next project. I don't know what it will be yet, but half the fun is figuring out where to go next.