Rules - Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

@Jobhob I like the idea, wid ghosts goin' like "NOOO YOU TOOK MY HAT YOU SKUNK" :kaoluv: I wud just make sure the mechanic doesn't make fights a slog!

@TMS. Well, even if the plot is generic, if you can nail the atmosphere, it should still end up being a pretty good game. After all, people create games for different reasons. Yours might be more narrative focused, but is it a specific story that you need to tell so the plot is more important, or are you just making a game to flash out a bigger (and potentially multi-media) world? Since you are a published author, maybe the latter type might be useful for your existing audience to learn more about the world, or maybe even introduce new audience to it? It can even be a simple point and click adventure.

Personally, I like stats and mechanics, so my purpose is to focus on power system of my settings. I do plan to flash out the plot and setting, but at the end of the day, I am more interested in creating a power system that I may possibly one day put into a PnP kind of thing.

Good luck with your project! Stats and numbers are probably going to be the thing I enjoy least about making video games, since finding the right balance seems rather complicated, and I'm not mathematically minded.

As for my own theoretical project (assuming you're talking about the second one), my intention would be to tie it into other works eventually, though less with my "literary" fiction (which is all I have published at the moment) than with the JRPG-adjacent stuff I mentioned novelizing before turning it into games.

Anyway, at this point, I think my problem is that I don't really know exactly what I want to achieve with Darkness Calling (or whatever title I give it). You're right when you say that people need a reason for creating something, and I still need to define what that is. Thank you for commenting!

I need a name for my villain. He’s a demigod that was banished from the land above. He was the god of entertainment. He saw humans as toys and would torture and kill them. Disgusted, the other banished him into the infinite void. In that void, he discovered a large mass of dark matter. He used it to create the Eye of Enlightenment and Dark Nebula

He used them to envelop the world in darkness and seek a way to return to the heavens and get revenge on the gods.


I need a name for this dude. And I didn't want to make a whole thread for it, so.. please help me brainstorm. :rswt

Do you already have names for other characters in your game? Are you looking for invented names, or for existing names from mythology and other sources?

I’m looking for new names. I have names for everyone else in the game, but I just can’t figure it out. And I don’t want any mythology names.

It would be helpful to understand how you’ve named your other characters to make suitable suggestions for this one.

@Raycat2011 Zorbul, Yorbal, Amril, Gurlang, Mong Ang, Zergul, Gulzeg, Borlan, Borluun, Orbal Zuun, Maggash, Shugam, Mugash, Dung Mash, Klamarg, Grammoc, Brocard, Oglam, Catlec, Leng Oun, Ghisam, Örblek, Khamasur, Ru-Shul-Gin, Bragur, Volbrek, JUST TELL ME AM I EVEN IN THE BALLPARK HERE?! :kaoswt:

Hard to say without knowing what the tone of your game is, but if it were my game he would be "British". I just see him introducing himself as "British" with a heavy Afrikaans accent.

I think this is the right place to ask.
Generally speaking, for the idea I have the environment of this project is very broad. I've got around 7 main areas (5 maybe since two places will probably end up being minor areas), but I'm not sure if that's too much or just right.
Even yet, most of the areas I have written in concepts are sorta... natural...? I'm not sure how to word it, but one sticks out to me like a sore thumb but I'm not sure how to change it.

You have a kingdom (1), a sea/beach area (2), a rainforest (3), a place that is lack of a better word a void (4), a city in the clouds (5, and its previous place counting 6 but it might just act as a checkpoint area), and an amusement park. (7)
The amusement park sticks out to me, but I wasn't sure what else to replace it with. Does anyone have an ideas, or do you think it would be better to just keep the amusement park?

What is the general setting or world in which the game takes place? If it's a standard pseudo-medieval fantasy world, then yeah, an amusement park would be out of place. I don't know what you would replace it with that would have the same connotation, but maybe a fair/festival ground, or a mansion surrounded by pleasure gardens?

Hrmm, I'll probably do a fair/festival ground. I had plans for a sort of ruined mansion to be in the fourth area (the lack of better word void) so yea.... Thank you!!

It is definitely worth to develop and publish a small scale game for the sake of having done it and getting the experience along the way.
If you check out the only game I have published, its an RTP graphic only, no story roguelike. I developed it exactly to finally have published SOMETHING (because turns out even projects I thought of as "small scale, just to get my feet wet" are way more work than I anticipated and still varying degrees of unfinished).

That said your game should offer something to the player. Using RTP is completely fine. Not having a story is completely fine. Having simple and standard combat (or more general, simple and standard gameplay) is completely fine. Having all three of those isn't great when you at least want some people to play your game. Even when it is your practice project you should think what you want to focus on practicing and then put some effort into that area, because otherwise you aren't really gonna learn anything.

Thanks! You make a good point. I was just thinking to myself last night that I need to have at least some sort of vision or reason for making a game, even if it's a simple one confined to the RTP. As an author, when I see people on the internet say that they want to be a writer but don't know what to write about, what I want to tell them is that if they don't have anything to say they shouldn't be a writer. The same applies to my wanting to be a video game creator. I need to try and analyze what exactly it is I'm trying to achieve with my first game. Maybe there's something I can focus on with it that I hadn't intended to be a focus in my dream projects? I'll see what I can come up with.

Hello! So I have the idea of a simple mystery/combat game to get myself familiarized with RMXP (since it was free and all)
The plan is to make it a small 3 act story where each act the MC solving a different murder, switching back and forth between the real world (walking simulator, finding clues) and the monster world (because why not slash away some ghosts while we're at it?)
[Now that I have wrote this down, am I just inspired by the Persona games? lmao]
I do think I'll be using the pre-made sprites that came with the game (RTP they're called?); so I'm sticking with using the Towns and Town Ins tilesets, to keep the 'real' world a bit grounded, sure magic exists but the area the game takes place in is peaceful. As for the monster world, I want to keep it to abandoned-looking tilesets with ghosts, skeletons and the like; nothing too fantastical or medieval.

So what I wanted to ask was for some name suggestions. I'm hilariously awful at giving characters names.
The characters I have planned for act 1 are:
Victim 1, 50-55yo, mother, artist-inclined, scholar, likes symmetry
Son, 18-20yo, short-height scholar/college student
Maid, 30-40yo
Husband, 50-55yo, father, office-worker-like, stoic

What names or style of names would be appropiate for the scenario?

I take it you don't have a specific setting in mind? Because that'll probably be the biggest factor in naming characters. Is it set in our world or a fantasy world? If our world, what country?

Good point. Yes, I hadn't considered a precise world setting.
The vague idea I have is that the world is a mix where fantastical elements exist but aren't the focus of society (as to allow combat against the RTP monsters). More concrete than that I hadn't thought at all.

So doing some googling popped 'Urban fantasy' up, "placing supernatural elements in an approximation of a contemporary urban setting", and it dates back to the 30's. Which is Persona's genre, so every day is a learning day. The results that pop up seem to give characters real world names... I guess just using real-life names will work, after all.

What are some cool real-life names in English? These characters (Victim, Son, Husband, Maid) are only supporting cast/suspects, but I do expect to keep them around all three acts.

Since you've brought up Persona a fair bit, it might do you well to draw from the other ATLUS series Persona drew from early on: Devil summoner. It's a bit difficult to do, because the original game was never localized, but it features a line of detectives that solve supernatural crimes, the Kuzunohas.

Well, naturally what's considered cool varies from person to person. You might try looking at babynames.com or some similar site where you can search on names derived from certain languages, including English. You might find some that sound good to you. I sometimes browse sites of that kind for inspiration.

From the robots:
Certainly, here are some menacing names for such a deity:

1. Malgorth the Tormentor
2. Vortemus the Cruel
3. Azrath the Devourer
4. Nekros the Desecrator
5. Steve From Accounting
6. Morgrul the Enslaver
7. Xalvador the Malevolent
8. Drakulon the Vile
9. Thal'karoth the Abyssal
10. Zargoth the Dreadbringer
11. Grimnir the Soulrender