Gameplay video & downloadable game file

Below on the left is the gameplay video of version 2 of web of magic. On the right, when you click on the “download the game” image, your download will start automatically. Wait for the zip file to download, then unzip it and immediately inside the first folder just open the “game icon” and the game will run!

let’s break it down!

I’ll start with the basics of how I built the world in RPG Maker MV.

I started building the world with the vague idea that Maia (the main character) would be going from her village/town to the forest, through a cavern where a Siren lives, in order to get the herbs Maia’s grandmother needs. On the way back, Maia journeys through the forest and encounters an ogre, who then helps her go back to the town/village she came from.

Since the game was being made for a Game Jam and prior to that I hadn’t used RPG Maker, I decided to use the default maps provided and customized the characters through the character creator. I re-used the saved character files in order to save different facial expressions – happy, sad, excited, confused and so on.

let’s talk about the characters and their interactions

Me: How in the world am I supposed to add dialogue. Wait no. How do I move my character from outside the house to the village?!

*Starts looking up tutorials*

Me: It’s as simple as double clicking and hitting a few buttons and creating events?!

As you can see in the image above on the left, there are some dark translucent squares. Each of them is an event. These events were generally texts or observations and for slightly more complicated quest related parts, a variable or switch would be triggered by these small events.

The image on the right shows what the event looks like. The only difference in the switches used was whether it was a switch affecting things globally, or if it was a switch directly related to the object at that moment in time. 

now let’s talk about the crazy things that went into this game!

Literally no one:

Me: Let’s have an alternate win condition where people are forced into healing the NPCs they’re fighting and will die if they can’t heal and therefore save them!

Yes, I love making things more complicated than necessary.

This part had me stumbling for almost an entire day. Mostly because events within the enemy events don’t exactly get checked every second (as far as I understand). In order to actually change the default win condition, I used common events related to skills being used by the player in order to calculate how many times that skill was called and therefore what to do when the conditions I required were satisfied.

Depending on what happened based on these events, the enemy NPC would react differently – either they died, or they were saved, or the player died. These events then tied back into the game as side quests, where Maia’s grandmother discusses with Maia as to what she could have or should have done.

I created random small events like this which also affected the choices Maia made directly. For example, when you go to collect the Bora Bora herbs, depending on the events the players triggered, Maia will either pluck bunches, or she will heal the herbs and take the excess.

what’s next then?

Well, as I stated earlier, the secret side story is still under development. Apart from this, I do need to adequately test the game for bugs and fix them. I will be posting any updates by continuing here or in another page, to which I will provide a link!

Copyright © Anjali Shibu 2020. All rights reserved.