Everyone is aware that story-driven games created with RPGmaker, despite lacking polished graphics and cutscenes, have carved out a niche in today's market solely with their pixel art style. The fact that even the release of an HD version, which offers no innovation in gameplay or story, can still garner a substantial fanbase and attention, speaks volumes about the unique appeal of narrative games produced with RPGmaker.

As a developer with over 400+ hours of RPGmaker project experience, I would like to take this opportunity to analyze the characteristics and advantages of narrative games made with RPGmaker.

Extremely simple gameplay and classic pixel art style

Whether it's "To the Moon" or "Finding Paradise," the interaction in these narrative RPGs is very straightforward. Often, the entire game only requires one interaction key; players only need to move and interact, which essentially means using basic dialogue exchanges to drive the story forward. Most of the interactive animations in the game are also directly implemented through the game engine, rather than through special effects CG, etc.

As for the game's art style, it follows the pixelated style that comes with RPGmaker. Many of the game's scenes are also built using materials included with the engine. Although the grid-based layout is apparent, the overall art style of the game is quite consistent.

At first glance, these points may not seem like advantages in game storytelling and might even appear more restrictive compared to modern narrative games. Plus, there's little in the way of gameplay innovation. However, these aspects have laid the groundwork for porting the game to mobile platforms, while also lowering the entry barrier to the game to the minimum. The game has virtually no learning cost; one just needs to control character movement and dialogue.

In fact, such simple gameplay and art style have not posed significant obstacles to the narrative aspect of the game; on the contrary, they have attracted a large number of RPG enthusiasts and players who are fond of story-driven games. The core goal of these games is quite straightforward: to present players with a layered story or narrative.

While we often emphasize the importance of gameplay innovation and the construction of core mechanics in games, these RPGmaker story-driven RPGs focus on the game's narrative and storytelling. Strictly speaking, the gameplay design of these games should serve the story. Overly complex or innovative gameplay is not suitable for these types of games and may even detract from the main narrative focus.

Alternatively, it can be said that the difference between these types of games and most visual media on the market (such as interactive visual novels, online short dramas) is not so distinct. Their primary purpose is to deliver narrative content to the user. However, framing them within the context of a game still enhances the player's sense of immersion and overall experience.

Unconstrained by the particularities of the game engine that could greatly limit gameplay expansion, the focus shifts to further exploration of the story and narrative

RPGmaker, known as a beginner-friendly game engine, is well-known among most game developers. Even today, there are quite a few individual creators and game studios within the game development community that use RPGmaker as their primary development engine. Freebird Games, the studio behind "To the Moon," is one such example.

In the RPGmaker engine, game creators do not need to do much game programming. Instead, they can use the event system designed within the game engine. Game creators can set different events within the game objects to complete the interactive content between game characters and players.

Certainly, to enhance the innovation and playability of games, RPGmaker supports the creation of custom plugins and scripts by users. However, as we can see from the earlier introduction, RPGmaker aims to lower the entry barrier for game creation to some extent, rather than using the engine to achieve more advanced interactions and designs.

The advantage of the RPGmaker engine is that it raises the floor for game creation while lowering the ceiling. This means that while RPGmaker comes with a fairly comprehensive set of game development tools, its very completeness can lead to formulaic and generic RPGmaker games, making it difficult to achieve significant innovation and breakthroughs in game mechanics and gameplay.

Yet, it is precisely these constraints that allow more and more game creators to easily produce their own works, while also ensuring a level of completion. However, this also raises players' expectations regarding the quality of the work, especially the quality of the narrative.

Although RPGmaker may not be suitable for producing larger-scale works, it is more than sufficient for small to medium-sized narrative games. In reality, many game creators have great scripts and ideas but struggle to realize them, and there is a high demand for narrative games in the current market. The advent of RPGmaker has built a bridge between game creators and their players, and the success of various RPGmaker story-driven games has proven to us that an excellent game narrative is the main guarantee of a successful RPGmaker game, while gameplay is secondary.

Concise and profound

As previously mentioned, one of the weaknesses of RPGmaker story-driven games is the lack of better visual feedback (visual effects), and there needs to be considerable effort put into narrative design to motivate players to continue playing. Moreover, the majority of RPGmaker games are not large in scale and tend to be more like short narrative pieces, which means authors need to master the narrative pacing of the game to make it compact and profound with significant meaning.

Due to the particularities of the RPGMaker engine, it has a dedicated player base and market, and making blind changes could risk losing the original players. My idea is to provide players with more sensory experiences to enhance the immersion of the game (such as art style, music, and sound effects), without changing the existing gameplay and narrative modes. The most important aspect is to polish the game's script and narrative style further, as this is the core of RPGmaker's story-driven games.

The domestic game "Firework" is an excellent attempt at exploring RPGmaker story-driven games. While maintaining the basic interaction mechanics of RPGmaker, the game has entirely redrawn assets and set appropriate collision volumes to achieve a 2D narrative experience. However, the core reason for its success is still the excellent script and narrative arrangement by the game's author, Yueliang Zhanzhang. RPGmaker merely helped him transform his ideas into a tangible work.

RPGmaker story-driven games do not seek innovation and interaction in gameplay and interaction as many game developers on the market do, but instead simplify gameplay to highlight the game's narrative content and pacing.

This approach can also be applied to other game genres, where developers can subtract from gameplay and mechanics, and invest more in polishing narratives and plots. Particularly in games with more complex gameplay, such as action-adventure titles, developers can try to separate the narrative aspects from the gameplay aspects. By adding to the gameplay part (mechanics, systems) and simplifying the narrative experience part (storytelling), they can cater to both core gamers (who focus on mechanics and systems) and story-driven players (who focus on narrative). This could potentially increase the game's competitiveness in the market.