DEVELOPER(S): Froach Club
ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003
GENRE: Story-exploration
SUMMARY: Melon Journey 2 is a story-exploration game about revisiting a town full of adorable animals with eccentric personalities. Yet under its cute and nostalgic surface lies a dark tale of crime and corruption...
Play as Honeydew, an employee of a huge melon factory, and travel to Hog Town where melons are illegal. While searching for a missing friend, you'll have to explore the town and its surrounding areas, and speak with suspicious characters in dangerous situations to uncover the truth.
Download the demo from the discord server here!
Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!
Introduce yourself!
We're Froach Club! (Mario - @markeryjane, Karolina - @minipete, & Simon - @carpetbones) Our CEO is rude little roach who goes by the name of Froach. We've all been making games together and separately for a quite a while now and we're currently working on our magnum opus... To see our other games check out froachclub.itch.io & carpetbones.itch.io
What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially?
*Froach Club: Melon Journey 2 is a story of crime and political corruption in a town where melons are outlawed. It's a sequel to our (Mario & Karolina) very first game we ever made back in 2012. Back then we had no idea what we were doing and were pretty awful at using RPG Maker 2003, so we had the idea to do kind of a remaster of the game. We accidentally expanded it so much though that it became a huge, fully-formed sequel.
How long have you been working on your project?
*FC: Almost 2 years now.
Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project?
*FC: Columbo, The Big Sleep, Chulip, Hamtaro Ham Ham Heartbreak, Kino's Journey, Twin Peaks, and Shenmue!
Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?
*FC: This is our first real large-scale project, spanning multiple years of development, so staying organized was a huge challenge. At first we would just work on whatever we felt like, jumping from one part of the game to another. But once Simon became more involved in the project, he taught us his amazing organization skills and we learned how to use to-do lists efficiently and and keep our files straight. And now that we have, things go much more smoothly.
Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept?
*FC: We started with a really bare-bones story, and as we built up the world by adding more characters, side-quests, and subplots to the main storyline, the game’s scope began to grow. The world of Melon Journey 2 is now much more detailed and immersive than we originally imagined.
What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone?
*FC: Back in 2012, when Melon Journey 1 came out, we were just a two person team (Mario and Karolina). We continued making games together for a few years until we started calling ourselves Froach Club and added our 3rd member, Simon. We worked together on u1f439 (https://carpetbones.itch.io/u1f439) and Fish Fly Fever (https://froachclub.itch.io/fish-fly-fever) and now Melon Journey 2!
What is the best part of developing a game?
*Mario: Making the music, when a scene comes together and the music fits the tone perfectly it's really satisfying.
Karolina: Coming up with crazy ideas in the beginning and thinking of all the possibilities!
Simon: Creating any form of a dense or rich world for people to interact with or experience.
Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing?
*FC: Back when we started out, we played a lot of RPG Maker games on rpgmaker.net and it was a big source of inspiration because it helped us feel like our ideas were doable without any previous knowledge of programming or game making.
Yume Nikki in particular gave us a lot of ideas on how to make the most out of RPG Maker 2003, like hacking together menus out of pictures, and creating complex animations using multiple charsets.
Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?)
*Mario: Bailey is my self-insert character kinda.
Karolina: Lily. She has really strict Russian parents (who are actually based on mine) and she has a hard time finding a place where she feels like she truly belongs. She goes through a lot but never truly stops caring about what she believes in.
Simon: I actually am Ham Ghost Jr.
Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently?
*FC: At some point the project kind of outgrew RPGMaker 2003 and we really regretted using it, but we've come to appreciate the limitations and they've helped to shape the game in some ways so we regret it less now, especially since discovering easyRPG which we're using to port the game!
Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is?
*FC: We like to joke about making Melon Journey 3D, but who knows, it might actually happen one day! We are leaving the ending of MJ2 a little bit open ended~
What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project?
*Mario: Being able to start a new project. Usually by the end of one project the only thing motivating me is getting it out of the way so we can start on the next thing.
Karolina: Seeing if people enjoy our game! I dream about people making fanart and silly deep lore videos. That would seriously make everything 100% worth it.
Simon: I cannot wait to get started on a new (maybe even bigger) project!
Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?
*FC: All three of us have an intense fear of something going horribly wrong on the day of the release. That's honestly the scariest part of making a game - saying that you're officially finished with it.
Do you have any advice for upcoming devs?
*FC: Try your best to get your game done and limit the scope! Even if it's not perfect or exactly like how you imagined it, the experience and growth you get from releasing a game is the most important thing.
Question from last month's featured dev @midnighttrain-project: What do you value most in a game? (story, gameplay, art,...) Is that an important aspect of your game?
*Mario: I think the interplay of the elements of a game is more important than what the individual parts are like on their own. Like, a simple animation can be transformed by adding a really good sound effect to it, so it's hard to separate elements or say that I value one more than the other.
Karolina: I value the story most in games. Even when the art or gameplay is great, if there are glaring plot holes I always spend too much time focusing on them and get pulled out of the experience. That's why we spent so much time making a super well thought-out world and characters for MJ2!
Simon: I really enjoy gameplay over most parts of any game, especially if the gameplay is well designed and interesting.
We mods would like to thank Froach Club for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!
Remember to check out Melon Journey 2 if you haven’t already! See you next month!
Melon Journey by @minipete and co. is fantastic! I love the graphics, the music, the witty dialogue... everybody please go download and play it (for free, or name your price!), and favorite Melon Journey 2 on Steam! It’s my most anticipated game of the year, and that’s for sure. (Spot the Froach!)
