i know this game was made in rm2k3 but im very curious on the process!! i love this game very much and it has inspired me greatly. ive only made tiny games in the newer version of RM. How did u do it??
This is a big question, so I’ve been sitting on this one for a while so I can answer it properly (sorry anon). I’m not sure what you would like me to focus on specifically, but I would say the rough development journey went like this:
1. Prototype.
Grimm’s Hollow started off as me figuring out what mechanics I could implement in RM2K3 using the picture feature. So at first I made a QTE and a skill tree, but in order to test it out I made some playable fights using those mechanics. This was the prototype - many of those fights carried on to the first cave of Grimm’s Hollow.
This is what the prototype looked like (really rough gif):
It’s all just default RM2K3 assets. No story, nothing but the core gameplay mechanics. But I knew I wanted to explore a “spooky” setting, so that’s why you have stuff like ghost themed skills in that gif. (I’m not posting what the skill tree looked like because it’s very cursed).
2. Story
From there, I started thinking of a plot, so I did a few sketches and wrote a few outlines, then picked one and refined it.
3. Writing and implementation
I then wrote some of the game’s opening scenes. Once that was done, I started making the maps, the character face sets, the system menus, the player sprites, dialogue boxes, and other basic graphical tidbits required for the game’s opening cutscene. Once I had all the resources, I implemented the scene in-game.
Everything from that point on was a mixture of:
1. Writing the scene.
2. Creating necessary graphics for that scene.
3. Implementing in game.
4. Playtesting it. (Pro tip: RM2K3 has a built in debug console for playtesting mode. For centuries, I did not know this. You just have to press F9. Also, you can skip dialogue boxes by holding Shift.)
You can mix it up - sometimes I would write like 10 pages before doing the next bit, or sometimes I would create a bunch of graphics before something else… there’s really no shortage of things to do!
4. Devblog
I started this halfway through development. For me, dev blogs are a little time consuming to upkeep and I preferred to spend more time making my game, so I started this about only somewhat over halfway through development so I could inform people about my game. For others though, devblogs are very useful diaries to keep track of their progress, so it depends on the person! At this stage, I also started working with Natbird and Hibarist for the game’s music.
5. Testing
This is the most important bit, and I made the grave mistake of rushing it. I asked plenty of people to playtest the game and record their playthrough, then fixed what I saw, patched it, rinse, repeat for a month. What I didn’t do enough of, however, is playtest through the entire game myself - and this was partially because I was feeling very burnt out, but had a deadline to release the game soon. Feedback and testing is important, and really the earlier you get feedback the better. (Important note: your game does not need to be completed in order for you to get feedback from someone!)
6. Final
Really anon, starting with small games isn’t bad at all. If anything, it’s important. At the end of the day, the game can be beat in slightly over an hour - but I tried my best to make that hour fun instead of making it longer.
I hope this helped, and good luck on your development journey!