New game in the works? Big if true.

I've been working on game development ideas for quite a while, on and off. I have a few things boiling in a pot on a back burner, but I've finally shifted my focus to working on one of them closer to full-time (in balance with my website/blog/writing projects) and bring it to fruition.

Moving forward I'll be posting about the game with dev logs, previews, and anything else I can think of, referring to it for now as Project Gaia, or just Gaia for short. Don't let this give an aggrandized view of what this project is, it's an indie RPG Maker title by yours truly, ahaha! It wouldn't make me unique to say that I'm inspired by the Mother series, Toby Fox's works, and several similar examples... so I won't say it :3

Instead, I will say a little bit about my approach to development, some of my more introductory ideas (so as to avoid spoilers for the WIP story), and where I plan to take it as I go.

My engine I'll be using is RPG Maker VX Ace, as that's the one I have. I also have 2003 and XP, but those would be for more niche projects with a smaller scale and more casual goal. More for fun that work, so to speak. I have Aseprite which I intend to experiment with for art, but I'll branch out if I need (and am open to suggestions for art programs that work well with RPG Maker). I have a program called Furnace, which I installed at the recommendation of a friend to experiment with music, and lets you emulate various console, handheld, and arcade soundchips. I think that could be fun to work around sound-wise, but obviously I'll have to look into other programs if I want a little more musical freedom.

To be perfectly honest: I have zero development experience, and all of my game design experience is hypothetical up to this point. I've been making ideas and concepts for games for years at this point, with only a few ever moving past the "Wouldn't that be cool?" stage of thought. This project happens to be one of the lucky few.

That said, I do expect this project to be a long one. I'm largely starting from scratch with little to no experience, so everything will be a learning opportunity along the way. Part of the reason I want to make project posts like this is to track my progress more tangibly, be able to show off what I'm working on as I go, and have a log to look back on at the end to see how long it took and far I came. I think those will be pretty valuable to me personally.

But hey, less me yapping and more about the game! I've always been interested in RPGs that don't take the fantasy approach. I'm a huge fantasy nerd, and a majority of my major creative writing projects take place in a fantasy world of my design, but for games I think there's plenty of fantasy RPGs, and so the ones that try new genres and settings tend to really shine. Obviously this is something that the Mother series does and does well, which is one of the reasons I love it so much, and is an inspiration for this project. You could call it a Mother-like at this point, though I suppose it remains to be seen how well that term will apply as the project evolves and develops more overtime. I want the maps you explore to be mostly urban, lots of sprawling cities and suburban towns that you can roam the streets of, maybe taking some River City inspirations there. Much like the Mother games, I want to have some nature areas in-between, highways to connect things together, bus routes, plenty of greenery and natural areas that can be explored as well. I don't have a firm grasp of any individual maps or locations in my mind right now, but that's generally the vibe I'm going for.

It takes inspiration from the Mother series again in the form of its turn-based combat with psychic inspirations. I want to lean into mixing the Mother series' more sci-fi interpretation of magic with PK/PSI, and add in a little bit of more classic fantasy magic as well, i.e. the characters are indeed psychic, but that power is certainly magic and not science. I want it to play into the story in a major way, showing the moment the characters receive their powers, how they grow over time, and why it's important that they gain and use them. I'll wait until I have a better idea of how to explain it in a non-spoilery way, but it is related to the project title, Gaia.

I'm still on the fence about the theming of the antagonists in Project Gaia. My gut tells me to go for the aliens approach like EarthBound, lean into the earthy themes of Gaia by introducing extraterrestrials, but also given that my PK is related to magic it would also seem right to have supernatural and/or mythical themes for the antagonist(s). Perhaps there's a way to better balance these two ideas that the way it's floating around my mind right now, but that is an aspect of Project Gaia that is still very up in the air as the story starts to leave the amorphous phase and take a more clear shape.

The main characters are actually a huge toss-up right now as well. This specific iteration started as a one-off bit using characters from another property (I'm not tellin' :P) and they're still technically in place now. I'm so used to them filling those character roles for both gameplay and writing purposes, it may take a while to make characters of my own that fit those roles. Until then, I'm happy to use the pre-existing fandom characters as placeholders. I don't want this to be a fangame, so eventually I will likely have to sub them out.

Unless some weird miracle happens and stars align and I'm just allowed to use these characters for no reason lmao

Finally, let's talk writing, and a little bit of story (a very little bit). My aim is to blend the humor and wit of writing from things like Toby Fox's body of works, the Mother series, etc. with the heartfelt moments and messages of something like Mother 3. I don't want the tone to be deathly serious at all times, because life for the most part isn't that way either. Even when things are falling apart, when you go out with your friends, the bad can start to fade to the background for a while, and the focus turns to your friends and the time you spend together. I want to make those kind of moments shine through, that even when it feels like the world is ending, your friend will still crack a stupid joke that makes you snort, and you still split an order of fries four ways when there was really only enough for one. Those little moments can be just as important as the grandest face-off against The Big Evil Overlord, and I want these parts to highlight each other, not overshadow one another.

The general plot revolves around these four friends (the playable party) who are sent on a quest by Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, to reunite their power with the earth's and empower Gaia to defend the Earth itself. I intend to format this as a series of roadtrips, some longer than others, that start in their suburban home town, and extend outward in all directions to other towns, cities, regions, etc. These roadtrips can more or less be considered the "chapters" of the game, though most things like side quests or optional content will be available whenever, it's just a matter of backtracking if you skip it during the plot-relevant visit to that area (assuming the plot took you to that spot in the first place). I want to promote exploration and a sort of spontaneous spirit of adventure that I associate with memories of traveling with friends and going out together. Plans tend to fall apart pretty easily, but not always in a bad way; sometimes it's because a sudden opportunity to explore came up, and you decide to take it and look around where you usually wouldn't. That spirit of "Why don't we stop here for a bit and see what there is to see?" is so valuable to those memories I have, and it's something I want the characters, story, and world design of this game to represent.

This devlog is something like a road trip, as I move from point A to point B in the process of making this game a reality. I'm very passionate about this project, and I hope that passion will shine through in the game itself, and in the posts I write about it. I hope you all will be willing to go on this roadtrip with me!

~ Alex Amelia Pine

This post is a part of Project Gaia