Mental Complex: An RPG-maker Horror Game

[cats-on-ice]

As the story is set in stone I'll post it here and edit this mess of names. For now I'll leave the incomplete list of names.

Director:
cats-on-ice

Second in Command:
sedron

Story:
raekuul
FluffiMasta
qazcake
sedron

Spriting:
cats-on-ice

Character Portraits:
cats-on-ice

Testing:
Zyglrox Odyssey
qazcake

Graphics:
pheonix
cats-on-ice

Mapping:
pheonix

General:
TheFinalSentinel


I'll be adding to the list, ya dig?
I've never actually done a collab before, so of course anyone with experience is especially welcome.

I'll include a couple screenshots from various rpg maker games for reference
Ib:

Mad Father:

Witch's House:

Yume Nikki:

Honestly we probably should've waited until the end of the project to organize who did what..

EDIT: also for future reference just in case, I'm usually offline most of the day from 7 am to 4 pm EST because school.

[raekuul]

Disclaimer: This is kind of on the heels of a bunch of us playing It Moves and Dreaming Mary late last night.

I'm tentatively willing to help with the story, depending on what direction general support wants to go. I don't do Atmospheric Terror well.

[cats-on-ice]

huh I forgot you went as raekuul on here. I guess I never really made that connection. Welcome poko.

also we'll decide on what direction when we get more people on board and their opinions.

[Ashan]

I made the final boss

[cats-on-ice]

you're hired

[Sorel]

I would love to help you with this project.

Anything related to story, characters and that kind of stuff would be what I'm best at. (Doesn't mean I'm a pro or something.)

Since I despise the horror genre a lot I rather would like to do a talkhaus RPG.

[ano0maly]

The main concern here is whether RPG Maker editing can be done across computers - meaning, it's designed to be edited per piece by multiple people and assembled or inserted together, without having to hand the entire project back and forth.

Considering how well Talkhaus Revolution went, I would suggest leaving out the RPG battle system entirely and just focus on exploration and adventure. The four games listed above do just that. They're about talking to people, solving puzzles and some running away from stuff.

[Sorel]

Basically a game like Clock Tower then?

[Leet]

The main concern here is whether RPG Maker editing can be done across computers - meaning, it's designed to be edited per piece by multiple people and assembled or inserted together, without having to hand the entire project back and forth.

Considering how well Talkhaus Revolution went, I would suggest leaving out the RPG battle system entirely and just focus on exploration and adventure. The four games listed above do just that. They're about talking to people, solving puzzles and some running away from stuff.

RPG maker collaboration can be easily done with Dropbox or something similar. If you don't use something like that I would imagine it would be pretty hard and time-consuming, due to how finnicky it can be with resources.

Also, yall going to need to choose a version of RPG maker. I suggest 2003 if only because it was never officially released in English, meaning that you can download it semi-dubiously. As opposed to newer versions, which you'd have to buy or download highly-dubiously.

[TheFinalSentinel]

And I'll probably just sit here throwing in my two-cents every-so-often.
Yeah, none of those things I find to be inherent talents for me. I'd like to think I have good story ideas, but they really come more in bursts of inspiration, "Man, I'd play that, that seems like a neat plot element, etc." They don't really come fluidly like I'd like them to.
...Yeah. I might have stuff to contribute, or maybe not. Gonna be watching this thread either way and we'll see what comes.

Two-cents: Theme? Horror does seem like a finicky genre, so my first instinct would be to say no to that. Never know if someone will come up with something good though.

[sedron]

I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute just because I don't know how much time I could set aside, but I'm super interested in working on something horror-related. I love both Ib and Yume Nikki, so doing something along those lines could be really, really fun.

[Kitet]

Um, I'm good at drawing.
Also I've made an RPGmaker 2k3 game before. I can't say I'm especially good at coding, so I can't like, modify the engine or anything, but I can work with the basics well enough.
Just saying, if you need help.

I figure a silly Talkhaus adventure game might be nice.

[cats-on-ice]

A couple things
-Yes we will be taking out the fighting engine, because I was never really a fan of that anyway.
-I'll add a general category for anyone just wanting to input and give ideas. Hell, maybe you can test it. I'll decide later on.
-Time is also a bit limited for myself as well, so I'm definitely flexible with the time of others as long as we don't lose complete motivation.

[Zygl]

I can neither write nor art to save my life, but I could perhaps test/proofread/something maybe idk. I'm deliberately being very non-committal here.
re: theme
Why not both? If you writer-types can write it well enough the mood dissonance would be pretty neat.
To be clear, I read "talkhaus-themed" as "with the talkhaus' characteristic sense of humor," not as having any specific thematic or story-based connection to the talkhaus or any associated works. And it wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing to write, whereas something like A2XT that's not at all serious in the slightest can just ooze talkhaus flavor all over the place for something like this to be even remotely unsettling rather than a parody of RPG Maker horror games or something would take a fair bit of subtlety.

[cats-on-ice]

I can neither write nor art to save my life, but I could perhaps test/proofread/something maybe idk. I'm deliberately being very non-committal here.
re: theme
Why not both? If you writer-types can write it well enough the mood dissonance would be pretty neat.
To be clear, I read "talkhaus-themed" as "with the talkhaus' characteristic sense of humor," not as having any specific thematic or story-based connection to the talkhaus or any associated works. And it wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing to write, whereas something like A2XT that's not at all serious in the slightest can just ooze talkhaus flavor all over the place for something like this to be even remotely unsettling rather than a parody of RPG Maker horror games or something would take a fair bit of subtlety.

I was thinking talkhaus themed as in either pretty humerous or having characters named and designed around talkhausers.
Misao does humor and horror pretty well.
Also if we were to do horror it wouldn't be jumpscare horror. That horror sucks eggs. I'm talking heavily atmospheric.
Or we could go Dreaming Mary style and make it extremely light hearted at first and have it get really, really dark.

[ano0maly]

I don't want to have another collab based directly on talkhausers, tbh. If we're going to have story writers, we could try going for a simple plot and settings, and an original cast with some basic characteristics.

I was just thinking that if this can be done well, it can be presented not so much as a silly talkhaus fan project, but more as an actual minigame standing on its own.

[cats-on-ice]

Ah gotcha. Sounds good then.
I hate that I'm leaning towards horror so much but I'm just really macabre and morbid. Of course if the majority thinks it shouldn't be horror I'll go with it.

[Leet]

we can do a creepy weird game without it being literally a horror game

yume nikki isnt a horror game really imo, but it certainly has its disturbing moments. mostly just surreal though.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

we can do a creepy weird game without it being literally a horror game

yume nikki isnt a horror game really imo, but it certainly has its disturbing moments. mostly just surreal though.

Yes, creepy is easy to do.

[sedron]

I agree with ano0omaly about not basing it on Talkhausers. It'll be easier to write something interesting with the freedom to create characters wholesale, and if you wanna go the creepy/scary route you're way better off that way.

I think we'd be pretty good at surreal, atmospheric horror too. It doesn't have to be devoid of humor or anything, but I'd love to help work on something dark.

[cats-on-ice]

Ahh I like it.
So like Yume Nikki style surrealism? Or creepier? Or less creepy?
Maybe I should play it again to get a better feel for it..

I guess we can rule out talkhaus themed.

What do you guys think of puzzles? I think it goes hand in hand with the genre. Better than the looping maps anyway.

[Leet]

as i said on the twitter thread, but am repeating here, yume nikki-esque exploration really is the best way to do an rpg maker collaboration. due to the nonlinearity, you can put in new content anywhere - you don't have to organize areas in a sequence, you can just add connections to previous areas, linking to any new stuff that people make. and you don't have to worry about "finishing" the game since they're the kinds of games that can get updated with new content for a long time.

you also don't have to keep as much consistency between areas, though some general themes/motifs should be established so it doesn't feel too meaningless, haha.

and adding puzzles to these kindsa games always makes the areas a lot more interesting.

[cats-on-ice]

as i said on the twitter thread, but am repeating here, yume nikki-esque exploration really is the best way to do an rpg maker collaboration. due to the nonlinearity, you can put in new content anywhere - you don't have to organize areas in a sequence, you can just add connections to previous areas, linking to any new stuff that people make. and you don't have to worry about "finishing" the game since they're the kinds of games that can get updated with new content for a long time.

you also don't have to keep as much consistency between areas, though some general themes/motifs should be established so it doesn't feel too meaningless, haha.

and adding puzzles to these kindsa games always makes the areas a lot more interesting.

Ah okay I see what you're saying. But I always felt that Yume Nikki was so hard to explore because everything led somewhere.. Although maybe that's just me being conditioned to the linearality of normal games?

I mean the lack of theme that comes from having everyone do different parts of a map can work with any alternate-world story theme for the most part.

Maybe doors. Lots and lots of doors but not doors within doors? More like Alicemare instead of Yume Nikki?

[Leet]

Some games inspired by Yume Nikki are a lot easier to explore. YN's main theme was "isolation", which meant that you were supposed to feel lost and alone. But by having less looping maps and making areas with more balance in terms of number of connections, you can make them a lot more explorable. See: Someday.

[cats-on-ice]

Ah gotcha gotcha
okay it's a start. I'm digging it.
Do you want me to put you on the list anywhere leet?