This is a game about a princess, a succubus, and a dragon
#The Idea
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My current project is something completely pointless, but kind of fun.
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I’m challenging myself to make a naughty RPG in an official RPG Maker. I seem to recall that the console RPG Makers have these keyword filters that try to keep you from swearing or using “bad words” and I want to try making the naughtiest story possible while dancing around the limitations.
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I’m thinking… what if you visit a generic old-school video game castle with everything on one or two floors? Super primitive. All the guards repeat each other. A princess playing in the garden with her bunny. That kind of thing. It all looks completely innocuous. The king gives the hero the typical quest to slay a dragon. But… if you talk to a couple of the NPC’s, their small-talk will just happen to mention a slightly odd detail here and there. And if you follow these leads they lead to kinkier and kinkier details of things happening behind the scenes at the castle.
#Trying Nintendo Switch RPG Maker
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Wow, the Nintendo Switch version of RPG Maker is downright painful to use. The menu controls are clunky as hell. It forces me to dig into multiple layers of focus just to press a button that’s already on the screen, and the touch-screen is laggy and imprecise. I guess I’ll try to bear with it. It’s all part of the challenge, right? Surprisingly it doesn’t seem to block any naughty words. But maybe it only checks that when you try to upload a game?
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Wait… why can’t I add any grass tiles for interiors? Maybe I can improvise with an “exterior” chipset and walls? But then I can’t place any furniture. I’m just trying to make a crude old-school castle with everything on a single floor. Why is that so hard?
#Giving Up on Nintendo Switch
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Ah, screw it. I’ll just throw something together in my own RPG Maker.
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This is so much faster and easier to use. Let’s see. If I want to give off that old-school NES feel I should probably make the characters walk in-place.
#Secret Passage Design
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I’ve always had a soft spot for the blocky walls in Final Fantasy 4. They feel perfect for things like secret passages. Later Final Fantasy games switched to making their walls fade up into a dark border, which looks less weird for large areas. All the RPG Makers also imitate this approach. But it makes the walls feel less… I dunno, moveable? If you hide the depth you hide the idea of something being on the other side. Sometimes you want things to look like blocks. Blocks can move. They can hide things.
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It feels kind of pointless to artificially hold myself back in my own RPG Maker. It’s hard to figure out where to draw the line or be consistent. I keep adding elaborate effects and detailed character poses. Sure I have a few little story ideas, but it feels pretty aimless. The original inspiration was to try pushing back against limitations and automated censorship to make something as naughty as possible. I need to focus on that core idea.
#Trying the 3DS RPG Maker
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Maybe the 3DS version of RPG Maker FES will let me use grass tiles? That was the only real deal-breaker I couldn’t ignore.
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Wow… this is MUCH easier to use! A lot of interesting quality-of-life features for a low resolution and a controller. They put some real effort into this one. The map tiles are super flexible. And the touch screen actually works well! They even have freakin’ scroll bars. Thank you! I’m surprised the Switch version is such a downgrade compared to this. How did they manage to forget all their good ideas?
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Granted, I’ll still have to wrestle with “switch” variables and the same limited scripting that all RPG Makers seem to have. I’m so spoiled with my own RPG Maker where I can just change a character’s pose in the middle of a conversation. In fact, couldn’t I do that in RPG Maker 2000? You’d think after literal decades these programs would GAIN features instead of losing them. I mean I get it. They want to the programs to be beginner friendly. But some limitations make things harder instead of easier.
#Secret Passage Scripting
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Okay it took some figuring out, but I managed to create some secret passages in the 3DS version of RPG Maker FES.
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You can only turn off the collision of tiles that are NOT on the lowest layer. And then you can add some wall sprites that block the player, but can later change into “floor” tiles that let them walk through. Sprites aren’t allowed to use the tiles reserved for the lowest layer, but luckily there are mid-layer tiles that look similar enough to blend in, so you can use those instead.
Find upper layer tiles that look similar to your normal walls...
... because you can only override the collision of upper layers
Draw the secret wall using only the upper layer, and then remove its collision
When the passage is closed, the sprite is invisible but collides with the player
Talking to the sprite turns on a switch variable...
... which makes the sprite look like a floor tile and disables collision.
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I’ll rough-out the map for now and add details as they become relevant for the story. Then polish up the rest of the visuals later after I’m done. This way it’ll still be easy to change things around if I want to.
#The Joys of Censorship
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The 3DS version does try to block some naughty words, but wow… they’re still making this way too easy for me. All I have to do is add a period to make it accept most words. C’mon, at least give me a challenge!
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… And then they give me a freakin’ succubus sprite! Just put her in a room with the princess and you already have naughty implications.
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The hero sent his squire to research how to fight dragons… I think I had a little too much fun writing this book.
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A hypnosis potion. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, the possibilities!
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I don’t have the whole story figured out, but the ideas seem to be flowing easily enough. And the limitations seem to slow the pace down enough for me to come up with more ideas by the time I finish adding the previous ones. Hmm… creative pacing. I wonder if there’s a way to design something that encourages that? Unfortunately I barely understand how it’s working, or why.
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The game doesn’t like it, but I really want to use “pussy” here. Other words could work I guess.
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Hmm… symbols, eh? I wonder if I could just…
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Yup!
#The Result
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Okay, I spent the entire day on it, but it’s basically done. It seems a little underwhelming because I couldn’t show the kind of details I usually do, but the idea itself came together, and the jokes are worth it.
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Should I share it as a checkpoint save for modded 3DS’s systems? I’m not sure that would be worth the effort for most people. A simple video playthrough is probably sufficient. I’m kind of tempted to re-create it in my normal RPG Maker with all the nice animations and conveniences, but starting a project with the 3DS version is a hell of a lot of work to make a glorified “rough draft.” If I’m just going to re-make something in my normal RPG Maker, I’d be better off making a completely new story.
#Game Data for RPG Maker FES (3DS)
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If you want to try this game on an actual Nintendo 3DS, you’ll need a hacked 3DS so you can run homebrew that can import saved games, such as Checkpoint or JKSM. RPG Maker FES stores the games you create in its save data, so if you import this “saved game” you’ll import my entire game.
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Saved data for Checkpoint
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Saved data for JKSM
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If you’re using an emulator like Citra, then you can import the game data this way: