My Ideas: 16-Bit Deserts and Nonsense

We'll make this one a quickee post, because the idea is a simple one. On the other hand, for this idea, you can actually PLAY it. This is all thanks to my old friend RPG Maker, specifically the Playstaion 1 version. There are others before and after this one, but my interest focused on this one for various reasons. One, I never became interested in the technical details of PC design. With the Playstation version, I can make my own game by just popping in the city.

Second, it was the first example of a memory-card saver that I could find. With the Dex Drive, I could store entire games to my PC and restore it when needed, saving me a fortune on these damn things and letting me play other people's games without losing my own data. Speaking of which, the third reason I used this version is the community. It wasn't huge, but there were sites like rpgpavilion (or something like that, it's been years.) Games were submitted for contests, put up for reviews, and chatted about in message boards. The community was teeny, approximating maybe a few hundred people at tops, but it's enough to get acknowledgment.

I'll get into my favorite game idea later, but my first game was a little simpler. The plot used most of the standard rules of RPGMaker: random encounters, three elemental types that counter each other in a roshambo/rock-paper-scissors scenario, gaining experience through enemy encounters, getting new equipment with every town.

The plot, though, was a bit weirder. In a game full of fantasy worlds of the traditional Dragon Warrior archetypes, I was already using the model of the later Final Fantasies. The story starts in Oasis (also the name of the game,) a school at the border of a massive desert. The desert is the result of a magical disaster, with the worst result being magical portals connecting the desert to other planes. Monsters would instantly appear and then be stranded when the portals vanish just as quickly. The hostile ones wreak havoc, and everyone else is in danger of these monsters or death by exposure or thirst. Oasis rescues these non-hostile arrivals and gives them a home. In exchange, many of them are trained at the school and become mercenaries. If I remember right, they didn't have to, but they were alone on a world they didn't understand with no other job prospects.

But the details of the school didn't matter for long. Soon, Fantax, the main character and a ninja who arrived at Oasis recently, is caught up in a job that changes...everything. I know. He learns that Solos, a lich with sun-control powers and who presumably created the desert, was once the partner of Fadune, the stereotypical wise old man who runs Oasis, were partners before finding a mystical orb of Macguffin-ness. It shattered, and since then the two parts of said orb and two control necklaces for it have been targeted, as they give control over not only the portals, but the land itself.

From there, things get complicated. The characters 1) learn that Solos used to be the good guy, and Fadune was the one who abused the orb, 2) learned that the orb itself was left on the planet by aliens for theoretically benevolent purposes, but now they're coming back to get the orb and conquer everyone because the people screwed it up so much, and 3) one half of the orb is actually embedded in seven people with various weather control magic, including Solos, Fadune, Fantax' chimera rival Geralk'im, and four of his own party members.

The game's mechanics were generic as all get out, but what I liked about the plot, besides it sheer outlandishness, is how things always change. In the best Final Fantasy games and other RPGs, the goal isn't just to go from point A to point B, collecting the X MacGuffins of power in the way. Between (and inside) dungeons, there should be betrayals, discoveries, and intrigue as the overarching plot became revealed. I also enjoyed the puzzles I could make in the last half or so of the game. The anti-gravity puzzle rooms remain a work of beauty and primitive coding I still like to brag about. Err, obviously.

There were a few other minor, fairly standard features. Based on a few primitive decisions, the main character will marry one of three female party members. The entire game's plot also splits based on the result of an early boss fight. It doesn't affect which dungeons, but it will affect some boss fights, random encounters, and even which of two party members will survive to the end of the game and which will die to give Fantax his/her power. Finally, there's a New Game+ mode which makes the above choice much easier to handle. Sadly, the game's nowhere near perfect. The random encounters in particular are more than a bit dated, but options are limited in this game.

As for why I stopped making these games, well, unfortunately the community seemed to dry up. It did so largely unpleasantly in the end, with an unfinished game winning for no good reason about three months after they were supposed to and after the community got so splintered that the creators of the website were insisting the game was dead. It was a sour end, but I still appreciate the game itself. I could even see making a semi-competent (if cheap) RPG out of the concept with the right tools and/or help. But it's the next idea that really holds an appeal so many years later. And we'll discuss that one soon enough.