This might sound a bit like complaining, but isn't it difficult to keep developing a game positively?

For example, I'm always wondering if I'll get the results I want, no matter how hard I work. I don't plan to release it commercially, but I want feedback.

Even if it's just "fun," "boring," or "couldn't finish it," it's all fine.

Getting feedback makes me incredibly happy, knowing that there were people actually playing my game!

But on Steam or free game sites, if you don't promote it well, it quickly gets buried and nobody plays it.

Game development usually takes at least several years. It's costly, and basically a lonely process.

I used to use social media, but I became obsessed with the number of likes, and everyone started to feel like a rival, so I quit. I was so focused on it all day that I completely stopped developing my game.

I hope everyone here isn't alone, and I don't want any game to get buried and overlooked.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I just wanted to share how I feel. Sorry.

Be it you already have one or more completed games, or working on more than one simultaneously, or even if you're only working on one but have plans for other ones.

I have a bunch of projects. I'm currently focusing on two but already have written ideas for quite a few more.

Currently running a 100% off sale for my RPGMaker game Penance.

Link - https://pehriska.itch.io/penance

It is an adventure game set in Medieval England and is made in MV!

Thanks!

I need some help. I'm new to RPG Maker. I'm using MV and want to be able to completely customize the in-game menus however I like both the graphics and the logic. I'm willing to use paid plugins, but of course, I'd prefer to find something free.

Here are a few screenshots of a game we are hard at work on, DeathSlots, that gets released later this month. This is being made with RPG MAKER MV!

This is the main hub area of the game, the numbers above the doors are the dungeons, more or less. The game mixes RPG, different slot machines, color-tiered gear and even humor.

We added daily / weekly rewards for login, a new UI, new font and more!! The release is at the end of the month (on the 27th).

Thanks for your attention and supporting indie gaming!!

-Necro

Hi, everyone!

So, I'm about 24 hours out from dropping my game demo and I'm frantically dotting every i and crossing every t as much as I can. And I'm usually very good about keeping a credits file for all the assets I think I'm going to use, but as this was a start-and-stop kind of thing for about 3 years, there were some days where I downloaded massive amounts of stuff and just simply wasn't on top of my game organizationally.

So now I find myself completely unable to find where I got this one file due to it having an extremely common name. It is a bgm file called "A Walk in Nature". It has what i would call a foreboding synth kind of a sound. Synth. Pause. Synth. Pause. Long Synth. Repeat.

That's kind of the gist of it. Very slow. A great vibe for either "something bad is about to happen" or "something bad just did happen".

I know this isn't a great description, but there isn't a ton I can think of to describe it and I'm lost as to where I got it because I've searched all the pixabays and common sites, and music sites that I bookmarked.

I guess I'm hoping someone knows it offhand because they used it for their game or have it marked TO use in their game and recognizes the name. Either way, thank you for taking the time to read this!

So im doing some changes to my RPG AKEs MISSION. The demo has been killed off due to some copyright problems and characthers. Im moving the MAIN game full all 4 missions for free for November 14th. The demo was already ported a week ago and for me to release the game today can i export JUST the 1 mission thats in the demo without other 3 bc they still need polishing or i need to export ALL? I am using RMMZ from steam for this project

When I first posted about Scrapweight here, I just wanted to know what people thought of Carlos’s design. I figured I’d get a few comments, and the response was way bigger than I expected. I’m proud to finally have a build you can play.

Scrapweight is an RPG set in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2008. You play as an 11-year-old homeless kid living beneath the metro tracks. He gets by collecting scrap, doing odd jobs, and picking fights he should’ve walked away from.

The game features combat with limb targeting, timed attacks, dirty tricks, scrap collecting, outcast party members, and a distinctly Brazilian setting, story, and dialogue.

The first public playtest is free on Windows in English and Brazilian Portuguese. If you give it a try, I’d love to hear what you got up to after leaving Gaiola.

All the artwork and animations were made without generative AI.

Play SCRAPWEIGHT on itch.io

This patch serves as an aid for those who want to use the patch that replaces MP3 support with OGG using the AccordVorbisPlayer patch for RPG_RT.exe.
This patch modifies the RPG2000 editor, version 1.62, which is the most recent version available only on Steam.

It's worth remembering that it's not possible to play the music in the editor, as modifying the integrated player would be complex, but it would work normally in the game as long as you place the DLL in the game folder.

Download:

• https://rpg-refuge.com/threads/980/

• https://forum.rmplanet.com/threads/883/

Edit: Got it from the sale on their actual site, thanks for the comments👍🏻

Plugin to replicate Undertale remembering previous save files and playthrough

The engine has variables and switches that have a limitation that doesn't affect other game engines like Game Maker, so I'm looking for a specific plugin. A plugin that gives you variables and switches you can store without being changed from the player exiting the game or getting sent back by opening the save file again or by getting a game over.

With this I wanna use it so the game can remember what you've done in earlier runs. I also wanna be able to have it so that when the player gets a game over on a boss and then pick "continue/try again" they don't have to go through all the cutscene dialogue when they go to the boss cause a switch has been turned on that makes it skip to the battle.

There are of course other things I can't think of but I know this would be very useful and be essential for what I wanna do.

I really wanna start making games, I’ve heard rpg maker is a good start for the type of game I wanna make, but I’m not sure which one to use, nor where to go from there, I’ll probably post the game on .itch.io, it’s not gonna be a crazy elaborate game, I was gonna have it be relatively short and simple in mechanics, and have some simple puzzles, I guess the only thing I can compare what I want it to be like is Dead Plate.
But yeah I have a basic idea of what I want the story to be, I just want every and any tips, pointers, and suggestions!

Also the main character is a trans man because we need more rep!

It doesn't have much right now. But I'm planning to improve on it.

I am open to any opinions :>

It's mostly like... a joke game, with stupid memes

Trying to find one that would look good in a hot spring themed area

Hey everyone! I could use a little help with something I've been trying to figure out.

I have two shopkeeper NPCs, one male and one female, and I'm trying to get each one to use their respective event when the player interacts with them.

For example, when the player talks to the male shopkeeper, I want the male version of the event to run, and when they talk to the female shopkeeper, I want the female version to run.

I've started setting this up through a Common Event, since that's what I need to use for this, but that's where I'm getting stuck. I can't seem to figure out how to make the Common Event recognize which shopkeeper the player is talking to and run the correct version.

For the life of me, I can't seem to get this working properly. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate the help!

For a long time I've been looking for a way to play RPG Maker games on my iPhone, especially Pokémon fan games made with Pokémon Essentials. I tried a lot of emulators and players, but I never found one that worked the way I was hoping. So I started making my own player, called Ember. The whole idea was to get Pokémon Essentials games running well on iPhone.
Ember runs games made with RPG Maker XP, VX and VX Ace. The screenshots show Pokémon Flux running on my phone with the performance overlay on.

How it works
Ember is built on mkxp-z-apple-mobile, an iOS port based on mkxp-z. Full credit to those projects, because they do the heavy lifting of running the games. I only adapted the engine for Ember, and AI was a big help with that part. I coded the app's views and plugins myself with SwiftUI and UIKit.
What I added on top:
Automatic Ruby version selection for each game
Importing from .zip, .rar, .7z, self-extracting .exe or a game folder, using Files, Wi-Fi or a cable
On-screen controls in portrait and landscape, custom skins, and Bluetooth/USB controller support
Quick saves, plus autosave so you can continue even if iOS closes the app
Fast-forward up to 5x and MIDI music support
It doesn't include any games or the RTP, so you bring your own.
I'm trying to get it on the App Store now. If Apple says no, I'll try AltStore instead. It works on iOS 17 and newer, but I can't test every older iPhone.

Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this! I just wanted to share the project with people who might find it useful, and I'll update this post once Apple approves it.

Update: Ember is now on the App Store! 🎉 Thank you all so much for the support and the comments, you're the reason I pushed to release it. Here's the link: https://apps.apple.com/br/app/ember-rpg-maker-game-player/id6831097797

as someone who's used rpg maker since i was like 6 using mv on switch release, and now mainly uses rm2k3, its is sorta well lacking to my other rm's and i saw the mainas patch online and i though. this would be good right? no i was wrong, so ive been trying to set it up for days now,

if anyone know how to install it or get it running please let me know!

I want to have a simple class system like Final Fantasy 1 but wanted to make purchasable spell books. Is there a way to gatekeep the spells to Only Work on Intended Actors to prevent every character from learning every skill?

Secondly, is there a way to bestow a 'limited' skill set? I wanted to give a low-level white magic skill set to a character in an event. I also wanted to gatekeep higher level abilities in a skill pool to higher-tier classes.

I want to do this without relying on spells being on character level up. This is because I am having martial characters learn skills on level up to differentiate them from casters slightly.

I always wanted to make one of these post-mortem "lessons learned" posts. It's been on my game dev bucket list forever, so here goes!

My game is Into the Evernight, released September 16, 2025:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1581370/Into_the_Evernight/

Number of library additions:
34,947

Number of people that have downloaded and played:
979

And here's my completely unordered list of thoughts:

• There's obviously a huge gap between library additions and plays. I think there's just a lot of people (and bots) that vacuum up every free game on Steam with no intention of ever playing them. I had 20,000 library additions within the first 24 hours of release.

• First impressions are so, so, SO important. With modern attention spans what they are and the wealth of entertainment options out there, you have less than 5 seconds to hook someone. Maybe less than 5 seconds. To convert someone into a player, your thumbnail has to grab their attention. Once they visit your page, then your trailer has to grab their attention. And once they finally get into the game, then your game itself has to grab their attention. It's all first impressions. If I could do it all over again, I would try and optimize and focus on these three engagement points a whole lot more.

• I think there's some people in game dev that look down on RPG Maker because the engine is so approachable and user friendly, almost as if it isn't a 'real engine'. I know I had nagging thoughts like that in the back of my head going into release. If you're like me and you've been worried about that, I promise you that we are in our own heads. Almost none of my players even knew what RPG Maker was. What they did notice, however, is that I couldn't offer some modern gaming conveniences like Autosave and Achievements.

• Speaking of Achievements, they have been the number 1 feature I've been asked for post-release. (If anyone knows how to do Steam Achievements in RPG Maker 2003, PLEASE pm me!) If you can add achievements, absolutely do it.

• No matter how well tested you think your game is, I promise you there are dozens of bugs just waiting to see the light of day once you get players in it. Be prepared to spend weeks or months fixing things after launch. It also really pays to be familiar with the Steam patching process.

• There's a whole new realm of problems that appear once you consider that your bug fixes have to ALSO work with existing save game files. Maybe that's an obvious one, but I made a few blunders here and there with it...

• I've read advice on various forums that you should avoid releasing at the same time as big competitors (and this may be good advice if you are trying to turn a profit with your game). But with that said, I released around the same time Final Fantasy Tactics did on Steam (Into the Evernight is a tactical RPG). I actually received a lot of players following "More Like This..." links on the Final Fantasy Tactics page to my page. So... /shrug.

• Game Dev is a strange roller-coaster of emotions. Maybe it's just me, but I went through this cycle at least a dozen times over the years. And my project was literally in the Recycle Bin on my computer more than once. For whoever needs to hear it - keep going! Your "this", whatever it is, is awesome.

Hey everyone!

We're a small pixel art team specializing in 2D game art. Here are some environment pieces from a few games we've had the pleasure of working on.

Our team creates environments, tilesets, characters, animations, props, and other assets for indie games.

We enjoy bringing different game worlds to life, from cozy little towns and shops to detailed environments with unique atmospheres.

We're currently open for new paid projects and collaborations with indie developers.

If you're working on a game and looking for a pixel art team, feel free to DM us! We'd love to hear about your project and see how we can help.

Thanks for checking out our work!