Very powerful engine giving a lot of freedom, but it's unfinished and completely dead.


I want to recommend this, I really do.
It's got a lot of good stuff in there, but it seems like it will never be finished.

This engine is so much more powerful than any other RPG Maker there is!
Want to add/remove equip types, stats, anything? Go ahead!
Want multiple HP bars or none at all? All fine!
Want a skill that does several things, attacking/healing several parameters or even changing the target's properties? All fine!
Want to change the menu commands and battle commands? Easy as pie, they're just lists of skills, anyways!

Change the fonts? Add translations? Adjust or remove any limit? All good!

It's got a sample game showcasing most features and provides a lot of default content qua textures, models, images, sounds, music, skills, monsters, items, etc.!
And the engine is open source[github.com] to boot!

The Steam discussion page has unanswered questions of over a year old, the Github repo has open issues and a PR of over a year old, the last release is 7 years ago[github.com] at the time of writing, the documentation[rpg-paper-maker.github.io] lacks so, so much. (ex. how to see what states a hero or monster has? I could probably make a skill that damages Poisoned targets more but no way to figure out how to do this!)
A bunch of options are still greyed out, "to be implemented in a future release", but looking at the current state of affairs they're never going to be implemented.
Translations are great as well but also incomplete, with several keys unable to be translated from English, either staying English or disappearing completely after changing the language, with no way to fix it.
The engine is dead, they stopped working on it, but are sadly still charging € 70 for a commercial liscence.