Cool game to learn from: Jojo the Seventh Stand User

[Smug Devil]

Here's a game I didn't make but I like a lot of the ideas it has and think people should look at it if they're making a large game. This game is based off the Stardust Crusaders manga turning it into a character insert fan fiction and staying close to the story. You might have also seen the anime which recently finished. I'll have a link to a download so you can get the game and try it but I just wanted to tell everyone using RPG maker this is what I would like to see more of. This isn't telling people how all rpg maker games should be or how you should go about making your first but if you're past learning how to make a basic game I think you should be checking out others work and think about what you could do to improve on your own level.

1. It has an art style.
Visuals are never the most important thing, if they work they're fine as they are. In this game they replace the standard tile sets with a monochrome scheme similar to how the manga is printed, I would also bet a few character images are taken from the manga but it's a fan project so no foul. I think most people already understand you shouldn't work for amazing visuals but changing things up from what everyone has already or even DLC stuff can make the game stand out.

2. Borrowed story/source material
Not everyone's going to have an amazing story their first time making a game, it might even be better to have none and just have point A->B->C->D->A->final boss just to get used to how events and stuff work. If you still don't have a story worth making into a game, just borrow one you know a lot about. Jojo is full of in jokes, it follows the story very closely minus a few added areas and of course shifting it more to a game format, bosses are themed from their narrative persona. It might seem lazy borrowing from a material but you can be just as creative as if making your own struggling to be original. Doing your game this way does mean you'll never be able to sell it for money, only a labor of love for the source can justify borrowing someone elses work.

3. Less random encounters and emergency win button
It was nice to work hard to program a lot of the enemies to not be random encounters (though most of the worst offenders are random), rather than walking down a street 30 paces and get attacked, you see the enemy and may have a chance to avoid them or if you're looking for specific enemies to grind. Another part of their combat I noticed is in boss battles a character usually has a chance to instantly win the fight by a chance roll or follow the mangas story and avoid the fight entirely. This is helpful if it turns out you didn't grind enough and just want to get to the next area or a boss is showing to be very cheap, the downside is you wont get the exp so you need to work harder in the next zone.

4. Character creation
It's always nice to let a player choose/take a test and make their own character and play along side the team. The way Jojo does it is really something by giving the player their own unique stand named after a band or musician. This really helps the insert fan fiction side because you feel like you're a character on the team, you're not just a knight or cleric with the same stats and skills as the other knight or cleric teammate, your stand is Red Garland and your power is the highest in the game. they also add unique dialog and situations based on what you got. Now this will take a lot of work but it adds to the expirience making it more personal.

In summary, I like how the people behind this went a long way to make the expirience unique and thrilling. Anyone who already knows the story would love to put themselves in it and see all the refferences to manga it's based on and newcommers still get a interesting game as the story unfolds. Of course this game wouldnt be possible without the full version and a lot of scripting (some of which is still unstable) but you can feel all the work they put into it to make it stand out from just being thrown together with prebuilt textures. I just felt like showing one case that went an extra mile in the hopes others would try to do something like that.

Link to download
http://7thjojo.tumblr.com/post/98202338885/after-several-months-in-the-making-the-7th-stand