I guess when you have as many games on your platform as Steam, every week can be a different type of game festival. Or even multiple festivals. It’s fun, it’s a great way to pick up games cheap, and it’s nice to know there’s a theme. This week, from February 3rd to the 10th, Steam is running an RPG Maker Festival. RPG Maker is something I’ve written about a few times and its games will always have a special place in my heart. More importantly, though, some really great RPG Maker games get passed over simply because of the engine being used. Let’s talk about some great RPG Maker titles you can pick up during this sale that might change your mind.
Why RPG Maker Games Deserve More Love
I’d like to take a moment to say that while there are a lot of great RPG Maker games out there, one of the most appealing things about the engine is that it has a low barrier of entry. And while this means there’s some slop out there, it also has a decently high ceiling for programming and events. And while there are some great games out there, keep in mind one thing that permeates these spaces a lot is games with loads of sexual content. I will not be covering those games in this article. Though there’s nothing wrong with those games, it’s just not what I’m covering here.
Likewise, there are a few titles that have already surpassed the stigma or are obvious standouts. If you haven’t played these, these are great places to start. Games like LISA the Painful which just got a definitive edition release from Serenity Forge in 2023. Ara Fell is another game that’s fairly remarkable for an RPG Maker game, though console versions of the game and the enhanced edition were moved over to Unity. It is foundationally an RPG Maker game. And finally, perhaps the best narrative-centered game created on RPG Maker, To The Moon. These are all great places to start if you’d like to expand your knowledge of what RPG Maker is capable of and the types of people working on these games. The three listed above are excellent games.
Shining a light on great unknowns is one of my greatest pleasures and RPG Maker’s stigma allows for that regularly. I’d first like to highlight a developer I have a deep respect for after playing their game, A Ghostly Rose. zDS created an emotional journey filled with rage and regret, a complex story with an engaging though simple battle system. A truly bizarre story in a strange world, Edmund’s journey is one that I’ll never forget. I interviewed zDS over on RPGFan about A Ghostly Rose, his previous title, Cope Island: Adrift, and his upcoming title, Kissed By A Star. zDS does incredible work, especially as solo projects. I highly recommend checking out zDS’s work.
Damien Crawford is doing absolutely incredible things with the RPG Maker engine. One of his latest titles, Purgatory Dungeoneer, is a town-building roguelite with over 400 possible residents from a pool of over 100 classes. The art and UI might be pedestrian but, mechanically, Damien has created a stellar experience in Purgatory Dungeoneer. And I can’t speak about Damien without bringing up Damien Crawford’s Golf Experience. Both Damien Crawford’s Golf Experience 2022 and 2024 are works of art. Offering one of the worst golfing experiences possible but from the perspective of someone with a very basic understanding of golf. There are a few other brilliant titles that live up to their name such as I Have Low Stats But My Class Is “Leader,” SO I Recruited Everyone I Know To Fight The Dark Lord and It’s Six Random Characters and a Single Floor Dungeon, That’s the Whole Game. Extremely worthwhile experiences to broaden your gaming horizons.
Another interview I conducted was with Dari/scitydreamer, who has a consistent theme of DIY game dev. Using RPG Maker as a method of exploring their own emotions, Dari has created some really interesting experiences that I haven’t seen replicated elsewhere. Slimes, for example, tells the story of a world that’s turned upside-down by the arrival of an alien being. Pitched simply as “a game about two guys that hate each other,” Slimes delves into that hate and where it comes from. Dari’s latest game, I Hate You, Please Suffer, is a meditation on games as a power fantasy. In a sense, I Hate You, Please Suffer is about accepting the dissatisfaction with the outcomes of our lives, no matter how perilous your journey, the ending you get is the ending you get.
And those are just three developers that I find particularly interesting, there’s a whole world of incredible RPG experiences to be had in RPG Maker. Games like Super Lesbian Animal RPG, a game about love and anxiety that is definitely drawing inspiration from older RPGs and has the art style to complement them. Or Conor Walsh’s There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings a narrative horror game about two men who live in a quiet town in the center of a desert where the vengeful sun can set alight anyone it so chooses. Red_Nova’s Prayer of the Faithless is a fantasy horror title set at the end of the world where two friends struggle to find what’s worth saving.
All of these titles have had a personal impression on me in the past but I think what’s more important about them is that they’re excellent titles for a budget. During a time when gamers have the least money available, especially considering how much talk there is about game prices going up, these games are great and cheap. They just need a little love from their community, especially considering how much work went into each of these titles. Honestly, I could probably talk about RPG Maker titles all day, I chose a few titles to leave out to keep this short, and it still ended up running long.
What’s on Your RPG Maker Wishlist?
Hoping you find something interesting in this list. Despite a few of these titles being considered “Unsupported” by the Steam Deck Compatibility thing on Steam, I played ALL of them on my SteamDeck to varying degrees of success, but they all worked. So if you’re looking for a few games to run on your Steam Deck, or just want some simpler titles to play on a crappier computer, take a look at these. And maybe seeing some of these experiences sparked your interest in game dev. I hope so, at least. RPG Maker VX Ace is currently FREE on Steam during this festival. Hope you picked up something on the festival and if there’s something I missed out on, hit me up on Bluesky. Always looking to provide coverage for cool, interesting projects.
