top-down RPG on PC?

[Reanimated]

How much in demand are top-down view RPG games for the PC? I was quite interested in this, because the most popular RPGs (zelda and pokemon for example), were top-down. However, this was due to the limitation of the handheld consoles at that time. Would there be a market for this type of game on the PC or Mac? ie, Draw using pixel-art tools etc..

[KNau]

No, I'm sad to say there is no market at all for this type of game.

RPGs have been completely overdone and people just aren't buying them any more no matter how original or polished they may be. Every top-down style game produced in the past 5 years has failed miserably.

(P.S. These boards really aren't the place for reliable market research. The true answer for any type of game is "yes" there is a market..."but" you have to create it.)

[queasy]

I dunno, dokoutsu is doing pretty well. I mean, I know it's freeware but it does show there's a market in terms of the popularity it's getting.

(And I know it's side view, but i figure it's in the same vien as what reanimated wants to do).

-j

[papillon]

There's a ton of people working on old console-style RPGs or zelda-style games (often in the Zelda Fangames mode). Most of these projects never get finished, of course. And most of these projects are free (And small.)

As for the market, well - can you reach the quality level of a SNES rom? That's what you need to beat to make a sale. :) But if you can do it well, then go for it! A fellow who was SUPPOSEDLY making a 2d conversion of a 3d zelda game (I say supposedly because despite years of work we never saw more than some lovely screenshots and an inventory-screen-only demo) managed to get a lot of publicity for himself and some magazine coverage, I think. The Retro gamer scene would be a lot more behind an old style pixel RPG than a casual connect-3 game.

[Reanimated]

I see. It's not going to be my current project, but it was something that I was wondering about because Im sure if the same game turned up on the gameboy advance, then it would sell extremely well, simply because it "suits" that type of console.

[Rainer Deyke]

I can't comment on the market in general, but I personally would love to see a good indie top-down rpg. (Keyword being "good". Rpgs are very easy to get wrong.) Rpgs are my favorite genre of games, yet all of the recent AAA rpgs that I have played have sucked. Yes, there is a vibrant freeware rpg community, but it doesn't produce enough completed quality titles to keep me satisfied.

[gpetersz]

No, I'm sad to say there is no market at all for this type of game.

RPGs have been completely overdone and people just aren't buying them any more no matter how original or polished they may be. Every top-down style game produced in the past 5 years has failed miserably.

(P.S. These boards really aren't the place for reliable market research. The true answer for any type of game is "yes" there is a market..."but" you have to create it.)

You are partially right but not fully. The "market" (which is already created) is full of FREE clones (there is even an RPGMaker or something that allows you to create similar ones, but I might be mistaken) but you can't find
a real good clone maybe with some innovative new areas.

Partially you are fail I think, I know at least one (but probably more) similar RPGs those sell. It is only true if I am talking about the same game genre though... :)

[adamw]

How much in demand are top-down view RPG games for the PC? I was quite interested in this, because the most popular RPGs (zelda and pokemon for example), were top-down. However, this was due to the limitation of the handheld consoles at that time. Would there be a market for this type of game on the PC or Mac? ie, Draw using pixel-art tools etc..

There's a small market and maybe a handful of successful Indie's doing it. Very specialized work really. We've done three now and are working on a fourth.

As for graphics, you need to look good. I don't mean necessarily 3D good, I mean just clean, professional and stylized. Graphics in RPGs get people to take a deeper look at you - just like every other game sector.

But have you developed another game before? Because doing an RPG for your first game is certain to kill you straight away. Seriously difficult stuff to do well believe me.

[lowemark]

A fellow who was SUPPOSEDLY making a 2d conversion of a 3d zelda game (I say supposedly because despite years of work we never saw more than some lovely screenshots and an inventory-screen-only demo) managed to get a lot of publicity for himself and some magazine coverage, I think.
If I remember correctly he got shut down by Nintendo due to legal issues :mad: Too bad because the game looked pretty nice.

[Sybixsus]

I dunno, dokoutsu is doing pretty well. I mean, I know it's freeware but it does show there's a market in terms of the popularity it's getting.

(And I know it's side view, but i figure it's in the same vien as what reanimated wants to do).

-j

Do you have a link? Google turns up a blank on dokoutsu and I don't really know what variations to try.

[lowemark]

Do you have a link?I'm guessing he's talking about Doukutsu. You can find the game here (http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA022293/FreeSoft/Doukutsu.html) and an english patch right here (http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html) (might make things easier as it's a Japanese game)

[papillon]

We've done three now and are working on a fourth.


... now hurry up and finish that thing because I've been waiting to try it out for forever!

[tentons]

No, I'm sad to say there is no market at all for this type of game.
There's a market for any game that's good enough. That means not being like the freeware and half-finished projects that try to clone the SNES games. The problem is that these games are unremarkable. Make something people will talk about--no matter what the genre or technology--and you'll see sales.

It may not be easy, but there's always a market.

[KNau]

That'll teach me to try and be absurd in my response. I don't actually think there's no market for such a game but was really curious how an "absolutely not" response would fly. Sadly, it was accepted as a possibly legitimate reply :(

Does anyone actually base their development decisions on the opinions from this board? I hope not.

[whisperstorm]

I for one love top-down RPG's and would love to see something beyond the endless amateur efforts folks do using RPG maker or something like that. Getting a Zelda - style game on PC which was GOOD would be something I'd fork over cash for. However one caveat - I simply hate the non-anime style characters that most American developers adopt -- the realistic , plastic, Poser style characters just really turn me off to a game. Guess I'm used to anime/SD RPG chars.

If you want some serious inspiration, check out this game:
JabberWock (http://www20.cds.ne.jp/~murasame/source/jabberwock.htm)

[gpetersz]

That'll teach me to try and be absurd in my response. I don't actually think there's no market for such a game but was really curious how an "absolutely not" response would fly. Sadly, it was accepted as a possibly legitimate reply :(

Does anyone actually base their development decisions on the opinions from this board? I hope not.

I think there is nothing problematic with your answer :D.

There are some genres where it is HARD to do anything that rocks, it is so with RPG, though (I agree with others) nothing is impossible.

Well, I don't take anything as carved to stone from this (and other) forum
but it's got an influence on my decisions.

[papillon]

As far as cloning the SNES goes - in terms of gameplay, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it's familiar. What would really make a difference to ME and set you apart from all the free projects would be PLOT.

I may be exaggerating, but it feels like all the free games (and a lot of the real snes ones, too) start out with "Oh, look at me, I'm an average teenager (usually male) in a piddly little peasant village going about my daily life... My parent/guardian has just sent me to feed the chickens..." (do pointless boring task) "Oh wow! Something earthshattering has occurred! Now I must save the world!"

It's not that this is an unplayable plot. I've played tons of them. But if you wanted to get my *attention* with a demo, different is good. I start the game as the kidnapped bride of Dracula and have to escape from his castle? Cool!

[Anthony Flack]

Heh, I have a large collection of SNES games here, all in Japanese. Sometimes I'll buy one at random just because the label on the cartridge looks kind of interesting.

More often than not it turns out to be some generic RPG. In which case the experience goes something like this:

1 - Turn on game. Hey, nice intro. This might be all right.
2 - Uh oh, here we are in that village again. Damn. It's another RPG.
3 - Yep, now the old guy is giving me some really important instruction I need to carry out before the game starts properly. In Japanese.
4 - Wander aimlessly around the village for a bit. Oo, nice water effect.
5 - Turn off game.

[whisperstorm]

Yes, imagine a strong female character as a lead role in an RPG - have the princess rescue the prince for a change. Imagine if legend of Zelda actually was about Zelda :)

BTW here's a BIG list of rpg plots (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/plots.htm)

[Fantus]

1 - Turn on game. Hey, nice intro. This might be all right.
2 - Uh oh, here we are in that village again. Damn. It's another RPG.
3 - Yep, now the old guy is giving me some really important instruction I need to carry out before the game starts properly. In Japanese.
4 - Wander aimlessly around the village for a bit. Oo, nice water effect.
5 - Turn off game.

Sounds very formiliar. I have a quite large collection of RPG games while I hate the turn based battle system. I only buy them because I like the graphics or music. Getting inspiration can be expensive...

[Triple_Fox]

I'm covering the Zelda angle. Sort of.

It's not a fantasy sword-slashing save-the-princess game. In fact, my inspiration is more <a href="http://www.chocobo.org/~butz/duky/mzxmag1.txt">"Code Red" or "Mission: Enigma"</a> than Zelda. Even those aren't entirely representative of what I want to do.

Mostly what I've set out to do in my game is to make it neither like a movie, nor an unabashed pure-gameplay experience, nor an open-ended megaquest-of-doom, but more like a dreamscape where the story is a bit thin and pretty linear, but is made relatively significant through a total emphasis on the player experience. There are significant choices to make, interesting conversations to have, and scenes where the player can "decompress" in a more predictable, action-oriented mode.

The significant choices are the main thing here - I think most games have stopped offering these entirely in favor of "surface choices" that are kind of amusing, but as the player quickly realizes have no meaning in relation to the story. There's a sequence I have where the player is given the option of joining a resistance movement, or getting out of the (conquered) city on his own. In most games it would be like, "well, yeah, the player's going to join this resistance no matter what he wants." But in this one, doing that sets you off on a whole different arc of both gameplay and story, which eventually returns to the main line but in the meantime presents the player with a new experience and additional replayability. And I can afford to do this in a technical sense because the art is kept pretty abstract and easy to animate, rather than trying for the SNES look, so that adding more areas and scripting is trivial and cheap.

[arcadetown]

I think the potential's there in a slightly different context, i.e. less boring junk concentrated more on just plain old action.

Some say Feeding Frenzy may have been inspired by a hit freeware flash game called Fishy. Check the following game, another hit freeware Flash game. MoFunZone makes consistent hits, much like XGenStudios that made Fishy. Think an expanded concept high quality try/buy adapation could really do well.
Sinjid Shadow Of The Warrior (http://www.heavygames.com/sinjidshadowwarrior/playgame.asp)

[Dan MacDonald]

What do you want to bet Castle is next? :)

(Sinjid is pretty neat )

[impossible]

I don't think Dokoutsu's popularity is a good indicator of how a top down RPG would do if you were selling. Sure, the people at IC and other hardcore gaming sites are all over the game... but do you really think they would buy it if it was the same game but not freeware and made by some american indie?

Even if you had a great demo and the game was cheaper than a budget console title ($10) I think very few of the people saying "omfg this is the greatest game evar!!!" about Dokoutsu would actually buy a game of similar quality. Now, it would be different if you released on a console and were selling physical media (in that case they'd buy it and be singing its praises even more), but I just dont see these kind of hardcore gamers actually buying indie games in a downloadable PC format.

That said, I think the game could get decent sales just because its a good game, and someone out there will be willing to buy it (although probably a lot more willing to warez it, sadly.) I'd love for someone to come out with a title like this and prove me wrong, though :D .

[Bmc]

if you mimicked the simplicity of the paper mario series and made the "missions" much much shorter then a normal rpg(or if you divide missions into smaller sub-mission chunks) it might do fairly well. The key would definetly be simplicity (assuming you want to target the casual market).

[Ricardo C]

I'd be all over a well made Chrono Trigger-type game (a tall order, I know ;)) As long as the graphics were at least up to late-period SNES standards, I'd gladly pay the cash for it :)