Second Sun
My first game ever. A quick story-focused experience made completely in RPG Maker MV.
About the project
During the two years I studied Creative Writing at Full Sail University, the class I was most excited and eager to start with was Game Writing. So when the teacher, Chad Coup, gave us the option of working on a game focused on narrative using Twine, I insisted on using another platform, the RPG Maker MV.
When looking at it today, perhaps the use of this tool was not ideal, especially considering my need to learn the basics of programming (which would have happened if I had decided to use Twine), but my mastery of RPG Maker since the time the golden age of its 2003 version gave me the confidence, and the skills, that I needed to complete a project like this in just a month.
Technical information
Developed in RPG Maker MV
Narrative
Game
Released
2017
Solo
Developed
College
Project
About the narrative
Since my course was focused on the study of narrative elements, we were naturally instructed to start planning the game with a narrative, which is not at all common in the industry. Inspired by a song by Nando Reis, O Segundo Sol (Second Sun), I decided to write a short story about a boy who finds himself in a fictitious and apocalyptic scenario: another sun appears out of nowhere. And, regardless of the ten million ways this story could develop, I decided to focus on romance.
However, I decided that this romantic tale would serve to "prove" that love is sometimes wrong and ends up bringing more evils than anything else. Something very melancholic. But, to make things more interesting, I decided to include three different endings. After having the layout, the plot was practically drawn, here is the first record I made about it:
[...] story of Nathan, a 24-years-old waiter in present New Orleans who is desperately in love with a girl named Lucia, who doesn't seem to care much about him. Amid another day of work, Nathan [...] witnesses something unusual, a second sun appears out of nowhere in the sky. [...] And so the story goes on.
About the planning
After writing and describing the story in its smallest details, the planning part began. Even though I calculated that the game would be no more than five minutes long, nor would God know how long it would take me to develop something this big. The first step I took, because of the many paths, or branches, in the game, was to create a flowchart.
Divided into three arcs, and trying to follow Joseph Campbell's hero journey as much as possible, I analyzed the key points of the story and inserted markings, which in the end would be calculated by the system and would result in one of three endings:
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The protagonist does not progress much, but neither is he trapped in lies (neutral ending); and
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The protagonist not only learns to overcome the world of lies where he was imprisoned but also finds someone new to love.
After planning, which lasted a week, development was done, four days before the deadline.
About the development
The most difficult part of developing this project was keeping my feet on the ground. I had less than a month to deliver the project, but there were always ways in my mind to make things in the game more interesting. However, without much time to spend, I got organized and did only what was necessary for the game to work.
The game works with the use of variables, and, at the last moment, the game reads all these variables that you create along the way and directs you to a specific ending. It was a matter of organizing myself so as not to get lost amid so many variables, and I believe that at those times writing down in a notebook is the best thing to do. Another function that helped me a lot, and that is included in the RPG Maker is art. I created, with the help of plugins, many artworks that are used in the final product.
