Stories from Danger's Den

The game that generates thousands of little retro RPGs.

Beginnings

Screenshot of a retro-style video game in grayscale. In the center of the screen is a small pixel sprite depicting a young woman with her hair in space buns. She's holding a sword and a shield. She's standing outside on an overworld map portraying a bay. The sea is to her south; mountains bound the north and east. The land is covered with alternating swaths of forest and plains. A river winds along the southwest corner of the screen. Slightly northeast of the heroine is a little town and castle on the border of the woods. Farther away, to the northwest, a cave opens from the mountainside.

When I first opened RPG Maker MZ to create Danger’s Den as a project, I already had a good portion of a notebook dedicated to character classes, plot point ideas, proposed solutions for procedural generation challenges, prioritized to-do lists, and more. But my first order of business in the engine was removing all of RPG Maker’s default assets, and putting in basics to make my game look and sound like itself.

I pixeled up some basic tiles and sprites, in two-bit grayscale because I knew that fussing with the palette would take me hours. I still think the grayscale has a certain charm.

To generate nice little retro sound effects, I tinkered with sfxr. It’s great for creating retro video game sounds quickly; I recommend it.

This is what my game looked like at the end of September 28, 2020, its tenth day of development.

On a plain black screen, the game's title, "Tales from Danger's Den" is centered at the top in a simple pixel font. Below it in a transparent gray window with a white rim, is a selectable list of three options: New Game, Continue, and Options.
Screenshot of a retro-style video game in grayscale. In the center of the screen is a small pixel sprite depicting a young woman with her hair in space buns. She's holding a sword and a shield. She's standing outside on an overworld map portraying a bay. The sea is to her south; mountains bound the north and east. The land is covered with alternating swaths of forest and plains. A river winds along the southwest corner of the screen. Slightly northeast of the heroine is a little town and castle on the border of the woods. Farther away, to the northwest, a cave opens from the mountainside.
Screenshot of a retro-style video game (mostly) in grayscale. Now the heroine is in town. She's talking over the counter to a man wearing an apron. A blue-white framed translucent gray window at the bottom of the screen shows what he's saying: "Buy your herbs here! Don't leave home without 'em!" A woman stands behind the counter of an adjacent shop to the heroine's right.
Video game screenshot of a field menu in typical RPG Maker MZ style. The window on the left takes up most of the screen. Near the top it shows basic status info for the heroine: her name is Wyeth, and she's a level 1 paladin with 544 HP, 41 MP, and no TP. The HP and MP bars stand out as pops of fire orange and ocean blue, respectively, on an otherwise grayscale screen. The window on the right is narrower, and lists menu commands: Item, Skill, Equp, Status, Formation (this one's grayed out), Options, Save, and Game End. Below this window is a small window displaying the heroine's money: 0 gold. In the top right corner of the screen, there's an arrow bent backward, providing a way for players using a mouse or touch screen to exit the menu. The windows of the field menu are translucent. Through the back of them, a blurry image can be seen: it's the heroine standing on the overworld map.

McKathlin

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