Happy Halloween!
I’m tenshideve, and I’d like to thank you for playing Ex Change, taking an interest in this game, or accidentally stumbling upon this post!
This game was created within the duration of the Women’s Fest Game Jam hosted by Everium. Though continuing existing projects was allowed, I wanted to challenge myself and create a game entirely within the span of the two months in the jam.
My inspiration for the game (minor spoilers in this section, skip to avoid)
The otome and amare genre is largely comprised of visual novels. However, exploration is something I greatly enjoy in video games. I recently played two otome RPGs I really enjoyed: *The Silent Kingdom, *and Ten Trials of Babel: The Doppelganger Maze. I wanted to create something different from the usual…
Happy Halloween!
I’m tenshideve, and I’d like to thank you for playing Ex Change, taking an interest in this game, or accidentally stumbling upon this post!
This game was created within the duration of the Women’s Fest Game Jam hosted by Everium. Though continuing existing projects was allowed, I wanted to challenge myself and create a game entirely within the span of the two months in the jam.
My inspiration for the game (minor spoilers in this section, skip to avoid)
The otome and amare genre is largely comprised of visual novels. However, exploration is something I greatly enjoy in video games. I recently played two otome RPGs I really enjoyed: *The Silent Kingdom, *and Ten Trials of Babel: The Doppelganger Maze. I wanted to create something different from the usual VN formula, which is why I’ve created a top-down RPG with gift giving mechanics and small quests. Of course, I’ve kept the element of otome games I love most: choices which influence the ending.
As ridiculous as the premise of Ex Change is, the core story is a couple truly learning to empathise with each other’s struggles—Nabi’s exhaustion from working full time while feeling unsupported, and Trip’s frustration with unemployment and the frustration of being an unrecognised game developer.
The characters are actually based off two versions of myself I’ve been in the past. I’ve gone through an unemployment phase and a feeling-unsupported-as-a-partner phase. Some parts of the story were difficult for me to write as I’ve had to tap into the emotional turmoil I felt during both those times.
The body swap concept is largely inspired by the gender-bender stories I grew up with and were very influential to me and my gender expression.
One of them is Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, a yuri manga about a high school boy who is killed when an alien spaceship crash lands on him, only to be revived as a girl. Hazumu would later end up in a same-sex love triangle with two of his best female friends. 12-year-old me (who was probably too young to be reading a manga Seven Seas rated 16+) really enjoyed reading about Hazumu and how he adapts to life in a woman’s body, and also the conflicted feelings of Tomari, who fell for Hazumu when he was in his original body.
(Please don’t watch the anime. It butchers the story.)
I yoinked the body-swapping system from the more controversial shoujo manga, Ani-Imo. To keep it brief, Ani-Imo is about a non-blood related brother and sister who swap bodies thanks to Truck-kun. While Kashimashi inspired the more emotional moments of Ex Change, the comedic moments are inspired by Ani-Imo.
Okay, now onto the more technical stuff!
What went well
Using RPG Maker MZ instead of MV was the best decision I made for the game. Being able to see exactly where to move a sprite with a visual interface instead of manually calculating the X and Y coordinates*? *Life changing, really.
It was my first time designing an RPG Maker game with multiple maps which required different events to trigger depending on various conditions. Initially, because I’m an idiot and kind of scared of coding, I had the terrible idea of duplicating the maps every time I had a new scene, rather than using events and variables. Thank God I didn’t go with that option, because I changed the map design a lot. I would’ve had to propagate each minor change across every duplication of a map if I went with that option.
Not technical, but had the pleasure of working with an artist that drew all the 2D sprites and CGs extremely fast without compromising on quality. Thank you, Milina Bryce.
What Went Wrong
I absolutely had a scope creep issue. There was a lot more quests I initially designed, that in my opinion would’ve made the exploration and gameplay sections a bit longer. Sadly, that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints. I only implemented enough quests to (hopefully) encourage the players to explore the maps I designed.
You know how I said I moved from MV to MZ? Well, the project was initially created with MV, and I ported it over to MZ. Things looked like it was all going to work seamlessly when I first opened the project and naively kept working on it. “My project worked in the engine, so I should have no issues with deployment,” I thought. Guess what? After deployment, the game wouldn’t work!
I had this exact error after opening my deployed game!
Thank you Shaz, Keeper of the Nuts on RPG Maker Forums for providing the fix I needed.
Art wise, I left it till way too late to begin commissioning promo art. Some of it still has yet to be complete. This is at no fault of the artist, it’s my fault! I only realised I needed more art when I had one week left. I’m sorry to everyone I’ve messaged asking for updates.
Overall
I’m bad at conclusions, so I’ll let my cat Lelouch type one:
Rgnk ,,,, llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll[p]
=o[‘[/