RPG Maker

Are you a fan of old-school RPG style games like Zelda for the Nintendo? Ever wish you could design your own? Now you can, with RPG Maker!

The premium edition of this program, RPG Maker VX Ace, allows you to create and personalize a game from scratch, without ever having to type a line of code. A combination of drag&drop options and instruction boxes give you the creativity and freed to design your own storyline, characters, scripts, maps, and more. You are in charge of everything.

The game itself, when played, is the top-scrolling map style game with 8-bit models, pop-up boxes for character scripts interaction and also for battles. 

I recommend coming up with a storyline plan before starting:

• Who is your hero? Are they male or female? Are they a warrior, adventurer, unsuspecting by-stander who was "chosen"?
• What is the goal of the game? "save the princess!" or "stop the bad guy from taking over the world!" or "Why has the river's gone dry?!"),
• What does the world look like? Is there a town? What's in the town? Who is in the town?
• What obstacles will your hero encounter and how will they have to overcome them?
• Does your hero find a team along the way? Who are they and how can they help the team reach the goal?

Once you have that all planned, all you have to do is start putting the game together!

The Tagline for this program is

RPG Maker VX Ace :
Simple Enough for a Child;
Powerful Enough for a Developer

And that's true. My boys who are 7, 9, and 11 love this program! But there is more than enough to keep me entertained and designing as well. Plus, if you WANT to see how the programming works, there is the option to check out the code for yourself.

Detailed tutorials make it so that you can figure out all the features and how to use them. (My oldest spent DAYS researching and learning with these!)

Unfortunately, this program is not available for Mac, but it does work great on Windows.

At the time of this post, this program costs $69.99US. 

There are a few options if you want to try this game out for yourself:

1. You can download a LITE version for free – just know that there are limited features for this option such as a maximum number of maps you can make and events you can have in your game and less tiles for design options.

2. Download the free trial for 30 days, after which you can buy a membership and continue your access.

3. Check out one of the other programs that the company offers – from character designing to other rpg makers that are less detailed and intense as the full VX Ace version.

Now get out there and get game designing!