Ha… Only on paper, and a little bit of messing with tilesets. I’m pretty terrible at working on solo projects–the one I’ve made progress on is still in the works almost ten years later, and is much much smaller than an RPG. Also, when I posted this, we were a few months from shipping Before the Storm, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Must have been itching to do something different!
I basically would consider these to be in that Lite RPG category, yes! Lots of meeting people, learning information, and travelling around an open world following threads and doing jobs… sprinkle in some combat that isn’t overly consequential most of the time, and some simple but satisfying progression… Love it. (SC2 is, after all, the greatest game ever made.)
In fact, along with the Ultima Worlds of Adventure games, they’re probably the games that FEEL closest to what I had in mind, just in how they meld story and gameplay.
My game idea is set in a fictionalized Homeric Dark Age Greece. City states acting as little oases of civilization within a world of wild, chaotic monsters–organic stuff jammed together without reason or order. You’re kind of like Telemachus, if he had taken the initiative and gone out sailing around the known world trying to find Odysseus (and if Odysseus’ spirit was destroyed so by the war that he gave up wanting to get home). Sail the sea, track down your father’s scattered crew at various city states–each with its own challenge of maintaining civilization–find your father himself… and… a bunch more. I didn’t even get to your bad-ass sister who is holding things down at home with grandma, keeping the city government from giving in to a hegemonic neighbor and taking up arms against the monsters that are storming the gates! In my head, the story has a very Avatar:TLA feel.
Well, maybe one day.
@RothdaTheTruculent – Thanks for mentioning Magical Diary! I’ve never even heard of them. Looks reminiscent of Long Live the Queen? Although that game didn’t have any dungeons.