An old school Action-RPG
Download Link: Click Here
Story:
Take control of a boy thrown into a world plagued by monsters from another realm!
Destined has you play as "Rick", normal high schooler from the year 199X who, on his way to a get-together, is mysteriously thrown into a world known as "Arcacia". From there he finds new friends- both natives of the new world and people from Earth stuck in the same situation. Unfortunately there's also a growing army of relentless monsters bent on taking over as well! Slowly learning and using the extraordinary powers the new world gives off, Rick must travel around the various lands. Help the natives with their troubles, find where this dangerous army is coming from, and hopefully find a way home for himself and his friends in the process!
Background:
I was really interested in game design back in high school, but didn't know where or how to get started. Upon searching for a long time and purchasing some crude third-rate apps along the way, I luckily stumbled across a pretty straight-forward system with RPG Maker 2000 (or RM2K for short). The community was surprisingly large too, so there were plenty of people who were making some amazing things with it, and with that came a lot of active forums and tutorials.
RM2K had a default battle system very similar to classic RPGs like the early Final Fantasy titles, Phantasy Star titles, Earthbound, etc. and after about an hour of playing, you would realize that the default battle system was pretty lackluster. Especially when you realized most people's games used the same exact system, animations, etc.
I always enjoyed the top-down Zelda-like battle systems, so I started attempting to code one within RM2K using basic variable usage. I remember staying up till midnight on school nights trying to conceptualize or finish ideas I had written down during study hall hours. Sure, I didn't have access to any standard Adobe products at the time, but I managed to make graphic edits for custom chipsets and character sets with some rudimentary online editors, and heavily relied on the classic midi music found over at www.VGMusic.com for a soundtrack.
After surviving one PC failure (always save your work!) and over a full year-and-a-half of creation, it was done! Sure it was still missing a few details here and there, but it had a story, characters, setting, and the battle system was finished. So, overall...it was okay! It's by no means a masterpiece, but it ran fine and was fun decently-sized romp through old-school territory.
The goal here was to create a Super Nintendo-era RPG, so if you're a fan of such things, give it a try! I'd recommend starting at part 2 if you want to be dropped right into the story quickly.