RPG Maker is neat, guest starring OHRRPGCE

[Trysdyn]

I like weird obscure indie RPGs. I've played quite a few RPG Maker games and am always curious to find more that are good. Steam's actually started a low-key golden age for RPG Maker games not just reaching a new level of quality but being a completely valid way to develop a for-sale game. So yeah! Some recs...

Anything made by Ephiam: Venaitura, To Aerthen, and Scarmonde. Ephiam tends to use vanilla RPG Maker without a lot of heavy plugin or script lifting, but designs amazingly engaging worlds and unique classes and characters that you may not notice it's vanilla RPG Maker. I consider Ephiam's work the gold standard on what vanilla RPG Maker can do. Scarmonde especially is one of cooler RPGs I played in 2024 and I wholly recommend.

Wolfs Moon Studios and their massive library of games deserve a mention too. Wolfs Moon does a bit more creative scripting around stuff, and turns their games more into Diablolikes with tiers of loot and rare drops that alter the battle systems. They churn out a game a quarter it feels like; I've only played a few and I've learned Wolfs Moon tends to lean into the "Bosses have one solution" style of puzzle fights and grind. If that's your thing, hey!

Veiled Skies is one I've been eyeing on my wishlist for ages. It's a cloudpunk "Inspired by Phantasy Star" game involving a species of fox-people and has a really neat fanciful vibe that screams "The dev knows what they like and they're gonna make exactly that". We need more of that. It also looks really sick. It's RPG Maker MZ but doesn't look it.

Exit Fate is an old, old mainstay. Someone built a spiritual successor to Suikoden in RPG Maker XP. I have no idea how they did that, but they did. Even running this in 2025 might be a challenge but it was considered one of the best for many, many years.

And hey, if you're tired of RPG Maker, may I suggest the OHRRRPGCE, AKA "The Hamster Republic Engine"? Because Feenicks has done some neat stuff there. I wholly recommend False Skies as a full-arse RPG in the style of Final Fantasy 3 or Legend. It's on Itch and Steam for a couple bucks and is a full 35 hour experience.

Feenicks's A Single Fallen Feather is a neat romp too! It's a FF1 "Party builder" style RPG where every PC and NPC is a harpy. Very bird, and free to boot.

I've got a couple others on my wishlist but I know so little about them I can't say much. I har murmurings of things like Wooden Ocean I want to give a try one day. I'm always looking for more though if anyone's played some RPG Maker or OHR game that just blew them away~

[CroaOrca]

I like weird obscure indie RPGs. I've played quite a few RPG Maker games and am always curious to find more that are good. Steam's actually started a low-key golden age for RPG Maker games not just reaching a new level of quality but being a completely valid way to develop a for-sale game. So yeah! Some recs...

Anything made by Ephiam: Venaitura, To Aerthen, and Scarmonde. Ephiam tends to use vanilla RPG Maker without a lot of heavy plugin or script lifting, but designs amazingly engaging worlds and unique classes and characters that you may not notice it's vanilla RPG Maker. I consider Ephiam's work the gold standard on what vanilla RPG Maker can do. Scarmonde especially is one of cooler RPGs I played in 2024 and I wholly recommend.

Wolfs Moon Studios and their massive library of games deserve a mention too. Wolfs Moon does a bit more creative scripting around stuff, and turns their games more into Diablolikes with tiers of loot and rare drops that alter the battle systems. They churn out a game a quarter it feels like; I've only played a few and I've learned Wolfs Moon tends to lean into the "Bosses have one solution" style of puzzle fights and grind. If that's your thing, hey!

Veiled Skies is one I've been eyeing on my wishlist for ages. It's a cloudpunk "Inspired by Phantasy Star" game involving a species of fox-people and has a really neat fanciful vibe that screams "The dev knows what they like and they're gonna make exactly that". We need more of that. It also looks really sick. It's RPG Maker MZ but doesn't look it.

Exit Fate is an old, old mainstay. Someone built a spiritual successor to Suikoden in RPG Maker XP. I have no idea how they did that, but they did. Even running this in 2025 might be a challenge but it was considered one of the best for many, many years.

And hey, if you're tired of RPG Maker, may I suggest the OHRRRPGCE, AKA "The Hamster Republic Engine"? Because Feenicks has done some neat stuff there. I wholly recommend False Skies as a full-arse RPG in the style of Final Fantasy 3 or Legend. It's on Itch and Steam for a couple bucks and is a full 35 hour experience.

Feenicks's A Single Fallen Feather is a neat romp too! It's a FF1 "Party builder" style RPG where every PC and NPC is a harpy. Very bird, and free to boot.

I've got a couple others on my wishlist but I know so little about them I can't say much. I har murmurings of things like Wooden Ocean I want to give a try one day. I'm always looking for more though if anyone's played some RPG Maker or OHR game that just blew them away~

I'm gunna have to check some of these out! Thanks for a bunch of recs!!! I've watched a lot of folks play through horror rpgmaker games but thats about it!

Def keeping tabs here for more one to check out in the future hehe

I'm gunna start with Ephiam's stuff since its what caught my eye from what you mentioned :3

[Trysdyn]

I'm gunna have to check some of these out! Thanks for a bunch of recs!!! I've watched a lot of folks play through horror rpgmaker games but thats about it!

Def keeping tabs here for more one to check out in the future hehe

I'm gunna start with Ephiam's stuff since its what caught my eye from what you mentioned :3

I definitely recommend Ephiam's stuff as a starting point yeah. Ephiam also apparently made a ton of stuff pre-Steam but I haven't dug into that stuff yet. It's all on the RPG Maker forum, to my understanding.

[Trysdyn]

Gosh I wrote all this stuff and I forgot to include the RPG Maker game I helped a friend build. Silly me.

Speo is a Lufia 2 Ancient Cave homage built in RPG Maker 2003.

If you know anything about RM2k3 this sentence should horrify you, and what my friend had to do to actually make random level generation work is, indeed, horrifying.

It's rough around the edges and kind of shallow in its procedural generation, but it's complete and silly and full of goofy humor I love.

[Mixi Blacksand]

My favorite RPG Maker game is EXTRA POWER: The Giant Fist which is... a side-scrolling beat 'em up that runs on RPG Maker VX. Save the animals of Africa by throwing your enemies at your enemies. Throw screen-sized boulders at your enemies. Throw lasers at your enemies. Throw a shark at your enemies. And that's just the default character's gameplay!

[Trysdyn]

My favorite RPG Maker game is EXTRA POWER: The Giant Fist which is... a side-scrolling beat 'em up that runs on RPG Maker VX. Save the animals of Africa by throwing your enemies at your enemies. Throw screen-sized boulders at your enemies. Throw lasers at your enemies. Throw a shark at your enemies. And that's just the default character's gameplay!

This is part of a series I think. I recall macaw45 streaming one of the EXTRAPOWER games and it was absolutely, positively unhinged. In a good way.

It's got a beat em up, a shmup, and a heckin' tactical RPG.

[Mixi Blacksand]

Macaw is how I found out about the Lucky Lamp games, yeah. I figured SOMEONE would bring them up in this thread eventually as novelty of bending RPG Maker backwards, but I can vouch for at least Giant Fist as being extremely fun, regardless of the platform it's built on. All you need is some good design, not fancy tech.

[ElTipejoLoco]

Hardi Gosal, also known as Orchard-L, made some pretty neat things in One Hamster Republic's RolePlayingGame Creation Engine, though it's become increasingly difficult to find them all as time has went on. Castle Paradox appears to still host them now that the RPG Creations/Radical Poeisis/Studio Eres site does not.

Art style aside, the games might be pretty hit-and-miss mechanics-wise and narratively, though. I recall not minding them for the latter that much but reading reviews for Boundless Ocean made me second-guess what I remember about it a bit. I know I felt Purgatory was pretty difficult, though.

Also, there's Mega Man Sprite Game. Opinions may vary on it.

[EdenCoven]

hearing about the OHRRPGCE in 2025.... blessed reality. We never finished anything with it but we sure spent HOURS trying

[EpsilDelta]

I've been pretty interested in the PC-98 era of RPGMaker/Dante.

Some games from that time are Azusa 999, Corpse Party, and Peret em Heru. I'm just completely fascinated by what people were starting to do with the idea of an engine meant for indie developers. Of course, there's plenty of rough edges, but it was a new era of game development.

ASCII/Enterbrain used to run an Internet Contest Park (Conpark, Archive.org link), where games that were submitted were reviewed and given awards. Many neat things to be found there!