RMMZ Mayor On The Run (IGMC 2022)

[SeaPhoenix]

​

While fleeing, you stumble across a small village in dire straits and you're offered the position of mayor. Can you rejuvenate the village within a week while staying ahead of the people who are after you?

You'll meet interesting characters who can help you achieve your goals, and you get to decide who moves in! Would you rather have a gardener who'll beautify the village, or a clown running away from the circus?

As you explore the surroundings, you'll discover new areas and useful items. Make the villagers happy by fulfilling their needs, decorating their homes, and improving their skills. You'll experience different outcomes and see the village transform in different ways based on your choices and actions.

If you're lucky, you may even be able to change your appearance!

Playtime
About 30-60 minutes per playthrough (multiple endings available).

Genre
Adventure, city-builder

Note
This game was made in about 5 weeks for the Indie Game Making Contest: Rebirth.

Link
https://seaphoenix.itch.io/mayor



More screenshots

Spoiler: More screenshots

Credits

Spoiler: Credits

Game engine
RPG Maker MZ © Gotcha Gotcha Games Inc./YOJI OJIMA 2020

Plugins
SeaPhoenix
Team VisuStella (Yanfly, Arisu, Olivia, Irina)
Galv
Shaz
triacontane
Moghunter
Galenmereth
Yanfly
Shi tsudo Kei

Tiles and Sprites
Pixel Art World (http://yms.main.jp)
Enterbrain
Panda Maru
Sithjester
Nekura Fantasy Map Chip Material Collection
SeaPhoenix

Icons
Avery
Enterbrain
SeaPhoenix

Pop-up Balloons
Pipoya
SeaPhoenix

User Interface Graphics
Krachware

Font
Overlock © 2011, Dario Manuel Muhafara (http://www.tipo.net.ar)

Music
Darren Curtis

Sound Effects
Gotcha Gotcha Games
WOW Sound

Playtesters
Paul
TeknoKyo Customs
Sillyshoes

 

[slimmmeiske2]

This looks amazing, SeaPhoenix!

 

[SeaPhoenix]

Thanks, @slimmmeiske2! I'm looking forward to playing your game too - it sounds very cute and interesting!

 

[Lady_JJ]

Definitely going to play this one.

 

[slimmmeiske2]

As I posted on the itch, this was such a fun experience! There were so many possibilties and it's so fleshed out, I kind of forgot it was a jam game at several points.

I did find some minor bugs:
Kitchen counter bends (slight pixel diference)
Stray pixels from this sprite. Only noticed it from this direction.
Roof of the house near the cave gets cut off.


Some ideas for further improvements:

• Being able to decorate our room. At the end of the game in my first run, both the village and the houses inside looked amazing, but my own only had a bed and a chest. I realise there's story reasons on why Carrot wouldn't really decorate their room. Nevertheless it would have been cool if Dogan gave a piece of furniture because I maxed out his skills.
• That brings me to my second suggestion. The ability to change my clothes back to the normal outfit after I picked my choices. It would be cool if there was a wardrobe with my old outfit that I could switch into.

Do you have any plans for an expansion? Also how many main endings are there?

 

[Tw0Face]

Wow, this game was incredibly fun and I haven't enjoyed an RPG Maker game this much in a long time. Absolutely everything was done right here and you created a great gaming experience. This is so absolutely well done, bro. I hope you have a lot of success at IGMC and I can even imagine you have some quite good chances to be among the top places with this piece.

 

[SeaPhoenix]

I'm glad you both enjoyed the game, @slimmmeiske2 and @Tw0Face! I appreciate your letting me know.

And thanks so much for the bug reports, @slimmmeiske2 - I can't tell you how many times I playtested and yet I missed those graphical errors! I'll fix them when the rating period is over.

I think having Dogan reward you with something special is a great idea. And I did consider having a wardrobe too to change your clothes but ran out of time to explore that.

I'll put more details regarding the multiple endings in a spoiler.

Spoiler: Possible outcomes

There are essentially 3 possible outcomes at the very end, but the dialogue also changes depending on what you did or say, or how many money you have. Some - but not all - of these changes you can see by reloading the Autosave of the final scene.

Also, there are 3 possible outcomes regarding the inner cave.

I don't know yet if I'll expand on this game... I was working on the sequel to The Lost Art of Innkeeping when IGMC popped up, so I feel like I should get that done first.

 

[TheRamenGirl]

Hello!! i finished your game! i loved it!

Spoiler: spoiler

What i don't quite like is that at my first ending (i don't yet know any other endings), i apologize for the things i done but even then they don't want me at the village.. i believe the game closes little fast....and the good things ive done don't matter...

I think, like slimmmeiske2 said, in the future maybe with update, we would love a little more customization on player and his house.. Maybe a little more backstory details...
and i will add why not a relationship system that will have really effect on the story or something..
i can see a lot of potential in the game. I can even imagine more story plot!!

i have 2 things to mention.
A rat can "close" you and you can't leave. Maybe I stepped on their programed path and that makes them to freeze but if you are near an object it can close you.. this can be fixed by making the rats leave from the player if they being touched or something..

Spoiler: example

Lucky i did have a near save file don't worry

And second

Spoiler: Story Spoiler maybe

if you buy furnitures for Caramel but you miss one, i needed to buy something extra for the Furniture maker to update his skills, so i buyed a table, (i thought it would be on my inventory for my house) but it went for caramel and i had to buy again the large table...

 

[SeaPhoenix]

Thank you for the feedback, @TheRamenGirl, and glad you liked the game! Yeah, I do think more customization for the player and the house would be nice, maybe even putting up paintings. And sorry about the bugs you encountered, especially being cornered by the rat! I appreciate your bug reports, and I wish I could fix them now, but I'll have to wait till judging is over.

Regarding the ending you got, I'll put the below in spoilers so you can read it if you want to learn more about getting a different ending. If you want more details too, just let me know.

Spoiler: Ending

The villagers will let you stay only if the average happiness level and the reputation are both high.

 

[TheRamenGirl]

Spoiler: I saw the good ending

When i wrote the reply, i went again and re-played the game to see other endings
i get it now it makes sense! you are right!

i want to add that the story writing and the characters speaking, are really pleasant!
(i don't often see that on a game)
I really enjoyed it! i would love a story coninue update or a sequel!
Very good job!!

 

[SeaPhoenix]

Oh, that's nice to know, @TheRamenGirl! Glad you saw the good ending and that you enjoyed replaying the game too!

 

[SeaPhoenix]

I posted a devlog on Itch.io on the furniture placement system I created for Mayor On The Run (https://seaphoenix.itch.io/mayor/devlog/418165/making-mayor-on-the-run-part-ii), but I thought I'd post more details here in case fellow developers are interested in how it was done.



Since the player has to make the villagers happy by buying furniture for them, I thought players might want to place the furniture too and decorate the home. So I spent several days writing the code for this (which you can see in action above) - you can buy different furniture, and place it wherever you want.

Spoiler: More details on how the furniture system was done

When the furniture is selected from the player's inventory, the player is replaced with a 50% opacity sprite of the furniture. (There is a lot of fiddling with the code too to prevent the player's sprite from changing and setting the camera to a fixed location). Then a parallel common event looks at where the mouse is, or whether the player moved with the keyboard, and this determines the location of the furniture sprite.

When the mouse is clicked or the player presses Ok, the furniture is placed (first checking through code if it's in a valid location within the room - this is identified by the region - and making sure it doesn't overlap with or obstruct other furniture). I used Galv's Event Spawner to spawn the furniture in place, and modified it slightly to allow the player to remove furniture and/or move it to a new location as well.

But when I playtested it, placing furniture felt very tedious, especially if one had to do it multiple times! And since it was the TYPE of furniture that mattered for the villagers' happiness, not its location, the whole thing did not feel necessary. So I ditched it for the most part (in the current version of the game, the only furniture the player gets to place is the bed), and spent a couple days streamlining things.

Which led to the screen below, where you buy the furniture the villagers want and it's automatically placed in their homes (i.e., the events in the houses show different images depending on variables for the type of furniture).



One of the lessons I've learned over the past few years ever since I started making games is that I need to playtest in order to see if something's fun (which means I have to implement it first!). And if I don't feel it's fun or good, I need to change it, or be prepared to discard it, never mind how many hours I already spent on it. But this is just my personal approach; other people may find things work differently for them.

 

[fizzly]

Wow, this game was incredibly fun and I haven't enjoyed an RPG Maker game this much in a long time. Absolutely everything was done right here and you created a great gaming experience.

Did you tried other games by @SeaPhoenix? Every one of them are super-addicting!