The JSH Anthology Retrospectives
Part I: Query Part I: Who Am I?
An Informal Reanalysis by Joseph S Hall
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So there are 18 games in my anthology, and I’ve been asked to give some commentary on them for the readers. There are a few games that I have omitted either because I no longer have a copy of them or they were really just wastes of space, but this anthology covers what I consider the entirety of my ‘good’ OHR phase (Who Am I? through OHR House 3). I encourage new users to take a look at some of the games and see my progression away from game design.

My games can essentially be divided into three categories: RPGs, joke games, and movies. The movies are generally my best work, but I think I did OK with some of the RPGs, and joke games are always fun for at least 5 minutes or So. I want to go into detail, so I will focus on just one game this week. Since it is probably my most important early work, I will be looking back on Query Part I: Who Am I?

So here we have the first game (Other than a really old crappy game called Pixilation) that I finished for the OHR. At the time, I was quite proud of it, because I had actually finished a standard RPG, but I got very little attention from the community. No reviews, maybe 10 or so replies to a message board thread, then nothing. The lack of response was disheartening to say the least, but I feel that this game is actually quite good considering its age, and I actually replayed it for this write-up. The original notes have been lost, but I will share what I can.

The story is very shoddy. I was just beginning to develop as a writer (I was only 16 when I finished the game…) and a lot of it was based on another story I had planned. The Query Series was originally going to span five episodes, but it got to be too much work to complete so it was scrapped, naturally. Nevertheless, I’m proud of some specific things in this game, and I’ll do my best to point them out.

One thing that I focused on a lot in this game was the inclusion of sidequests, all accessible once the player obtained the airship. The game is a lot easier if you do the sidequests, but I imagine most would not have bothered to look for them. I think that a lot of OHR users include sidequests that do not benefit the player in a big enough way; it is nice when the super equipment one finds in these quests is actually very powerful.

The best sidequest I included was a timed one, reminiscent of the Excalibur II sidequest in Final Fantasy IX. If the player reaches Tate Island within 30 minutes of starting Who Am I?, he can get the best weapon in the game, the Ow. (Later renamed in newer versions of the game) Sure, that kind of quest is annoying, but at least I was thinking outside the box. OHR developers should try little things like this.

Another thing that I think I did right in this game was giving the player a lot of equipment options. In too many RPGs, the player equips the same old junk, maximizing defense and strength, etc. In this game, I offered lots of equipment with varying elemental properties and statistic boosts. These things do not make such a big difference that they are vital, but they do help the player immerse himself into the game by providing input on the characters’ stats.

Playing the game now, I also notice that all of the characters have good strengths; in fact, this might be the most balanced game I ever made. It is a little difficult to decide whom I want to use against bosses because I remember designing all of the characters to be different and wanting to use them all. (To clarify, I am not saying this game’s characters are the most unique, interesting, or whatever; I’m just glad that the player can win with any party and have a good time deciding who to use.)

So, I guess I should talk a little bit about what’s WRONG with this game. The first should be obvious, looking at the screenshot. Why did I bother to make all these towns and not include any NPCs?

Well, the answer is: I was going to, but the game was taking too long to make and I wanted to finish it up. As a result, the game looks really lazy and bare. The important thing about this, though, is it really reflects my philosophy on towns in RPGs. The NPCs that I would have added probably would have been boring to talk to, so they would have been pointless to have anyway, so the game might actually be better off without them. In my later games, I made towns much smaller and with very few or no NPCs at all.

Of course, this raises another issue common to my games: I always forget about LITTLE problems. Little problems are worse than big problems because the game designer can consciously choose to look over them, and after a while, they add up. Sure, Who Am I? isn’t bad for an indie RPG, but it does not look professional at all, and it is largely because I chose to ignore small problems like the lack of NPCs and characters ending up in odd places during dialog scenes. The game plays like a demo even though it is supposedly complete. I would advise my readers not to make this mistake.

The last slip-up I want to focus on is how I used an incredibly stupid, contrived plot to fuel gameplay. Seriously, this game’s plot does not make any sense. Taking people into a dream with you? What the heck was I thinking? Well, I was thinking, “I want to have a bunch of bizarre enemies that could only exist in a dream for the heroes to fight.” It’s as simple as that.

I sacrificed having a deep plot to enrich gameplay, and the result is pretty messy. I named characters after friends just so that I could have a Red Mage, a Thief, a Knight, a Summoner, a Wizard, a Dragoon, a Priest, and an Arc Knight. The plot is poorly constructed and pretentious—nobody wants to play a game about my friends! This is such a common mistake that OHR users make that it is hardly worth mentioning, but I wanted to say that even the “well-known” developers make dumb newbie mistakes. The fact is, no matter how good an OHR game is, its audience is limited. Who Am I? had problems, some of them glaringly stupid, but if all that you want to do is make a silly RPG, it can be done, and you can even make parts of it good.

If I want the reader to walk away with anything from this retrospective, it is that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Surlaw (creator of Walthros) is not a great pixel artist; heck, not even a great game designer, but his games focus on what he is good at: plot construction and comedy. Fenrir (Final Fantasy H) is not good with music placement or battle balance, but he is a great artist and makes good maps. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice one thing when you are good at something else, especially with your first real game. Your game will be sloppier than it should be, but GETTING DONE is more important.

It’s more fun to finish than to quit because the game is taking too long to make. Besides, you have to prove that you have stamina if you want other people to work with you on later games. When that happens, you can work with someone who is a good artist (if you aren’t good with graphics) or who makes good maps (if you have no sense of design whatsoever), etc. Yes, I realize this paragraph goes against anything ‘high-brow’ game designers will try to tell you, but if you are not making a high-budget game, have some fun before you decide to get serious. You can always go back and fix little problems, like I didn’t.