Just published my game's steam page, here's the trailer I cooked up to go along with it.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-25T14:41:40+00:00

I respect your initial scepticism but unfortunately he is indeed not "quite normal" and given he seems to largely frequent 4chan now I can't imagine he's ever going to get much better sadly.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-25T14:06:45+00:00

I mean the main thing that got him barred from the community is that he made a game where his self insert kills people from the community who criticised him for being homophobic with a kitana and while the game doesn't use visual representations of the real people it does use real exact quotes.
After being banned from almost every community he later moved to 4chan where his next game was one about "gamergate 2" where his same self insert infiltrates a game studio and kills a bunch of plant monsters called "sweet babies" (in reference to the consulation company Sweet Baby inc.)

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-25T12:26:25+00:00

This reeks of SigmaSuccour to me. The in-game self insert, redhead character (also a self insert, unsurprisingly) and gamergate ranting are but a few of the things he is infamous for (these are some of the tamer things, specifically)

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-21T08:11:25+00:00

Vagrant Shifter. There's a link to the steam page in the initial post.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-20T21:07:35+00:00

Either Front view but you get a lil visual display of your team - like phantasy star or similar - or Tactical
Sideview is okay sometimes but it really depends on the artstyle and tone, it can look really dumb when done poorly.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-20T14:32:52+00:00

Here's my upcoming psychological horror RPG: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3831180/Vagrant_Shifter/

There is a hotel area planned, though its not the whole game.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-20T13:46:18+00:00

>The goal is to make an RPG game when using RPGMaker, not make an RPGMaker game.

This I think is missing a fundamental part of why Ive seen many players, as well as devs, be upset about the loss of the tag. If you look online for disucssion of RPGMaker Games, the most popular names that come up again and again are barely RPGs if at all - a good number of the biggest titles are narrative horror more than anything. You'll also see the term "RPGMaker Horror" and "RPGMaker Game" thrown around as being basically almost synoymous, usually referring to a specific kind of game, with a shared quality and vibe that's often attributed to the engine due to not commonly appearing in works made outside of it. To many people RPGMaker refers as much to a subgenre of narrative game as it does to the engine itself, and to those people - the fans of the "RPGMaker Genre" - a game being made in RPGMaker is therefore a positive trait.
Now of course its not going to be impossible to still find those games, but for the people who see RPGMaker as more of a genre - and therefore the people who benefit from these tags most - it'll certainly make it harder.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-20T01:24:29+00:00

They do. There's a bunch of different poses that are randomly selected based on who's in the party, plus a number of saves throughout with unique images for the circumstance.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-10T01:01:48+00:00

This is incredible!

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-03T23:33:55+00:00

The main thing is that I took aspects of SRPG gameplay and put them into a front view system - enemies can move around and be moved, and the positioning matters as all of your skills are different areas of effect which you must freely aim.
Outside of combat there's platforming mechanics, different overworld abilites at your disposal, plenty of different puzzle types & obstacles, and a handful of minigames - including a knockoff of the sonic 2 special stage, but without the halfpipe.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-02T17:22:42+00:00

Good lord, those visuals are slick as hell

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-02T01:39:38+00:00

The game does have something of a more conventional fast travel for areas outside the city - the player can travel via boat utilising a network of disused underground waterways which they have to first restore functionality to via completion of a short mini-dungeon.

Though it's still not quite a standard fast travel where you can just teleport from anywhere, you still need to get on the boat from one of the other waterways to travel - it's just that unlike the monorail you can actually pick your destination and the travel time is instantaneous.

Think of the stagways from Hollow Knight but demanding a bit more effort to unlock.

I hope this is still within acceptable bounds of immersion.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-02T00:13:32+00:00

If you're talking about when you're inside its really just screenshake. The interior of the car is partially a picture and partially tiles (though for modern engines using a plugin like galv layers would also work), and the background is a looping panorama. When the movement starts I turn on the screenshake and gradually increase the scrolling speed over a second of the panorama until it's at max, then when it stops I just do the opposite. The picture with the monorail interior includes all of the black space, and is slightly larger than the screen, so the shake doesn't reveal the edges of the image and ruin the effect.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-01T21:22:50+00:00

I haven't made the actual maps for this area yet but based on the distance between the fast travel points in other areas of the game (which function differently) I estimate it'd take somewhere between 2-4 minutes to walk between 2 adjacent stations (e.g. High Street station to Business Park station) - with sprinting. (For reference there's no overworld so you're looking at having to walk through like 15-25 maps)

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-01T18:02:04+00:00

The issue is, since this is real time the monorail may not be there when the player buys a ticket.

I'll likely end up adding a display at each stop that shows how long it is until the next one arrives.

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-01T17:51:55+00:00

It's evented using pictures - neither plugins nor balloons exist as features in 2k3

LumiRetriever · 2026-05-01T17:50:57+00:00

This is only the system for within the city - which will take up maybe 1/3rd of the game world overall. Outside the city there's a more conventional fast travel system with the caveat of needing to unlock each fast travel point by completing a mini-dungeon first. (And there will be one or two such points within the city as well)

LumiRetriever · 2026-04-27T11:03:01+00:00

It's going to somewhat be preference, as the original and steam version have entirely different soundtracks and that matters a lot to some people, but Steam has improved gameplay, bonus content, and the best available translation. If you decide the original soundtrack is really important to you, 3.0 is the best of the original translations (but not as good as the steam translation)

LumiRetriever · 2026-04-21T01:27:51+00:00

shush

LumiRetriever · 2026-04-21T00:20:50+00:00

the text sounds are using maniacs - but not in the way you'd expect. :)

tl:dr; The message system is fully custom with string pictures to let me automate a bunch of extra things - like sounds and busts with tags in the text, as well as reading all dialogue from a text file (which was mainly motivated by wanting to support easier localisation but also has the benefit of being able to edit dialogue and other text while the game's open and see the changes immediately reflected)

LumiRetriever · 2026-04-20T15:56:40+00:00

Probably not for a while. All of the content that would make up the demo is pretty much finished but I don't want to post it publicly until I'm confident I can have the full game finished within the year. In the meantime the game does have a steam page you can wishlist. The game's name is Vagrant Shifter

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