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RPGMaker Game Recommendations... from Dune!

Why RPGMaker? What's that?

RPGMaker is an inexpensive game engine often used by independent or hobbyist game developers, sometimes to make genuine RPGs but often these games forgoe the RPG elements entirely or only have light RPG elements (pseudo-RPG). Horror is also a very popular genre for these games. They're usually free to download, and sometimes tricky to download and play if you're using an English-language computer trying to run a Japanese-language game (but there are solutions). What I love about these games is that they can be very creative and atmospheric, sometimes they have rich and compelling stories that rely on little to no dialogue and mostly environmental storytelling. They also tend to be rather short games made by one person, which, I enjoy shorter games that are easy for me to finish. Some of them are very long, though! And that surprises me! I think the reason I got into them is because they were so different from the console and PC-ROM games I had played before, and... they were free! No mulling around, just download and play and give it a try! (A few of these aren't free, but pretty cheap. Over the past 10 years more games get released on Steam and Itch.io for a fee, which, usually they're way easier to install and run, so not a bad thing. Plus, it's great to support the creators. Sometimes a game has a longstanding free version but you can offer up a few bucks for the newly released Steam version, too, so you've got options.)

I also enjoy non-RPGMaker indie games that fit a similar description, if you want you can check those out [here]. Else, I hope you find something you enjoy in the list below!

GAME - Download | Steam/Itch.io

Yume Nikki Fangames

If you've played Yume Nikki, there's a whole world of fanmade games waiting for you! Some of which I love even more than the original game. Basically, lots of different people around the world have taken their own spin on the dream-traveling game format laid out in Yume Nikki, and the results are really interesting. There's even a yearly Dream Diary Jam hosted on Itch.io to encourage people to make their own YNFGs. You can find a lot of YNFGs on places like [rpgmaker.net], [rpgmaker fandom], [rpgmaker tumblr blogs].

Here are a few of my favorite YNFGs:

RPGMaker Games I want to play but haven't yet:

RPGMaker Game Installation Troubleshooting