To the Moon was Kan Gao’s first commercial success, a game about memory, loss, and dreams of being an astronaut that many players felt a strong emotional connection with (by which I mean everyone cried). To the Moon exceeded expectations for a game created with RPG Maker, but it was not his first. Before that, he spent many years working with the much-mocked engine, refining his poetic writing through many smaller games.

Though lacking polish and scope, those first projects are an intriguing glance into Gao’s mind, and share many traits with the award-winning To the Moon. They have lovingly crafted soundtracks, deep themes and a focus on storytelling and atmosphere, on small gestures and human emotions (plus annoying puzzles and birds). Those early experiments can be downloaded for free on Freebird Games’ website, and can be a nice appetizer before To the Moon’s new sequel Finding Paradise.

But are they all worth playing?

Quintessence

Superficially, Quintessence looks very much like every teen’s first RPG Maker game, with default art assets, rough menus, and a wonky battle system. As soon as you start playing, however, you realize it has one big redeeming quality: craft.

It may look cheap, but its cutscenes are composed with the care you’d expect from a Final Fantasy game. The camera movements, the lovely animations, the pacing of the dialogue, the music, the expressions: everything is calculated. Quintessence feels cinematic.

It’s a game that starts at the ending, with a final dungeon and a hardened group of heroes solving puzzles and battling monsters. After their tragic defeat, we’re back to the start to witness how everything started. This is not a start in medias res followed by a flashback, though. Thanks to a pact with a deity, the protagonist effectively rewinds time, getting another chance to relive events. 

Unlike To the Moon, we’re not back in time to make everything better: the protagonist wants to avoid getting involved in this mess in the first place, but it doesn’t take much for him to get tangled again in a story full of shapeshifters, magic, and lies.

It’s an intriguing tale, but its pacing is glacially slow. Every map change is an excuse for a new cutscene, a conversation, or a new character to be introduced. Quintessence is packed with details, and the never-ending dialogues, combined with the intricate maps, can sometimes feel overwhelming. Battles, on the other hand, are a convoluted real-time affair, often just an excuse to stretch your fingers before the next dialogue.

It’s a game that demands patience, and unashamedly wears its JRPG influences on its sleeve. Those willing to give it a chance will get to enjoy a lengthy, compelling story full of twists—albeit one that might possibly never get an ending.

As Gao’s attention shifted to commercial work, the fate of Quintessence became uncertain. Although Gao stated his determination to finish the game, it has been officially on hiatus for more than five years, and it’s still missing its final chapters. Even if you are interested in a look at his early work, you may want to hold off for now.

The Mirror Lied

"This is NOT a horror game," the description says. There are no monsters, no jumpscares, and no ways to get a Game Over: you’re just a faceless girl in an empty house, tasked with the duty of… watering a plant. 

Weird, but not horrifying. And yet, there’s something palpably disturbing in the way the house withers and shifts as you explore it, looking for answers in dusty rooms illuminated by crepuscular lights.

Books in the libraries have titles, but the pages are all blank. The phone keeps ringing, ominous messages telling you that a mysterious "birdie" is coming to get you. And the world map pinned on a room gradually gets emptier, continents disappearing one after another. 

This is not a horror game, not one of the many Yume Nikki-inspired RPG Maker titles with small girls fighting big monsters. And yet, it’s impossible to walk away from The Mirror Lied without feeling a bit uneasy. What was it all about? I don’t know. Nobody knows (the most accepted theory: "some metaphor about the bird flu"). Perhaps not even Kan Gao knows for sure—people tried to ask him, and this was his official response: 

While Gao hasn’t made proper horror games, this sense of uneasiness, of crumbling realities and distorted dreams, brings to mind the two mini episodes that were released after To the Moon, the Holiday Special Minisode and Sigismund Minisode 2. 

Do You Remember My Lullaby? 

Kan Gao’s works are sometimes criticized for their lack of interaction. His virtual words can sometimes be reduced to little more than the occasional puzzle or brief walk from a cutscene to another. In this case, he solved the problem by simply not having a game at all.

Do You Remember My Lullaby? is an immersive movie about a mother and child, narrated with few words and many small gestures. It’s a Christmas story, perfect for this holiday season—though being a Kan Gao game there is no happy ending and everything is terrible. Even in this game, Gao used RPG Maker’s default assets to paint its world, but to call them simply "default assets" would belie what he did with them.

Instead of making assets from scratch, Gao focused on improving what he already had, giving each character a full range of small movements, expressions and gestures. Simple scenes, like a mother making a cake, are portrayed with an attention to detail that makes everything feel more humane. A perfect non-game to try if you have half an hour and a pack of tissues to spare.

Lyra's Melody

It’s another sad game, this one. But not for the usual reasons.

Lyra’s Melody is the forgotten idea for a full-fledged game, that became less and less important as To the Moon became Gao’s main project. The only trace of its existence are some forum posts that gives us a brief summary of what it could have been:

When Ralle Peregrine was a child, he began to hear a mysterious melody in his head. Around the same time, his childhood sweetheart, Lyra Shire, began to lose her hearing.

As they grew up, Ralle became a guitarist to accompany the strange melody that only he hears whenever he closes his eyes. By then, Lyra had gone completely deaf.

He wrote many songs for her, but she could hear none of them.

One day, when Ralle was playing the mysterious tune at his usual spot, a wagon came by and stopped. Out came a man; a wanderer named Traviston Estel, with a piece of rye hanging out of his mouth.

That of which he soon spat out, as he took out a music box, echoing the very melody that Ralle has been hearing all these years.

The only playable demo is a lovely, criminally brief affair with no fights and the usual mix of cutscenes and minigames. Not much happens in terms of plots, but the interactions between the two protagonists are pleasant enough to leave us wondering. As it stands, it's the ghost of a tale that may never be, worthy of a play only for the most fervent fans.

If you didn't enjoy To the Moon, Gao’s previous works aren't going to blow your mind. There’s no artistic revolutions here, no dives into new genres or new ideas. Kan Gao’s path has been focused on polish—on the meticulous refinement of his particular style of storytelling over the course of 10 years. It makes me wonder what he could do with a bigger budget and full team behind him, but I think I already know the answer. Gao’s games are popular because they manage to strike a chord even in their primitive, pixelated form. Additional resources would help him reach a bigger audience, but his games would remain exactly the same. Because this one time, they sent a poet.

Between Steam's daily and weekly deals, not to mention a few well-timed individual sales, a lot of indie games are cheap right now. The sales aren't bundled together and therefore will end at different times, but they're all good deals on good games. Here's a rundown, sorted by when they end:

Friday, December 15 

Ruiner - $13 at 33 percent off (same price on GOG)

Saturday, December 16

Kerbal Space Program - $20 at 50 percent off 

Tacoma - $10 at 50 percent off

Monday, December 18

Ultimate Chicken Horse - $9 at 40 percent off 

Battle Chasers: Nightwar - $20 at 33 percent off

Wednesday, December 20

To the Moon - $4 at 60 percent off 

Thursday, December 21 

Gorogoa - $12 at 20 percent off (same price on GOG) 

Gorogoa is celebrating its launch week, by the way. Our review went up earlier today (spoilers: Philippa was quite taken with it). It's worth noting that the Steam winter sale also starts on Thursday, December 21, so more and likely steeper discounts are sure to follow. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

Can a game engine as old as the Super Nintendo remain relevant in 2017? If we're talking about RPG Maker, the answer is a resounding yes. After two decades of relative obscurity, the game-making software has exploded in popularity in recent years, leading to gems like To The Moon, LISA, and Always Sometimes Monsters. Since its first release in the early '90s, RPG Maker has mostly avoided mainstream attention, trundling along as a hobbyist tool for hardcore 16-bit JRPG fans. It wasn't until 2007 that the community even established a central repository for sharing advice and distributing their games. Dubbed the RPG Maker Network, it hosted more than 50 games in 2008, and another 74 in 2009. Many of these games were tech demos and proofs-of-concept, small projects made more for the developer's sake than for the player's. Others were fan games, lifting sprites and lore from established properties. Almost no one was selling their games.

All that changed in 2013. 188 new releases hit the RPG Maker Network. ModDB, the popular modding site, saw 74 stand-alone RPG Maker games added to its database. The next year, Steam got in on the action, adding 30 RPG Maker games in 2014 and following it up with 99 more in 2015 and 135 just last year. RPG Maker has quietly become the go-to tool for aspiring developers who want to make a game and sell it, too.

Why, after more than 20 years, has RPG Maker recently seen such an explosion of popularity? It's the most accessible game engine around, but recent iterations have added the depth needed to make serious games. And, perhaps most importantly, it's on Steam.

Accessibility and customization

From the moment he heard the first stirring notes of the original Final Fantasy, Phil Hamilton fell in love with video game soundtracks. For years he dreamed of scoring an RPG of his own, something in the vein of Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana. Unfortunately, his style of music never seemed to fit with other people's games, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. Diving into RPG Maker VX, Hamilton began building and scoring his own game, and he was so enamored with the process that he rounded up other like-minded developers and formed Dancing Dragon Games, going on to release standout RPG Maker games like Skyborn and Echoes of Aetheria.

Hamilton attributes much of his studio's success to how user-friendly recent editions of RPG Maker have become. 

"From RM2k [RPG Maker 2000] to VX Ace," he says, "there have been a few peaks and valleys but generally speaking I believe VX Ace to be the apex of 'casual' game development. It takes the best of all previous iterations put together."

RPG Maker VX Ace, released in the west in 2012, was essentially an enhanced version of RPG Maker VX, incorporating a number of improvements that had kept its predecessor from reaching its full potential. Support for multiple tilesets (the source of a 2D game's sprites) and the addition of numerous DLC resource packs released by Enterbrain, the developer of RPG Maker, made VX Ace the most approachable version of RPG Maker yet. Combined with its release on Steam—the first time RPG Maker had been available on the platform—VX Ace marked the start of a new, more inclusive era for RPG Maker.

Increased accessibility isn't the only reason RPG Maker has taken off in recent years. For as welcoming as it is to beginners, the software packs a lot of depth for those willing to sink their teeth into it.

"RPG maker is just great as an entry-level software, but not in a way that's restricting," says Ross Tunney of New Reality Games, makers of the Data Hacker series of RPGs. "There's a much steeper learning curve for Unity, and Game Maker I've found that that is limiting in terms of scope for what you can create."

Key to RPG Maker's depth is how open to customization it is. Though the engine comes packed with basic art and battle systems perfect for first-time developers, it's the support for user-made plugins that studios like Amaterasu Software, makers of the Unforgiving Trials games, find invaluable. From New Game+ modes to character subclass systems, plugins creators like Yanfly have saved Team Amaterasu plenty of development time with their ready-made solutions.

Community

"RPG Maker offers an excellent foundation for game development along with many possibilities for customization," says Martin Matanovic of Team Amaterasu. "Many mundane tasks of game development have been made easier with the tools provided in RPG Maker." 

Even with all those advances in approachability, RPG Maker's software is still only half the story. As the engine has evolved, so too has its community, growing from a ragtag group of hardcore JRPG fans into a diverse body of talented developers more than willing to help each other out. 

"The RPG Maker community greatly increased both in size and in expertise," recalls Matanovic. "We found many talented artists and developers that helped us along the way."

Much of the community's growth can be traced back to the efforts of Degica, the western publishing partner brought on to help Enterbrain in 2011. In addition to establishing an official RPG Maker forum and staffing it with knowledgeable moderators, Degica regularly updates its blog with tips and tutorials from experienced developers, as well as offering free monthly resource packs containing new art, audio, and scripts for anyone to use.

"We worked to provide more support, more tutorials, and a bigger official community atmosphere for newcomers to join and learn," explains Nick Palmer, community manager at Degica. "When I first came on the project, it was me and one other person, and I was just part-time. Now? We have an entire team that handles RPG Maker. It is definitely an entire different ballgame."

Perhaps most importantly, Degica sees RPG Maker as a product of its users as much as its developers.

"We are always, always listening to the community," says Palmer. "We are with them every step of the way, trying out new games people have made, talking about game design on the forums, or about projects we’ve dreamt up. Being a fan of the product you release is by far the most fun you can have in this field of work."

The rise of indies and RPG Maker stigma

Just as instrumental in RPG Maker's recent popularity is the changing attitude towards indie games. With the success of Braid, Limbo, and Bastion in the late 2000s, the dominance of AAA started to crumble. Sites like indieDB found an audience eager to explore the humbler, more intimate side of gaming. Even Valve sat up and took notice, releasing its Steamworks SDK in 2008 that allowed developers of all sizes to sell their games on Steam without a major publisher, though you still needed a Valve contact to get on the store. Valve followed that up with the launch of Steam Greenlight in 2012, providing developers with an affordable, if not always effective, means of self-distribution. 

This shift in public opinion, combined with the rise of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, was a huge win for games with small but passionate audiences—RPG Maker's bread and butter.

"Both the release of RPG Maker on Steam and the opening up of the platform to be easier for indies has let more people than ever discover that the dream of making a game isn’t out of their reach," says Palmer. 

"Players are beginning to understand that a great game doesn't need to be a 3D FPS about shooting tanks with your gun," adds Francesco Ficarelli, designer of parody RPG Doom & Destiny. "Now, more players are looking for RPG games like those made with RPG Maker, so if your games looks fun and good, it's likely going to pass Greenlight."

For as little as labels like triple-A and indie mean these days, the RPG Maker branding still carries a nasty stigma. One look at the comments on the Greenlight page for a game like Fantasy Symphony reveals the enmity some people still have for the engine. Frustrating though it can be, Data Hacker developer Ross Tunney understands why.

"I think that community members are very quick to judge now," Tunney says. "Proposing an RPG Maker game with any stock assets on Greenlight is a bold move, even if it has a cool mechanic or premise. It's a shame, but I can understand why so many users are getting tired of seeing the same old artwork and hearing the same music."

Nevertheless, Tunney believes that the benefits of RPG Maker far outweigh the stigma it carries. "With some custom artwork and soundtrack, anyone can still make a unique-looking game, and if that's coupled with a decent story and characters, then there's still appeal."

The rising popularity of RPG Maker also feeds into the narrative that Steam is being flooded with samey, low-quality games—more than 5,000 games were released on Steam in 2016, according to SteamSpy. But even though new RPG Maker releases seem like a daily occurrence on Steam, they still represent a tiny slice of the total pie. 2.6 percent of Steam's new games, in 2016. That may change with Steam Direct in 2017: it's possible that the fee Valve settles on will lead to fewer RPG Maker games and fewer games in general. But if current trends are any indication, RPG Maker releases will continue to rise on Steam. 

Phil Hamilton, too, sees signs of the stigma fading. "The 'not real games' thing is a thing. I don't know how big it is—I suspect it is a loud minority. Skyborn has seen enough success that it simply doesn't get those comments anymore. People still criticize it, but because of legit things, not because it's made in RPG Maker."

With games like Oneshot and Actual Sunlight redefining what RPG Maker is capable of, the humble engine has a bright future ahead. Behind its simple pixel art lies tremendous depth, and developers are only getting more creative with how they use the engine.

"It really is a circular thing," concludes Nick Palmer. "The more games made, the more people learn it exists, and then the more they make games. More games, more innovation. And hopefully, more people discovering that they can fulfill their dreams of making a game."

Developer Kan Gao released the first free *shudder* 'minisode' for To The Moon at around this time last year, and now another has been released, completely free. While it's the same sort of length as the first (around 20 minutes), Gao suggests that this one is "a tad more...important, plot-wise". Once again, you're stuck in a hospital playing as the two main scientist characters of To The Moon, as protestors do protesty things outside.

If you own To The Moon on Steam, you should find that the DLC has already been registered to your account. Otherwise, you can download it here. You don't need to own TTM, but it will probably make more sense if you've played that first.

With Sigmund Minisode 2 out of the way, Gao will be resuming work on To The Moon's full-fledged sequel, Finding Paradise. Meanwhile, one of Freebird's pixel artists, Jordan, is still in hospital undergoing chemotherapy; if you'd like to help out with either kind words or donations, there are details of how you can do so here.