Let’s take a brief step away from The House in Fata Morgana to delve back into familiar territory: RPG Maker. I didn’t know about it, but Gotcha Gotcha Games ran the RPG Maker 2025 Game Jam in the middle of March, with the theme of “beyond expectations,” asking participants to make games about exceeding limits. Whether it be a story about a character exceeding what’s expected of them, or something that challenges genre conventions, it’s a rather broad theme.

I didn’t participate in this, but despite that, the competition calls to me. So, like the 2022 IGMC jam, I’ll look at some of the games made for this! Like last time, these are highlights out of a bunch I played. Do not be mad at me if I didn’t play your thing, I am one guy.

The first game I checked out was Pentacle Abyss, by Tiop. You are a necromancer that died, and Charon can’t ferry you because I guess  you sucked so bad in life that nobody left you a coin to pay your toll. Fear not, as Charon will take an alternate payment: you must get him a feather from an angel in Hell, and man, the people of Hell kinda hate you for your necromancy crimes. So, Charon bestows a gift that’ll help you out: deckbuilding action!

Each turn you play as many cards as you can, then the enemy takes their own turn, doing whatever the forecast above them says. Most cards require you to sacrifice one or two other cards in your hand to play them. Others, though, require you to exorcise a card, permanently removing it for the rest of battle unless you have a card to bring it back. It doesn’t seem useful, but when enemy attacks are stuffing your deck with junk cards? That’s free real estate.

I wish some icons were bigger, and that card that does damage based on how much block you have doesn’t actually work? But otherwise, it works fine. It’s pretty basic for a deckbuilder, but that’s fine because it wasn’t aiming to be a deckbuilding roguelike, but a linear trek through a bunch of normal guys.

Before battles, monsters will hit you up with questions like a Shin Megami Tensei demon negotiation. If they like your answers, they may bestow a blessing card to help you out a bit. If they hate you? You may start the proper battle a little beaten up, and if they really hate you, they’ll give you a curse card to stuff your hand which… is actually kinda trivial to get rid of, if I gotta be honest. But well, maybe it’d be good to suck up to the monsters to have an easier time fighting… but will that be good for the dear necromancer?

I enjoy the art in the game, I like the simpler art of the cards contrasting against the demonic and grotesque enemy art. The music is just ambient noise, but I feel that it works here. It’s good accompanying music on the lonesome trek downward, where demons talk philosophically when they’re not trying to tear you limb from limb. I dunno, it’s my personal taste as an SMT stan, but I would have liked electronic music, but you know, what’s actually there is fine.

I don’t know how Pentacle Abyss compares to other deckbuilders made in RPG Maker, but as a short game made for a jam, I’d say it mostly does the job.

But now, for something moodier, we have Excession, by Morg. You are The Fabricator, the latest person condemned to some other world. Is it a Hell? Not quite. People still live and breathe down here, but it may as well be Hell with how miserable everything feels. The Fabricator could escape, but the way out is guarded by an angelic being, who will easily kill the Fabricator no matter how much gear they scavenge down there.

But you know what could fight that angel? A Creature. The Fabricator forms a being out of dirt, but to make The Creature fight, they need to bless it with four objects of power held by the other denizens of the land. The Hermit, the Scholar, the Opportunist, the Ritualist… all have given up on leaving, carving their own sense of meaning in the blighted world, but maybe, they’re the key for the Fabricator to escape. Maybe they can help him complete The Creature.

The game defines itself as Dark Souls meets Disco Elysium, and I think it’s an apt comparison. The atmosphere feels rather Souls-like, but contrasting that, there’s a whole lot of dialogue that chases the vein of something like Disco Elysium. Maybe it’s not a full Disco and there’s certainly no personality traits chipping in, but it’s Disco in the sense of having characters that strongly embody ideals. The Scholar searches for answers in a world that doesn’t have any, the Opportunist tries to enforce a capitalist structure even though there isn’t even money, the Ritualist carved his own meaning into the world with a religion, and the Hermit merely wants to find a humble living in spite of everything.

Fuck all that, the Fabricator just wants out. They’ll chat people up, and in talking to them, they present opportunities to gift objects of power that grant enough meaning to help stir The Creature to life. You can do these side quests… or you can just kill them for the stuff. Combat is just base RPG Maker engine stuff, just kinda boring… but in a way, the fights being super basic grants more meaning to the peaceful methods of doing things. Would you want to do a longer sidequest for someone? Or just do the quick and boring way of murder? Granted, some of these guys want you to kill someone else anyway, but that’s two objects of power for the price of one. 

The adventure takes place in a world of hand-drawn visuals radiating decay. I especially like how the character profile pictures are actually animated talking. All of this is drowned in a single oppressive track that nicely sets the tone for the game.

This is the first game by the developer, and like a few of the first-timers from IGMC, Excession sets a good first impression.

Speaking of Disco, do you like dice rolls backing decision making? I got some dice rolling for you. A Bureaucrat’s Judgement, by Rubescen, is a short game about a government bureaucrat named Martin. He works for the government’s housing bureaucracy, and he’s been made to oversee the eviction of a residential building formerly under government funding. Does he go along with the new government’s decisions, or can he fight back against the sudden undue evictions? You’re gonna let the dice decide.

Martin grapples with his boss, who is guided by a youth that looks down on the government and wants to cut supposedly wasteful spending and oh my god this game’s all about the fucking nerds of DOGE. A+. A Bureaucrat’s Judgement is really not subtle about its messaging, and I’m living for it. Fuck subtlety, wear your hate and rage on your heart.

But yeah, dice? You frequently have to make decisions in the game, decided by dice rolls. You can meet expectations if you meet the default dice rolling goal, but you can get a better story outcome if you meet a harder goal. Items can tweak your chances of success, but in the end, it all comes down to the roll of the die.

You may complain about the game being luck-based. However, play sessions are quick, and there are multiple endings for a reason. The game clearly doesn’t expect you to get the best outcome on the first go-around. Just try, try again. I mean, isn’t this true to life? Isn’t misfortune wrought by bad twists in fate and getting dealt with a bad hand you have no control over?

Maybe this is just the gambler’s heart in me, but I loved this game. The mostly monochrome presentation, the commentary on current events, the dice rolling… it’s apt misery pulled off well.

Now to step toward something more unusual, we have file_you_wanted by dax812, and the expectations being challenged here is… well did you expect to play a game?

A young man named Rommel moves to a new city in the countryside to start a new life. Something that might feel typical… and then the game starts glitching out.

You are not Rommel, but you’re the person playing as Rommel, bug testing their friend’s new game. You must guide Rommel around what should be a tutorial starting town, finding bugs in puzzle adventure hijinks, while listening to audio commentaries from your friend.

To be honest, I don’t want to say more because I actually liked the meta story that started unfolding and don’t want to ruin it. I think the puzzle solving segment’s a bit long for my liking, though it makes for a good contrast with what comes after. The game does a bunch of neat things that I don’t really see in a lot of RPG Maker games, from the mundane like long audio messages to the bizarre as the game fully goes in on glitchy horror. Overall, I liked it!

I’m ending this tour off with something I was personally excited for: The Copper Knight, by Melon Kid. I played their 2018 game Magical Disaster X, and I really enjoyed To Be Continued from the 2022 jam we both participated in. And also they worked on OMORI I guess. There’s kind of a reason why my post on OMORI’s not up anymore, but whatever, let’s look toward the here and now!

An RPG party is going off to explore a dungeon, but money is tight. The party’s Warrior has a solution: hiring a Door Opener for cheap. Door Openers are essentially scouts, usually a role reserved for commoners. They hire Milly, a Door Opener stuck at level 1 that fights with items. She explores the first floor…

Then abandons that party. She’s not some helping hand NPC, but a main character. She has a mission to accomplish in the dungeon, after all.

Copper Knight is a first-person dungeon crawler, the world lovingly rendered in a copper palette. It does a lot of work within the palette, and combined with the engine’s lighting, the game sets a good atmosphere. Contrasting with the mood is an energetic soundtrack, again by the J-Trigger, which to me carries the tone of somebody doing their best to fight impossible odds. Then those specks of blue come in and the soundtrack gets more somber…

But bah, let’s not let emotion get in the way, let’s talk fighting! Milly has a whole bunch of items and skills to aid her, because she can’t fight normally. Combined with enemies being set formations encountered on the map, you have to think of fights as more like puzzles. Save often and keep track of enemy behavior. One enemy spends the first turn charging power? Leave em’ alone and stun someone else for a bit while you focus on a different guy, because buffs don’t really matter if Milly is ridiculously fragile, anyway. Play smart, and maybe you’ll find your way through.

Milly will do her best. She’s following the footsteps of an adventurer that mentored her, who took a chance on her when she was just a poor thief. Do you like yuri? This game has yuri.

I think Copper Knight comes together well, with a good presentation and story with interesting gameplay. I don’t think the gameplay would have worked if it was a longer game, but for something short? It’s nice and sweet.

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I might check some more game jam games in the future. I do need to finish The House in Fata Morgana, after all. But so far, this has been a strong showing from the jam, congrats to everyone that participated!