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devblog#1: the genesis of Boy's Quest
Sep. 23rd, 2025 12:06 amFor the past few months, I’ve been toying around with the idea of making a role-playing game with RPG Maker. This is something I’ve tried once or twice in the past, with varying degrees of progress, yet I always ended up getting distracted, moving on to other things. This time will likely be no different, but that’s not going to stop me from trying, again.
The idea came to me months ago when I was watching my son play in the living room. He’s always been fascinated by long, sword-like things, the swiffer-duster thing being a favorite of his. We always kept the swiffer-duster thing on a high rack above the washer and dryer, and my son knew that, so he would push stools and boxes and things up to the washer and dryer, then position himself dangerously on the stack of these wobbly things, then climb up and grab the swiffer-duster thing, then run around with it, smacking anyone he could find, all while making cute little battle noises. And one time, he fell from the perilously stacked boxes and hurt himself pretty bad, so my wife and I found a new place to hide the swiffer-duster thing, deciding on this thin space between the cushions of our big green couch, thinking that surely the boy would never find it there.
But, of course, we were wrong. And one day, as I was walking through the living room, I saw my son digging through the couch cushions, looking for some lost toy or other, and he paused for a second, looked back at me with this mischievous look on his face, then slowly slid the swiffer-duster thing out from between the cushions, as if he were pulling the sword from the stone, and then he held the thing above his head for a moment, like Link after opening a treasure chest, before running all throughout the house smacking everyone with the thing while making cute little battle noises, at which point we had to find a new hiding place for the swiffer-duster thing, a place so hidden I now have no idea where the thing actually is anymore.
Anyway. The whole thing put this idea in my head of like, what if, upon pulling that swiffer-duster thing out of the cushion, instead of a swiffer-duster thing, it was actually a sword, and all of a sudden, upon pulling that sword out of the couch, instead of being in the real world, my son was now in some fantasy, video-game-like world, where the normal everyday stuff he interacted with on a daily basis was now like walking and talking and being all anthropomorphic? And then I thought, what if, hypothetically, a boy who was neglected by his parents, not that I neglect my son or anything, but what if, what if a boy concocted this fantasy world in his head, because he was so starved for attention due to his parents’ neglect, what if he concocted this fantasy world and sort of like dissociated from the real world to live in this fantasy world, all so he wouldn't have to deal with the confusing pain caused by his parents' neglect, and then I started thinking like, how exactly would that all play out?
And that’s when the idea of “Arthur’s Quest” came to me, which eventually I started calling “The Boy’s Quest,” to sort of distance it from my own life and make it more relatable to a potential player, until eventually I changed the name once more, to “Boy’s Quest,” because I didn’t like the “The” in the title, for flow-related reasons, thinking it made the game’s title a little too awkward and unwieldy to say out loud.
So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few days, using RPG Maker MV, writing and programming “Boy’s Quest,” a game that will likely never manifest into anything more than yet another incomplete project amongst hundreds of other incomplete projects, but hey at least I’m having fun, for the time being. And I do have the general story overview, main character descriptions, and first scene already mapped out, in a “script” document I've been keeping, and I’m going to share that, and future progress, occasionally, in these “devblog” entries, and I’m only calling these entries “devblogs” because it gets the point across, I’m not actually a developer or anything, as I have absolutely zero experience in real-game coding, RPG Maker being sort of like a drag-and-drop, just-fucking-do-it-for-me kind of game-making tool that I suspect real game developers scoff at and look down upon, and I'm using stolen assets to make the beta version of the game, but hey I’m having fun, at least for the time being.
Anyway, that whole ramble up there was really just a preface to share with you some of the progress I've made, so here's a general overview of the game's plot and a description of some of the main characters.
( Plot Overview & Character Descriptions )
The next devblog entry will likely be an overview of the first scene, including the script and a short video of said scene playing in-engine, something that is already about 90% of the way done.
The idea came to me months ago when I was watching my son play in the living room. He’s always been fascinated by long, sword-like things, the swiffer-duster thing being a favorite of his. We always kept the swiffer-duster thing on a high rack above the washer and dryer, and my son knew that, so he would push stools and boxes and things up to the washer and dryer, then position himself dangerously on the stack of these wobbly things, then climb up and grab the swiffer-duster thing, then run around with it, smacking anyone he could find, all while making cute little battle noises. And one time, he fell from the perilously stacked boxes and hurt himself pretty bad, so my wife and I found a new place to hide the swiffer-duster thing, deciding on this thin space between the cushions of our big green couch, thinking that surely the boy would never find it there.
But, of course, we were wrong. And one day, as I was walking through the living room, I saw my son digging through the couch cushions, looking for some lost toy or other, and he paused for a second, looked back at me with this mischievous look on his face, then slowly slid the swiffer-duster thing out from between the cushions, as if he were pulling the sword from the stone, and then he held the thing above his head for a moment, like Link after opening a treasure chest, before running all throughout the house smacking everyone with the thing while making cute little battle noises, at which point we had to find a new hiding place for the swiffer-duster thing, a place so hidden I now have no idea where the thing actually is anymore.
Anyway. The whole thing put this idea in my head of like, what if, upon pulling that swiffer-duster thing out of the cushion, instead of a swiffer-duster thing, it was actually a sword, and all of a sudden, upon pulling that sword out of the couch, instead of being in the real world, my son was now in some fantasy, video-game-like world, where the normal everyday stuff he interacted with on a daily basis was now like walking and talking and being all anthropomorphic? And then I thought, what if, hypothetically, a boy who was neglected by his parents, not that I neglect my son or anything, but what if, what if a boy concocted this fantasy world in his head, because he was so starved for attention due to his parents’ neglect, what if he concocted this fantasy world and sort of like dissociated from the real world to live in this fantasy world, all so he wouldn't have to deal with the confusing pain caused by his parents' neglect, and then I started thinking like, how exactly would that all play out?
And that’s when the idea of “Arthur’s Quest” came to me, which eventually I started calling “The Boy’s Quest,” to sort of distance it from my own life and make it more relatable to a potential player, until eventually I changed the name once more, to “Boy’s Quest,” because I didn’t like the “The” in the title, for flow-related reasons, thinking it made the game’s title a little too awkward and unwieldy to say out loud.
So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few days, using RPG Maker MV, writing and programming “Boy’s Quest,” a game that will likely never manifest into anything more than yet another incomplete project amongst hundreds of other incomplete projects, but hey at least I’m having fun, for the time being. And I do have the general story overview, main character descriptions, and first scene already mapped out, in a “script” document I've been keeping, and I’m going to share that, and future progress, occasionally, in these “devblog” entries, and I’m only calling these entries “devblogs” because it gets the point across, I’m not actually a developer or anything, as I have absolutely zero experience in real-game coding, RPG Maker being sort of like a drag-and-drop, just-fucking-do-it-for-me kind of game-making tool that I suspect real game developers scoff at and look down upon, and I'm using stolen assets to make the beta version of the game, but hey I’m having fun, at least for the time being.
Anyway, that whole ramble up there was really just a preface to share with you some of the progress I've made, so here's a general overview of the game's plot and a description of some of the main characters.
( Plot Overview & Character Descriptions )
The next devblog entry will likely be an overview of the first scene, including the script and a short video of said scene playing in-engine, something that is already about 90% of the way done.
