If you’re looking to spend the weekend with a punishing action game along the lines of I Wanna Be The Guy or Super Meat Boy you need to give DURNGEN RUNNAR a go. Created in RPG Maker(!) by local dev/artist James Hickey for our Summer of RPG Maker Game Jam, Durngen Runner is a straight-up masocore speed-run challenge in which players must navigate increasingly complex mazes filled with all sorts of devious enemies and traps. The game is straight punishing in the best way possible; for a twitch game made in an engine that isn’t meant for that sort of thing the controls are incredibly tight and, like the best games of its genre, dying never feels cheap and you’ll never feel like the game mechanics are fighting against you. I got to talk to James about the process of making an action game (soundtrack and everything) in a two-month time span in an engine suited more to slow-paced games with lots of cinemas and random, turn-based battles.
SCN: So, uh, DURNGEN RUNNNAR… what were your inspirations when making the game?
JH: I actually went through a few ideas initially, but this just kind of came out of… what I was doing was a Pac-Man clone and it just sort of developed over time. I wanted something really nostalgic, you know what I mean?
SCN: Mmhm
JH: The difficulty level definitely reflects that and the password system, so it’s really just more of a highly challenging, nostalgic flashback kind of game, kind of a hint of the 8-bit era I suppose.
SCN: Yeah, I was really impressed by that; I really don’t know what I was expecting when I got into it other than it was going to be something that I… uh, that I wasn’t going to be expecting. I know the other people that were working on games that never finished them were making like straight-ahead RPGs but it was really awesome booting DR up and that opening scroll with all the Engrish and everything cracked me up.
JH: (laughs)
SCN: And it was really impressive, the difficulty level early on. I really felt like I had to learn the intricacies of a twitch game as made in RPG Maker which was really awesome.
JH: Yeah, I really… I kind of wanted to deviate from the turn-based battle because first of all I’m not a big fan of the turn-based battle. I think the only turn-based battle JRPG I ever beat was Pokemon Red.
SCN: Oh man.
JH: I never got into Final Fantasy or anything like that so I wanted to deviate from that and see what I could do reasonably by myself within two months and a puzzler action dungeon crawling game is what came of it.
SCN: Yeah, that was kind of the biggest thing was the time constraint because it was like two months to make a game and a lot of, well, this was the first game jam we’ve ever ran and of course I wound up having all this stuff come up that prevented me from really running it well and all that and there were a lot of people who hopped in and expected to make these, like, craft these RPGs fully in two months and it was really awesome… uh, ahhh, the scope. I think that’s where I’m trying to go with this, the whole scope of everything, you have to plan reasonably with what you can do in two months and you did such an amazing job with that
JH: Honestly, I was shooting for 40 levels initially but the time crunch man. Actually I might revisit it again and kind of flesh it out, who knows, because I feel like to some degree, I mean, I’m satisfied with it, but I feel like it’s unfinished. I feel like there’s a lot more I can do with it. I had a lot of people that brainstormed with me. I had a fair amount of people test for me, typically I had to entice them with alcohol, but I got a lot of good ideas from my friends and I didn’t get to implement all of them. The thing about RPG Maker is that it’s made for making RPGs and I just had to do these roundabout ways of doing the collision detection and the other things, the projectiles are really awkward in RPG Maker. No game is bug-free but there’s still a fair amount of bugs in that game, I don’t think there’s anything game-breaking but, you know.
SCN: I didn’t notice anything game-breaking but the projectiles… it’s funny you mention the projectiles, the first time I saw them I was all “wow, is this really happening?” and I kind kept like, for at least the first or second level until I got to the third level and I was all “okay, this is what the game is” and it’s not going to go anywhere weird with it or anything. When the projectiles popped up I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to turn-based battle them or anything, but this is an actual arcade-style game in RPG Maker and I thought that was really great
JH: Yeah, as far as the graphics, it was a little bit painful at first but essientially I just used a pixel filter over what was already provided and got it to a point where it looked unique and different which was really surprising. I took a lot of shortcuts in this game and I kinda had to, in all honesty, because time constraints and I was the only person working on it. If I had another person writing music and another person doing graphics and one doing programming then that would’ve been stellar but that wasn’t the case.
SCN: The artstyle really impressed me. RPG Maker games, especially given the limitation of the engine, they don’t blow up very well on modern monitors at all but this one… yeah, the lo-fi-ness worked for it so well.
JH: I had to go out of my way to find a script to force full-screen. I felt like it should be a full-screen sort of game, I wanted that immersive experience. Most people’s monitor resolutions are well over 1024×768 now and you get this tiny little window… it just feels wrong to me, I guess. I dunno.
SCN: I know that feel exactly. Even now that we’ve got full games made in RPG Maker popping up on Steam and everything, a lot of them default not even to that high of a resolution but 640×480 and it’s just kinda really awkward especially when they advertise using Big Picture Mode and the game pops up in a tiny window, this really tiny window on most peoples’ monitors and it’s like WHY? Why is this a thing?!
JH: Did I leave… I don’t even remember, did I leave the Blue Screen of Death in there when it booted up?
SCN: I… don’t think you did actually. I didn’t notice that.
JH: Awwww, it was a joke that I put in there, the title screen when it first booted up was the Blue Screen of Death.
SCN: I’ve got it on my tablet, I can boot it up right now and see.
JH: I don’t remember if I took it out, if I thought it was, if people would be like “this is a virus!” (laughs)
SCN: Yeah, I’m going to check on this, I don’t think you did but it would’ve been really cool.
JH: I can’t even remember, it’s been so long and I haven’t played it because, in all honesty, it’s incredibly frustrating. On my Twitch channel I think I did the first 10 levels and just gave up because it gets that hard and the thing is, I don’t even have the levels memorized because it got that in-depth to the point where I couldn’t even keep up with what I was doing anymore because it was so complex.
SCN: Yeah, by the third level I was just kinda of in awe with how nuts it was getting with the maze designs, I was all “argh, there’s not enough time” or “I don’t have enough lives” and then the projectiles started happening and I’d be like “I’m going to try and dodge this” and it’d be all “Oh. RPG Maker controls.”
JH: (laughs) Yeah, the controls are… uhm… I wouldn’t exactly call them tight. A protip would be alternate between running and walking; it’ll help you a lot on turning tight corners and whatnot. Also on the first three or four levels use your extra time to rack up extra lives and you can rack up quite a few before you start getting to the really hard stuff.
JH: I don’t know, it’s kinda really just a hobby of mine. Ideally I’d like to get a copy of Construct 2, it’s like $120 or so and it’s a really great piece of software in all honesty, it’s really flexible. If you’re doing anything in 2-D Construct 2 is really amazing stuff. It’s so versatile and you can do mobile apps if you want to do mobile games, PC, if you wanted you could probably even upload it to Xbox or PS3 or whatever and not have any compatibility issues. I’ve got a lot of projects that are unfinished but I probably won’t revisit them, they were just kind of learning exercises but who knows.
SCN: Yeah, Construct 2 is pretty nuts from what I’ve seen, that’d be really cool. What about non-video game stuff, got any other projects coming down the pipeline that you’d like to let everyone know about?
JH: I’m kind of like in stasis right now to be honest. I’m trying to do the responsible adult thing and get a day job and all that good stuff, I actually just started painting again.
SCN: Gooooooood
JH: Yeah, everything’s just kind of in stasis for me right now and that’s kind of… I don’t know, I’m trying to get my life together more or less, you can understand that much
SCN: Yeah, I know exactly how that goes. It’s rough.
JH: I dunno, yeah, probably just going to keep doing my stream on Twitch if anyone wants to check that out, it’s called Johan the Rappist and we typically stream about twice a month and we tend to do platformers, Super Nintendo, maybe top-down games. It’s me and my friend Jordan and, of course, our commentary, you know, you gotta have the schtick. Shout out to all the people who helped me out with the project, there was a lot of people on forums who helped me out quite a bit, all my friends; Jordan probably tested it out the most out of everyone. Lauren, Trey, of course, Space City Nerd for hosting the game jam, and all the people who said they’d test for me and never did.
(both laugh)
SCN: It happens, though. It’s a thing that happens.
Download DURGEN RUNNAR here (216 mb). The OST is available on Soundcloud, and don’t forget to check out James’s Twitch channel at http://www.twitch.tv/johantherappist
OMAKE SECTION
Having difficulty navigating the durngens? Feel like you just gotta go fast? Here’s a list of codes provided by the developer.
- Play as a cat – kittycat
- Play as Sonic the Hedgehog – stepitup
- View the End Credits – spacecty
- Start at Level 3 – idkfa
- Start at Level 6 – impulse9
- Start at Level 9 – zelda
- Start at Level 12 – rosebud
- Start at Level 15 – buddamus
- Start at Level 18 – bllyblze
