ED. NOTE: The following is an article written by a volunteer who has decided to try his hand at developing games. If you have a problem with someone on our site creating their own game, please turn around and check out the rest of the great news, editorials, and reviews our site has to offer. Thank you.
This site is maintained by a small army of volunteer writers, but today, I am more than that: I am the developer of an RPG!
Learning the Dark Trade is a 2D, turn-based RPG in development for the PC. In it, the player is sent to a college for sorcerers, half-monsters and others with supernatural powers. Revealing your own potential for unique abilities, the school allows you the freedom to develop it in any way you choose. In the classes you choose, you’ll learn different spells, techniques and passive abilities, and level up the ones you’ve already learned.
Based on the principles of Persona 3, the story will present you with bigger challenges over time. To survive, you’ll have to prepare yourself through the classes you choose and by training in the randomly-generated dungeons. Since you can only go on the weekends, limited healing challenges you to make each training trip count.
The relationships between your party members are important. Improving their relationships through combat and dialogue choices gives them stat benefits, triggers unique events, unlocks more areas in dungeons, and can even determine the game’s ending.
This game is very early in development, so any visuals you see are probably going to change significantly over time. In fact, the team is not yet fully complete. While I do have the basic gameplay working, I will require programming help to add more advanced mechanics. So if you or anyone you know is good at Ruby–especially the RGSS3 environment–I am hiring.
There is no direct connection between Learning the Dark Trade and oprainfall. However, as a volunteer here, I hope to work with the others to make sure that any coverage of this game is done honestly and ethically. Obviously, it is impossible to be completely impartial about it, so I will strive for openness instead.
Interested in this game? Follow its progress on Facebook or Twitter, or check out the website.
If you have any questions, please comment. I will do my best to answer them.
