The Book of Metal RPG

For the last four years (on and off) and with over 600 hours put into the RPG Maker VX Ace software I’ve finally finished my first ever game – The Book of Metal.  Firstly here’s a video of the first 15 minutes of the game:

 

In a world where metal binds the people of The Peanus Isles, life is simple, and life is good.

Kept strong by the whisper of a legend, metal has grown strong over time and its influence is ever expanding.

All have heard of this legend.

The legend of a book, which has maintained the ethos of this world for many centuries.

But today…

It will be stolen.  It will be taken.

By evil.

Join Alan, Pete, Aiden and more on their quest to bring metal music back from the clutches of evil, stolen by the egomaniac Stubbs after a series of poor album reviews drives him to the brink of insanity.

Take a journey through a world drenched in brutality, taking on corrupted souls, fiends, demons and bad jokes along the way.

Can you save metal as we know it?

Features

• 4+ hours of gameplay
• A unique 40+ song soundtrack featuring metal/rock fused with old-school chiptunes
• A Triple Triad card game
• Collectables to be discovered

You can download it and play it yourself here.

 

The Book of Metal Spotify Playlist

The Book of Metal is a video game in progress made using RPG Maker VX Ace, and it now has a playlist on Spotify for anyone interested.

The Book of Metal – WWE Triple Triad

The Book of Metal is Pete’s first real attempt at creating a video game through RPG Maker VX Ace, and the idea behind The Book of Metal is that metal itself has been stolen in the form of a book and it’s up to our heroes to claim it back.

Triple Triad is a game I wanted to add from the beginning but not directly rip off the Final Fantasy 8 version, so I decided to make it based on WWE and NXT Superstars.  So for fans of RPGs, Triple Triad, metal music and professional wrestling (which is a niche audience, but hey) this is something you’ll hopefully enjoy.

Top 10 Albums of 2015

Something a little different from the usual stuff found here, this time Pete, uh, plays music rather than video games.  Not as much as I have in previous years but enough to form a pretty comprehensive top 10 list, including some metal, post rock and some pretty out-there electronic music too.  I like to think I have a reasonably eclectic taste so hopefully there might be something here you can either relate to or better yet a totally new artist you might like the sound of.  So without further ado, here are my top ten albums for 2015.

10. Panopticon – Autumn Eternal

Panopticon is a one-man metal band from the US fusing all sorts of genres together, starting Autum Eternal with a soothing country ballad before exploding into the more familiar black metal-esque sound that is prominent throughout the majority of the rest of album.  It’s haunting and raw melodies are what make this album as good as it is and the drumming by Austin Dunn is as spectacular as his other work; he performs stellar guest drumming on Saor’s ‘Aura’ album which is what first drew me to his own project.

9. Ruby The Hatchet – Valley of The Snake

The best stoner metal release of 2015 by far, combining head-nodding riffs, catchy melodies and familiar grooves found throughout the genre going back to the 1970’s.  Enjoyable from start to finish particularly for a debut album, the addition of an organ really makes Valley of The Snake stand out too.

8. Skeletal Remains – Condemned To Misery

One of the most anticipated death metal releases of the year, Skeletal Remains did not disappoint with the release of Condemned To Misery.  It brings nothing new to the genre but when proper throwbacks to the heyday of the genre are hard to find this does what it sets out to do perfectly, with crushing riffs, pounding drums and vocals that compliment the chaos, Skeletal Remains comfortably take the crown of best death metal release of 2015.

RPG Maker VX Ace – The Book of Metal

For those unaware of what RPG Maker is think back to the classic SNES RPGs of that era – the early Final Fantasy games, Secret of Mana and of course A Link To The Past.  The RPG Maker software allows you to create your own games with a similar style, but with much more creativity available.  There are literally thousands of ‘scripts’ available to add to a game made by talented developers, which means an aspiring game maker is pretty much only limited by their imagination.

The RPG Maker software itself has been around in one form or another since 1988 would you believe, but it wasn’t until 1992 where it started to take shape.  With the release of RPG Maker 95 and later 2000 it truly became a powerful tool for creating detailed and intricate RPGs, only to be improved further with each subsequent release which included RPG Maker 2003, XP, VX, VX Ace and most recently MV.

I’ve personally tinkered with the software on and off since about 2002, playing about with RPG Maker 2000 and later 2003 where I started developing my first game, tentatively titled ‘Truro vs Treno’ which involved two rival soldiers developing a common bond and friendship in order to end a decade-long war.  Unfortunately I had no particular direction for the overall story to go in and the game was ultimately abandoned… and a bit boring, if my girlfriends brutal yet honest review was anything to go by.

It wasn’t until a Humble Bundle appeared in mid-2014 selling both RPG Maker XP and VX Ace, so both Alan and I jumped on the deal and bounced around a few ideas for a game.  This was just before ‘Alan & Pete Play’ became a semi-serious thing for us, and with that taking up most of our gaming time the idea of creating an RPG took a back seat.

I can’t remember exactly what made me come back to RPG Maker nearly 18 months later, but I’d had an idea for a game called ‘The Book of Metal’ in my mind for quite a while leading up to firing up the software again.  Of course what’s taken shape now is pretty far from what I wanted to put into the game originally, but the core idea is the same – metal music is stolen in the form of a book, and it’s up to a band of heroes to get it back and follow a (hopefully) amusing and entertaining story.  It’s a simple premise and one I wanted to generally keep that way as its my first game, and not only that but having not touched an RPG Maker for more than 12 years I had absolutely no clue as to what I was doing at first. In many ways I still don’t, but I’m happy with how the game is going and some of the frankly awesome things I’ve put in it – for example there’s a WWE style Triple Triad game (the card game from Final Fantasy 8) in there, simply because I can do that.  There’s also a guild system akin to that of the Fairy Tail anime series, which I very proudly programmed myself after spending hours reading and learning about how things like ‘events’ and ‘switches’ work.

But that’s enough about all that, you’ve hopefully read this far because you either have an interest in old-school RPGs or metal music, so please check out this 11 minute video of the opening to The Book of Metal.  I currently don’t plan on making it publicly available but if there’s enough interest I’ll happily release it for free when the game is complete.  If you have any questions, critique or ideas please put them in the comments box, I’d love to hear them.  My girlfriend likes it too, which is a plus.