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      1. Retronator, Wednesday, January 22, 2020

        GameMaker, RPG Maker, and Adventure Game Studio have been traditionally the tools one would mention to a beginner who wanted to create games without writing code. Turns out RPG Maker’s parent company Kadokawa late last year added a new title to its lineup, Pixel Game Maker MV, that could be another addition as well.

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        Instead of role playing games, Pixel Game Maker specializes at side scrollers/platformers as well as top-down action games. It’s yet again possible to create everything (well, everything the engine supports) simply by navigating through menus and panels, this time divided into 6 main categories: resources, tiles, objects, animations, scenes, and transitions. Gameplay and animation logic is also fittingly described with visual scripting instead of coding.

        image

        The software released out of early access in September last year, together with a 30-day free trial (Steam, Itch.io) and a 6-month-long competition to create a game with it.

        The latter, Pixel Game Maker MV Game Development Challenge, offers a price of a million yen (about $9,000) to the winner (in exchange for selling exclusive publishing rights to Kudokawa, so do check out the terms carefully if this is worth your time). The entries will be judged by two Japanese pixel art/indie legends, Daisuke ‘Pixel’ Amaya (Cave Story) and Takumi Naramura (La-Mulana), so that’s a bit exciting as well. You have time till the end of March if you decide to participate.

        For more info about the software, check out its webpage, or get inspired by the showcase of games below:

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      Retronator
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      Hello everyone, I am Matej Jan a.k.a. Retro. Welcome to Retronator—my blog and game development studio.

      I started Retronator in 2007 with the goal of making video games focused on creativity. Along the way I started writing about art and gaming, featuring artists and projects that caught my attention. Nowadays this mostly includes pixel art, with occasional diversions into voxels, low-poly 3D, low-res digital painting, and basically anything that makes me feel like a kid again (text adventures, chiptune, LEGO …).

      I'm also very nostalgic about 20th century games that didn't neglect their educational potential. I expected titles like Sim Ant, Caesar II, and Sim City to continue into the future, expanding their power to teach us something along the way. Games such as Kerbal Space Program and ECO continue to carry the torch, but are far in between in the current gaming landscape. Expect Retronator to cover more games like that in the future.

      Finally, on these pages I document my own journey as an illustrator and game developer. I'm working on an adventure game for learning how to draw called Pixel Art Academy. This newspaper lives in the game world and I'll make that quite obvious soon. Thanks to backers of the game and supporters on Patreon I can create this content full-time. Thank you for making this possible!

      It's been 10 years since I started this journey and there is no doubt the next 10 will be absolutely amazing. Stick around and I hope you will enjoy the ride.

      Happy pixeling,
      —Retro

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