I’ve been playing jrpg’s since I was a little kid. I loved Final Fantasy I and II. And I remember having an iPad over fifteen years ago at this point where I realized you could buy all the Final Fantasys never released in the US that happened in-between I, II, and VII. They were translated into English and they brought me back to Saturdays in my parent’s basement watching BONK the fighter waggle his sword at a slime. The time that I started to check out of final fantasy was around seven. While the storyline was good, the feature that I hated the most creeping into my Final Fantasy games was the elimination of turn based combat (with that being said, I have played the ones with Yuna and the ones with Lightning, though I didn’t enjoy them as much as II, my all time favorite).
I started picking up the Fire Emblem series that thankfully hasn’t tried to eliminate turn based combat. The main reason, I loathe rpgs without turn based combat is that I have a naturally slow reaction time. For example, I do bad in buzzer based trivia games. I generally know the answers, but I can never hit the buzzer fast enough. There was a game called Fable that I gave up playing because there was a level that was just too challenging for me because I couldn’t mash the button fast enough. I played the entire Mass Effect series on its easiest setting because I loved the story line, but on easy it was one of the hardest games I ever played.
It’s the same reason why I was so bad at sports. When there is a ball flying towards me, my hand goes up after its passed and if I try to anticipate and raise my hand early and I’m lucky enough to have my hand in the right spot, the ball bounces off it. My brain is wired with slow thinking, slow moving, and if a movie or a game requires me to go too fast, it’s impossible for me.
But that slow thinking helps me be pretty good at strategic games where you have all the time in the world to plan your next move. I’ve been playing Star Wars Shatterpoint and Conquest lately and realize that I’m pretty good at it. I win more than I lose, though for me its never about winning. I’m a very anti-competitive person and will honestly throw a game if it means the other person will have more fun. It’s pretty easy to blunder in strategy games without looking like you blunder (I mean I’ve also blundered for real too where a turn later, I realize my mistake).
For me, turn based games with vivid worlds and story lines are the top. A good story and time to think through your next move is where I have the most fun. Which is funny because you’d think I’d like logic puzzles, but I don’t, mainly because they derail the story line for me. If I spend too much time puzzling what lever to pull in what order, it gets tedious and boring where as turn based combat progresses the story, and each turn progresses you toward the goal. A logic puzzle just involves a lot of restarts and iterations that makes me want to just do something else.
The reason I mention this is because I realized that AI is capable of making a video game that is perfect for me, and also can bring my books to life in ways that previously would be inaccessible to me because I’d either have to have a lot of money or be famous, two things I don’t have. But now I can. I created with the help of Claude for the coding and Gemini for the graphics. (Here is my AI disclosure statement if you want to know how exactly I use it).
I’m proud to share with you the Misfits of Carnt V Mini Game. It’s a game created from real chapters from the new book. Now, if you don’t want spoilers, play the game after you read the book. But if you’re okay with learning some things about the characters give it a try. Claude did a fantastic job in a process that only took me three days.
I’m interested to hear your feedback, because I think I want to go bigger and make a similar game for Office Maxi. Of all my books, it has a RPG system baked into the story. I plan to create a system with turn-based combat where you can get loot, raise levels, go on quests. The whole game shebang.
This mini-game I made for the 5th Carnt book is my toe in the water for what I’ll eventually do. So let me know your feedback. For those of you who’ve been here for a while, you’ll remember an Office Maxi email game I created. Where you get emails from Terry and depending on how you click, Terry will send you another email. It was pretty dumb, and nowhere near as sophisticated as what I can do with Claude, and what I plan to do with Office Maxi.
Either way, I hope you enjoy the mini game, and if you want more games like that, there will be more!
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