I'm so glad I've helped. It's exciting communicating with someone who is making a game. I've had a dabble in Gamemaker, Unity 3D, blender, Maya, C# & GML over the years but I've never finished a full game never-mind published one. I wish you the best and hope your project does well.

By Nuance I mean a non-linear path of progression. Like tree branches going in separate directions. Whether it is more fleshed out mechanics, hybrid mechanics or completely new concepts.

Nuance is usually caused by subtle changes in a collective (large group of people, like industry scale) can be art movements, technological progression, culture/industry/political changes, etc.

Usually when new a category is established (like 3rd gen JPGs). Its usually has a lot of subconsciously hidden context that people take for granted at the time. It isn't until there's been a lot of experiments that blur the category until we realise there was more to the context of the initial category. Sub-categories within that initial category start to form (for example - 3rd-gen JRPGs turn into turn-based combat, fantasy-adventure, anime inspired, shopping-sim, Lore-based story with character-based story progression, numerical-based-RPG with free-roaming character movement outside of combat, etc).

Fantasy is another category we take for granted. We in the west imagine a medieval setting. Horror is another category we take for granted, we expect a supernatural element (Zombie's, Ghosts, etc). FPS games expect either a war theme (Call of Duty) or sci-fi theme (Halo). In a hundred years time we will look back and wonder why there were a lot of similarities that we didn't see before. 60s music feels similar to other 60s music but I bet in the 60s people saw each song as very different. Same with 70s and 80s music. Each decade is distinctive in itself when looking back in the 21st century.

I'm not trying to dictate what you do in your game cos Nuance isn't the only way to elevate a game genre, but it is handy for creating new subgenres within an existing genre, but you could always do the opposite; Hybrid genres/mechanics are more extreme changes which have the ability to create new entire genres (the Metroidvania genre for example). Also, entirely new concepts are even more extreme (but that one is even harder to pull off). I've been thinking about how to create fresh ideas recently and I thought of a good technique. I would imagine different types of simulations (like flight sim, sports sim, cooking sim, etc) then combining them. Or I would think of a new type of simulation that has never been done in a game before). Maybe combining a range of different simulations together, then I would flesh it out by combining a range of mechanics that flow. Splatoon combines paintballing and wall-painting nicely, these simulation ideas flow really well, then they would have added mechanics that also flow; paintballing sim = shooting mechanic. and also being able to travel fast through your teams paint type, including up walls (which works with the wall-painting simulation). Not that Splatoon is an RPG, it's just an clear example I can think of.

Sorry, I think I went a bit off-topic by the end. I just enjoy thinking about stuff until I flesh out the meaning in all it's context and I sometimes get lost inside my mind lol :P

Don't let me limit what you want to create. There will be many other ways to elevate a genre that I have not considered. These are just my personal input, but I hope I was inspirational :D

Yeah. I agree generally with the P&P mechanics. I don’t have much to add there.

So I’ll talk about the weirdness of sub genres and hybrid genres that often share the same names… as well as some widely held misconceptions about the genre due to naming conventions, like the misapplication of the RPG label to other genres (mainly by Nintendo fans during the N64 and Gamecube eras… I generally hung around Nintendo communities back then), and also the popularization of the term “JRPG” during the PS2 era.

While Dragon Quest is often considered the first RPG, there were games before it that used to used alternative means to simulate mechanics. The early Wizardry games used written commands instead of menu selection and such, and they also used out-of game manuals to describe the story - some people get confused thinking Dragon Quest lifted the mechanics off of Wizardry because they played the Japanese remakes/remasters of Wizardry that replaced the original mechanics with those from Dragon Quest; menus, HP, and such. For example, if you played a gaming console version of Wizardry, it wasn’t the original, but a Japanese remake. Also, it’s worth noting that Wizardry is WAY bigger in Japan than anywhere else. Anyway, the point being that Wizardry falls in the early phase of RPGs, while Dragon Quest 1 was probably the first feature complete RPG. If you know punk music, Wizardry is Velvet Underground, Ultima is the Stooges, Dragon Quest is like the Ramones, and Dragon Quest 3 is the Sex Pistols - the console remakes of Wizardry are like if the Ramones covered Velvet Underground songs. If that makes sense—to explain a little, The Stooges and Velvet Underground came about earlier, and are often considered punk or proto-punk because of the similarities, but The Ramones were really the first to put the full package together, and The Sex Pistols are the ones that gave it the coat of paint.

And while some like to pretend that RPGs in Japan are a different genre, they’re not. This is both a false distinction and an oversimplification. Mechanically, non-Japanese developers took a lot of inspiration from what Japanese devs were doing, and vice versa. There are a variety of different flavours of RPG in every country. It’s an oversimplification because everywhere RPGs are made there are wide varieties of flavour—particularly Japan, because the genre is traditionally much more popular there, almost as popular as the rest of the world combined—sometimes more, depending on the period. Japan also hybridizes more genres, including genres like pro-wrestling and baseball, and that was by the 1980s - another thing: many western pro-wrestling games are actually created by Japanese devs using western licenses: this even includes the N64’s Wrestlemania 2000, No Mercy, and the PS2’s Def Jam Vendetta.

I’d also say Strategy-RPGs Action-RPGs can be both a hybrid genre and a sub-genre.
For example: Fire Emblem games, particularly the older ones are more of a hybrid genre being that their core mechanics and experience are made up of elements of strategy games and RPGs - but a game like Final Fantasy Tactics or Lunar SSS are more like RPGs that have battle systems involving strategy. The distinction being that the strategy elements in those games are a part of the RPG battle system. Fire Emblem is a much deeper strategy game, and like strategy games you will probably lose several characters over the course of the game, and they will be replaced by fresh characters later on. Later FE games kinda got rid of the strategy elements and don’t even properly balance for them anymore - so I’d say the Awakening and onward series is less a hybrid and more a sub-genre of RPG.

With action RPGs, Witcher 3 is more of a hybrid Action-RPG while something like Secret of Mana is a sub-genre. The reason being that the action elements hold almost no consequence in Secret of Mana, it’s really an RPG where you just occasionally hit the weapon button when the meter fills. In Witcher 3, the action elements are quite important for the battles.

Games like Zelda and Illusion of Time are solid action-adventure games. I’ve seen them described as RPGs, but this largely came as a console wars response to the “N64 lacks RPGs” criticisms during the 1990s, and claimed that action-adventure games were in fact RPGs, so that they could say Ocarina of Time was an RPG like Final Fantasy 7, Suikoden, and Xenogears. People went so far as to say “Metroid is an RPG because it’s a game where you play the role of Samus” - which, if true, expands the definition of RPG so far that it becomes meaningless, because then almost every genre would be an RPG.

Although, during the NES/SNES era there was no mistaking Legend of Zelda or Link to the Past as RPGs - Adventure of Link was considered a hybrid action RPG because Link had HP, MP, and leveled up with experience points. In fact, the confusion was around RPGs like Secret of Mana, which was clearly an RPG, but most people weren’t familiar with RPGs using action mechanics at the time, so it was kind of wrapped in under the greater “Epic” category, that was a 1990s marketing term for fantasy and scifi games, especially RPGs, adventures, action-adventures—although, sometimes games like Story of Seasons on SNES (then localized as Harvest Moon prior to the localization team hijacking the Harvest Moon branding).

First time I hear anyone considers DQ as the first RPG, given that there was nothing proto about Ultima 1-4 (all released before DQ), which had overworld, random encounters, NPC interaction and dungeons - all characteristic of D&D, which Ultima copied. If anything, Proto VRPGs were long before on mainframes in universities, trying in various way to emulate TTRPGs of the time. Not that we actually called RPGs "RPGs" in 80s, most folks I knew referred to them as FRP (Fantasy Role Playing) games.

As for punk, I'd say proto punk goes long before Stooges, at least to Kinks, and probably earlier. Personally I would never consider Velvet Underground as anything near punk, Stooges, yeah, they were almost there, as well as MC5. For me, the first song that had that classic punk sound is New York Dolls - Trash

Who the fuck does that? There were tons of video game RPGs before DQ. Dragon Quest released 1986. As I wrote before, the first video game RPGs released the same year as D&D, the game they copied: 1974. Early games were dnd, m199h, pedit5, Dungeon. Games on the Plato-system (which had some advanced capabilities) pushed graphic capabilities for RPGs, namely in moria (which had wireframe 3D dungeons) and avatar. All these games and their inspiration D&D had such an impact, that basically every student with coding abilities tried their own games, by 1980 existed many games, many of them lost now, but back then circulated in the early internet. 1980 released two other highly influental RPGs. In this year released rogue (you may have heard the name in the context of the rogue-like genre) and Akabaleth: World of Doom, which was the predecessor to the Ultima series. Dominating the early 80s were Ultima and Wizardry, and they were indeed more than prototypical, otherwise they wouldn't have been such a success. And yes, Dragon Quest pushed the borders further, but anyone saying it is the first RPG or even close too is really ignoring the rich history of RPGs.

In my mind, collecting character experience is enough for me to sort a game into the RPG-category. It is a very simplistic way of looking at the genre, but it works fairly well.

Cool, you can ignore that sentence then if you don’t like it. The rest of what you’re saying is just kinda re-articulating my point following that statement, so I don’t object to it. But, I’m basing it off of numerous conversations I’ve had on the topic of “what is an RPG?” And many (I’d even say most) weren’t aware of RPGs before Dragon Quest  - granted, it was years ago now, back from when people were calling Ocarina of Time an RPG, so that line may be out of date.

I think it is a generational thing. Gen Z probably is not aware of games you recognize as classics. DQ is still around, but some series aren't anymore. And yeah, some might not know much about RPGs and DQ is the oldest they heard about, but for other it actually may be Baldur's Gate the oldest. I for instance when I played Baldur's Gate I hadn't even heard about Dragon Quest. I knew about the existance of the Gold box RPGs and Ultima though. It might be down to the question if your gaming experience stems mostly from console or PC. As a kid and in my youth I was a PC gamer, console was this mythical space that somehow existed with worse inputs and graphics and lesser games and ideas. After the 90s though I fell somewhat off of gaming, and it was Wii and DS that pulled me back in, now from the console side of things.

So a gamer who started out on console might have heard about DQ, but not about Baldur's Gate or Gold Box, while a PC gamer might know these but never heard of DQ. And future generation might not know either.

Heh. I was actually thinking of assigning Ultima to the New York Dolls. But chose The Stooges instead because better known.

Although, I’d call The Kinks Power Pop rather than Punk. Granted, there is a lot of stylistic similarity between Power Pop and Punk—you could probably call them cousins or siblings. The Kinks, no doubt, had direct influence on the genres and sub genres of Punk and Alternative all the way up to the 1990s. Anyway, to tie it back, The Kinks could be assigned to (and I’m just spitballing here) adventures (maybe text based), which have a lot of similarities to RPGs, and have similar influences as well as having influenced the RPG genre - perhaps we can call it Zork, which is the earliest one I can think of off the top of my head.

It actually sounds like you have a similar situation to me growing up. I too was kinda re-introduced into the dedicated console side with DS and Wii after being mainly a PC gamer (probably from the late PSX era circa 2000).

To go off on a bit of a tangent: In the 1990s, my main early communities were places like Nintendojo, Squaresoft.net (.com? .org? The site run by Andrew Vestal that became RPGamer). And some of those discussions I was talking about occurred on those exact sites, I still remember the name of my main adversary, a guy called Milenko *shakes fist*.

I think fleshing out the meaning is fantastic!

Of course, and your words, and other too have been inspirational. I'm honestly just in a paper & pencil phase drawing up plans, idea, and story. I've decided to work on a demo before I work on the whole project (So I can see who is interested, and get support). I'm also trying to find a good engine (for free) to develop the demo for now. I want to it be almost 2.5D pixel.

That's super cool that you've worked on all of those and learned those coding languages, very impressive!