Introduction

After several false starts at creating my own game over the past few years, I decided that I had enough of quitting and would finally see through my first project from beginning to end! The project in question is a short, five chapter Fire Emblem game featuring a demographic hardly represented in the series or in RPGs in general – brown people! In the spirit of the Fire Emblem games, I want to tell a tale of drama, heroism, and political intrigue through map-based combat and a colorful cast of companions. But more than that, I want to demonstrate that, contrary to what the medium might have us think, it is as easy to create a hero with dark skin as it is to conjure up purple-haired dragonkin. This blog will document my creative process, from map design to debates about lore.

I will be using the open-source software FEBuilder to hack Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones and design my game. Depending on my success, and on feedback from friends and fans of the series, I might try to recreate the game with original assets using SRPG Studio or Godot – that's a long way from now, but I'd like to keep it in mind as potential "endgame content" to this journey of mine!

This is meant to be a solo project, but I won't refuse help, especially if I make it to the endgame! So if you're an artist, I'd love to create concept art of my characters with you. If you're a programmer, let me pick your brain about how you'd build and SRPG.

Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own any intellectual property of Fire Emblem, nor do I seek to profit from its use. The purpose of this blog is to document a personal project and discuss game design elements. I do not take any responsibility for the distribution, downloading, or hacking of ROMs by others.