Projects

Quantum Ryder

4/20/2018

A completely different venture from anything previous, Quantum Ryder was the result of a collaboration for the Motor City Game Jam in June 2017. With only two and a half days to complete a project from scratch to finish, we scrambled to create a short racing game.

Of course, the graphics are very old school; we went for a sort of VGA/SVGA-style look, taking pictures of real objects and downsampling them to look more pixelated but still recognizable. The gameplay isn't super complicated, just race along and grab tachyon batteries while avoiding obstacles, but we're pretty proud with what we were able to accomplish in two days, especially for having multiple distinct levels.

The team consisted of Nate Berens doing the majority of the coding, David Firth and Matt Graczyk creating the art and sound assets, and myself directing while also doing the menu scene, story writing, and supplemental coding.

Unto the Breach - Episode Zero

4/18/2018

Comments

The first commercial release from Templar Games! Episode Zero serves as a general introduction/tutorial for the larger Unto the Breach experience, giving players a taste of the story and characters, as well as various gameplay elements such as the combat system, classes, crafting, quests, random loot, and more.

Alex Girard is a member of the Montblanc city militia. While conducting a fairly routine daily patrol, his friend Conrad convinces him to go on a short adventure to find remnants of an ancient city that may or may not have even existed. This leads to the catalyst event that finally convinces him to follow after his other friend, Mileena, and leave home in search of something greater for himself.

All told, Episode Zero should take about 2-3 hours to complete. It utilizes scripts by the following authors: Yanfly, Yami, Vlue, Nicke, Fomar0513, Venka, Galv, Khas, and RPG Maker Source. All creative writing and original assets are copyright Templar Games.

You can view additional information at the game's Itch.io page, or purchase it below.

Murder in the Rue Marche

4/18/2018

Comments

The second completed project for Unto the Breach, Murder in the Rue Marche is a short mystery/adventure game, created both to help familiarize myself with RPG Maker VX Ace, having recently switched to that version at the time, as well as to be an entry in the 2014 Indie Game Developers Contest, after the original planned entry proved to be too much work to complete in a single month.

As such, Murder was completed in approximately a week and a half. Although it uses the same maps as The Tournament, they had to be re-imported from scratch into VX Ace through a nigh-gratuitous amount of Photoshop work, and served as a rather intense introduction to the concept of parallax mapping.

Since it is a more straight-forward mystery/adventure game, it does not, in fact, have any RPG elements, such as combat, experience, equipment, etc. It does, however, have a randomly selected culprit from a list of five suspects, so the game changes each time you play. It takes place the day before The Tournament, and further fleshes out the character of Sergeant Daniel.

Unto the Breach: The Gathering

4/18/2018

Comments

My first published literary work, this novella tells the story of how Alex, Conrad, Lucy, and Ali, the characters you begin Episode One with, all first meet and begin their adventure together. It's available at Amazon as a downloadable eBook. Give it a read!

A second edition of the book is planned, which will add several additional short stories to the book, further fleshing out the background of the game's main characters and other aspects of the world. There will be no change to the price, and purchasers of the current edition will be able to update their ebooks for free!

Unto the Breach: The Tournament

4/18/2018

Comments

The first released title by Templar Games, UTB: The Tournament was intended as a stand-alone demo/side-story to showcase my game-making capabilities for several makers' fairs being held in Detroit. As a self-contained story, The Tournament can be played independently of any other titles in the series, though, as it takes place a year before Unto the Breach itself, it's recommended playing this first if you want to experience things chronologically.

Since this version was developed in RPG Maker XP, it's not compatible with the current version of RPG Maker the main game is being developed in, and thus can't be directly added in. I might go back and add it as an optional side-story of some sort later on, as the events of The Tournament are referenced in the main story.

The Tournament is a free game, available for download.