Spent hours researching last night because I got mad at trees.

Came to the conclusion that trees suck, but waterfalls are cool.

These are the kind of statements that come out of overthinking game design.

Or to put it as a meme…

Not wanting to leave you with just that, so here’s a bit of an explanation.

I don’t like how the stock trees look in RPG Maker MV. The tree walls simply don’t look the way I want them to look, so I spent time researching how other RPGs make their trees as I worked on my design for the Forest Outskirts.

I looked at several games doing this, including Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Evermore, both Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Soul Blazer and Breath of Fire 1 and 2.

Some games do trees incredibly well (like Chrono Trigger and Trials of Mana) others I didn’t like, but I liked their overall map structure (like Breath of Fire 2)

In all cases though, I came across awesome waterfalls. Not once did I see a waterfall design I didn’t like.

I’ve expressed numerous times in the development process for this game that I cannot stand drawing trees, as they are everywhere and I am constantly drawing them.

So I took the map I have for my forest outskirts and re-sketched it, to get an idea of what changes I wanted to make and how to improve on its overall look.

Then I compared areas of the map to well designed areas of games I like, to give me an idea of how I can improve on it.

Finally, I looked at real-life forest trails to get an idea on how a trail like this would ACTUALLY look and be kind of realistic for my RPG about monsters in modern day times.

This is the result of my crazy man wall of thought…

So yeah, the journey continues!