Its been nearly a year since this project began. If you’ve visited my blog before this, I thank you for joining me on what’s been a much longer journey than I anticipated.

My name is Jeff Johnson and I’m the developer of The New World Saga, a passion project of mine that has really started to take shape in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The New World Saga is an RPG that I’ve developing for quite some time. It started as an RPG, before turning into an on-stage play, before work began on a book, then work began recently on it being an RPG again.

Throughout all of this time, RPG Maker has been a big part of the process. The story began when I was tinkering around with RPG Maker for the PlayStation One several years ago and came back to light with the release of RPG Maker MV for the Nintendo Switch.

Since then, a lot of development has been going on with all the home time I’ve been getting through the ongoing pandemic. MONTHS of planning, development, drawings, writing, discussions over Messenger, in newsrooms and over phones, MORE writing.

Is this game close to being released? Nope! Not by a long shot.

To be honest, I felt starting some sort of a development blog would help keep some of my ideas in check and potentially help with keeping me sane. It has been updated occasionally (RARELY), minus story spoilers and what not. 

My original goal was to get a version of the first chapter of the game released onto Switch’s RPG Maker MV Player sometime in 2021. From there, I want to take that and move it over to the Steam version of RPG Maker MV, where I have a lot more options available to me for development.

Now that 2021 is nearly over, I’d like to revise that goal.

The majority of the work this past year has focused on scripting and designing many of the art assets this game will use. At this point, 98 percent of the game’s enemies are drawn, digitized and colored, almost all of the battlebacks are drawn, digitized and colored and the focus of art development recently has been sprite work and map design.

I’m not musically inclined, so I’ve been donating to various musicians here on itch.io and purchasing music rights from musicians on other sites to find the right sound for the game. All songs that end up being used for the project will be credited properly.

I’ve also been purchasing several asset packs from creators here on itch.io, which I’ve been editing items from to fit with the overall design of my project. I’ll make sure to credit all creators whenever I use an item from one of their asset packs.

I also spent some time this Fall brainstorming a new name for this project. With the release of Amazon’s New World MMO, its forced me into re-thinking what I call The New World Saga. Two of the names I’ve been tossing around for this first section of the story include A Rural Tale and No Light Town. Its still very much a work-in-progress.

So hopefully you are enjoying this ride. I’ve been trying to share what I can as I go, but I can’t share items edited from asset packs. I would be happy to share some more of my original works going into the new year.

Before this year’s over, I’m also planning on sharing some Top Ten lists from the development desk of some of my favorite parts of this project, so hopefully you have fun with that!

(Spoiler Alert: I am not the best artist in the world, nor do I claim to be.  I’m having fun with this and that’s what really matters.)