Guilherme Martins · Tokyo Cowboys
-Dialog and text corrections -Ability balancing -Weapon and armor balancing -Enemy balancing -Level progression balancing -Additional side quest and non-main story line content added
-Dialog and text corrections
-Ability balancing
-Weapon and armor balancing
-Enemy balancing
-Level progression balancing
-Additional side quest and non-main story line content added
General QOL and minor bug fixes.
General QOL and minor bug fixes.
General QOL and minor bug fixes
General QOL and minor bug fixes
General QOL and minor bug fixes.
General QOL and minor bug fixes.
General text fixes and small bug corrections.
General text fixes and small bug corrections.
General QOL and minor bug fixes
General QOL and minor bug fixes
About a week ago, Gui and I found ourselves programming the end movie to The Benza RPG. It felt very surreal. We took a look at the clock on the editing software, and we realized that by the time we finish with the game we will have spent 1000 hours working it. That doesn’t inclu
About a week ago, Gui and I found ourselves programming the end movie to The Benza RPG. It felt very surreal. We took a look at the clock on the editing software, and we realized that by the time we finish with the game we will have spent 1000 hours working it. That doesn’t include the countless playtesting sessions and upload sessions to Apple, Android, and Steam.
1000 hours. At times it feels like it was a lot shorter than that. Gui and I laugh a lot while we work. I talk to him about plot points for episodes I’m still writing for The Benza. He tells me about what it’s like being a full-time programmer. We’re quite the odd couple when you think about it!
At times it feels a lot longer than that. There have been times we really wanted RPG MAKER MV to do something that it just can’t do. There have been times we had to sacrifice things because of memory limitations. Being an odd couple leads to misunderstandings and communication break downs that must be overcome.
Having said that, The Benza overall is a rag tag team made up of the ODDEST couples you’ve ever seen. I think that is what makes our team work. Looking back at this game, it’s the mix of what each individual member of the team brings to the table that has sailed us through the rough waters and got us laughing into the harbor.
When we started this, it really was just Gui and I working on what we thought would take us a couple of months to finish. As we round the two year point and our team stands at about twenty people, it feels really good to have made it this far without giving up.
Looking forward, Gui and I foresee making one more large update in the coming months with finished art work and additional assets. It took about a year and a half, but we both feel very comfortable with where our party members and abilities are at. Unless we get some large feedback from players about something feeling unbalanced, we will be moving forward to Nintendo Switch development.
As we near the end of The Benza RPG’s development, I just want to take a moment to say thank you to all of the people who have messaged me directly over The Benza’s official account on Twitter or via email. We were able to nip some bugs in the butt and handle some balancing issues thanks to your time and support. My favorite message up to now has just been one sentence long. I will sign this blog off with that sentence below.
“Help, how do I kill Bob?”
Heh.
-Chris
-The Benza RPG is playable from start to finish! The Japanese school is now playable from floors 1 to 50! -A new area has been added to the Shadow Circus that is only playable by Hamilton’s “Call” magic. This area is accessible after Hamilton joins the party. -Extensive additions
-The Benza RPG is playable from start to finish! The Japanese school is now playable from floors 1 to 50!
-A new area has been added to the Shadow Circus that is only playable by Hamilton’s “Call” magic. This area is accessible after Hamilton joins the party.
-Extensive additions have been made to the voice acting cast including Bob Werley (Bob), Shizuka Anderson (Carol), Hiro Ono (Hiro), and many more characters from Benza English!
-Over 200 lines of new spoken dialog have been added to the game!
-All character’s stats have been balanced to reflect their roles at the end of the game.
-“Callable” characters now gain levels easier and have increased stats to make them more viable throughout the entire game.
-5th tier weapons and armor have been added.
-New monster art has been added to various points of the game.
-Additional moves have been added to many of the “callable” characters and to main party members including Chris and Tamura.
Hey everyone! Gui and Chris here (and Masa if you’re reading this in Japanese) with another large update. Gui and I were both avid players of FFXI and have always approached our game like it was an MMORPG. That means that sometimes the way forward is to take a step back and rebal
Hey everyone! Gui and Chris here (and Masa if you’re reading this in Japanese) with another large update. Gui and I were both avid players of FFXI and have always approached our game like it was an MMORPG. That means that sometimes the way forward is to take a step back and rebalance job classes and gameplay. In that spirit, we are mainly bringing you a QOL update, but I think you’ll agree that it is a massive one.
As we move closer and closer towards the end of the main game scenario, Gui and I realized that this would be a good time to take a step back and update some of the events that take place at the beginning of the game. Before we hand things off to Nintendo, we want to make sure this game launches as smoothly as possible, and that means cleaning off some of the dust that’s settled on the start of our game.
When we first started making this game, we really weren’t sure about what we could and couldn’t do within the limitations of the RPG Maker MV engine. A year later we have a really good idea and know a lot more about what the end of our game looks like. That means we are now able to go back in to the very first steps of Chris and Kyle’s adventure and smooth some things out for the player to further equip them to succeed.
A few examples: Canned Coffee now heals for 500HP, not 250. Fruit Juice now heals for 1000HP instead of 500. We went into all of the monster’s programming on floors 1-25 and updated it so that monster’s no longer spam one move. Chris’ ability “Step Forward Again” is now learned at a much lower level and prevents negative status effects instead of healing them to help with the David boss fight. Stephanie has a lot more MP to work with and her magic can now critical hit. Even the first quest to find weapons in Higashi Nakano has a lot more hints and has been made a lot easier to solve.
Essentially, we wanted to help each character lean into their roles in combat more and streamline the user’s experience overall so that a new player’s entry into our world feels…fun. This is a game we’re talking about after all.
To top it off, for players waiting for additional end game content, we have finished off Boss Rush mode at the battle arena and have added in some cool new accessories we’d been holding off on.
Expect another large update on the second half of version one content later this month. Then we will be moving on to the end of the game and the release of Version 3 of The Benza RPG.
Chris, Gui, and Masa
Part of me feels like maybe I should have put the Nintendo Switch development part first in the title. A big part of me feels like that’s the lead story here, but I’m going to come back to the NINTENDO SWITCH DEVELOPMENT story later. (OMGOMGOMG what is happening?) Version 2.5 of
Part of me feels like maybe I should have put the Nintendo Switch development part first in the title.
A big part of me feels like that’s the lead story here, but I’m going to come back to the NINTENDO SWITCH DEVELOPMENT story later. (OMGOMGOMG what is happening?)
Version 2.5 of The Benza RPG adds two new fantastic playable characters, a bonkers storyline even for us, and about 3 hours of new content. I’m quite proud of this bit of the game. This part of the story I’d been looking forward to since we’d started and I’m glad we finally got it in the game.
If you’ve played the game to this point and have been on this journey with us for the past year, you know that The Benza RPG is actually based on a television show called The Benza. In Japan, we just had the successful release of the first part of series 2 of the television show. Over two hundred guests joined us and it was a lot of laughs!
Now that the second season has launched in Japan, it frees up a lot of my mental resources to work with Gui and Masa (who’s translating this blog if you’re reading it in Japanese) on steering this game through its last act! We are probably going to take a small step back to do a mini QOL update next, but then it’s full steam (no pun intended) to the end.
As our game is a retro RPG, we always thought that the Nintendo Switch would be the most comfortable main console port of our game. A few weeks back a very hopeful Gui and I crossed our fingers and sent in an application. We’re very happy to announce that Nintendo approved our application and granted us permission to port The Benza RPG to the Switch.
Quite like the title of this blog, the game must come first. As much as I would love to just start porting everything right now, Gui and I from the beginning of programming said that we would want the game to be completely finished before we started porting it to any other systems.
It’s a long road from here to possibly porting to Nintendo Switch, but I’m very excited to have this amazing option available to us. I don’t believe we’d have this option without everyone’s support and feedback. Thank you and I hope you enjoy Version 2.5!
Chris
Hello everyone! It’s been a while. Never fear though, Gui and I have been working non-stop towards the final release of The Benza RPG 3.0! The release of The Benza Series 2 has eaten up a lot more time than I thought it was going to. I’m sure you can imagine it’s difficult to sim
Hello everyone! It’s been a while. Never fear though, Gui and I have been working non-stop towards the final release of The Benza RPG 3.0!
The release of The Benza Series 2 has eaten up a lot more time than I thought it was going to. I’m sure you can imagine it’s difficult to simultaneously work on a game and produce a television show at the same time. I have to admit, Gui and I both feel very lucky to have this game to continue to work on. The Benza is a very fun world to be a part of, and no matter how stressful programming within RPG Maker can be, the constant humor and gags within The Benza prevent Gui and I from ever becoming stressed to the point we want to quit.
We have lots of amazing news. We are releasing a small patch today to commemorate the world premiere of The Benza Series 2 at MCM Birmingham Comic Con. We have added a password locked chest that can be opened with a code in Higashi Nakano Talent. (It’s on the west side of Higashi Nakano if you haven’t been there yet.) We will be releasing the code for the chest on social media on the 13th of November. Keep an eye out for it. This password will get you an equippable “MCM Comic Con T-Shirt” that gives whoever wears it a regenerative TP effect. I recommend David or Alena.
Additionally, we have decided to release a large expansion The Benza RPG 2.5 before we release the final 3.0. This expansion will add five new floors to the main dungeon as well as an additional estimated three hours of gameplay. I won’t go into too many details now about this release as Gui and I are still estimating how much new content we can comfortably fit into this release.
Stay tuned for more information about The Benza RPG 2.5 as well as the official release of The Benza Series 2.
Thank you everyone for playing The Benza RPG. We hope you're enjoying version 2! It feels like we've finally got the hang of how to roll a massive version update now. We have replied to every message that we received about questions, QOL changes, and bug fixes. We can say with co
Thank you everyone for playing The Benza RPG. We hope you're enjoying version 2!
It feels like we've finally got the hang of how to roll a massive version update now. We have replied to every message that we received about questions, QOL changes, and bug fixes. We can say with confidence that we have addressed all of the concerns that have been brought to our attention with this update.
As you all know, The Benza is a television show, and we are simultaneously shooting series two while smoothing out the rough edges of version 2 of the game. Cast members Kosuke Imai (Kosuke) and Lee Min Kuk (Lee) both played through the full game for the first time. It took Kosuke a bit over 30 hours to finish the main game and all of the side quests! Needless to say, while we are on set we talk about the game quite a lot and about who's in everyone's main party.
If you read this and have a minute, let us know what your play time is at and who is your main team!
Mine is Chris, Alena, David, and Maria. All offense, all boosts, all the loot.
Thanks for playing! We hope to be making small updates via steam every two weeks or so until work begins on version 3! Speak to you again soon.
-Chris
Version 2 is finally here! Find out what happens as Chris and Kyle continue their battle with Inko Sensei to save Lee and all of Higashi Nakano! -Three new playable characters join the party!!! Kaori, Hamilton, and Maria from “Benza English” each bring their own original moves, s
Version 2 is finally here! Find out what happens as Chris and Kyle continue their battle with Inko Sensei to save Lee and all of Higashi Nakano!
-Three new playable characters join the party!!! Kaori, Hamilton, and Maria from “Benza English” each bring their own original moves, skills and abilities to assist in the fight against Inko Sensei’s shadow monsters! Featuring new voice acting by Kaori Ikeda, Aver Hamilton, and Maria Papadopoulou.
-A new town, Okubo, is available to explore as well as Higashi Nakano Park, a shopping mall, and several other exciting new locations.
-The Japanese School is now explorable up to floor 40.
-Side quests to learn new magic spells and abilities add an additional three hours of playtime.
-Party members are now able to equip two accessories, one for stat boosts, and one for additional effects.
-Full Japanese language support has been added to the game! Switch between Japanese and English at any time from the “Option” menu in the game.
Thank you all so much for playing The Benza RPG. On behalf of Gui and myself, we cannot tell you how flattering it is to hear from so many of you. We are listening to your comments and feedback, and are trying to implement the things we think are a good fit for our game. We are v
Thank you all so much for playing The Benza RPG. On behalf of Gui and myself, we cannot tell you how flattering it is to hear from so many of you. We are listening to your comments and feedback, and are trying to implement the things we think are a good fit for our game.
We are very excited to announce the release of the most requested feature: In Battle Subtitles! For those of you who don't speak Japanese, you can now understand what Chris and Kyle are saying as they battle Inko Sensei.
Additionally, Gui and I are still collecting finished artwork from artists around the world and switching out temporary assets. We are very proud of the work that our team is doing. Please be patient with us as we continue to update version one!
The good news is we have started looking at how to translate the game into Japanese as well as starting to program version 2 for those of you who are waiting to see what happens next.
-Chris and Gui