Never thought about it. Is that the sort of thing people would be into? I feel like I'm ultimately not the most knowledgeable source on this kinda stuff to be honest. I frequently see people who can gml rings around my head.

With Phanta, the idea was to avoid a lot of the time consuming engine making time that cones with making an Rpg and focus on design and other stuff. For this project it saved me a lot of time to start with functional elements, even though I spent a lot of time redoing big chunks. For most games its easier for me to just start from scratch since working with my old sources is often difficult (see below).

Never thought about it. Or, I have, but only when I occasionally am asked about it here. My standard answer, which still stands, is that my source is pretty messy and unreadable to anyone but me. The proliferation of my art assets would not be worth the minimal educational value provided by the code.

I never really dick around or test things for the heck of it. I visualize every part of every project I do before I make it and then do my best to create what's in my head with the tools provided. Over the years I picked up a lot of skills just doing that, I guess.

I guess I would give myself... All the powers?

Yeah

OK, you got me. These projects I have involved myself with, but that's because they were commercial ventures using my IP--I had to involve myself! In both cases I was approached first, and I took a very passive role. When porting most of the work is on the porter to recreate what I've already done as accurately as possible using the assets I've made. For both cases I could easily have said no to the guys who approached me and the game would never exist. But, earning some cash for barely any new productive effort usually seems like a pretty good deal to me!

(EftU flash made pretty much nothing tho :/ )

Bard of.............. Anything. Time? I haven't put much thought into it. Honestly I feel the whole thing is too transparently constructed to motivate such fan speculation

I am a hundred percent cool with fan stuff. I generally have no intent to return to old stuff do if anybody anywhere wants to see more and or wants to take it somewhere I haven't then that is all within their power. But I won't involve myself in any way with such projects. I won't "approve" or provide content or feedback in any official capacity. Once you take the responsibility of making a project that is on you, not me, and I have no intention of canon-izing anything but my own work.

That pretty much sums up my position

Yeah man I played the begining it was mad sweet

Each relationship is a unique flower, and some are better than others.

Typically if I'm working with someone on a project I've already finished I am admittedly a little testy. I don't like coming back to old projects, which is also why I haven't made sequels. Having to work on something I was finished with literally and mentally is a trying experience for me. That and I can be very defensive about certain aspects of my games. It's almost always weird specific little stuff like the placement of a popup or something but man does it annoy me when I "KNOW" something should be a certain way and the person who has final control of the output disagrees. These end up being very small perturbations in a fabric of cooperative, productive work.

With new games the mentality can be pretty different. First of all, I'm way more invested in a game project if it's new, without exception. Secondly, having a much smaller pool to sample opinions from and feeling much more familiar with the game's programming makes me a lot more open to ideas and contributions from partners. The issue I always seem to have on these projects is that I work too much... I keep adding and fixing and moving forward faster than my coworkers can keep up with and so I end up either taking control of larger parts of the project or waiting around for people to catch up. My best quality as a designer is probably just that I can focus so deeply and single mindedly on things and accomplish crazy feats of productivity, but it can make me kind of a pain to work with, I'm sure.

Wait, I'm answering this again because I just recalled that there is in fact a monkey in Phanta. Kiiiiind of.

Sure! In fact, here's a screenshot of what I'm working on RIGHT NOW. (or, well, in the vicinity of what I'm working on) http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b136/BanovG/screenshot115-2.png

I've been meaning to make a video for a while just to demo some of the gameplay inside dungeons. I really should get around to that sometime.

Roxxy, definitely.

*Spoiler* is the real true protagonist of Phanta, for realz.

I'm not sitting around in my lab coat and goggles and thinking, "man, what am I gonna do today to REVOLUTIONIZE the GENRE?" My motivation has been to create a game with a certain kind of story and feel and atmosphere. Each decision was more or less approached from the perspective of "what's going to work for this game" and "what's going to be fun," including the decision to make this game an RPG at all, and what I have now came pretty organically from that process. It just so happens that this model doesn't include certain things that are pretty standard for games of this genre, and I have the confidence to say that the game is better off without 'em. They weren't removed--they just didn't need to be there from the start.

All of these tropes and mechanics are just tools for telling a certain kind of story and presenting a certain kind of experience, and like any tool, there are times when they're useful and times when they're not. You wouldn't be having the same crisis if these elements were "missing" from, say, Metal Gear... or Shadow of the Colossus... or Minecraft... or whatever. To me, playing through Phanta, there's never a time when it feels like there's elements "missing." I doubt you'll think so either when you play.

I don't really play RPGs so I have no idea what the envelope really is or what parts of my game are wholly original ideas. I'm not trying to come off as Mr. Number One Indie Dude with All The Answers. I'm just a guy making a game the way I want to make it.

Phanta has so much *spoiler,* you don't even KNOW

We've got bunnies, deer, owls, cats, rats, squirrels, dogs, foxes and more if that appeases you...

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. It's not like I sat and planned out this awesome full featured RPG, and then decided to take out the currency and NPCs. They're just not necessary and their nonexistence is an organic extension of the entire game's design. Focus is on other stuff. When you get attached to certain tropes like that the genre gets stagnant--that's how we ended up with all these mountains of cookie cutter RPGs. I'm not going to shove in game elements that have no place or purpose in my work.

I'm not worried if people won't like it. That's pretty low on the list of concerns. The most important thing to me is making something that I'm happy with.

Other things in Dubloon that aren't in Phanta: pirates, bombs, ships, sailing minigame, fetch quests, item trading, npcs, currency, the navy, parrots, monkeys, sea serpents, captain sparkles, islands, temples, shops, inns, alcohol, buried items, battle items, ghosts... Er... wait hang on that last one I kept