Villain RPG
A downloadable game
Released Dec 25, 2021; Updated Dec 24, 2023
During a dark night,
three thieves enter a castle.
They steal... the SAGE STONE!
Empowered by this,
they then loot a nearby town.
By stealth or by blood?
You can choose your path.
There's plenty of options here.
Just mind your karma!
Features:
- 20 playable characters
- 254 maps
- cheat codes
- consequence
- Crime
- hard mode, easy mode
- JRPG combat
- list of NPCs met/slain/etc
- minigames
- playable on RG351 handheld devices
- puzzles
- random encounter heat bar
- random NPC placements & events in towns
- rig a tournament
- save almost anywhere
- scoreboards
- secrets everywhere
- skills from levels, trees, trainers, and enemies
- stealth segments
- weather
- weird/unfortunate things
Fight against (a/an):
- abstract chromatic creatures
- botanomancer (requires code 90210)
- clunky UI
- death itself (phychopomp)
- Demi-fiend with a stock of demons
- escalating fights in a combat tower
- half the monster manual
- joke enemies aplenty
- mimic
- most of the default stock RTP monsters
- party members
- rival heroes
- rival villains
- tournament of competitors in a single elim bracket
- townsfolk young and old, fresh and veteran, maybe
- valkyrie with einherijar
- vampire (at least 3)
Content advisory warnings: Nasty themes ensue. Specifics listed below.
DMCA warning: Samples from Linkin Park, Childen of Bodom, or Metallica might get your VOD copyright struck, partially muted, or could add ads.
Flashing lights warning: Sudden flashes can occur and some battle effects are a bit much. Recommended to be played in a decently lit room.
Fullscreen warning: This game launches in fullscreen which has an awful aspect ratio and might cause issues with the midi music. I suggest pressing [F4-key] to toggle to windowed mode then [F5-key] to 2x size it.
Gender equality warning: The entire party is either male or non-binary.
Installer warning: Your antivirus is probably not going to like this ancient installer exe. You can't even paste an install path and have to click through the folder tree.
Intellectual property warning: Characters, music, sprites, tilesets, basically everything under the sun has been lifted from other games.
Inventory sort warning: All items are sorted by item ID. You may have to scroll past unusable items to find other battle items and logical grouping isn't really a thing.
Loud audio warning: The game is loud from frame 1 so be sure to not have your headphones turned to max. Some SFX/BGM is a bit too loud at times.
Midi music warning: Most audio in this relies on your OS's midi sound font. Results may vary. Sometimes the music goes wonky and notes are off key for whatever reason.
Missable content warning: Huge amounts of dialog and several scenes and even party members cannot all be seen on the same run. Even with repeat play-throughs, some content is just too hidden or obscure.
Murder option warning: If you would choose to ransack a zone, you can check/murder/ignore most folk.
Narrative warning: The team is all about the loot and scoot and isn't involved in an overarching epic quest to save the world. Narration and direction are at a minimum.
Nasty bugs warning: The game-breaking bugs I was able to find were squashed but there is an absolute chance of other minor bugs still existing. I may patch out the nastier ones that get reported.
No tutorialization warning: If you do not intuit the rules, you may be slain. NPCs that explain mechanics of the game are hidden in secret pocket dimensions or are already engaged in a combat arena.
Piracy warning: This game was made in Don Miguel's awesome version of RM2K which is probably highly illegal etc. The official steam version has frame-rate issues, so I never switched over.
Pixel gore warning: Some bits are gratuitous; most times there isn't a cadaver and pool but other times there is a battlefield of a dozen of doomed dudes.
Readability warning: I decided to go with transparent text boxes and blue text for item pickups which turned out to be bad for watery/blue zones. There are some other color/contrast issues going on too.
Suspicious balancing warning: Some items, skills, and possibly even characters will not up to be up to par with others. Some encounters will have lopsided rewards or a sudden difficulty spike.
Teen-aged writing warning: Some dialog was rewritten to be less awful but most has gone unchanged over the decades. Everyone is bound to find something offensive.
Typos warning: These were progressively slain but are still numerous.
Wav music warning: Are you ready for a 6MB track? Prepare for extreme compression and the bulk of the overall file-size.
Weird characters warning: Most characters were created from ideas posted to a 20 year old forum thread. These kinds of characters might not fly by today's standards but weren't cut. Watch out for drunks, stoners, Stalin, fin collectors, *ists, racial stereotypes, people that type in all-caps, people that substitute letters with numbers and punctuation, people that are the sprite of one character and the portrait of another, and other such troublemakers.
List of characters based-on/submitted-by people: Acrofales, Agent, Aqua, Arrow Dodger, Azzkicker, Balron, Baru, BigFan, BLinD-RawR, Bobby Ghostly, Botanomancer, Brahms, BuddyLee, Budmandude, Carmilla, Carnage, Chacron, Chester, Chill, Chilleh, Chillysword, Dalia, DarkPlasmaBall, David, DiabloGamerz, Dlareme, Dominic, Dorkdav, Duffman, Edxecutor, Escalus, Exolix (987666), Ezolloki, Fat Bastard, Footman, Gage, GAME !3OI, General Bob, Geth, Grongler the Executioner, IntoTheWow, Jacone, Jammno, Josh, Jowy, Kaz, Kkor, Kyamu, Liquid`Drone, Liquid`Zephyr, Lorant Ham, Mabaricko, Manifesto7, Moggin, Morino, MysteryMeat1, Nemesis, Niax, Nique, Nitrous, Noober, Novanix, Nyx, NöéVèmbēr, Pathikar, Peef, Phoenix Flame, Protrox, Protrozz, Queen, RaGe, REDRUM, Redstalin, Rekrul, Roc, Rokonosa, SENTRYIII, ShadowFang, Skully, Slio, Snake, Stealth, Terrorific, Trozz, Tsujin, UndeadCheese, Venom, Vexx, Warbringer, Wixxow, XDUDE, Yobby, Zealotlee
In memory of a good friend who had helped work on the game 20 years ago...
Good luck; have fun.
Other recommended RPGs:
1: https://unity.itch.io/weird
2: https://tuyoki.itch.io/dwellers-empty-path
3: https://housekeepinggames.itch.io/jimmy-and-the-pulsating-mass
Change Log
Version 2: Fixed an issue where your sprite would disappear when finished attacking the farm town.
Version 3: Fixed a typo in chpt2, all of Demi's elementals have learned matarukaja, duffman, noober, and sentry iii no longer appear in the tavern if slain elsewhere, fixed pathikar's dialog when he gives you an E.H., fixed underwather pathing in Villnor moat
Version 4: Fixed color on credits, reduced castle1 volume, made castle1 east wing easier to traverse, easy/normal mode knight fights no longer use the hard mode encounter and vice versa, reduced time to loot shimto, reduced walk speed of tower guards, avalon door guards are now drunk/flatfooted on easy, Brahms comments on an unlootable town, added 7 exp crystals which are easy to find on easy mode, skill tree now properly shows unspent points, added a new secret code, 4 more typos slain
Version 5: Fixed a soft-lock when jumping down a waterfall, fixed an issue where MM1 didn't join, improved New Game Plus, added and rebalanced stuff. Version 5 changelog
Version 6: Added new finale encounter on the heroes airship, added a side quest involving breaking a mirror, lots of tweaks and fixes. Version 6 changelog
Download
Development log
- Version 6 changelogDec 24, 2023
- One Year Anniversary: Character Map & Tier ListsDec 25, 2022
- Version 5 changelogMar 19, 2022
- Game launched - Here's a world mapDec 25, 2021
Comments
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I had a lot of fun playing this game I found on RMN. You should try it, the first quest is boring but the game is extremely fun.
Thanks for the comment! I'm making some improvements to the opening heist to be a bit less bs.
This game is pretty fun. I wasn't sure how to progress the tournament so I ended up just attacking the castle and got into some truly dreadful battles- (probably locked myself out of a lot of stuff) and a few things seem bugged like turning in fins to the merman or how I kept teleporting back to the first town when swapping team members for awhile, but there's a lot of stuff to do here.
Ah the attack on that castle town was one of the last things added so it’s also the least tested and probably the buggiest and least balanced. Thanks for the feedback! I’ll see if I can work in fixes for that area on the next update.
I ended up finishing (I think) the bulk of content, the only things I know I missed were the moon key in the destroyed castle, and not knowing what to do to trigger any events with the heroes in the Sage's house in the swamp. If the Mantis God is the -final- final boss, was it intended that it just warps you into the zelda-like dungeon after beating it? I can't get to the top of the tower even while having all four crowns either.
Had any change suggestions for what to do in the new versions? More party chatter of scenes vs the hero squad might be ideal to add or a better ending that transitions to the My Villain Castle sequel
-Ohhh, I'm blind.
-There's an angel that I can't approach near the slab that tells you that you need a crown to proceed.. I get stopped like two tiles away, after the tower's 3rd warp point.
-Ah, I might've bugged that out by attacking the castle then, I don't think the arena is an option anymore. I did one round then it said something about being closed and I got impatient. Some events are hard to figure out, I didn't even know you needed Venom in your party to enter that one town until I watched the trailer lmao
Well, maybe a NG+ sorta feature to make breezing through the game again to find different events easier. I'm not sure just how variable things are, but I'm guessing David is an optional recruit over Jowy (best heal boy 10/10) and there's some segments where party members chatter that I want to see more of like when Death appears or when hunting the Kraken or when Zealotte pops up to ask for help. Other than that, maybe an event/recruitment guide of some sort since I know I definitely missed people and scenes.
A proper ending after beating MG or getting the mcguffin might be good too, and if a sequel does get made that'd be cool, would definitely play.
Ya attacking the castle locks out the arena. You can advance it to the next round by chatting with the door guard after talking some number of times to others.
I have a character recruitment guide posted onto this page that only shows you the area each can be recruited. David is a tanky lockpicker but can’t join along with your healer.
I made a sequel called My Villain Castle posted here on itch but I never actually finished it so it’s still just a prototype.
I agree adding some more scenes with the entire cast would be best. I’ll add something like that when I get around to doing the next version. Recommending code 987666 for a subsequent play through. Also I recommend investigating the west canyon rubble tunnel before doing the zealot cave quest. The two secret points in the first two maps are the easiest to miss.
Oh, and NG+ is possible. I think it’s either at the top right of the world map or it’s at the roof of the mcguffin castle.
hey there! really been enjoying your game so far, but I did run into an issue with one questline where I had to get a key from coral town, since the chest on the river is inaccessible even with the blue flame. any advice?
The key is hidden to the right side outside of the inn! There is a narrow gap you can enter the building from the right side.
thanks so much! wow I completely missed that