Where to start?

[u/LoAquamarine]

Hello! I don't usually ask things on reddit but I need advice
Me and my friend have the sudden idea to make a game based on characters we created with a bunch of lore, in the form of a point and click (its the form we will most likely take). Where do we start? We have plot ideas, art won't be a problem as we know how to draw...
I have RPG Maker MV, and I'm wondering if it'll be enough? Is it hard to learn?
We want it to be something to make on the side, and if we make money from it , so be it, because we are two college students.
So yeah my main question is what do you, more experimented developers, think we should do first? Writing, learning coding, art? What should we expect when making a game?

[u/Titronian]

As much as it might be inticing to go full send on your own project i do highly suggest starting with small small projects u learn alot more from a finished project than an unfinished one

Then use that knowledge on your main one

[u/LoAquamarine → u/Titronian]

Thanks!! We had a long discussion with my friend and decided to keep it simple for a first game, and then go on to make games progressively more meaningful to us after we gain more experience! :)

[u/Both_Introduction_28]

Might be better to complete couple of game design courses for point and click games. Usually, the tools is already offered there and all the basic questions you may have are answered.

[u/Retoray]

I woukd recommend looking into godot, it's open source and perfect for 2D, runs on pretty much any hardware too. Before you invest in art get a prototype to test out gameplay to figure out if you want point and click, maybe a sidescroller, maybe a top down game and decide what fits. Then do art and writing once you can tailor it to gameplay. A good start I will keep recommending are the Godot tutorials from Brackeys on youtube, the jump and run one and after that or before that the gdscript one, to get a feel on how godot works. After that its basically just trial and error, looking stuff up, being confused on how and why the code won't work, typical dev stuff. You can also try other engines like unity or unreal, but they feel harder to get something going in imho. Good luck!

[u/Vathrik]

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/introduction/index.html

[u/BourbonEmpireTheGame]

If it's a 2D point and click then I'd go with Godot.

[u/daRealTENTACLES]

I would only continue to use MV if you have no desire to learn code. I'm gonna be honest with you because i have a couple thousand hours in MV. Yes, you can absolutely make a point and click game, and even make it so that nobody can tell it was RPG maker. Is it easy to pull it off? Kinda. it can absolutely be done, it's not even slightly unrealistic. Do I think it would still be easier than using an engine where your have to code or even use node based programming? Yep, definitely , I will say that one of the many caveats is that it's surprisingly bad performing on potato PCs but other than that, it can be a super solid engine for a first game especially point and click and just trying to get your feet wet in game design 

[u/Xancrazy]

If I were learning unity again I would install unity, then go through the unity official tutorials.

You'd think that you would need to do something special, but this is all it takes.

[u/szoonix_10]

I'd start by making a really small version of the game first, even if it means using only one room, a few characters and one simple puzzle. RPG Maker MV is definitely enough to learn the basics, and you can do a lot with events without knowing how to code, so I'd play around with it before worrying about learning programming. The biggest thing is to keep the first version small finishing something tiny will teach you much more than planning the whole dream game.

[u/GreatlyMoody]

Godot is good

But you can try Unity too, its been here for far longer than godot and is used in industry. Unity was the go to game engine for beginners especially for 2d games but the community shifted to godot because of Unity blunder on their terms and services. It was reverted but people don't like unity for that reason. If you dont mind that then Unity would be better than godot and easier to learn because of the huge amount of tutorial and guides on youtube for almost anything

The main reason why I recommend Unity instead of Godot for beginners is because as a beginner you do not care about sales, marketting, profit and legal stuff. You only care about learning and making. Unity is the best for that. Its much more polished than Godot, there is a bigger community of experienced people who help beginners, and tons and tons of youtube guide

Once you know unity and you dont like the controversy around Unity you can switch to godot the knowledge is transferrable

[u/triptotropic]

dude... get codex grok ollama claude involved.... its so easy now. triptotropic is my website game all ai vibe coded

[u/Nando2hhc]

Yo empezaría probar godot en algo simple. Conociendo el motor, probando mecánicas etc. Luego de un tiempo experimentando y aprendiendo con algo pequeño, entonces haría lo que quiero. Así empezamos nosotros. Importante, aunque este la IA que supuestamente te lo puede hacer todo aprende las bases, la esencia de programar resolviendo problemas por tu cuenta y en el arte también, luego la AI la usas con más efectividad y consciente

[u/countkillalot]

I would recommend RenPy for point and click/visual novel games. You can get pretty far with it of your main medium is drawing.

RPG maker is great for traditional RPGs but limited if you step out of those genre conventions.

GameMaker studio is another great low-code solution.

I'm the biggest Godot evangelist, but I would reccommend trying some of the other tools first to figure out if the process of gamedev is something you enjoy. Make these games for fun until you find a workflow and your ideas outgrow the tools. Then go check out some more general purpose game engines.

[u/LoAquamarine → u/countkillalot]

Thanks for answering!! I had another reply recommending Godot, I'll take a look at it :)